I’m sitting beneath the shade of a lemon tree, tucked away in a quiet alcove of the Generalife—the Alhambra’s former summer residence, garden, and orchard.
If that sentence didn’t make any sense to you, that’s because I’m on vacation with my wife and daughter…sightseeing our merry way across Spain.
The Alhambra is a sprawling Moorish fortress-slash-city-slash-palace, perched on a hill above the city of Granada in southern Spain.
It was the last stronghold of the Andalusian Moors—the Muslim conquerors who occupied most of central and southern Spain for centuries, until they were pushed back and crushed during Spain’s Reconquista.
Today, the only invaders being conquered are my family.
We’re thirsty. And our portable fan battery just died.
So…
While Nhu and baby Nora pass out on the bench next to me, I’ll continue with yet another business tip wrapped inside a seemingly unrelated, insane tangent—as I often do.
After King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella conquered Granada in 1492, they moved their royal court to Alhambra.
1492!
Where my Columbus fans at?
Yep, this is the exact spot where our dear Christopher received his royal endorsement for that crazy idea he had about sailing around the world or something.
Lol doesn’t he know you’ll just fall off the edge of the map?
Smh…
Anyway, after Chris duped the King and Queen of Spain and vanished into the footnotes of history without accomplishing anything notable…
Charles V later commissioned a big ol’ Renaissance palace right across the street from the Alhambra.
(I mean, it’s a street now. I don’t know what it was 500 years ago. A moat? A very wide churro? Historians are baffled.)
Anyway, THAT palace fell into disrepair and became occupied by squatters…
Was then blown to smithereens by Napoleon a couple hundred years later…
And finally, finally became a UNESCO World Heritage site along with the rest of Alhambra proper.
Over the centuries, the Alhambra has been repurposed dozens of times—and it means different things to different people.
For the Moors, it was a symbol of power and defiance.
For Christopher Columbus, it was a symbol of boundless opportunity.
And for millions of K-Drama fans, the Alhambra represents a really trippy TV show that I couldn’t get through.
It’s hard to imagine exactly how the Alhambra’s previous tenants and visitors must have felt, because they came from different time periods and carried their own beliefs, desires, and pains.
We can guess, but unless we were there? It’s just an assumption.
I see a lot of freelancers and agency owners making dangerous assumptions, too.
You can’t waltz into the Andalusian court pre-1492 offering your Explorer Services—the Moors were more preoccupied with maintaining their land in Spain than chasing rainbows and cotton candy across the ocean blue.
Nor should you embarrass yourself in front of Ferdinad and Isabella with your grand scheme to transform the Alhambra into a tourism hub.
No, selling is more about meeting your prospect where THEY are.
Not about your shiny new service…like most business owners do.
You can’t sell ice to eskimos, as they say.
But what if you could convince the eskimos that your ice wasn’t really ice at all?
Here’s the trick most freelancers miss:
They think selling is about convincing someone to want what they have.
But selling is really about matching what you have to what someone already wants.
That means before you ever pitch, you need to ask:
What are they worried about right now?
What would make them excited enough to take action today?
What would make this offer feel like a no-brainer?
When you can answer those three questions, you stop “selling” altogether—
You just become the natural next step they were already looking for.
This is how I write proposals, sales pages, and even these emails: I meet readers where they already are, not where I wish they were.
If you want to learn to do that too—and get daily business tips to help you land more clients, close more deals, and stop guessing what your market wants…
The Niña, The Pinta… act now and I’ll throw in the Santa Maria for FREE,
Nick
