Developing and Marketing a Product
In this section, the speaker discusses the process of developing and marketing a product.
Developing a Product
- Creating a product is not enough to launch it successfully.
- Companies that roll out new products on a continual basis communicate with their customers about what product they are willing to buy next before developing it.
- It is essential to have your market identified and be in continual communication with them while developing the product.
Marketing a Product
- Even if you have an excellent product, people may not buy it because they already have many great options available.
- People are preoccupied by their jobs, so they don't want to spend time learning about new products unless they're on fire and need immediate help.
- If you can say that your product will stop people from being identified as failures, then people might be happy about that.
Challenges in Selling Products
- Corporations may not buy your product even if it works because they already have processes in place.
- Customers cannot understand statistics or verify them themselves, so they ask who else is using the product.
- People do not care about whether or not they succeed; they care about whether or not they fail. They want to be invisible and left alone.
The Zebra Story
In this section, the speaker tells a story about zebras and explains how it relates to human behavior.
The Zebra Story
- Zebras have stripes for camouflage theory does not make sense because lions are camouflaged but golden like grass.
- The real reason zebras have stripes is that when lions hunt together, each lion focuses on one zebra. When all zebras stand together, lions get confused and cannot focus on one zebra.
- This story tells us that people want to be invisible and left alone.
The Importance of Herds and Schools
In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of herds and schools in nature, using zebras and cod as examples.
Zebras and Cod
- Cod exist in massive schools that are hundreds of miles long and 20 million years old.
- Without the school, there is no cod. Introducing a whole school of cod is not possible because they do not exist as individuals.
- Similarly, there is no individual zebra. They exist only as part of a herd.
- It is difficult to identify an individual zebra within a herd due to their camouflage against the group.
Hunting Strategies
- Lions must identify an individual zebra before they can organize their hunt.
- Predators target weaker or injured individuals that are easier to identify within the herd.
Camouflaging Against the Herd
In this section, the speaker discusses how humans also camouflage themselves against the herd for protection.
Protective Ring
- People try to move into the middle of a group for protection from predators.
- The negative emotion system is a powerful motivator for people who want to avoid being threatened or hurt.
Scales of Well-being
- Scales of well-being show that people are after not hurting rather than happiness or extroversion.
Avoiding Suffering
In this section, the speaker talks about how to avoid suffering by staying in the middle of hurt and danger.
Staying Visible
- The speaker acknowledges that there is real danger in being visible.
- However, he suggests that staying visible can also lead to success.
- The key is to stay in the middle of the hurt and not let it consume you.
- By facing your fears and staying visible, you can avoid suffering in the long run.
- But if you choose to hide from danger, you may be successful but you might also end up dead.