Any Fool can Make Soap

earlier in the week I left you with this quote:

“ANY FOOL CAN MAKE SOAP. IT TAKES A CLEVER MAN TO SELL IT.”

It’s so hard to accept. The lady psychologist sends me the audio program she’s lovingly, painstakingly put together about successful parenting, and she does not want to think of that as “soap”.

She believes, maybe rightly so, that it is different and better than any book, tape, and anything else that has ever been put together about parenting. But there are two things she doesn’t want to get: one, I’ve got 11 other products just like hers piled up in a corner in my office, from 11 other people who believe just as passionately that their’s is the only/best doohickey on parenting ever invented. And over in Palm Desert, Cindi Anderson at Guthy-Renker has nine more. And down in Key West, in Gary Halbert’s office, there are 14 others. And on and on and on. Darn it, it is “soap”.

Second and more importantly, even if it is the best, most innovative, most technologically advanced, best researched, most incredible, etc. none of that matters if no one will buy the damned thing.

They will only appreciate all that if and after they buy it. And the truth is any psychologist, many other authors, coaches, teachers, ministers and parents can “make” this particular “soap”. It takes a clever person to sell it.

Now, the next tough idea to accept: the time to think about who it will be sold to and how it will be sold to them is BEFORE you build it, not afterward. We'll discuss that next week.