Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true for me in semi-rural Ohio, too.
I'm in SW Ohio, you? I do not think there are many Ohioans on HN, and we ought to find each other!
Bowling Green
Wow, check out this guy's comment
81–90 of 103 posts
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#82A very nice story. I think, however, he overlooks the power of humanity in his story. It's not down to that $50 voucher. It's because he became a real person to the people he visited - a local guy, someone they'd seen in real life. It really seems all down to pressing the flesh. The other points don't make any logical sense, for example: All these years I was right, most people let money motivate them and that create…
Agreed, it's the "look them in the eye, shake their hand, and tell them you want to earn their business" part that really gets them. The $50 voucher is the thing that gives the future customer "permission" to follow up on their gut feeling of "Wow, I like being treated like a HUMAN BEING."
When I mowed lawns I got a lot of work, not by being the best at what I did, not by being the cheapest, but by being a person. I would get most of my customers by going door to door and knocking on doors where I saw people with high grass. In my area it was rare for a highschool/college kid to have a job at all, much less one requiring real effort. It also helped that I was the one doing the work, not a crew of people working for me.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#83> my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out "...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part." It's reading things like this that make me appreciate my wife more than I already did. Get a 'walmart type job' or get out? My wife would _never_ say that to…
Are you kidding? She helped him out big time. He was just sitting there hopelessly waiting for the phone to ring for a plumber, which wasn't going to happen, and she realized it. She gave him the motivation to at least try something, and she apparently didn't kick him out during the time it took to print out all those cards and pass them out.
Sometimes helping someone means a good swift kick in the ass. That lady is a hero.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#84> my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out "...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part." It's reading things like this that make me appreciate my wife more than I already did. Get a 'walmart type job' or get out? My wife would _never_ say that to…
As I get older, I am not sure if life is so simple anymore. Although I guess ultimately it boils down to this: women want to have children, and children cost money. The time in which women can have children is limited, so they can't sit around and wait for you to get a hold on life forever.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Despite what others here may have to say, we women are not a bunch of money grubbing whores. Thanks, HN, for downvoting the outrageous comments. Here's a different view of what may have been going on: man has a family both he & his wife work full time to support. He cannot, for whatever reason, hang on to a job for more than a year at a time. This becomes frustrating to the other spouse, because they can't ever seem…
d, you're supposing an awful lot about how the situation might have been. Fact is, there are a lot of women out there who want what they think is the status quo: husband away during the day, providing plenty of money, newish car(s), family going out to eat once or twice a week, cable tv, buying whatever you want at the grocery store without regard for price, big X-mases, no stress about being able to pay bills, etc.,…
Thing is, don't women somehow deserve it, too? Women are needed to bring children into the world, so men are competing to make women bring THEIR children into the world. If husband doesn't provide said benefits, woman is missing out because other men are probably waiting in line wanting to provide.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is the combination that does it. I have lots of "discount vouchers" for all sorts of things, which I never use. But I need a plumber and this guy would be it.
What serves this purpose with a web app? Is it a stock photo of a person? (Doubt it.) Some bit of humor that a corporate marketdroid would never write for fear of pissing off his boss? The developer blogs? MySpace or Twitter presence? I suspect that most of the time, most of these things don't succeed. Perhaps this is part of the power behind "Viral Marketing" in the old days when its effectiveness wasn't diluted by…
It's my personal feeling that most people can tell the difference between "calculated humanity" and real humanity. Most businesses and startups go for calculated humanity because real humanity is something they either don't believe in as an aspect of business, or are afraid to show because omgz what if somebody says something the readers don't like?
Real humanity means being vulnerable and talking about negative stuff, and risking people not liking you. But the people who don't dislike you will like you more. It means being genuine, not just "authentic."
When I left my parents as a teen, I partially supported myself with a Mac news/opinion site. Everybody told me that there was no room for another one, blah blah, but I decided to write like a real (& funny) human being instead of pretending to be a professional journalist like the rest. I earned $600-1000 a month in ad impressions, so it clearly worked.
Same thing worked for my current web site & information products I've created. I'm totally famous in the niche, and I'm not the best or brightest with the actual programming aspect. But my oldest tutorial from 2005 still gets about 15,000 views a month.
When it comes to my new SaaS that I just launched, it's the same thing. The blog is "real humanity" and I answer support requests myself.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#87Reads like a completely made up story to me. Nice, inspirational and all, but that was not written by a plumber after reading first ever blogpost in his life.
I tend to agree with you. I did get that "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" vibe from it, and that was a made up story.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#88Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
@bd Just wanted to mention something that you may not be aware of. In most russian cities, housing stock is in very short supply (thanks to the legacy of centralized city planning) and people often stay together because otherwise they would have nowhere to live. I believe this skews the statistic in favor of the US, i.e. I believe that the russian divorce rates would be even higher if more people were able to live se…
Then it is even more surprising, at least for me. I had Russia associated with strong families, people sticking together and so on. And it doesn't even seem to be a recent phenomenon. It looks like already in 1970s divorce rate in Russia was very high (40%): "Even in Communist times, the unhappiness of Russian families was hard to hide. The divorce rate in the 1970s was 40 percent; now it is 51 percent. In the past,…
Hmm. It's kind of hard for me to reconcile those stats with my personal experience. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, there were hardly any divorced couples in Russia. A number close to half seems completely off. I have to question where they got their numbers... although the more current numbers are probably more on target.
What's also interesting though is who initiates divorce. I believe in the US, roughly 70% of divorces are initiated by women, while in Russia the opposite is true.
Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, neither would I. But you have to consider the other perspective; they have 2 kids to support and his business hasn't received any custom for weeks. I think the statement "get a job or leave" is more of a generic "something has to change" statement not something completely literal.
Those words should never leave her mouth - only the worst of relationships involve threats of one side leaving. You either hang in there or you split, threats to get things done don't do any good, and are indicative of a very, very wrong relationship. I would've had said "get a job or get some business, your choice". The concept of divorce should never be hung over anyone's head to spur them to action.
That's ridiculous: you're saying that either she puts up with a bad situation, or she leaves. What she did was basically say that she wanted a change. Doesn't matter whether or not those were her exact words: people say things they don't really mean when angry or frustrated and in this situation I'm sure she was both.
It's a pretty fair bet that the statement "get a job or get out" wasn't the first thing she said about the situation! And in any case we only have his version of what happened.