As a teen, Richard Feyman, Nobel Prize winning physicist, worked one summer for the Metaplast Corporation.
The company was started to metal-plate plastics and they needed a chemist.
This was back around the Great Depression. Plastics and related technologies weren’t what they were today.
You could say they sorta, kinda, sometimes knew what they were doing. 😉
Their biggest problem was getting the metal-plating to actually stay on the plastic.
Often it wouldn’t, and they didn’t know why.
But their salesperson wasn’t bothered by facts. He’d go out and promise all sorts of things that Metaplast would then try to fulfill.
With mixed results.
Now, one day some folks at the company decided to run full page ads in Modern Plastics magazine. The ads featured stunning photos of their best work.
What you couldn’t see in such a photo, Feynman relates in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, is how long the plating would actually stick.
Anyway, he spent the summer helping them improve their processes. But the entire chemistry lab there was just him. A college student on summer break.
Then Feynman tells this story:
A few years later, I was in Los Alamos, where there was a man named Frederic de Hoffman, who was a sort of scientist…
One day we were eating at the Fuller Lodge, and he told me that he had been working in England before coming to Los Alamos.
“What kind of work were you doing there?” I asked.
“I was working on a process for metal-plating plastics. I was one of the guys in the laboratory.”
“How did it go?”
“It was going pretty well, but we had our problems. Just as we were beginning to develop our process, there was a company in New York called Metaplast Corporation. They were developed further than we were.”
“How could you tell?”
“They were advertising all the time in Modern Plastics with full page ads showing all the things they could plate, and we realized they were further along that we were.”
“Did you have any stuff from them?”
“No, but you could tell from the ads that they were way ahead… it was no use trying to compete with an American process like that.”
“How many chemists did you have working in the lab?”
“We had six chemists working.”
“How many do you think the Metaplast Corporation had?”
“Oh! They must have had a real chemistry department! …I would guess they must have had twenty-five or fifty chemists, and a chief research chemist with his own office… guys coming in all the time with research projects they’re doing, getting his advice and rushing off to do more research… How the hell could we compete with them?”
Then Feynman revealed:
“You’ll be interested and amused to know that you are now talking to the chief research chemist for the Metaplast Corporation, whose staff consisted of one bottle-washer!”
Oh, and the Metaplast Corporation went out of business after taking on a big job that they really couldn’t handle.
Metaplast wasn’t any better than de Hoffman’s English company. On the contrary.
They were just louder, so loud their competitors surrendered before the battle even began.
The fact is, we are our own worst enemies – as long as we stay inside our own heads.
How many times have you looked at others and felt “Wow, I’m so far behind, I’ll never catch up!”
It’s a lie you’re telling yourself! You’re not seeing the whole picture. ( Oh that Metaplast Corporation? They went out of business after taking on a big job that they really couldn’t handle.)
Which is one of the benefits of getting our help. You need help to get out of your own head. And to follow a proven path to a consistent flow of ideal clients.
If you’re past trying to figure it out alone, and you’re ready to invest to get exactly what you need go here and request a free “Consistent Flow of Clients” strategy chat.
It’s an opportunity for us to begin to get to know each other and see if my team is the right one to help you finally turn your expertise into a thriving business.
Dov Gordon
