Today’s Downsizer Dispatch . . .
Quote of the Day:
. . . there’s a super-special quote today, but it’s in the message, so you’ll have to read what follows . . .
Subject: How to get what you want
A marketing guru was teaching a room of full of eager entrepreneurs. He said . . .
“If you were opening a hamburger stand, what’s the most important thing you’d need to succeed?”
Of course, since it was a marketing class, a student replied, “Great marketing.” But the guru merely smiled and said nothing. So the other students chimed in with their answers: “A competitive price.” “A good location.” “A great hamburger.”
The guru said, “Those things are good. But if I can have just one thing, my hamburger stand will beat yours.”
The guru paused for effect. The students listened intently. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Finally, a student cried out, “What is it?”
The guru replied: “A hungry crowd.”
Everyone smiled. Everyone agreed. Nothing was more important — not marketing, price, location, or quality. A hungry crowd was the most important thing a hamburger stand could have.
That’s what we need too. A crowd that’s hungry for smaller government.
I am sometimes criticized for saying that nothing matters more than building the Downsize DC Army (a.k.a., the hungry crowd). People want to focus on other things: electing the right candidates, focusing on a particular issue to the exclusion of others, or communicating an idea in a certain special way. But . . .
None of those things will work if we don’t have a hungry crowd first. How do we induce a hunger in the American people?
Let me share some words of wisdom. They come from a book published in 1885, titled “Hints to Intending Advertisers” by Thomas Smith. They were sent to me by a guy named Roger Austin of Florida. This is our “Quote of the Day” . . .
- The first time a man looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
- The second time he does not notice it.
- The third time he is conscious of its existence.
- The fourth time he faintly remembers having seen it before.
- The fifth time he reads it.
- The sixth time he turns up his nose at it.
- The seventh time he reads it through and says, “Oh, brother!”
- The eighth time he says, “Here’s that confounded thing again!”
- The ninth time he wonders if it amounts to anything.
- The tenth time he will ask his neighbor if he’s tried it.
- The eleventh time he wonders how advertisers make it pay.
- The twelfth time he thinks it must be a good thing.
- The thirteenth time he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
- The fourteenth time he remembers that he’s wanted such a thing for a long time.
- The fifteenth time he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
- The sixteenth time he thinks he will buy it some day.
- The seventeenth time he makes a memorandum of it.
- The eighteenth time he swears at his poverty.
- The nineteenth time he counts his money carefully.
- The twentieth time . . . he buys it.
- And then he begins telling his friend what a wonderful thing he’s acquired.
Do you want people to agree with you? Do you want people to be hungry for what you want? Then you need to sell the benefits of what you want with the kind of overwhelming repetition described above.
This is what we mean by Operation Everywhere. We need to make our ideas — YOUR ideas — seen and heard by everyone, everywhere, every day. Do your ideas currently benefit from this kind of repetition? No, but the ideas you oppose do. That may be why so many people seem to be hungry for things you find poisonous.
We’ve structured DownsizeDC.org to create a hungry crowd in the quickest way possible. We’ll do that by being simple. We only want to do three things: advertise to make people hungry for smaller government, recruit those hungry people to build a large army, and use that army to apply relentless, overwhelming, resistance numbing pressure on the politicians.
Simple. Powerful. If we do it.
We need your help to grow financially so we can reach our goals. The goal for this month is modest. We start small or not at all. We want to increase the amount of monthly pledge support we have. You can become a monthly pledger for as little as $5 a month. You can pledge here.
We also one to make budget for February. The balance needed is $4,583. That means we need $305 today. Just 21 cents per Dispatch subscriber would cover us for the month. So your contribution of $10, $25, or $50 would cover a lot of ground quickly. You can contribute here.
All donors will receive a copy of “The Downsize DC Vision.”
Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army.
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.