Eisner’s Tornante Company offered £5.67m to buy the club and will invest an extra £10m.
Eisner said a man who oversaw the design of Disney parks in Paris and Hong Kong will visit the stadium to see what improvements can be made.
He said the character of the stadium is something that should be protected and said he had no desire to build a new modern facility.
Eisner said: “Hopefully the team will run, the club will run in an efficient way and that we can use what we’ve committed to and maybe even more down the line to obviously safety of the Fratton Park, we’re going to stay at Fratton Park. Of course we want to expand capacity there over time. We want to improve the academy but we also want to run it intelligently so over a long period of time, it will be clear that this is one of the major clubs in the UK. Now that’s going to take a while.
“I have a couple of people that used to work with me at Disney coming over to walk the grounds on Sunday to see what the long-term vision of the whole area could be. I don’t see us building a modern stadium – we don’t have to copy everybody else. we didn’t do it in Anaheim when we did the baseball team, we did do it for the hockey team but Fratton Park has a feeling that you could really screw up by arrogantly thinking you could improve it.
“We can improve it by filling in the corners maybe, by maybe making a new stand, by certainly making it totally safe, modern inside – wifi video and all that stuff but you wouldn’t rebuild Queen Victoria’s house, Osborne House – I’ve just been there Isle of Wight – just to do it. It’s pretty good. So this is very good, as I know, over 100 years old and everybody wants these very fancy stadiums and maybe my grandchildren will think that’s a good idea, right now I like it.”
In
2002 I was driving to a hedge fund manager’s house to hopefully raise
money from him. I was two hours late. This was pre-GPS and I had no cell
phone. I was totally lost. If you’ve never driven around Connecticut
you need to know one thing: all the roads are parallel and they all have
the same name. And all the towns have the same name.
I
know that doesn’t make sense. But drive in that state and you will see
what I mean. Also, their computers don’t work. For the life of me, I
can’t figure out how to get rid of my outstanding driving violations in
Connecticut.
I
was two hours late and I kept playing over and over again “Lose
Yourself” by Eminem. Maybe this was subconsciously making me “lose
myself”, I don’t know.
But I kept thinking I had “one shot” and I was going to blow it by not showing up.
Finally
I got there. The hedge fund manager was dressed all in pink. His house
was enormous. Maybe 20,000 square feet. His cook served us a great meal.
I had made him wait two hours to eat. And he had cancer at the time. I
felt real bad.
Then
we played chess and it was fun and he gave me a tour of the house. One
room was just for toys made in 1848. He had a squash court inside the
house. Another room had weird artifacts like the handwritten notes when
Lennon & McCartney were first writing down the lyrics for “Hey
Jude”. Another was the official signed statement by Ted Kennedy in the
police station after he reported the Chappequidick accident that
ultimately caused him to never be President.
Eventually I did raise money and it started a new life for me.
But that’s not why I bring up Eminem at all.
The
song “Lose Yourself” is from the movie “8 Mile”. Although I recommend
it, you don’t have to see it to understand what I am about to write.
I’ll give you everything you need to know.
Eminem
is a genius at sales and competition and he shows it in one scene in
the movie. A scene I will break down for you line by line so you will
know everything there is to know about sales, cognitive bias, and
defeating your competition.
First, here’s all you need to know about the movie.
Eminem
is a poor, no-collar, white-trash guy living in a trailer park. He’s
beaten on, works crappy jobs, gets betrayed, etc. But he lives to rap
and break out somehow.
In
the first scene he is having a “battle” against another rapper and he
chokes. He gives up without saying a word. He’s known throughout the
movie as someone who chokes under pressure and he seems doomed for
failure.
The
scene I will show you and then break down is the final battle in the
movie. He’s the only white guy and the entire audience is black. He’s up
against the reigning champion that the audience loves.
He wins the battle and I will show you how. With his techniques you can go up against any competition.
After
he wins it, he can go on to do anything he wants. To win any battles.
To even run the battles each week. But he walks off because he’s going
to do his own thing. He chooses himself. The movie is autobiographical.
300 million records later he is the most successful rapper in history.
First off, watch the scene (with lyrics) before and after my explanation.
Ok, let’s break it down. How did Eminem win so easily?
Setting
aside his talent for a moment (assume both sides are equally talented),
Eminem used a series of cognitive biases to win the battle.
The
current human brain was developed over the past 400,000 years ago. In
fact, arguably, when the brain was used more to survive in nomadic
situations, humans had higher IQs then they had today. But one very
important thing is that the brain developed many biases as sort of
short-cuts to survival.
For
instance, a very common one is that we have a bias towards noticing
negative news over positive news. The reason is simple: if you were in
the jungle and you saw a lion to your right and an apple tree to your
left, you would best ignore the apple tree and run as fast as possible
away from the lion. This is called “negativity bias” and it’s the entire
reasons newspapers still survive by very explicitly exploiting this
bias in humans. .
We
no longer need those short-cuts as much. There aren’t that many lions
in the street. But the brain took 400,000 years to evolve and it’s only
in the past 50 years maybe that we are relatively safe from most of the
dangers that threatened earlier humans. Our technology and ideas have
evolved but our brains can’t evolve fast enough to keep up with them.
Consequently,
these biases are used in almost every sales campaign, business,
marketing campaign, movie, news, relationship, everything. Almost all of
your interactions are dominated by biases and understanding them is
helpful when calling BS on your thoughts.
Your
brain is loving and wants to protect you. But it’s not smart enough
because life has evolved faster than the brain. So you have to learn how
to reach past the signals from the brain and develop intuition and
mastery over these biases.
1) INGROUP BIAS
Notice Eminem’s first line: “Now everybody from the 313, put your mother-f&cking hands up and follow me”.
The
313 is the area code for Detroit. ANd not just Detroit. It’s for
blue-collar black Detroit where the entire audience, and Eminem, is
from. So he wipes away the outgroup bias that might be associated with
his race and he changes the conversation to “who is in 313 and who is
NOT in 313″.
2) HERD BEHAVIOR.
He
said, “put your hands up and follow me”. Everyone starts putting their
hands up without thinking. So their brain tells them that they are doing
this for rational reasons. For instance, they are now following Eminem.
3) AVAILABILITY CASCADE.
The
brain has a tendency to believe things even more if they are repeated,
regardless of whether or not they are true. This is called Availability
Cascade. There is a cascade of information that is available to you,
it’s all the same, so you feel the need to believe it. It must be true.
Notice
Eminem repeats his first line. After he does that he no longer needs to
say “follow me”. He says, “Look, look.” They are already following him
and under his command. So he says “Look” because he is about to point
out the enemy. He is setting up the next cognitive bias.
4) DISTINCTION BIAS OR OUTGROUP BIAS.
Brains have a tendency to view two things as very different if they are
evaluated at the same time as opposed to if they were evaluated
separately. Eminem wants his opponent “Papa Doc” to be evaluated right
then as someone different from the group, even though the reality is
they are all in the same group of friends with similar interests, etc.
Eminem says: “Now while he stands tough, notice that this man did not have his hands up”.
In
other words, even though Papa Doc is black, like everyone in the
audience, he is no longer “in the group” that Eminem has defined and
commanded: the 313 group. He has completely changed the conversation
from race to area code.
5) AMBIGUITY BIAS.
He
doesn’t refer to Papa Doc by name. He says “this man”. In other words,
there’s “the 313 group” which we are all a part of in the audience and
now there is this ambiguous man who is attempting to invade us. Watch
Presidential campaign debates. A candidate will rarely refer to another
candidate by name. Instead, he might say, “All of my opponents might
think X, but we here know that Y is better”.
When
the brain starts to view a person with ambiguity it gets confused and
can’t make choices involving that ambiguity. So the person without
ambiguity wins.
6) CREDENTIAL BIAS.
Because the brain wants to take short cuts, it will look for
information more from people with credentials or lineage than from
people who come out of nowhere. So, for instance, if one person was from
Harvard and told you it was going to rain today and another random
person told you it was going to be sunny today you might be more
inclined to believe the person from Harvard.
Eminem
does this subtly two lines later. He says, “one, two, three, and to the
four”. This is a direct line from Snoop Doggy Dogg’s first song with
Dr. Dre, “Ain’t Nothin But a G Thing”. It is the first line in the song
and perhaps one of the most well-known rap lines ever. Outside of the
context of the movie, Eminem was actually discovered by Dr. Dre. There’s
actually an interesting lineage of: NWA, Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent.
The most popular rappers ever.
But
in this battle, Eminem directly associates himself with well-known
successful rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop when he uses that line.
He then use Availability Cascade
again by saying, “one Pac, two Pac, three Pac, four.” First, he’s using
that one, two, three, and to the four again but this time with Pac,
which refers to the rapper Tupac. So now he’s associated himself in this
little battle in Detroit with three of the greatest rappers ever.
7) INGROUP / OUTGROUP.
Eminem
points to random people in the audience and says “You’re Pac, He’s
Pac,” including them with him in associating their lineages with these
great rappers. But then he points to his opponent, Papa Doc, makes a
gesture like his head is being sliced off and says, “You’re Pac, NONE”.
Meaning that Papa Doc has no lineage, no credibility, unlike Eminem and
the audience.
8) BASIC DIRECT MARKETING: LIST THE OBJECTIONS UP FRONT.
Any
direct marketer or salesperson knows the next technique Eminem uses.
When you are selling a product, or yourself, the person or group you are
selling to is going to have easy objections. They know those objections
and you know those objections. If you don’t bring them up and they
don’t bring them up then they will not buy your product. If they bring
it up before you, then it looks like you were hiding something and you
just wasted a little of their time by forcing them to bring it up.
So a great sales technique is to address all of the objections in advance.
Eminem’s next set of lines does this brilliantly.
He says, “I know everything he’s got to say against me”.
And then he just lists them one by one:
- “I am white”
- “I am a fuckin bum”
- “I do live in a trailer with my mom”
- “My boy, Future, is an Uncle Tom”
- “I do have a dumb friend named Cheddar Bob who shot himself with his own gun”.
- “I did get jumped by all six of you chumps”
And
so on. He lists several more. But at the end of the list, there’s no
more criticism you can make of him. He’s addressed everything and
dismissed them. In a rap battle, (or a sales pitch), if you address
everything youjr opponent can say, he’s left with nothing to say. When
he has nothing to say, the audience, or the sales prospect, will buy
from you.
Look
at direct marketing letters you get in email. They all spend pages and
pages addressing your concerns. This is one of the most important
techniques in direct marketing.
9) HUMOR BIAS.
Eminem saves his best for last. “But I know Something About You” he
says while staring at Papa Doc. He sings is playfully, making it stand
out and almost humorous. There is something called Humor Bias. People
remember things that are stated humorously more than they remember
serious things.
10) EXTREME OUTGROUP
“You
went to Cranbook.” And then Eminem turns to his “313 group” for
emphasis as he explains what Cranbook is. “That’s a private school.”
BAM! There’s
no way now the audience can be on Papa Doc’s side but Eminem makes the
outgroup even larger. “His real name’s Clarence. And his parents have a
real good marriage.”
BAM
and BAM! Two more things that separate Papa Doc out from the crowd.
He’s a nerdy guy, who goes to a rich school, and his parents are
together. Unlike probably everyone in the audience including Eminem. No
wonder Papa Doc doesn’t live in the 313, which was originally stated
somewhat humorously but is now proven without a doubt.
11) CREDENTIAL BIAS (again)
Eminmen
says, “There ain’t no such thing as”… and the audience chants with him
because they know exactly what he is quoting from “Halfway Crooks!” a
line from a song by Mobb Deep, another huge East Coast rap group (so now
Eminem has established lineage between himself and both the West Coast
and the East Coast). And by using the audience to say “Halfway Crooks”
we’re all in the same group again while “Clarence” goes back to his home
with his parents at the end of the show.
12) SCARCITY.
The
music stops, which means Eminem has to stop and let Papa Doc have his
turn. But he doesn’t. He basically says “F*ck everybody”, “F*ck y’all if
you doubt me”. “I don’t wanna win. I’m outtie”.
He
makes himself scarce. After establishing total credibility with the
audience he basically says he doesn’t want what they have to offer. He
reduces the supply of himself by saying he’s out of there. Maybe he will
never come back. Reduce the supply of yourself while demand is going up
and what happens? Basic economics. Value goes up.
He’s
so thoroughly dominated the battle that now, in reversal to the
beginning of the movie, Papa Doc chokes. He doesn’t quite choke, though.
There’s nothing left to say. Eminem has said it all for him. There’s no
way Papa Doc can raise any “objections” because Eminem has already
addressed them all. All he can do is defend himself, which will give him
the appearance of being weak. And he’s so thoroughly not in the “313
Group” that there is no way to get back in there.
There’s simply nothing left to say. So Eminem wins the battle.
And what does Eminem do with his victory? He can do anything.
But he walks away from the entire subculture. He walks off at the end of the movie with no connection to what he fought for.
He’s going to Choose Himself to be successful and not rely on the small-time thinking in battles in Detroit.
He’s
sold 220 million records worldwide. He discovered and produced 50 Cent
who has sold hundreds of millions more (and is another example of
“Choose Yourself” as Robert Greene so aptly describes in his book “The
50th Law”).
Cost: $20 Million | Size: 11,000 Sq. Feet | 8 Bedrooms, 10 Bathrooms
Cost: $11 Million | Size: 8,000 Sq. Feet | 8 Bedrooms, 10 Bathrooms
