This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up? Welcome to Cytosol School. Welcome to a new week and welcome to this week's classroom episode. In recent classroom lessons, we have looked at different Cytosol ideas, where they come from, categories, how to decide between competing ideas and so on. Last week we began building our roadmap to launch, all the things you need to do before you can debut your project.
Now this week's episode is called, it's not just what you say, it's how you say it. You might think, hey, why aren't we talking about shopping carts, Instagram ads, or wait, why aren't we building out those nuts and bolts we talked about last week? Well, here's the thing, we're still all about nuts and bolts for sure. And we'll get to marketing much more in the second two thirds of the year. But because branding and messaging are part of product design, or at least they should be, it's critical to think about the message you'll be presenting.
And the sooner you think about this, the better. The sooner you think about this, the easier it is, the less adjustment you'll have to do later, the greater the odds you'll be successful, the less friction you'll encounter and so on. So this shouldn't be an afterthought. It's something you consider as you work off that roadmap and as you complete those tasks you identified last week. Now here's a key point that frames everything.
We make purchasing decisions based on emotion much more than logic. And the way you appeal to emotion is by leading with benefits. Give you a couple of examples here from recent and upcoming stories. So here's a recent one, episode 1134. We talked about the journalist who leads outdoor activities in Maine.
She put together this membership club where people every month go out and try a different activity. So there the emotion, the benefit is all about getting outdoors and trying something new with a supportive group. So you're able to experiment, but you have the support of new friends, it's a community and so on. And then 1151, which is not out yet, it comes out next week, it's all about two sisters who make natural skincare products. Their message is essentially improve your skincare routine without paying commercial price and order from this family-run business.
So they have a whole story, a whole narrative around that. Now, even if you think about something, like you might say, well, that's inspirational, okay? But what about something that's just more practical? Even so, think about something as basic and boring as car suspension systems or shocks, which we talked about in episode 1140, just three days ago. You can listen to that if you haven't heard it yet.
The guy in that story doing really, really well as a car suspension system reseller, originally on eBay and now with his own website, his USB or his unique selling proposition, what made his pitch, his product unique, was making the replacement process simple, removing the decision fatigue and discomfort associated with car maintenance. At least I have a lot of discomfort associated with car maintenance. I do not want anything to do with car maintenance. So if I needed to do it, I would look for the simplest possible solution. And I would look to just kind of get rid of anything that makes it complicated or just kind of stresses me out, basically.
And so there's a lot of other people like that as well. Now, from the beginning of your project, as you're working on something, as you're building that, working off that checklist that you made, just thinking through whatever tasks are to come, you wanna think about some of the questions that we have covered already in this series, such as, is it a product or service? Who is my ideal customer? How will I go from idea to offer? We'll have more in that last part soon.
But also you wanna think, what are the core emotional needs that I will meet with this product or service and how will I communicate that fact? How will I communicate that fact? And again, you wanna be thinking about this on the front end. Now, in my case, I haven't made a course or an ebook or other online product in a while now, but over the years, looking back, I probably made 25 or 30 of them, if not more. And I usually started the process by thinking, what do I want this next product to communicate to buyers?
And then my very first practical task in creating a product would be to draft a sales page. And in other words, I would write the offer before I actually made the product, which might seem counterintuitive or even backwards, but just by thinking and asking myself, why will this be interesting and compelling? What would be cool to include? What promise am I going to make to potential customers? All of that helped me to make better products, essentially.
And I can usually see a connection between the product being successful and getting the messaging right on the front end versus a product that kind of struggled or one that was a laggard. I was almost always able to look back and say, you know what, I didn't do a good job communicating something here, or I actually didn't have a good answer to, why will this be interesting and compelling? So in thinking about that in the early stage of the process, again, it will make your life much easier later. And you might think, well, I can't do that. I haven't even made the product yet.
But in writing the offer in sales page, just for example, it's only a draft. You're not showing it with anyone yet, it's not public. If you find as you go along that you're not able to deliver on a particular feature you want it to include, or it's just not working out the way you initially intended or expected or hoped for, then you can just drop it later, you can revise it. So in a moment, I will give you your assignment for the week. Every classroom episode has an assignment.
But first, I would like to thank our sponsor for making all of this series completely free to you. So shout out to them, then I'll be back with some examples and that assignment. [Music]
Okay, we are back. Now your assignment is gonna be to describe your product or service based on this important quality of benefit driven messaging. I will recap that for you in just a moment.
But first, I wanna give you three quick examples. Three examples of episodes where we will pull out the benefits of the project in question and go from being descriptive to being benefit driven. All right, so episode 1099, 1099, Art School Graduate Becomes Pencil King. That episode, the way that I would describe the episode was an artist goes from a small Manitoba village to earning six figures with educational websites while living in China. Okay, so that's a description if I'm talking about the project to you.
For this guy, the reason why he was able to be so successful, his message to his audience is anyone can learn to draw. Even if you never thought it was possible, you too can become an artist. So that's a very compelling benefit driven message. Not a descriptive message, it is an emotional message. Episode 1123, flimsy notebooks inspire crafty construction worker.
This was also a fun one. And the description that I used for that episode was when a safety supervisor's genuine leather notebooks kept falling apart, he begins to investigate. He finds his answer and a side assault that brings in $8,000 a month. So not a bad description for a story, but his message to his customers is, you need a notebook that works as hard as you do. This tool won't let you down.
So here he's kind of using this language that identifies with his target market, talking about a problem, essentially, or at least alluding to a problem. You need a notebook that works as hard as you do. It basically suggests that other notebooks don't, and then offering the solution. This tool won't let you down. Even though it's a practical tool, the benefit isn't, oh, this notebook will allow you to write words on it.
You know, the benefit is emotional. This tool won't let you down, you can depend on it. It's reliable. And then the last example, 1127, belly dance class gets high tech updates. And by the way, I think you probably noticed, but I'm pulling examples just from recent episodes.
I'm not going way back in the archives for these, because hopefully if you've been listening, you might actually recall some of these examples. So 1127, about a belly dance class that goes virtual, and the description there is finding a way to offer belly dance classes to an online audience, allows this listener to shimmy her way to success. That was actually one of our listener success stories, which is always fun to feature. Now the benefit here, if she is pitching this, her message might be get fit, get sexy, and learn a new skill based on an ancient practice from the comfort and privacy of your home. So a lot of stuff there, so it all comes together to communicate this emotional message.
All right, so each classroom feature, it will include an assignment. I already alluded to what yours is today, but here's the full thing. Write a short paragraph or two about your idea, focusing on the benefit it will provide. This benefit can be emotional or practical or both, but it shouldn't just be descriptive. All right, 'cause we're talking about messaging.
It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. You should think about this on the front end of your product design. You could read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. This has been episode 1143. I'll be cheering you on this week and always, and you're not alone, by the way.
There's a lot of other people out there all pursuing this process in their own way. All right, that's all for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
