One of the most popular posts on this blog is one where I describe contacting Warren Buffett using a postcard. I got the idea originally from Tim Ferriss’s book The Four Hour Work Week. Tim describes attempting to have a class contact a famous person only to have none of them succeed. I thought it would be neat to try myself to see what kind of result I got. Here’s how:

The target:

I chose Warren Buffett mostly due to his stature in the financial world along with his ability to rely on sound principles and no B.S. responses. At the time, according to Forbes he was still the second richest person in the world. That changed about a week after I got my response back from him.

I knew that Warren Buffett had been a long time resident of Omaha, NE, for much longer than I have been alive. He also bought and lived in the same house for the last couple decades, so his address isn’t the world’s biggest secret. With the help of Whitepages.com and Google Maps (plus Streetveiw), I was pretty confident that he would receive my letter and quite possibly respond to it. He actually lives on the same street as his office building just further down where there is residential houses.That is why I used to Google Streetview to make sure I was in fact sending it to a house.

What did I learn?

First and foremost, just about anyone given the right circumstances will be willing to reply to a simple request, including the richest person in the world. I also learned that he was an actual human with thoughts and feelings replying to a direct question with a direct response. Sometimes I, and I am sure I am not alone in this, tend to think of some famous people as unreachable or on a pedestal. This isn’t the case. They are who they are and sometimes it only takes the right combination of variables to get a response from them. Not to mention the time invested in myself in pondering the most suiting question to ask that pertained to my life at the time. The funny thing was I knew the answer all along it just sounded different hearing it from someone else.

If you put a little thought into how you might contact someone you consider famous, it will surprise you how simple it could be. I can’t imagine how many people have showed up at Warren Buffett’s office or phoned in the hopes of getting a word from him, or how about all of the different authors and financial analysts who would love a little golden investment nugget. All it took was a postcard.

If you really would like to contact someone famous, I would take an hour out of one of your day and figure a way to do it. In the end, you will only learn more about yourself and someone else in your quest. If you ever do contact someone, you can always share your experience here.

(Image from nymag.com)

Let me ask you this one question: Have you ever seen a UPS truck broken down on the side of the road or in a junk yard?

I for one have never seen a broken down UPS truck and probably for good reason. As it turns out, UPS and its competition would never want to be branded as the company that can’t deliver on time due to faulty equipment. Besides maintaining all of its vehicles regularly, UPS goes to great lengths to ensure you never see one of its trucks “broken.” If one were to break down on the side of the road for any reason, the cargo is immediately swapped from one truck to another, making sure to get all packages to their destination on time. Shortly there after, the truck is carted away to a mechanic.

If the broken UPS truck is no longer valuable to the company or needs to be destroyed, it is altered. UPS goes through the process of repainting and re-branding the original truck so that by the time it is done, the only similarity is the shape. For this reason, you will never see one in the junk yard. I wonder if UPS makes them look like FedEx before carting them off…ha… anyways.

Each of these companies has a huge image and brand to protect. It is so big and so important that they will go to the lengths or repainting a totaled delivery truck so people will never see that there was something wrong with their brand or that it was unreliable somehow.

Branding is a very important aspect of business. Visitors to your site or business can either promote your brand or they can trash it. When you are about to add that new advertising or start a new marketing campaign, make sure you think about the effects that it could have on your brand. Don’t let your customers see your brand if it breaks.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” -Warren Buffet

Last year I spent a lot of time working on a business plan involving ebooks. I can’t say that the plan is completely shelved, but it is definitely on hold. Inspired by Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich to contact a famous person, I did. Around Christmas time I wrote Warren Buffett a simple letter. I also included a stamped postcard with my address on it.

Dear Mr. Buffett,

My name is Josh Whitford, and I live in Fargo, ND. I am looking for a bit of advice. There are few things I know better than the fact that I truly do not know much. I do not seek knowledge but rather wisdom. I admire the foresight you have that has led to your success as a person. I would like to know what single piece of wisdom you would offer to someone you have never met.

Sincerely,

Josh Whitford

seasons greetings

A couple weeks later I received my postcard in the mail. The response was “Read, read, read” and nothing more. I do enjoy reading compared to the majority of Americans who only read 1 book a year. I guess you could say that I read 1200% more than the average American. If you haven’t read lately, feel free to pick up a book, cozy up on your recliner, crack the spine (of the book that is) and enjoy.