I made a bet with my son and taught him a lesson

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Had a friendly bet with my soon to be teenage son Keoni today. I'll paint the scenario so you can play the game too…

It's the day before the start of another school year and my wife April asks me if Keoni has had her hair cut yet.

He didn't.

So, I called our favorite hair salon to ask about the wait times.

After hanging up, I called Keoni and said, "MORE or LESS on the wait times for a haircut today? "

This is the code for "Do you want to play a game where you guess ABOVE or BELOW a certain number I give you?"

He said, "Of course! What's at stake?"

"A cheese steak." I answered.

"Yes!" he said with a smirk. "What's the number?"

"2 hours. More or less?"

After a curiously long pause, Keoni finally replied, "Below. He's got to be below."

What do you think? More or less?

Well, let me say that the cheesesteak I ate was very good, especially because it was free.

Total wait time for a haircut today: 3 hours and 5 minutes. DONE, by far.

As we sat there eating our cheesesteaks, I took the opportunity to do what I normally do in situations like this: teach my son a lesson in how people think and behave.< /p>

Most people wait until the last minute to do and decide most things, just like we (and the rest of the neighborhood) waited until the last day before school started to finally get a haircut.

Without delay and without stakes, no action or decision will likely be taken.

For my son, context was related to goal setting, homework, creating self-imposed deadlines, using a calendar, getting ahead, and general, to prepare to have to intensify it in grade 7 this year.

For you, creator and entrepreneur, the context is this:

This is a graph showing revenue from a recent 7-day course sale in our business. Can you see when most sales have been made?

Here is the breakdown, revenue report style:

Total sales: $102,400 Total sales in the last 24 hours: $59,000 (57.6%)

Here's another example of a recent 3-day sale we also just ran:

The breakdown:

Total sales: $47,200 Total sales in the last 24 hours: $36,000 (76.3%)

This last-minute pattern holds true forevery sale we've made, and the more we highlight the deadline to decide, the more sales we see just before the deadline.

All. Only. Time.

Plain and simple: Unless a buyer has a reason to make a decision now...they won't.

Here are three key takeaways from all of this:

Legit and authentic marketing is about helping people make a decision, one way or another. Specifically, it's about helping people make the right decision for them. It shouldn't be about trickery or over-promising, but about being honest and upfront about what's on offer, the transformation on the other end, and giving them a reason to make a decision now. Even if they pass on your offer, that's a good thing - it means...