Your pal & daily email horror host has been accused many times of being a “luddite.”
Which I think, really, is not very fair.
“Luddite” doesn’t even BEGIN to describe me, and falls way short.
Although I do own a couple software companies, so there’s that, at least. But the “prototype” for my way of thinking and successfully doing business as a supposed luddite regardless of today’s volatile technological change is:
Ralph “Papa” Thorson in the movie “The Hunter”.
It was Steve McQueen’s last movie.
And the story was also based on a real life guy who was a modern day bounty hunter. In the movie Papa is a 50-year old guy who is way behind on technology and only getting older, slower, and more out of touch with the times each day. Yet, he always gets his man when given an assignment to bring someone in by applying relentless almost machine-like consistency vs brute force.
Papa’s pregnant woman Dotty (20-years younger than him) even complains about his contempt for new:
DOTTY: You ought to let your hair grow out. It looked a lot better when it was longer.
PAPA: I’m too old for that.
DOTTY: You like old things. That’s all you care about. You don’t like anything that’s new.
PAPA: New things are no good.
That is a nearly identical conversation Stefania (Millennial, easily distracted by new) and myself (Gen X, longing for the internet to go back to being plain text) have almost every week, it seems, lately, which got me to thinking about this.
Again, I highly suggest watching the movie.
Papa’s format – his unique way of doing business – may be old fashioned, just as his job as a bounty hunter was old fashioned. But he was good at it, did business HIS way, and had people competing to hire him and pay him lots of money because he had such a high success rate and bringing people in.
Ain’t no different today in the world of constantly-changing business & technology.
My approach to business is similar to Papa’s.
And, in many ways, so is my Email Players methodology although it can be “adapted” for nearly any business format, in my experience – old, young, or in between.
To learn more about that go here:
Ben Settle
