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The Queens Gambit Analysis

The Crutch – She uses alcohol and drugs. She yearns for companionship? Maybe not so much. But definitely she has a drug and alcohol problem. And she overcomes it near the end with the help of a childhood friend.

The Tragic Early Life Event – Her mother dying and her becoming an orphan. Finally explained at the end. At the moment she relives it she also has the strength to throw the pills away.

The incredible ability – a genius chess player. You want to cheer for her. An unusual chess player also, a young girl.

The nemsis – The Russians and in particular Borgov. Although her enemies changes throughout.

The Showdown Climax – The big chess game in Russia against Borgov.

Slowed down Climax – During the game, Borgov adjourns. Slowing it down. Then during the match he acts outside how they planned. Beth focuses on the ceiling, her old trick to learn it all and then over come him – after also getting help from her team. All her strengths coming together.

The cast of mentors – boyfriends and her friend from school. She also remembers her old chess teacher, the janitor during the press questioning.

Tragic death of a loved one – her mother. Her real mom dies then her step mother. Then she turns to drink heavily. Things seem to be spiriling.

The Broken heart – the reporter who is gay? But she loved him?

The crutch removed – pills and booze – after facing down her history.

The Climax as rematch – She lost in Paris to Borgov.

The intro as flashback before worst moments – The intro is a flashback to her trying to get ready for a chess match after a late night of partying.

The return of her team at the end – her friends, ex lovers, all of them come together to help her prepare.

Tropes? – Seems to have a lot of the hero’s journey – hero with a problem trope.

The Hero as flawed mega talent

7 Episodes about an hour long each with their own story flow, inciting incident, climax, etc.

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Framework for Making Money and Marketing

The Framework Overview

Have a skill. Either learn about it through getting an internship or low paid job and progressively get better. Depends on the technical difficulty of the skill and your comfort level.

Have a Skill

You need a skill. Some way to provide value. The SKILL can be almost anything but it needs to be related to adding value to someone with money because that person is going to trade money for you to use that skill.

What about cleaning houses. That’s a low end skill where you are basically trading time. You can use that as a skill but you will need to leverage people eventually. Or as an offshoot to that skill, you learn the skill of lead generation for cleaning business.

Flipping

What about flipping which includes investing. This can certainly be a skill. Sourcing deals, knowing how to flip etc. In the beginning you may be able to do this on your own with your own money but to really grow quickly you will need other people’s money. This includes stock investing, flipping houses, flipping cars, or flipping rugs.

Lead Generation

Lead generation, marketing, whatever is a skill.

Going to College

Some people blast going to college. I’ve seen marketers or some business people blast it. They say it is a waste of time. I disagree though. I could be biased but it is not a waste of time if you are focused on what you do there. Some skills, high level technical skills, are hard to learn outside of a structured setting. This includes computers, science, mathematics, medicine, law, etc. Maybe art also? On the other hand other courses of study are a waste of time unless they are pursued for academic purposes – like you are going to be a teacher. These include social sciences.

If you are going to college,

Art & Writing

Your skill in art has to be sufficiently valuable enough that it can turn a profit for someone rich. They can use you and pay for your skill and turn around and make a profit because of their position.

Banksy – Starting as a street artist until brand is recognized. Prolific posting on public walls and locations where the public looks. Then it becomes a collectors item for the rich. Now the rich sell to flip for profit. Before that, exhibitions where items sold for profit, prints etc. Tough model to go on, selling prints unless brand is clearly established.

Damien Hirst – He seemed to align himself quickly with with big money collectors and making the art almost about the making money part.

Basquiat – Similar to Banksy. Posting constantly in public spaces. Developed brand. Then was used by rich people for status and for a man made object to flip.

It is like creating something out of thin air that can be flipped for profit by rich people.

Have People Pay You While You Learn The Skill

Some people skip this step but some skills take a really long time to really develop. You will need income. One way is to start at the bottom and make some money learning the skill. The alternative is to get people to pay you while you learn that skill freelance. It is a lot harder to do this for highly technical skills or skills that required expensive tools. But one benefit to devoting time learning a more technical skill is that the competition is lower. The downside is that it is hard to delegate the work. It has to be done by highly trained people.

Start A Business

Be A Middleman

Most people who start a business don’t have money. So they need to find a way to add value without spending a ton of money. The fastest and easiest way to to this is to become a middle man. Or maybe not even be a middle man but be an originator, someone who get the business. Be a rainmaker. Broker deals. Be a broker.

If you are not a broker you need to a meet someone who is. If you are highly technical, with no sales or marketing skills, you need to connect with that type of person. The problem is the person who is brokering has more leverage because there is likely competition and if you won’t accept the deal they will go to someone else. The exception is if you are a big enough brand which can be hard to develop in the beginning.

Finding Allies

In the beginning, without much capital you will need allies to help take down large projects or large deals. It is important to find allies to help you. You want trustworthy allies that will assist you and not screw you over. Think about how Genghis Kahn rose to power so fast. He needed allies with a joint goal.

Sell Tools

Along the way, sell your tools. Tools can be more than just software. It could be systems, education, training, etc. Sell the tools to you becoming successful. This is unique items that are separate from your service. Easier to scale.

Invest

After you have generated cashflow and built a business, it is easier to invest in other opportunities. Before this you could be investing also but investing well requires time and energy. You need to be analyzing deals and scouting. This can be very time consuming and it makes more sense to generate a cash flow positive business.

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Getting Clients with No Marketing Budget

I’m a lawyer so I’m going to be talking about it as a lawyer. I have not tried this. I’m adapting from other business.

  1. Select your service. Be clear on the service you provide.
  2. Choose a niche within your service. It doesn’t mean that you turn down other niches. It only means you focus on one niche. It helps you better sell your services.
    1. Gov Claims
    2. Slip and Falls
    3. Uber
    4. what cases to other law firms not want to handle – fed tort claims
    5. unusual PI cases
    6. med mal
    7. elder abuse
    8. What groups of people can I target:
    9. ride share
    10. kids
    11. mentally handicapped
    12. crime victims
    13. small claims cases (not a good one)
    14. workers comp
    15. employment attorneys
    16. criminal defense attorneys
    17. medical providers
    18. could be by location also, or associations
    19. looking at associations is one way to find niches
  3. Use Linkedin (sales navigator)
    1. try the free trial
  4. optimize your linkedin profile
    1. with a headline that shows the benefit driven to your niche
    2. about section is long form sales copy
    3. testimony in the featured section
  5. scrape a list
    1. target deciison makers in your list
    2. targete people with less htan 50 employees and posted in the last 30 days
    3. export the list and make sure at least 80% are people you want to connect to
  6. message the list
    1. use Ulinc – automates linked in message
    2. focus on landing the connection – then warming them up to a phone call
    3. aim for connection rate of 20% and connect to 2500 people per month
    4. second messages go out 24 hours after first connection is made
    5. 3-4 msgs over hte next 21 days
  7. sales
    1. 15 min initial call
    2. act like a doctor
    3. ask about their stats to see if a good fit for you
    4. (notably for lead gen he recommends 2500 per month or 5k per month)
    5. use a pitch deck
  8. Zapier
    1. use zapier to add new connections to a google sheet and CRM
    2. also add connections emails to a custom audience and facebook and adroll

Anyway – that was from someone on twitter. What it tells you is the basic way to get clients using twitter and some automation. I think the core of the strategy is to find a niche, focus your message to that niche, then contact that niche. It can be done with personal injury like any other one. You have to add value to that niche. Like giving a talk, white paper, some educational info, joining a board. The problem with certain activities is the time commitment.

It does seem like targeting a niche is a better way to get some clients. Also cold calling, which this essentially is, is a good way to get in front of people when you don’t have money.

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Generating Content

The crazy thing about generating content is that you don’t know where it will lead.

When I was in law school someone told me to write an article and get it published once a year. This was before social media was as popular as it is now.

The idea with writing an article is that it shows competency and credibility. Also it leverages the publications audience. It is a tried and true method like public speaking. In fact I think that speaking and writing are the two greatest leverages of talent ever. It allows you to get in front of an audience and demonstrate competency. The alternative is to buy leads.

Even if you are working on building a network you need to generate content to demonstrate competency.

I suppose another way to demonstrate competency is to have accomplishments. But shouting accomplishments are a dime a dozen. In my field many lawyers claim big settlements and verdicts. Some have accomplished a lot. But how do you distinguish yourselves from that crowd. You are unique in your own way. Your personality will click some some people and rub others the wrong way. You need to find your tribe.

Anyway, I followed that plan that was told to me as best I could. I wrote articles and was published in local legal magazines.

The first article I wrote was about distinguishing similar causes of action. The difference between a medical malpractice case and elder abuse complaint is a few words. Those words mean the difference between having damages capped versus getting attorneys fees.

So I put it out into the universe, and low and behold someone calls me up. They had a case. I pitched it to the firm I was at and they didn’t want it. I pitched it to the firm I later joined and they agreed to take it. I worked it up and handled a lot of the case. The partners took the depositions and did work on the case. It eventually settled for a good amount of money and I got a piece of it. I used that to pay down student loans right away.

The article demonstrated my competence. I leveraged an audience. I got a lead. I did it again with a blog post I wrote for a networking group.

To get leads, you need to get in front of an audience and have them trust you. Get in front of an audience by various methods: cold calling, ads, leveraging an audience. Develop trust by demonstrating competency, acting like a normal person in social settings, show consistency, etc. You then need to maintain the relationship. Provide something of value. Information, access to your networking, something like that.

What I like about content generation is that it lives a long time and can be repurposed. It also helps crystalize thoughts. I have a lot of knowledge from practicing law over 13 years. That’s a long time. I’ve handled crazy cases. I’ve done some hard stuff. Kids on the internet leverage 6 months of knowledge to build education empires. They dropship garbage. I don’t want to be a pure businessman selling tshirts or trinkets. It is like a super powered salesperson at a tourist trap. Educational products are interesting. Look at the doctors and lawyers who are most successful. Either you develop a tool or system that you can sell, you develop a business, or you develop a skill into something highly technical. The problem with the highly technical side is that you lack the business side and then need to partner with a business person. Also with the highly technical side it all rests with you. When you stop working, it all stops working. You can develop tools and systems while creating the business. You can create educational products as an offshoot of creating training. You can still become highly specialized while creating the business. That is what makes most sense.