When Steve Jobs announced the iPod in 2001, he didn’t talk about the 5 GB hard drive. He talked about having 1,000 songs in your pocket.
When you buy a product, you don’t buy it because of the raw materials. You buy it because of what it can do for you, and how it makes you feel.
So the challenge then becomes for product creators to identify and then clearly communicate how your product fulfills this promise.
In the language of Super Mario, you’re not selling the mushroom. You’re selling what the mushroom can do. The superpower.
I am currently thinking deeply about that for my new personal finance course. The original title of my first course was “Principles of Successful Investing”, which is okay, but also quite boring.
I’m not selling principles, I’m selling what the principles can do. So my new title is “Build Wealth, Buy Freedom” which comes a lot closer to what I’m actually selling. A recent poll I did on social media confirmed my hypothesis that the new title seems to be more appealing.
That’s the beauty of the internet. You can experiment, you can iterate, you can improve.
[Hat tip Samuel Hulick and Jack Butcher]
