# Personalization Humans crave custom. I'm not sure why, but it probably makes us feel special, wanted, important, and gives us a sense of significance in the world. There are few things more ineffective than a blanket spam email which starts off "SIR / MADAM." Our first names are the sweetest sounds in the world to us. Personalized engravings on gifts don't get thrown away. I'm learning a new type of marketing / sales strategy called "contact marketing" which is all about getting hyper targeted with not only the outreach but in the outreach method. Researching the individual, figuring out what would delight them, and leveraging that to get their attention in order to build a relationship and possibly do business together. Gone are the days of spam working. Get personal, or get lost. Interestingly (to me at least), this is accidentally plowing the same field as some of my research into empathy at the moment. The ability to understand what someone else is thinking and feeling is precisely the precursor needed to deliver an extremely personal outreach. Funny how paths overlap. The reason I bring this up today is because of the tremendous impact it has had in my life so far. Developing the ability to get into another person's inner circle by taking the time to research them, deploying empathy to understand them, and then investing the effort to make contact in a super thoughtful and personal way? Superpower. Especially in the world of increasingly powerful AI and technology. A few resources to sharpen up on this. - *how to win friends & influence people* by dale carnegie - *influence* by robert cialdini - *the art of seduction* by robert greene Master the concepts in these 3 books, and you'll be unstoppable.