Change the Rules

In the classic movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” there is a terrific scene where the hero Indiana Jones is facing an opponent who pulls out a huge sword.

Indiana Jones has just had a fight using his whip to beat a number of other baddies in the movie. So movie viewers are expecting him to use his whip to fight this sword-wielding person as well.  Instead, Indiana does something totally unexpected
and pulls out a gun and shoots him. 

What he did was change the rules of the game. 

The same strategy of changing the rules can work very well in marketing your business. 

Here is an example: 

Victor Niederhoffer became kind of famous for making and losing a lot of money in the commodities markets. But before he did that he helped people sell their companies and he did a remarkable thing.

He was competing against the likes of Goldman Sachs and he couldn’t compete with them because they were so famous and so well known.

So he decided to go after the companies that Goldman doesn’t want, companies that are worth 5 million dollars or less because Goldman had a threshold of 5 million or more. He sent postcards to companies in that size range, with a really simple story.

They said if your business is doing really well, if you are not even thinking about retirement, if you are at the height of your game and you think your business is going to be worth a lot more years later, now is the time to sell.

His point was that you should sell when you are doing well -not when you are nearing retirement age and not when somebody else is ready to take over the business, because you will get your maximum value when the business is at its prime.

Victor concentrated on small companies, he did direct marketing and he ended up doing more mergers and acquisitions than any other firm on Wall Street at the time. 

They were smaller in size than people like Goldman Sachs but he changed the rules, he just took the business that they couldn’t afford to go after and made a fortune doing it. 

Action Exercise:

How can you change the rules to differentiate your own business?

As always I highly recommend that you get your team involved in this exercise. Stand around a whiteboard and brainstorm this together. Your team will come up with some great ideas!

Today’s quote: “Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.” – Dalai Lama