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The Kentaro Sono Letter 2024
〒600-8846 京都府京都市下京区朱雀宝蔵町44番地
協栄ビル2階 京都朱雀スタジオ
H-209
2024-W40-1 | Monday | Bonus: ENG
No. 274
From:
Kyoto-shi, Kyoto, Japan
Monday, 10:00 A.M.
September 30, 2024
Dear Friend,
In The Kentaro Sono Letter 2024, in the issue No. 273, the author Kentaro Sono (It's me) writes:
Welcome to Kentaro Sono Inc. I’m the CEO here, Kentaro Sono.
Frankly, Kentaro Sono Inc. is not for everyone. This is the consulting firm specialized in copywriting, especially creating excellent titles, headlines, or bullets for your products or services.
You know titles, headlines, but don't know anything about bullets? In the copywriting world, you can define bullets like this:
Bullet: A sentence in your sales letter which ignites readers' curiosity so badly that they drop what they are doing and start reading your sales letter immediately.
If you are looking for the everything adviser, I recommend you to go to McKinsey & Company, Accenture, or Boston Consulting Group.
- I don't show you how to layoff 10,000 employees without embarrassing strikes or humiliating lawsuits.
- I don't show you how to manage your 15-years-older subordinate of the opposite sex who is vulgar to you but popular with your colleagues and clients.
- I don't show you how to stop rampant sexual harassment in your office.
Kentaro Sono Inc. is the consulting firm specialized in copywriting, creating excellent titles, headlines, or bullets for your products or services.
In the previous issue, I showed you how to take advantage of your weakness from the angle of honesty. If you show your weakness before being questioned by your prospects or customers, you can earn their trust.
In this issue, I show you another way to take advantage of your weaknesses from the angle of psychological contrast between what you can and what you can't.
Have you ever wondered why heroes in popular novels, movies, comics, mangas, animes all have some kinds of weaknesses? After all, they are fictional characters. You can create perfect heroes and heroines in any way you want. Why should you bother to create their weaknesses?
The answer is simple. Because perfect characters are boring. As a rule, we don't like perfect people.
You must have special abilities to be recognized as heroes or heroines. This is the minimum requirement of heroes and heroines. But being special only, doesn't give you friends. Ordinary people despise, mock, bully the weak. And they isolate, envy, hate the strong. Being strong only, is not enough to be popular. There is a missing link. If you want to be the popular hero or heroine... you must have insignificant weaknesses.
The best example is Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie.
Hercule Poirot has the great reasoning skill and deep psychological insights. These characteristics work as the minimum requirements of the hero. And he has some insignificant weaknesses too.
He is short. He has the strange egg-shaped head, ridiculous sense of fashion, and stupid moustache. He is not like one of fashion models, and he is not popular among women in romantic ways. In other words, he has insignificant weaknesses.
Why do I call his weaknesses "insignificant"?
Because not being popular among women in romantic ways, has nothing to do with the fact he is the greatest detective in the world.
But beware, the weakness of Hercule Poirot should not be the ability to think logically. Because if he can't think logically, he lose the status as the hero (the greatest detective in the world). For example, the cook with a stupid sense of music is forgivable. But the cook without a sense of hygiene is not. Lack of a sense of hygiene is the unforgivable weakness as the cook.
Great Strength and Forgivable Weakness. This gap, or contrast, makes you attractive.
In the next issue, I show you how to protect you from monster customers!
Today's Pearl of Wisdom #1:
The contrast between your great strength and forgivable weakness makes you attractive!
Sincerely,
Kentaro Sono
Bonus 1:
In The New York Times, in the article Meet the Birkin Bag of the Book World: Collectible, Covetable and Priced to Match, the author Ruth La Ferla writes:
The priciest, The Ultimate Collection — limited edition volumes, some the size of small coffee tables and bound in leather or encased in velvet or pigskin — sell in the five-figure range. A special edition on Versailles, presented in a velvet clamshell, and priced at $4,900, is offered with a private tour of the château’s interior. (The company said that The Ultimate Collection represents more than 25 percent of its annual revenues.)
If you can create the best quality products or services in the industry, don't think about low-margin & high volume strategy. You should markup to the limit. Those who buy the best rarely care about what your profit margin is.
Today's Pearl of Wisdom #2:
The really rich people don't care about what your profit margin is!
Bonus 2:
In The Washington Post, in the article Alexandra Fuller’s new book is not your typical grief memoir, the author Marion Winik writes:
Who could have imagined that in the two decades since, life would give her material for three more grief memoirs, written in the spaces between a novel and several other nonfiction books. In “Leaving Before the Rains Come” (2016), she documented the painful end of her long marriage; in “Travel Light, Move Fast” (2019), the passing of her beloved, complicated father. Then, in that book’s epilogue, she revealed that as bad as things may have seemed, they were now much worse: her sister and mother had stopped speaking to her, the romance that saved the day post-divorce was over, and, dwarfing every other possible misery, her 21-year-old son had died.
There are no "happy ends" in the real world. There are sad ends and bad ends only. If you want to watch "happy ends", you must go to theaters, open your PC, smartphones.
If you don't want to lose someone you love, the only solution is not to love anyone from the beginning.
But remember: by loving someone, you may be able to make them happy.
Today's Pearl of Wisdom #3:
Loving someone will make you unhappy in the end. But remember: your love can be able to make someone else happy. (dogs and cats for example)
