I can't remember where I first heard the phrase, "She's built like a Shit Brickhouse..."

But, I've always found it to be an incredibly bizarre way to describe a shapely woman. It certainly begs the question(s)...

What exactly is a Shit Brickhouse?

And, what does one do in a Shit Brickhouse?

But, that's neither here nor there. 

The bottom line is that Marilyn Monroe was, by every stretch of the word(s), built like a Shit Brickhouse and Hugh Hefner recognized this when he paid a calendar company something like $500 for some nudes she took long before she was Marilyn Monroe.

He then slapped her beautiful face on the cover of his very first edition of Playboy and the thing sold more than 50,000 issues. 

Unfortunately, for the rest of us marketers and writers and entrepreneurs and creatives, it's not the 1950s, men aren't nearly as sexually starved and folks have seen enough of Marilyn Monroe that her bewitching effect has somewhat worn off. Somewhat. 

This means to move product, you have to get creative. Damn creative. And, you have to be creative with small, boring stuff, like pricing and positioning and speed of production. 

Today marks the end of the launch of my cold email course, How to become the Don Draper of cold email. I don't like to share too much in the way of numbers because there is a fine line between transparency and dick-swinging.

But, I'll say this: I set out with ambitions of a $15,000 launch and I somehow managed to exceed it. 

Its mild success was a side-effect of the following three things...

1. I asked folks what they wanted and they said a cold email guide (maybe Henry Ford didn't know what the fuck he was talking about with the faster horses bit). 

2. Being that one well-written cold email can change the trajectory of your life forever, I had a feeling that $100 to change your life would be a goddamn bargain. The sales are showing that hunch was correct.

3. I priced the sonofabitch at $77 and told everyone it was going up $10/day for the next five days and I kept my word. It's now $117, where it will remain $117. 

Now, I know what you're thinking...

What does any of this have to do with Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner and Playboy?

Well, save for the massive advantage Hefner had with Monroe's nudes, something Hefner did that was genius when he launched the magazine is that he released an imperfect product, quickly. 

Quality matters but it doesn't matter as much as speed.

And, the thing about speed is that if you run fast enough, you lap your competition and then you can take a breather and tie your shoes and improve upon the product while they're behind you, gasping for air, trying for the perfect stride and losing because there is no such thing as perfection. 

To get a bit weird, imagine for a moment that you are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and two gunsmiths are fighting to do business with you.

Gunsmith #1 says he has a perfectly satisfactory shotgun that can blow the brains off zombies but certainly won't "wow" you with a bunch of bells and whistles.

Gunsmith #2 says he has the best gun on the planet with motion sensor laser tracking and triple trigger technology and the ability to turn into a drone and hover and fire for you while you eat a ham sandwich in the corner... but it will take him twelve months to build. 

Give me the shotgun, mother fucker, and get out of my way. 

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. Keep scrolling for nudes of Monroe. 

This week on Twitter...

Genius Lyrics...

"Schafer is expressing skepticism around what we as a society are celebrating in regards to human innovation and its focus, while at the same time poking fun at the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, for dressing like a cross between Buzz Lightyear and Woody on his way to the "edges of space"..."

Here's the lesser-known story behind Playboy magazine earning its name. 

Playboy Magazine wasn’t always Playboy Magazine.

When Hugh Hefner was originally breathing it into existence he gave it the name…

“Stag Party”

(I know… it has a terrible ring to it.)

Hefner was so deadset on the name that he even created a character of sorts that was a buck dressed in a robe holding what appeared to be a glass of scotch.

Unfortunately, another magazine called “Stag” caught wind that the upstart magazine was about to launch with a similar name and threatened to sue Hefner and his little band of misfits for everything they had.

Days before the magazine was supposed to go to print, Hefner and his team had to go back through the magazine with a fine-tooth comb, putting to rest all instances of the word “stag” and coming up with a new name entirely…

(Keep in mind that this was long before the age of “Word” so this editing had to be done manually, by hand.)

As the boys were shooting the shit, tossing out potential names, one of them remembered a now-defunct automobile company that his mother had worked at in a past life called…

“Playboy”.

The Playboy had a short lifespan of just three to four years and was manufactured in Buffalo, New York between 1946 and 1949.

He joked…

“Why don’t we call it Playboy…”

The magazine went to launch –– with Marilyn Monroe sitting pretty on its cover and “Playboy” etched above her –– and of the 70,000 issues that were printed, 80% of them sold out.

In Playboy’s first year, they were profitable –– a feat unheard of in the world of magazines.

(By comparison, Sports Illustrated, which started around the same time, took five to six years to dig itself out of debt.)

In closing…

Stag Party doesn’t have the same ring to it as Playboy, does it?

Sometimes your biggest setbacks are ultimately what set you apart.

How to become the Don Draper of Cold Email | $117 

Look at anyone doing anything noteworthy and there is a very good chance they got to where they are not by twiddling their goddamn thumbs whilst waiting on lady luck to show up in all her busty, voluptuous glory but by shooting their shot. This guide doesn't teach you how to send really good cold email. It teaches you how to shoot your shot, again and again, until you get what you want. 

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