Purity

All effective education creates tension, because just before you learn something, you’re aware you don’t know it (yet).

Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt famously said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They want a quarter-inch hole.” The lesson is that the drill bit is merely a feature, a means to an end, but what people truly want is the hole it makes. But that doesn’t go nearly far enough. No one wants a hole. What people want is the s

The social crusader wants a glimmer of hope and the chance to make things right.

The alternative is to find and build and earn your story, the arc of the change you seek to produce. This is a generative posture, one based on possibility, not scarcity.

It is never the case that people will tell their friends because you want them to, or because you ask them to, or because you worked hard. Give them a why. And that usually involves changing what you offer. Make things better by making better things—things that have a network effect, a ratchet, a reason for sharing.

My product is for people who believe _________________. I will focus on people who want _________________. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get _________________.

If you’re a career coach, then explain why people who don’t hire a coach have made a smart decision. Or explain why people who are using someone else to coach them have done something that makes sense for them.

This is the status that comes from the community. It is the status of respect in return for contribution, for caring, for seeing and being in sync with others. Especially others with no ability to repay you. Modern society, urban society, the society of the internet, the arts, and innovation are all built primarily on affiliation, not dominion. Thi