Well now, pull up a chair. Not the good chair — that one's got a spring loose and it'll pinch you out of pure meanness. This one. There. Now, I understand you've got something to sell, and you've been sitting there wondering why nobody's beating a path to your door. Let me save you some money on wondering. Folks don't buy the thing. Folks buy the story the thing comes wrapped in — and most of what's out there is wrapped in tissue paper and big words, and it tears before it gets to the porch.
I learned this the slow way, which is the only way anybody learns anything worth knowing.
A story about a man and a mower
There was a fellow — not me, a fellow I knew — who fixed small engines out of a garage with a dirt floor and a coffee can full of bolts he'd been meaning to sort since the second Bush administration. He didn't advertise. Didn't have a sign you could read from the road, just a piece of plywood with his name burned into it with a soldering iron, letters all different heights like they were walking downhill.
And that garage was full. Every spring, full. People drove past two shiny shops to get to him.
Now, why? Because when you brought him a mower, he told you what was wrong with it in words a ten-year-old could follow, told you what it'd cost before he touched it, and if the mower wasn't worth fixing, he told you that too — and lost the sale and kept the customer. Everybody in three counties knew a story about him doing exactly that. He never paid for an advertisement in his life. He just kept handing people a story worth carrying home, and they carried it.
That's marketing, friend. The rest is stationery.
The three rules, such as they are
Tell it straight. If your thing is good, say what it does and what it costs and let that be enough. If part of it isn't ready yet, say that too — folks can smell paint over rot, and they'd rather hear "we're still building that part" from you than discover it themselves. Around this house we say in development right on the door when it's true, and nobody's ever held honesty against a man who led with it.
Tell it warm. Numbers put people to sleep and stories wake them up, because a story is the only package a fact can travel in without getting dropped. You tell a man his problem costs him money, he'll nod and forget. You tell him about the fellow with the dirt-floor garage, and ten years from now he'll tell it to somebody else — and your name will still be riding in it.
Tell it like you'd want it told to you. Sit on the porch side of your own words. Would you believe you? Would you drive past two shiny shops for you? If the answer's a squirm, fix the work before you fix the words. Marketing done right is just the truth, carried well. Marketing done wrong is a loud shirt on a man with nothing to say.
What this house is
Good Ol' Dad is the marketing department of this establishment — the porch where the family's work gets its stories told. It's a young department, still in development, and it says so plainly, because that's rule one and we eat our own cooking here. The voice you'll find in this house is this one: plainspoken, story first, warm as a stove in January, and straight as a string line.
Come sit with us while we build it: goodoldad.marketing. The coffee's terrible. The stories are honest. Around here, that's the right way around.
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