Last night I went to bed reading 7 Steps to a Pain-free Life. Here’s what struck me:
This book has a lot of steps you can follow to have less pain (or, be pain-free). It’s very feature-rich. But the reason I’m reading it, and the reason people bought it, is not for the features. I started reading this book because of the BENEFIT.
Sure, I want to understand the dynamics of my neck and back, and how they all work. Sure, I want to learn some exercises that will be beneficial, but neither of those are the reasons I’m reading this book.
I’m reading this book because I want to be pain-free. There is hope, according to the title, and the introduction, that the pain I experience can actually go away, forever.
My first exposure to the McKenzie Method was around 15 years ago, when a doctor referred me to a physical therapist who was a McKenzie Method guy. To be honest, this was the most intriguing and honest medical consultation I’ve ever had. Without going into our first meeting, and the next few weeks, I’ll just say that the results were amazing. What I learned about my back, and one specific problem (pain), was enough to help me go through the rest of my life to avoid or fix that pain.
Recently, I’ve been experiencing a different pain in a different place, and it’s time to dive deeper into some other exercises, and knowledge about the root issues of my pain. This is all about HOPE.
Sometimes, I am hopeless that I’ll live a pain-free life. But this book promises me hope.
Switching gears to YOU, I wonder what you promise your future company. Is it that you can do A faster, B better, and C cleaner than anyone else? Is it that you are smart and have high integrity? Those are all great, and important, things. But in reality, you bring HOPE to the employer. Hope that they will make more money, or save more money, or that Headache A or Wildest Dream B will actually come true.
When I hired my last developer, I did it because I want to make serious and major progress in JibberJobber. Not because I want more lines of code written, but because I want to offer more value to my users, and help people get onboarded with JibberJobber better (that’s been one of my headaches for years). She will help with that. I don’t know how many lines of code she’ll add (or remove), but I do know she’ll help us get closer to achieving our goals of delighting people who sign up and get started with JibberJobber.
She has given me an added measure of HOPE. And that is one of the most powerful things she can give me.
What HOPE are you communicating in your value proposition?
Thank you Jason for this poignant reminder of the power of hope. You nailed it! Hope is exactly the benefit we bring in most interactions in the marketplace.