Founders #350 How To Sell Like Steve Jobs
Ivar Kreuger's Pitch
- Ivar Kreuger successfully raised capital by clearly explaining his match monopoly investment strategy.
- He used simple language, saying "government loans for match monopolies," which resonated with investors.
Juan Trippe's Value Proposition
- Juan Trippe effectively sold air travel by focusing on the time savings compared to dangerous three-day road trips.
- He offered a 48x improvement, highlighting a clear value proposition for the United Fruit Company.
Repeat Your Core Message
- Describe your core idea succinctly, ideally in one sentence.
- Repeat this headline consistently across all communication channels.
What I learned from reading The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo
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(1:00) You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology—not the other way around. —Steve Jobs in 1997
(6:00) Why should I care = What does this do for me?
(6:00) The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy. (Founders #348)
(7:00) Easy to understand, easy to spread.
(8:00) An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire by Robert Daley
(8:00) The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)
(9:00) love how crystal clear this value proposition is. Instead of 3 days driving on dangerous road, it’s 1.5 hours by air. That’s a 48x improvement in time savings. This allows the company to work so much faster. The best B2B companies save businesses time.
(10:00) Great Advertising Founders Episodes:
Albert Lasker (Founders #206)
Claude Hopkins (Founders #170 and #207)
David Ogilvy (Founders #82, 89, 169, 189, 306, 343)
(12:00) Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. (That is the most important sentence in this book. Read it again.) — Ogilvy on Advertising
(13:00) Repeat, repeat, repeat. Human nature has a flaw. We forget that we forget.
(19:00) Start with the problem. Do not start talking about your product before you describe the problem your product solves.
(23:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)
(27:00) Being so well known has advantages of scale—what you might call an informational advantage.
Psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced-subconsciously and, to some extent, consciously-by what we see others do and approve.
Therefore, if everybody's buying something, we think it's better.
We don't like to be the one guy who's out of step.
The social proof phenomenon, which comes right out of psychology, gives huge advantages to scale.
— the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)
(29:00) Marketing is theatre.
(32:00) Belief is irresistible. — Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)
(35:00) I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.
And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast