The Half Hour in October

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, up by the guild hall, on the evening they let anybody speak who has something worth hearing.

Two thatchers know one roof's whole art,
Both learned the same, both know each part.
One waits behind his ladder, still,
One speaks one evening on the hill.
By spring, one's asked for by his name.
They knew the same. Why not the same?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two thatchers in the town I've never named, and their roofs, in the old chorus, were equally sound. Same apprenticeship, same hands, same forty years ahead of them.

The first waited to be asked, and he was not idle about it: he did excellent work and trusted that excellent work travels. Some of it did. He was known to the twenty households whose roofs he had done, and to nobody else in a parish of nine hundred, and when a woman three villages over needed a thatcher she asked her neighbour, who named whoever came to mind.

Consider his position when he did get to the door. He arrived as a man with a ladder, one of three she was seeing, and every single thing he knew had to be established from nothing in forty minutes on a doorstep, in competition with two other men doing the same. He was arguing for his competence, every time, from the beginning, for forty years.

The second thatcher did something small and slightly embarrassing. He asked the guild hall whether he might speak for half an hour one evening in October on how to tell whether your roof will see out the winter.

Eleven people came. It was not a triumph. He was nervous, he over-ran, and two of the eleven were his own relations.

But he did it again in the spring, and the following autumn, and by the third year the parish clerk was asking him for a few lines for the notices, and the ironmonger had started saying, when a customer mentioned a damp ceiling, that there was a fellow who gave a talk about that.

Here is what those half hours actually bought, and it was not the eleven people in the room.

He became the answer to a question. When somebody in that parish said who knows about roofs, a name arrived, and it arrived without him being present, which is the only form of selling that works while you sleep. His rival's excellence could not do that, because nobody can recommend a man they have never heard described.

And the doorstep changed entirely. He no longer arrived as one of three men with ladders; he arrived as the fellow who gave the talk, which meant the first forty minutes of establishing competence had already happened, months earlier, in a room he was not in. People asked him fewer questions, argued less about the price, and frequently did not trouble to get another quote at all.

The subject was always the same one, note. Not thatching in general, which nobody in the room needed: whether your roof will see out the winter, which is what a person with a damp patch actually lies awake about.

By the fourth year he had stopped seeking work altogether. He had not become a better thatcher. He had become a name that arrived in conversations he was not part of.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Skill that nobody can describe cannot be recommended. Word of mouth is not a reward for good work, whatever your trade likes to believe. It is a sentence somebody says to somebody else, and it requires words: a name, and a subject attached to it. Do excellent work in silence and your customers will be perfectly willing to recommend you and quite unable to, because when the moment comes they have nothing to say beyond that you were very good, which is what everyone says about everyone.

So the work is to become the answer to a question that is asked in your absence. That means picking one subject rather than your whole trade, and it should be the one your customers worry about at night rather than the one you find most interesting professionally. Then say the same thing about it, repeatedly, in whatever rooms and pages your parish actually has, until the association sticks.

And note what it does to the doorstep, since this is the part that pays. The unknown man must establish his competence in the first forty minutes of every meeting, forever, against two rivals doing the same. The known man arrives with it already done, which shortens the sale, softens the price, and often removes the competition entirely. That is the same mechanism as the mason's witnesses, only arriving earlier: proof that reaches the customer before you do.

Two warnings. Eleven people is the correct beginning, and almost everyone quits at eleven, because it feels like a humiliation rather than the third of a hundred and fifty-six things that finally works. This is the compounding letter again, applied to your name. And keep it to one subject: a man who speaks about roofs, drains and gutters is a man about whom nothing is remembered, and being known for one thing is what makes the sentence sayable.

Three questions, and answer the second one with your customers' words rather than your own:

1. What sentence would you like said about you when you are not there? Write the actual words a customer would use to a neighbour. If it comes out as "he does good work", you have no sentence yet, since that describes every competent person in your trade and distinguishes nobody.
2. What is the one thing your customers worry about? Not the whole of your trade: the specific anxiety, in their language. That is your subject, and you may only have one, and you will be tempted every year to add a second.
3. Where are the rooms and pages in your parish? Name three: the trade evening, the local group, the newsletter, the page that answers the question, the ten minutes at the end of a job. Book one of them this month and accept that eleven people is a fine start.

The Answer to the Riddle

They knew the same, so why not the same?

Because one of them was knowledge and the other was a name with knowledge attached, and only the second can travel. The first thatcher spent forty years proving himself on doorsteps to people meeting him for the first time; the second spent three years becoming the answer to a question, and then spent thirty-seven being sent for. The half hour in October was not marketing in the way the trade understands it. It was the difference between being good and being thought of.

The verse:

A skill unspoken has no name,
And silent men are all the same.
So take one subject, say it plain,
Until the parish says it again.

Until next time. Go and choose your one subject this week, and find the first room, however small, in which to say it.

P.S. The objection I hear most is that this feels like showing off, which is a very English complaint and worth answering plainly. You are not asking to be admired. You are making yourself easy to recommend, which is a service to the customer standing there trying to remember somebody, and a kindness to the neighbour who does not know who to ask.

Also in the archive: The Collab, One of Their Own and The Yellow Wheels.