The 1/4" drill bit, Bali, cocktails on the beach, love, pride, and Spark

This entry is part 11 of 70 in the series Spark

Seth Godin says, “People don’t want to buy a 1/4″ drill bit. They need a 1/4″ hole in the wall.”

In his new book, “This is Marketing,” Mr. Godin goes on to say, and I’m going to paraphrase here, they don’t even really want the hole in the wall (who wants a hole in the wall?) but they want to hang the shelf. It’s not even the shelf so much as the books that are going to go on there. In fact, deeper than that is the pride he’ll feel when he drilled the hole and put up the shelf himself. An added bonus (and potentially the reason behind the entire 1/4″ drill bit purchasing journey in the first place) is the love and admiration he’s going to feel from his wife for having bought the drill bit to make the hole to hang the shelf to place the books to clean up the clutter which lightens their mood that saves their marriage and inspires a trip to Bali where they dream up a new career path and live happily ever after sipping sunset cocktails on the deck of their beach villa.

Seth: drill bit and shelf and admiration
Bradley: clear clutter, save marriage, inspire travel, change careers, move to Bali, sip cocktails, enjoy sunset

See how that happened? Seth Godin laid the foundation, he provided the spark, the initial momentum and I took it and ran with it.

This is exactly what I’m after with (my latest book) Spark.

Spark: It’s about creating something from nothing. Let’s create a subtitle, shall we?

Maybe the spark is not only you and your child and you igniting his or her creativity, but maybe *I* am also the spark lighting a fire under you to get this going.

Let’s take Seth’s 1/4″ drill bit to Spark:

You (parent) buy the Spark book,
Because you’d like to do a project together with your kids. Specifically, in the case study of you, your daughter.
(Even though your child might not be so interested (at least not yet, but you know this is a long-term strategy)),
But it will make you feel good that you did it, that you’re making an effort towards improving, enhancing, and adding a soft and warm glow to your relationship with her,
You talk about it with her (which is already a step in the right direction if we’re talking about relationships),
She is (a) completely uninterested, (b) sort of meh, (c) or thinks it might be fun. You move forward.
You get started.
Now you’re committed.
It’s harder than you thought. But this is a good thing as your daughter adds a new twist you never would have thought of.
You barely recognize her.
You see your child in a new light.
They lose interest in the project, but you’re motivated, so you reel them back in.
You both get a second wind.
You make never-before-witnessed progress in the family household.
You laugh.
You cry.
You want to give up.
You’re almost done.
One last effort. One last push.
It’s done.
You did it.
Your child can’t believe you were able to make it through the whole thing with all of the red wine you consumed during the project.
You are astonished that your daughter is as creative as a wild hyena trapped in a corner by a pack of lions. She is ferocious and you love her now more than you ever thought you could love a person.
Your final product is probably the worst creation known in the history of final products and you and your daughter couldn’t be more proud–or care less what other people think.
You laugh more.
You cry a little.
Your daughter asks you why you’re crying.
You tell her it’s because you love her.
She asks what that has to do with the project.
You tell her it has both nothing and everything to do with it.
She doesn’t understand. At all.
She pushes your wine glass towards you.
You refuse the offering and just smother her in a hug that you never want to let go.
She asks you, after some time, to please let go.
You let her go because she’s now a new person, a new creative force to be reckoned with.
There’s a fire in her.
You helped start it.
It started with a spark.