Blogger starts with paper clip, ends with house
The Associated Press
Taking a paper clip and turning it into a house sounds like a cheesy magic trick or a phony instance of resourcefulness on the 1980s TV show MacGyver.
One year ago, Kyle MacDonald, a 26-year-old blogger from Montreal, Canada, set out to barter one red paper clip for something and that thing for something else, over and over again until he had a house.
Last week the quest is ending as envisioned: MacDonald is due to become the proud owner of a three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home provided by the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan. MacDonald and his girlfriend, Dominique Dupuis, expect to move there in early September.
It’s a great story.
Roaming Canada and the United States, he exchanged the pen for a ceramic knob, and in turn: a camping stove, a generator, a beer keg and Budweiser sign, a snowmobile, a trip to the Canadian Rockies, a supply truck and a recording contract. Next, in April, he got himself really close, obtaining a year’s rent in Phoenix.
His adventure became an Internet blockbuster. He did Canadian and Japanese TV and Good Morning America.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-07-11-paper-clip-house_x.htm
Here’s your selling thought that springs from Kyle’s story.
How well do you use leverage?
Are you leveraging your sales experiences, good and bad, into powerful knowledge that improves your prosepct interactions?
Or do you get surprised, over and over again, by the same objections?
Smart businesspeople get mad enough at mistakes that they decide to avoid them in the future. You leverage these negative outcomes into success by asking others sales pros what to do, or you read books or listen to audio recordings.
You must move beyond your current skill level or you will find yourself stuck on the plateau of mediocrity.
And from there you might as well just throw yourself off that plateau – before your employer or marketplace does it for you.
So how can you leverage your one cent paperclip of experience into a $50,000 house of fortune?
I was just curious how much was spent on travel to make the trades? Flying around Canada and the US can’t be too terribly economical, can it?
Just a question the whole story is great though, incredible all the different dreams fulfilled.
Good question.
You would think the Internet enhanced his ability to find people to trade with.
Why not try to track the guy down and ask him?
I’ve had great success tracking down authors whose books had an impact on me. Doing this over the last 20+ years really inspired me to write (I’m on my third book now, not including The Sales Comic Book – http://www.salescomics.com).
Let me know if you find him and find out.