If you ever think “no one would ever buy this” for an idea you just came up with for a business, just remember there was a millionaire walking around in this world that had the bright idea to sell a “pet rock.” The great mind unfortunately past away last year, but his legacy will never be forgotten.
There are instructions out there for how to properly care for your rock, as well as how to let your pet rock have a luxury life. The sales pitch that the rock won’t make a mess for you or give you allergies. There are instructions out there on how to teach it obedience and tricks like: to roll over, stay, come, and play dead. You can get the rock’s lineage certified so no one can argue it isn’t family. The pet comes in a box with holes, of course, so it can properly breathe and you can transport it comfortably. The rock won’t talk back to you and is always there to listen to your problems. Oh, and they have a pretty long life span, so you won’t have to really worry about losing it after a few years. Kind of the all-around ideal pet.
Getting to the main point, if a guy can sell over a million and a half rocks to people, you don’t really have an excuse to not be able to sell something. How you go about selling the product/service is equivalent to the product/service. I would imagine just about anyone couldn’t go outside right now and pick up a rock and sell it to someone at any price to a person walking by. This guy sold a rock a piece in 1975 at $3.95. If you plug that in on an inflation calculator, that comes out to $18 in today’s money. That’s some serious cash for what some call a crazy dumb idea. It gets better, he was selling over a 100,000 rocks a day too at one point. The guy was brilliant in how he packaged the product, used humor to sell it to lazy people wanting a pet, marketed it, and assembled a business to pump out millions of rocks to customers. He eventually sold his company and you can still buy a pet rock today at around $20 at www.petrock.com
Where there is just about anything, there is value to someone if you do it right.
testacr22
I really liked how you related being able to sell anything to being able to sell a rock. And how people thought it was crazy and people still do think it is crazy to sell a pet rock, but this man was able to do it with no trouble and huge profits. Awesome post!
Your storytelling ability is great, Alan. I really envisioned the rock and it’s features/attributes. You’re right, you can sell anything no matter what it is. This is why trying as many things as you can works! You never know what will be successful.
this is a really cool story. it makes you see things from different perspectives.
This was the first time I heard this story. I am completely shocked that someone made a living selling rocks and I am very intrigued to learn more about his sales techniques. He obviously has some very great sales abilities. The title of your post interested me and you completely backed it up with the contents of the article. It was very interesting and I enjoyed reading it.