Henry built a house of wonders.
Feeling exotic, he named it Le palais merveilleux, which translates to The Palace of Marvels. Then, realising that most people in his city couldn’t pronounce merveilleux, he called it both names.
(It’s pronounced mer-vey-eugh, if you were wondering.)
How marvellous was the Palace of Marvels? Well, once he invited Flinn Bordin, the current holder of the Most Blasé Man Alive title, to tour the palace. By room three Flinn’s eyebrows has escaped his control and gave him an unquestionable look of surprise. By room seven, a smile had definitely started in the corners of his mouth. By room eleven, Flinn was sobbing like a baby and grinning like a fool. He lost the title and stayed to work as a ticket seller.
For of course Henry sold tickets. He had built the Palace of Marvels with a bag of fairy gold he’d found in a disused well, but even fairy gold runs out eventually in the face of that much ambition. Henry’s plan was to sell enough tickets to finance his acquisition trips, to expand the house, and to buy P.T. Barnum’s top hat.
He sold some tickets, mostly to the friends and family of people who had visited before, but to achieve his goal he needed to increase his ticket sales from a trickle to a flood.
To attract these new visitors, Henry built up his front yard. He added a formal Japanese garden. He built a three-storey-tall thrill slide. He constructed a sorbet fountain. He added steam-powered mechanical elephants who played God Save the Queen. “Ah-ha,” he said, “All of these wonderful attractions will be sure to increase my ticket sales!”
A month later he had to admit that they had not. He climbed to the top of the Prisoner’s Turret with a spyglass and tried to figure out why.
He watched as new people crowded through his front gate. They oohed and aahed at the elephants, dipped their spoons in the sorbet fountain, refreshed their wa in the Garden of Tranquillity, screamed like dervishes coming down the slide, wandered around to count the monkeys – did I mention the monkeys? – and eat a little more sorbet… and then they looked at their watches, rubbed their feet, and left.
Henry twirled his moustache thoughtfully for an hour, and then he went to the bulldozer shed.
His new visitors arrived the next morning to find a new addition to the front yard: a path. The path led past the steam-powered mechanical elephants who played God Save the Queen, through the Garden of Tranquillity, past the sorbet fountain, up to the thrill slide. And when people descended, screaming like dervishes, to the bottom of the thrill slide, they found themselves at the door of the Palace of Marvels, which bore a sign:
Many more wonders inside!
See the delights which destroyed the composure of The Most Blasé Man Alive!
And delighted, calmed, tingling with sorbet, thrilled and hoping for more monkeys – a hope soon to be amply rewarded – the crowds lined up to buy tickets. They lined up in such numbers that Henry soon started making plans to acquire P.T. Barnum’s entire wardrobe.
All was wonder in the Palace of Marvels. As it should be.
The moral of the story
Physical businesses have a clear path to the money, whether it’s the Pay Here sign over the cashier, or the irritating Exit Through the Gift Shop. They work for business owners – of course – and for the customers. Businesses win because they get paid. Customers win because they don’t have to spend their precious mental energy and attention deciphering where to go next.
You’ve seen this done badly, especially in dimly-lit stock clearance stores. Remember how tiring and frustrating they are? Life is too short to spend stumbling around looking daft, attempting to find what you want, find the cashier, and find the exit.
Far too many websites are like this.
In the jumble of Free! Downloadable! Thingie! and Sign up for the newsletter and Please Like This on Facebook and Teleclass Next Tuesday, most people behave like they’re in the front yard of the Palace of Marvels: they wander, admire, and then leave. No-one wins here.
For both of your sakes, you need a path.
An example? Mais oui!
In the next day or so I will have a new doohickey on this website – depending on when you’re reading this it might already be in place. That doohickey will be a box at the end of every article encouraging you to sign up to Mo’Cash, Mo’Joy (the Cash and Joy newsletter).
[Edit: it's in place now. Shiny.]
That’s the first step on the path. The purpose of articles like this one is to entice you to the next level of engagement by writing the most excellent, informative and transformative stories I possibly can.
Once you’re reading the newsletter, you’ll be offered a free 30-minute Marketing Check-up. The purpose of the newsletter is to entice you into signing up for a free Marketing Check-up by delivering consistently excellent Cash-and-Joy-flavoured information and reminders of why you’re doing your work.
When you talk with me in the Marketing Check-up, you get a taste of what it’s like to work with me. The purpose of the one-on-one session is to entice you into one day buying my products and services by delivering an overwhelming amount of clarity, love and epiphany.
You win: at the end of this path you’ve had at least four levels of value, delight and insight. (You wouldn’t hang around if it wasn’t great.) And if you buy from me, it’s because you’re convinced that would be a frakkin’ smart move.
I win: I actually make money instead of having a delightful website and an empty back account. And I make money by doing things I love: writing and giving away my talents.
Every step on the path leads to the next step.
What’s your path? How could you shape one?
See the nifty new box. Use the nifty new box. Sign up for Mo’Cash, Mo’Joy today!
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