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Extreme accountability: The Entrepreneur’s Superpower

October 8, 2015 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

Most startups fail. About 1 in 2 survive 5 years. In IT, that’s probably more extreme.

How many companies do you deal with today, which are over 10 years old? Remember how many search engines there were in the late nineties, most of which don’t exist, or at minimum, don’t exist any more as a viable alternative to Google and Bing.

Enter the entrepreneur. He is a visionary, a dreamer. He sees what others don’t see. Or he is just deranged.

How does this happen?

Eric Reis has a theory: “Hidden among these mundane details are a handful of assumptions that require more courage to state-in the present tense-with a straight face: we assume that customers have a significant desire to use a product like ours or that supermarkets will carry our product. Acting as if these assumptions are true is a classic entrepreneur superpower….If [these assumptions] are true, tremendous opportunity awaits. If they are false, the start-up risks total failure.” Typically, this refers to assumptions that everyone else overlooks. That’s why it takes guts, cojones even. At the very core of being of an entrepreneur, you will find someone who has the guts to face reality how it really is, and constantly test his assumptions. This is not necessarily difficult intellectually, as you can have an army of accountants keep track of systems, models, and spreadsheets. You can even build it into the product, such a system to allow you to test refinements of your business idea.

At the very core, this is about courage, not spreadsheets. It’s the very essence of creating a new business, when nothing existed before. It’s equally applicable to the pimply-faced php hacker trying to create a “social network” in his bedroom, as it is to the clean tech industry veteran who needs to raise 500 million in order to take a punt.

It’s been called various things in the past. In Steve Jobs’ case, it was called a “reality distortion field”.

Here is a conversation between Andy Hertzfeld and Bud Tribble, the guy who coined the term:

“Bud, that’s crazy!”, I told him. “We’ve hardly even started yet. There’s no way we can get it done by then.”
“I know,” he responded, in a low voice, almost a whisper.
“You know? If you know the schedule is off-base, why don’t you correct it?”
“Well, it’s Steve. Steve insists that we’re shipping in early 1982, and won’t accept answers to the contrary. The best way to describe the situation is a term from Star Trek. Steve has a reality distortion field.”
“A what?”
“A reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules. And there’s a couple of other things you should know about working with Steve.”
“What else?”
“Well, just because he tells you that something is awful or great, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll feel that way tomorrow. You have to low-pass filter his input. And then, he’s really funny about ideas. If you tell him a new idea, he’ll usually tell you that he thinks it’s stupid. But then, if he actually likes it, exactly one week later, he’ll come back to you and propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it.”

This ability of Steve’s has even been parodied by a Dilbert comic strip.

What would it take to get you to that level?

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Filed Under: inner game, startup, tools for founders

38 different ways to prove your case

February 23, 2015 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

While ideally you have some sort of proof direct in your headline and ad, your persuasiveness argument relies on how well you prove your point. You see, it’s ultimately about belief and feeling.

As heavy hitter Gary Bencivenga says:

Almost everyone in the world, in every field of human endeavor, is desperately searching for someone to believe in. Be that person and you can write your own ticket. Belief is today’s most overlooked yet most powerful key to boosting response to any ad, in any medium. Harness it and you unleash the core atomic power for exploding response.

Most prospects want to believe the claims you make in a landing page, yet the claims challenge their world-view and the status quo. You need proof, ideally proof that resonates emotionally, in order to get them to take action.

A landing page, or a salesletter, is like a one-to-one conversation between you and the prospect. You put various things on the landing page, designed to instill a particular reaction in the reader’s mind.

A good landing page is written in a conversational tone. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. In fact, you can read it out loud to ensure that the text “flows” well. prove your case

A good landing page is written in a conversational tone. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. In fact, you can read it out loud to ensure that the text “flows” well. prove your case

Imagine it as a phone conversation with a friend. They call you. They bring up a problem they’re struggling with. You say something surprising. You empathize with their pain. You talk about an approach you’ve used in the past or a product you can recommend to address it, as you know it will help them out. At the end, you help them buy the product or implement a solution in their lives. Empathize with your reader in the same way you’d empathize with that friend on the other end of the line.

Direct response progenitor Eugene Schwartz puts it well:

It is the facts that the prospect believes in and accepts, and the way that he passes that acceptance along from one fact to another, that determines the ad’s development, the arrangement of your claims and your images and your proofs, so that there is a step-by-step strengthening, not only of your prospect’s desire but of his conviction that the satisfaction of that desire will come true through your product.

You are building up the emotional weight of your argument as much as you can. You want the solution to become real in the prospect’s mind.

When you are making claims about the benefits your product has, your prospect is likely to not believe a claim that you make. It’s that “yeah, right” knee-jerk response. On the phone, you might be able to tell based on voice tone. Some prospects might tell you outright that they don’t believe you.

Proof counters that pushback. It’s your job, as a product creator or founder, to provide strong counter-arguments to this type of objection. In other words, your copy explicitly addresses the prospect’s objections. Show exactly how your solution can solve his problem. Or hers.

Well, the best type of proof is a poignant detail that knocks out a line of questioning or thinking. That’s why direct response copy that sells is clear.

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If you want to know what types of proof you can use, I’ve got your back. In its next update, Launch Tomorrow will include at least 38 different types of proof you can include on your landing page.

You can get a copy over here.

Create an explainer video for your complicated new product. Make sure your audience understands it, without being overwhelmed by technical details.

Contact Us
or call us now at:

US/Canada: +1 202 949 4478
UK: +44 773 952 7708
EU: +48 692 870 297

To be crystal clear, most of the 38 different types of proof don’t require you to even even have a customer, much less a success story.

Even on a landing page MVP, it all comes down to knowing how to present your product.

[image: typexnick]

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Filed Under: conversion rate, inner game, landing page, landing page MVP, minimum viable product, proof

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