Close your eyes for a moment. Oh, wait. You’ll need to read. So keep them open, but pretend they’re closed.
Imagine you restore old cars. You’re the type who dons blue coveralls just to change your wiper blades. You smoke around open cans of gasoline, taunting the fumes. You keep a greasy socket wrench in your bra. If you even wear a bra, that is. Maybe you’re too tough for a bra. Or you’re a dude who likes to wear women’s undergarments under your coveralls. But let’s get back to the story.
Imagine you just built a hot rod with a super powerful engine. Rumble, rumble. Gun that engine. Go ahead, rev it up. Nice.
You’ve spent hours timing that engine. You found only the best parts to assemble it. Special mail order from some old geezer outside of Detroit. Expensive, but worth it. I mean, listen to that thing. Hell yeah.
Now step outside the car. Look at that dull, chipped paint and those worn-out tires. That needs fixin’. So you polish it up, apply a few careful dabs of your kid’s tempura paints and call it done. Will anyone even notice? I mean… listen to that power under the hood.
You take it to the car show (which is what coverall-wearing people do for fun). Before anyone gets to hear that turbo-charged rumble, they stroll right on by thinking, “Who let in the riff-raff?”
So you jump behind the wheel and crank that sucker over. rrrrRRRRROAR! Rumble rumble. By the time it revs up, they’re already over by the Batmobile.
On the flip side, let’s talk about the Batmobile. People gather around to soak up the legend behind this jet-powered rocket car they used to see on TV. Sooner or later, they’ll find out it’s only slick black paint and shiny chrome. Wait. Is that a Volkswagen engine? Then they feel bamboozled. They want what they saw on TV.
Hey. That’s kinda like a product.
Is it unfair that people judge your content before they even read your turbo-charged words? Yes, it’s unfair. So unfair. My coverall-covered butt is clenched in outrage over the unfairness.
Okay. So you can make them pay attention with your Batmobile reputation. If you’re Danielle LaPorte, for example, you can create a fantastic product and design it yourself. Even if it has chipped paint (and her stuff does not), people will see potential value in your product before you open the hood simply by virtue of you having rocked their world before. From what I’ve read, Danielle’s engine is turbo-charged. So no problem there.
But what if you’re just a weekend garage monkey with no rep? What do you do about your paint job – er, your package?
Your biggest priority is to turbo-charge that engine. Remember the Batmobile. Ironic, but most people I work with designing their products make the mistake of underestimating how powerful their engine (message) is, not the other way around. So hone it, test, it, get feedback. Tweak it. Then close the hood and move on to the paint job.
You have two options:
- Do it yourself
- Hire someone to design it for you
DIY for the win
Danielle did it herself. But look around her web site and take notice of the fact that everything on her site is so simple and elegant. Design is subjective but you can always count on the fact that clarity and simplicity win every time.
So if you feel like you have no choice but to design everything yourself, err on the side of simple. This means:
- Leave out the cartoon clipart (the design equivalent of naked chick mud flaps)
- Don’t use special effects (like drop shadows)
- When in doubt about background patterns and colors, leave it white.
- Don’t combine more than two fonts. Better still, don’t try and figure out which ones compliment each other. Stick to one and you’ll be fine.
Take your hands off the wheel
What’s stopping you from hiring someone? What I hear from clients most often is the money. My fees are outrageous for some people. Money worries will put a wrench into the flywheel every time.
You need to decide what’s right for you. A few things to ponder that might help you decide:
Consider what you’ll get from your launch. Do you expect to make $11K on your product? That’s awesome. Go for it. If you’ve got an audience eagerly awaiting your product, you might be able to advance the cash to hire a pro, knowing you’ll get it back in spades. If you’re offering a free 5-page ebook to your email subscribers, you can save your money for the big $11K stuff.
Consider your time and sanity. Do you really want to learn InDesign? Pick fonts? Scour Google for answers on why Adobe Acrobat won’t make your hyperlinks clickable? Use your energy to build your turbo-charged engine and let Earl Sheib paint your car. Give yourself the space to think creative thoughts rather than technical ones.
Think about the hidden value in hiring someone. Ponder two projects I recently completed; World-Changing Writers Workshop and the LIft-Off Retreat. In working with both of those teams, I cared about what they were creating beyond the final invoice. Plus, I did some of my best work with them. So when the time came, I promoted the hell out of their stuff.
Even on the purely selfish side where I just wanted more people to see my art, they got the benefit of my emails, tweets, and connections with their people.
I don’t know if you can put a dollar value on that.
Meanwhile, back at the car show…
So while you’re crafting the engine of your genius product, think about what you’re going to deliver to your people. You’ll probably spend hours on your sales copy, explaining the benefits and outlining features. Think about what happens when someone identifies with your offer and clicks that “buy” button.
Picture their anticipation at receiving the final product.
Try to imagine what it will be like when they see that first page of your book. If you’re giving a presentation, what do you hope people will feel when they see that first slide come up?
Before you hit the car show, make sure you have something to show off inside and out. And take off those coveralls. Wait. Are you wearing pants under there?
I love the premise of this post. Having a husband who is a web designer, we most often still see people who are concerned with “prettiness” and SEO more than copy that knocks a reader’s socks off.
When they go the design only route, though, they soon see that they are pulling tons of people to their home page but losing them very quickly after that. The inside/outside car analogy is an excellent one. You need that wow factor that attracts them (that would be the fantastic design skills of Mr. Pants) and some kind of work on content so the actual selling happens.
A spot-on post, although I did get a little sidetracked picturing the butt-clenching… : -)
Really, butt clenching and coverall wearing, I think I’ve been to some of those car shows ;) Great article and analogy btw =)