Hark! For I come bearing great news!
The bar for achieving the status of “legend” has been lowered.
Quite a bit, it turns out. And I’m talking from personal experience…
My daughter tells me her friends think I’m a “legend” and that I’m “iconic”.
I presumed they were taking the piss, like when that doctor told me cleaning out my ears with my industrial grade pyrography pen was a bad idea, but…
… it appears not she’s not kidding.
“No, they actually think you’re really cool. They’re always asking about you.”
I’m not good at taking compliments at the best of times…
My usual approach (carefully honed and refined over 40-odd years) is to presume someone else has entered the room quietly behind me and the complimenter is now talking to them.
Let’s be honest, if you’ve ever clicked the social links in my footer to check out my FREE daily email ideas, you won’t have seen anything worthy of yanking a teenager’s attention away from cross-stitching tutorials, shipping forecasts, and biographies of Sir Clive Sinclair.
(Those ARE the kinds of things the young people are interested in, right?)
So what the hell’s going on?
“Why do they think I’m cool?”, I asked my daughter.
“Because you play Fortnite and Call of Duty”
OK, so a couple of points need clarification there, so I’ll write that sentence again, only this time I’ll add in my director’s commentary. That way, you’ll be able to fully appreciate just how far the legendary benchmark has fallen…
“Because you play Fortnite…
John’s commentary: I play Fortnite… VERY badly. Like, REALLY very badly. Watching me try to aim is like watching a small child wielding a fire hose.
“… and Call of Duty”
John’s commentary: I ‘played’ this once on my stepdaughter’s Xbox. ONCE. And I put ‘played’ in quotes because I was so bad, two of my team members decided to shoot me, thinking I’d be more useful dead.
That’s how far the bar has lowered.
To put it another way…
Neil Armstrong became a legend by studying aeronautical engineering for years, spending thousands of hours testing supersonic fighters, and undergoing arduous training to become the first man in history to step onto the moon…
Me? I did it by switching on an Xbox.
What your audience thinks of you really matters.
Unfortunately, I’m unable to harness my “iconic” status (13-year-old schoolchildren are a terrible market for copywriters), but…
… at least I now know how to get on their wavelength should I ever come up with a “How to turn a bloody light off when you leave a room” course.
So…
What do you WANT your audience to think about you?
And once you’ve got that…
What do THEY need to see to believe it?
John Holt