Ordinary guy beats NASA, tweets from outer space

If you want to build massive credibility for yourself and your claims, then you’re going to want to stick around for today’s lesson on deep space marketing.

It’s about a man who calls himself:

“The most ordinary guy to ever become an astronaut.”

Now, I wouldn’t say he’s that ordinary, but compared to what you might expect it takes to become a flight-ready astronaut, then he’s probably right.

Very average and very ordinary… at least when he first got started.

Except of course, for one thing…

The very same thing you’ll want to use to increase believability in everything you offer and everything you claim. But first, a story… and in it, I’ll reveal everything you need to know about the guy who convinced NASA to let him tweet from outer space (even though he was grossly under-qualified).

Fresh out of Columbia engineering college, Mike Massimino applied to be an astronaut and got denied.

No call back… just a standard rejection letter, “sorry, you’re not qualified”.

After getting accepted into the Ph.D. robotics program at MIT he applied again. This time, he was rejected more formally but they flat out told him he didn’t have the right physical or career profile to be meddling around in space.

So he doubled down at MIT…

More robotics research, more teaching, and more experiments (even performing many underwater to simulate the weightlessness of space). His goal was to re-position himself as “not just an engineer” but someone NASA actually needed to perform important missions like making repairs the Hubble telescope.

So the third time he applied, they took him seriously.

Administered all the tests…

And he passed with flying colors.

That is… until he had to take the vision test.

NASA has a super strict policy for uncorrected vision and since he’s nearsighted, he failed. At that point they told him, “You’ll never be an astronaut. Ever.”

Dude was devastated…

But instead of giving up, he discovered a series of eye exercises he could use to improve his vision over time. He kept building his experience at MIT, he kept working on advanced robotics research for outer space, he kept growing his credentials, and most of all, he kept improving his vision (something most people incorrectly believe is impossible to improve).

10 years later he did his first spacewalk and said the view of Earth was so overwhelming he almost forgot to breathe.

On his second mission, he became the first astronaut to send a tweet from outer space.

So how does this apply to you and your ability to instill belief in everything that you offer and everything that you claim?

Well…

In Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success she writes:

“When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, [NASA] rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them.”

And in your readers too… “perfection” raises red flags.

Most people relate to failure more than they do success. And we all know that success, no matter how much we’re striving towards it, is a terrible teacher if it’s never accompanied by inevitable failures of life that keep us honest, keep us humble, and keep us striving against all odds to consistently do our best.

Something to think about next time you promote your offers or wares…

Let people in on what’s not so great about what you do.

It’s more believable that way.

That said…

One of the things that sucks about the Email Sales Accelerator — once I open the doors again — is that it requires you to write about some things that you’re probably a little uncomfortable writing about. Some things that might make people realize that you’re not so perfect after all.

And as a result…

They might trust you 10x more than you ever thought possible.

Click the waitlist link below to be in the know (details coming soon):

https://kevinhood.me/accelerator

Best,

Kevin Hood