He had, quite possibly, the most annoying voice I had ever heard. But it filled the largest lecture hall in Strathclyde University and the classes were always full.

Think about that for a second. Students have no compulsion to go to lectures. There's no intake form, no attendance sheet. You get those on workshops, not lectures. Lectures were voluntary. Every person in that room could have been at the pub, three pints deep, reinventing themselves for a stranger across the bar. Instead they got out of bed to sit and listen to this man with the annoying voice. Why?

Maybe you'd think it was the subject. It wasn't. Take contract law. They barely showed up for that one. That woman lurched over the microphone, scanning the audience for any sign of broken focus, like she was hunting for someone to convict. You didn't feel like a student. You felt like you were on trial. Flirting was not allowed in contract law lectures, unfortunately.

Goooooooooooood Morning! It was like a song. The way the marketing professor began his talks. He was almost like a rapper the way he jumped around. He wouldn't get annoyed at people who pulled focus. He would joust with them. "Oh, so you have something more interesting to discuss?" He'd make fun of them. "I see my book on your desk. It looks too clean. Barely touched." Admittedly, I felt caught, and it triggered me to read his material ahead of lectures so I was up to speed. From then on I felt more knowledgeable than my classmates. Simply because I had begun actually reading the material. Even the mockery had a point. He wanted the book open, not clean.

My point is that his dig had a direct impact on my behaviour. It made me pay attention. It's a trap I fall into today. I put so much thought into the substance of what I'm saying that the delivery goes flat. And maybe you feel this too. We forget that if the delivery isn't potent, the substance never gets fully understood. We forget about attention.

I remember watching Full Metal Jacket. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (bald-headed, tightly wound, booted) shouting at a private at the foot of his bed. AAAAATTTTEENNSSSSIIOOON HUT. HUT. It was military. You were drilled. You obeyed. It was so aggressive. I think I want to be that drill sergeant sometimes. I want to stand at the top of the page and shout "READ THIS" because I know the idea is valuable. But you can't do that to a voluntary audience. They'll just leave.

Which brings me back to Harker and his incredibly annoying voice. Harker was a drill sergeant too. He just wore a different uniform. Where Hartman screamed, Harker sang. That sing-song "Goooooooooooood Morning!"? That was his "ATTENTION!" Jumping around the stage? Jousting with the students? Calling me out for having a clean textbook? That was his version of standing at the foot of the bed. He knew he couldn't force us to be there using authority. So he used delivery. He was jarring. He was loud. He was un-ignorable. He snapped us to attention first. And once he had it, he delivered the payload.

I still remember his core thesis. He dismantled the whole idea of "making a sale" and taught us the Leaky Bucket. Most businesses pour everything into the top, chasing new customers, while ignoring the holes draining the bottom dry. Marketing wasn't acquisition, he drilled into us. It was retention. That image stuck. Years later, running Deserved Massage, I caught myself doing exactly what he'd warned against: chasing new bodies through the door while the people already on my table walked out and were never spoken to again. So I plugged the holes: a card at the end of every treatment, one tap to rebook. A lesson I'd nodded along to for years, and finally acted on.

That idea, retention over acquisition, is foundational. It's business gospel. But if he had just read it off a PowerPoint slide, lurching over a microphone like the law professor? It would have gone in one ear and out the other. Half the room would have been mentally at the pub. Instead, it sank in. It changed my behavior. And it shaped how I think about building businesses.

Why did it sink in? Because attention is the only mechanism that grants access to learning, and learning is the only mechanism that changes behaviour.

But I had the order wrong for years. I thought the trick was the noise. The song, the jumping around, the jousting. It wasn't. Harker was loud because he believed every word of what he was teaching. The delivery was just conviction turned up. He had done the reading. He knew retention beat acquisition cold, and the whole performance sat on top of something solid. That is the part you can't fake. You can rehearse every hook and every opening line, but if you don't believe what you're selling, the room can smell it. He earned the right to be loud.

So if you want the idea to sink in, you can't just be right, and you can't just be loud. You have to believe it. Then you can joust. Then you can sing. Then you can snap them awake. Because the volume only works when there's something true behind it.

Thanks for reading,
Grant