4. Attention is not rational.

You have to make them want it before they know why they want it.

Of everything I’ve learned over my work with dozens of companies about how go to market actually works and how to create a system to solve it, this is the most difficult thing I’ve had to learn and the most difficult thing to teach. It took me years to understand why this is true and what it means for creating and delivering an effective message. 

The simple truth is that, for everyone outside the 15% who make up your Neophile and Early Adopter customers — in other words, for 6 of every 7 of your possible customers — explaining why they should want your thing, using reasons, appealing to logic, does not work. 

I know that sounds crazy. 

Why it’s true is explained in a Nobel Prize-winning book that is fascinating, dense, filled with insight, and at least twice as long as it needs to be. To be honest, I empathize with Daniel Kahneman’s editor. I wouldn’t want to be in the position of telling anyone this smart to shave his content in half. Kahneman is a brilliant and important thinker. His groundbreaking book is called Thinking Fast and Slow.