Tag Archives: sales

Business and life strategies from a disclaimer tag

I bought this new rug for our family room and I love it. It came with this disclaimer slip which reminded me of a crucial strategy in business and life:

This company wants to combat returns and replacements — it’s expensive to return rugs, they’re awkward to ship. So they’ve taken the flaws in the rug, the “irregularities and variety of shades,” and reframed them as advantages: “unique beauty” and “natural.”

The lesson is simple: Figure out how to make any weakness, flaw, blind spot or disadvantage into an asset and nothing can stop you.

The Uber Strategy to Selling a Pilot or Screenplay

I don’t endorse this at all and I have no idea if it works…

…But I got a ride from an Uber driver from LAX the other day. He was very friendly and we started talking. I learned that he’s a screenwriter by trade and he told me that Ubering lead to an option on a script he’s been working on for years.

Here’s his strategy for leveraging Uber to sell his screenplay:

  1. Flip on Uber and idle near Sony, Paramount, WB — choose your favorite studio lot
  2. Pick up an unusually high frequency of executives you’d never otherwise have a chance to meet let alone host as a captive audience; be friendly and not weirdly pushy about your script or skills
  3. Profit

Again, I have NO idea if this would work at scale or if the guy was telling the truth. But I just love the hustle so I had to post it.