Nodding and napping 

As an occasional 11th-hour babysitter for my grandkids, ranging in age from one to nine, I’m acutely aware of how important napping is – both to the nappers and to me.

I don’t need Google to know that in the early weeks infants are almost constantly napping. Before they reach their first birthday, babies take 2-4 naps a day and most preschoolers, even some five- and six-year-olds, still need at least one.

After that, for most children and certainly for most adults, naps are infrequent. I don’t think I took a single nap from the time I was seven to my 70th birthday.

Nowadays, naps are a regular part of my life. There is rarely a day when I don’t take a catnap, usually in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon. In recent months, the one nap hasn’t been feeling like enough. Fifteen minutes at nine or ten o’clock seems about right to keep me going till about two. But then I find myself nodding and looking for some horizontal piece of furniture on which to briefly lay my body down.

You’ve seen the illustration of the chronology of human movement – from fetal position to crawling to toddling to walking upright to walking in a stoop to returning to the fetal position just before death.

Someone should create something similar about napping – from much of the day as an infant to 2-4 times a day as a baby to once a day as a child to zero as a teenager/young adult… and then gradually back up again.

I’m already at one nap a day, bordering on two. And do you know what? I’m secretly looking forward to that next stage.

 

Used book, big price

Great Leads is a book that John Forde and I wrote in 2011. It was published by AWAI, a business that sells career courses to aspiring professional writers.

Great Leads teaches copywriters how to create successful direct response advertising pieces by deploying six “archetypal” leads – basically, the headline and first several hundred words of copy.

Of the two-dozen business and self-study books and courses I’ve written, I’d rate this among the top six. And it looks like there’s someone else that has the same opinion, as a used copy was recently listed on Amazon for $127.

This sometimes happens with how-to books published by medium- and small-sized publishing companies. Unlike the larger imprints with extensive reach and large advertising budgets (like John Wiley, which published Automatic Wealth and Ready, Fire, Aim), these smaller companies rarely take the risk of printing more than one edition. And although it’s not common, if there continues to be a demand for the out-of-stock book, it can inflate the price above the original list price, sometimes much higher.

That seems to be the case with Great Leads. 

List price on the book is $14.95, and I have a small number of copies in storage that I’ve been offering to my readers for just $10 (including free shipping).

But now I’m wondering if I should talk to the publisher about doing another print run. Or perhaps take back the copyright and sell it myself. Or, if I’m clever, convert it into a course and have someone else sell it for $299.

Hmmm…

 

Doing business

I spent a fair amount of time last month brainstorming, consulting, coaching, and digitally conversing with colleagues in the investment publishing industry on the always challenging eternal challenges we talk about – product quality, marketing, and copywriting.

At the time, it seemed like these were all different discussions. But thinking about it now, I can see that there was a thread that ran through them. I believe the market for our products and services has been changing gradually but steadily for about 25 years and that we will not be successful in the future if we continue doing all the things that brought us success in the past. In fact, I think we need a radical change in every important aspect of our business: what our products look like, how we write them, how we advertise them, and how we price them.

I’m not sure anyone is going to listen to me. It’s difficult to believe that you should abandon what has been working well for decades. And of course, I could be wrong about all this. But what if I’m right?

 

Peace Corps reunion at Palm Bath & Tennis Club 

I spent the last day of February at a VIP luncheon at a VIP venue, the Palm Beach Bath & Tennis Club. There were 18 in attendance, all distinguished looking men, roughly my age, and all former Peace Corp volunteers. The ostensible purpose was to talk about our experiences as volunteers in mostly distant third-world countries. The actual purpose was to raise money to build a Peace Corps Memorial Park in Washington, DC.

I attended because I’d been invited and because I’d heard that the Palm Beach Bath & Tennis Club was the place to be. It’s across the street from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private residence in Palm Beach. And although it doesn’t have the same panache as his Moorish estate, it has enough to satisfy the likes of me.

As lunch was being served, everyone had an interesting story to tell. Some were funny. Some were touching. Some were amazing. And not surprisingly, virtually all of them involved overdrinking. Such was the age!

We talked then about plans for the memorial, about how much money had been raised so far ($6 million) and how much more was needed to get the project done (another $6 million). We shared insights from our experiences as fund raisers or fund givers, and agreed we would each, in our own way, consider what we could do to advance the cause.

The atmosphere was a bit formal, but the mood was relaxing towards comfortable and even casual. Before the event ended, I was already hoping that we would all meet again one day.

What struck me was how quickly the group’s openness to and trust for one another developed. Here we were, 18 septuagenarian and octogenarian men who had obviously enjoyed successful and rewarding careers, bonded together by a common experience decades earlier. A bond formed, I believe, by all of us having spent two years at such a young age in a foreign place, speaking a foreign language, working within cultures so different from our own. It happens to soldiers at war and to others that have been through difficult times, too. There is something about it that, although we may rarely talk about it to others, or even think about it when we are alone, nonetheless stayed with us and, in some significant way, formed us into the individuals we became.

I came to the luncheon motivated by a minor interest in seeing what the Palm Beach Bath & Tennis Club looked like from inside its walls and left with a good feeling about those two years I’d spent as a Peace Corps volunteer and 17 potential new friends.

 

ZenHippo at Paradise Palms 

I had a good time at our botanical and sculpture garden last Saturday. We’ve been getting a steadily increasing flow of visitors during the three days we are open each week. But on Saturday, we had an additional group of at least 60 who had come to a promotional event for ZenHippo, a local nonprofit that provides play-based educational classes and activities for toddlers and their parents.

Their programs are well done. I know because I’ve attended a few with H and E. It’s run by two young moms who seem to have done a good job growing the business. Saturday’s event, which was meant to establish a new base for ZenHippo in Delray Beach, was located between what I think of as Paradise Palms’ Kid Town (with a playground and a “scary” little forest) and Adult Town (with a Tiki bar and game center).

Everyone that came seemed to very much enjoy themselves, so I am expecting to be hosting many more ZenHippo events in the future.

 

290 building update 

We finally finished the expansion and rehab of my Cigar Club, redoing the exercise area and adding a second floor, which contains a largish gallery for public exhibitions of my Central American Art collection and two offices – one for Gio and one for me – with windows! (A first in 30 years.)