Startup Strategy: Making People Care

Patrick HanlonMay 1, 20236 min

There is a lot of positive energy, excitement and passion that surrounds startups and fresh entrepreneurs who have a vision of how they can impact the planet according to their own slant on the world.

Truth is, nobody cares.

Not really. Sure, your mentor may care. Your spouse may care. Your startup investors may even care — a little (but remember they have other startup investments to protect them in case you run aground). But even your mother is secretly hoping that you will find a good job with a health plan.

This is commonly referred to as, Against all odds.

In fact, most people are expecting you to fail.

Perhaps even hoping you will fail, so you get pulled back into the dronefield.

As king-of-melancholy rock singer Morrissey croons:

We hate it when our friends become successful…If we can destroy them, bet your life we will destroy them.

This is not pessimistic or negative. It is realistic. 90% of new products fail, not because they aren’t better, more innovative or even disruptive, but because they have not clearly articulated their reason for being or attached themselves to people in ways that make them care. In other words they do not pivot from being meaningless to becoming meaningful.

This pivot from being meaningless to becoming meaningful is 400% of your new job.

Entrepreneurs have to attract positive energies and create momentum that incites the public at large to level you up — to care just a little more about you and your enterprise than everyone else trying to capture their attentions. To prefer you above their other choices. How do you do that?

You may be enthusiastic, have great attitude and a great business plan, but what you really need to move from cult to culture is great narrative.

What’s your story?

Every great narrative starts with “Once upon a time…”, “One hundred years ago…”, or “We went out for drinks after work and then…”. What inspired you? What sparked you? Where did your disruptively breakthrough 10X idea come from? Who are you? It’s never too early to start your creation myth.

(Yes. Performance marketers poo-poo this idea. Skip the origin myth, they say, get right to the action. Convert. So they iterate and hustle each transaction — moving on to each new customer until they reach the dead zone. By doing so, they turn each opportunity for experience, advocacy and word of mouth into a one-time transaction. And leave the churn of potential fans and positive growth-spurting WOM in their wake.)

In the beginning, your story may be all you have. “What is it?” “Where’d you get that?” “Who are they?” All simple questions that need smart answers so that you can lead people to the next question.

Why are you here?

Explain yourself. We have don’t have time to listen, so make it quick. Think. Think different. Invent. Those are the reasons for being for IBM, Apple, and HP, respectively.

Some people talk about the “Why?” This is the why: Why should I care?

What basic human need (not want or desire, but need) are you fulfilling? There are thousands of books about strategy: Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman is one of the best.

Why you exist is only the next step in your narrative.

You must also identify yourself. People need to be able to find you — in a crowd, on the shelf, online. Sure, that can be your logo: think the iconic Nike swoosh, the America flag, the Google G. Lots of people start out with a logo and a home page. It means you’re in business, right?

Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are all iconic sensations wired directly to our brains to create positive or negative imprints (the taste of Blue Bottle, the playing fields of Call Of Duty, the sensory-surround of web4 and virtual reality.) The sensory fragrance of Caldrea cleaning products actually makes people want to clean.

Icons are memes hard-wired to our brains. They spontaneously signal whether we should come closer, or run for our lives.

Next: Know what things you want to celebrate.

Polaroid was the legendary start-up in the 1960s: technologically innovative, disruptive, design-smart and founded by a Harvard drop-out (is any of this ringing bells?).

And, by the way, in order to create the patent-wielding Polaroid film substrate, chemicals had to flow down an eight-story glide. (Imagine telling investors that we have a great, innovative idea — but first we have to build an eight-story building!)

In the Polaroid cafeteria, a pyramid chart was posted with the names of the people who had earned patents. Polaroid celebrated patents.

Other companies celebrate new hires. New clients. Awards. Front page articles. Office space. Stock price. What do you celebrate?

Knowing what things you celebrate is the root code for culture.

Process is ritual.

This is the way we do things (and it’s different from the way “they” do things).

Act different. Be different. Do different.

Make others wish, dream and hunger to do things the way you do.

In order for people to consider you differently, you have to help them think about you differently. So surround your new idea with the unique vocabulary that identifies you. The best, easiest example: “Iced grande skinny decaf no foam latte”. We all had to learn new words just to order a cup of coffee.

We also had to learn new words to play Halo, use ChatGPT4, and how to cook using tofu.

Language creates culture.

Language sparks differentiation. Language creates mystery and desire: What does that mean?

“Language creates culture.” Say it again. Baseball fans, coders, accountants, gangs, gamers, historians of the Napoleonic wars — all have words, phrases and language that they use to express events, ideas and moments of community.

These are excited, vibrant social communities fanning their fandom. When people start using your language, it means they want to become a part of your tribe.

And still, nobody cares.

Especially those people standing over there — the naysayers that keep telling other people how much you suck. The competitors and trolls who shrug and shake their heads and tell whoever will listen that you’re not getting it done, you have a long way to go, you’re never going to pull this off. The ones who say it wasn’t a good idea anyway — you couldn’t scale, wrong metrics, wrong technology, wrong consumer, wrong wrong wrong, all wrong.

You have to understand that they really don’t care and never will. The cruel fact is that some people will never become a part of your Venn diagram. Not everyone is going to buy you or buy into you.

As Peter Thiel once declared, “Almost everyone is going to tell you your idea sucks…The haters are never going to go away.”

Then know this, too.

Nothing will reaffirm your commitment and the energy of your partners and team than having someone else tell them, “you are wrong.” Think of a Dunkin’ Donuts drinker trying to convince a Starbucks drinker. Red and blue states. Vegans versus carnivores.

Stand on your side of the line. Tell people, “Come, stand over here. Be one of us. We’re not like them.”

“Startup founders tend to be functionally obsessed, not story obsessed,” adds Mike Parsons, chief executive at Apollo Advisors. “Tell us why that killer function or app makes our world better. That’s the story!”

Create your own pieces of narrative and stand tall in the place you have created for yourself. You will trigger the emotional parts that make your ecosystem feel better than any other. Eventually, more and more people will care. Really care.

And if their caring not only feels good, but is rewarded with a constant drip of stories spread across social, digital and traditional media that remind them of the best parts of why you exist, others will crowd around you.

Better make room.

The Blake Project Can Help Craft Your Story In The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

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