Winding / Nicholas Shakinofsky
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen (the term is to be liberally applied),
Welcome to those new to Serendipity. As always, the premises of these essays can be found in the provenance email. (In short, it’s a tessellation of dubious marketing, networking, and personal development reflections that no one asked for).
Lately, when driving home from the office, I prefer to take the long, scenic way home; a meandering road that sees Mount Lemmon in the rearview mirror while being confronted by the Tucson Mountains through the windshield. By all accounts, in order to increase operational efficiency, I should take the freeway home and save 6.27 minutes of average drive time but this route increases my stress levels. It is filled with endless road construction crews rather than 400-year-old cactuses and, most importantly, this route gives me less time to dream up excuses for Steph as to why I left the office late again.
My stoic hypothesis is that the occasional long way home might actually be an unoriginal metaphor for the short way to increased happiness.
In my world, if you swap out happiness for an increased sales pipeline, a pithy ad leads to a custom landing page where there is gated content followed by email capture and then, finally, a barrage of sequenced emails designed to get a prospect to take a discovery call. This is marketing operational efficiency. This is the highway home.
But what if you took the time to write a hilarious dissection of something that's bothering you about your market or business, sent it to a friend who laughed their ass off, and said, “I know Sally, who’s in your world, and she would love this.” Sally gets an email from her trusted friend, laughs her ass off, and says “I’ve got to meet this person.” Three conversations later you have a new prospect, partner, or employee. This is the long way home.
I’m willing to wager a shilling that more people on this list have started working with someone because of a long-way home scenario than because they clicked on an ad and followed the email nurture sequence.
That said, if you click on this email, I am a little confused about whether I have just executed the long or short way home scenario. Oh well, this is a working hypothesis.
Moving on.
I am obviously bullish on the continued confluence of marketing and entertainment. So, this month, I think it makes sense to introduce you to the undisputed, funniest man in the marketing world who is helping to build something really exciting.
Nicholas (Shak) Shakinofsky
How do you make a sport that almost no one watches and only a handful of people compete in a global phenomenon? I am not talking about the gratuitous attempts to introduce F1 in the States but about bringing competitive triathlons to the mainstream world of sports.
A man who has spent professional time between Philadelphia and London, Shak uses his unique abilities to attract and entertain audiences all over the world. After coming up through the marketing ranks at UFC, Nick now directs all the content for the Professional Triathletes Association (PTO).
If you want to get involved with the PTO through sponsorships or partnerships (REI, Nike, Carhartt, SAP, BBC folks - I am looking at you!), please get in touch with Nick. Or maybe you are a production company looking for a wild cinematography challenge. Find Nick on LinkedIn here.
If you are just interested in the sport or following the journey of an emerging movement, you can get all the social stuff here.
Finally, if you are interested in being featured in Serendipity, too bad, there is no way to influence who I pick. Half the time, the people don’t even know I am going to do it. This is about fostering genuine connections and opportunities, not pay-to-play.