Missing Link? Or Missing The Point?

A few years back, I heard Dan Kennedy tell this story…

He was booked to speak in a very small town. The night before the gig, he unpacked his suitcase at the motel and discovered he’d forgotten his cuff links.

No problem. He’d buy some.

But the motel had no gift shop. So he asked the desk clerk to point him to the best clothing store in town.

“The Wal-Mart,” she said.

Dan grabbed a cab and raced to the Wal-Mart jewelry counter.

No cuff links.

Next stop, the Target down the street.

No cuff links.

Then K-Mart. By now Dan was fuming.

He marched up to the clerk in the clothing department and explained, in his most indignant voice, that he was a Very Important Person in town for a Very Important Speaking Engagement. He had a French cuff dress shirt. He had no cuff links. And surely, somewhere in this entire store, there was one set.

The clerk let him finish. Then she answered slowly and patiently, the way you’d talk to a four-year-old.

“No sir, I’m sorry, we don’t. But sir, we do have men’s dress shirts with button cuffs. You could just buy a shirt, sir.”

Dan admits plenty of speakers tell some version of this story. He swears it really happened to him. And, he says, maybe we’re all this dumb.

I know I can be.

We lock in on one way to solve a problem, and we can’t see any other. So we hail a cab and go hunting for missing links.

In marketing, the missing link usually looks like something you have to go out and get. A fancier funnel. A website redesign. The latest AI gizmo. A course that promises to fix everything.

Meanwhile, there’s a shirt on the rack.

Often, it’s something you already have. A list you haven’t emailed in months. A story you’ve never told. A happy client who’d gladly refer you if you asked.

So before you hail another cab, ask yourself: What’s the shirt on the rack?

If you can’t see it, I’ll help you look. Book a Plan-to-Prosper Blueprint Session at BookProfitSession.com. Tell me what you’ve been hunting for. I’ll help you find the simpler fix, and we’ll map out a blueprint to help you attract more leads and land more clients.

And here’s the cool thing: Once you have a blueprint that makes sense, we’ll implement for you so you don’t have to fuss with tech, hiring, and all the other stuff that you don’t want to do.