Levy Innovation

Look At Your Business As If It Were a Book

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Coming up with a persuasive marketplace differentiator for your business can be difficult.

One reason why: Since your business is your livelihood, creating its differentiator seems like a life-or-death decision. You tense up, thinking: “This differentiator of mine has got to be a one-of-a-kind, revenue-generating winner. Otherwise, I’m sunk.”

Trying to complete such an overwhelming exercise naturally shuts you down. The differentiator you come up with is weak. Or, you leave the exercise with no differentiator at all. What to do?

In the past decade and a half, I’ve created differentiators by the hundreds. One of my secrets: I play with how I see a client’s business. I look at it in different ways.

I even pretend that my client’s business isn’t a business at all. Instead, I pretend it’s a book.

Whether you realize it or not, your business is indeed a lot like a book.

Like a book, it has a main idea. It’s “about” something. That main idea may be sharp and distinct, or it may be broad and commoditized. It may be easy for people to talk about, or it may be fighting with other ideas, so talking about it is hard.

Your business is a book.As I study a business, I think, “Right now, what’s the main idea here, and what are all the pieces of philosophy, facts, and stories substantiating that idea? If this business had a table of contents, what would the chapters be called and in what order would they fall?”

While I’m examining things, I look for storylines that are buried, or that hadn’t been thought of before. I ask myself, “If this new storyline were brought to the fore, how would that change everything? Who would be the  readers for this new ‘book’? What would they be buying? How would they talk about it to friends?”

Consider trying this exercise for yourself.

Pretend your business is a book. Into which category would it fit? What would be its title? What about its main idea? Could you tweak that idea to make it stronger? Could you change the book’s meaning by moving a subordinate idea up front? Could you combine a series of subordinate ideas into something new and valuable? What would its cover look like?

Keep playing with the “book of your business” until you have a much stronger book than when you began.

Consider, then, how you could incorporate these rewrites into real life.

Writing an Elevator Speech “Lifelike in the Extreme”

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To prepare for a workshop I’m giving, I’ve spent hours doing exploratory writing on how to create an elevator speech.

On the page, I’ve asked and answered questions like, “What’s an elevator speech supposed to accomplish?,” “What are the best ones I’ve heard?,” and “What are the worst ones?”

I’ve also made a list of elevator speech ingredients. Most of them, naturally, are the things you’d expect. A good speech mentions one’s target market, product or service, and benefits to the customer.

One of the ingredients I came up with, though, is more unusual. You rarely hear about it in business literature. That often overlooked ingredient is honest detail.

To better describe what I mean by honest detail, which might also be called “telling detail,” let’s turn to an outside source: novelist and essayist, George Orwell.

A Detail Saves a Life

In late 1936 to early 1937, Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War. During one battle he was shot in the throat. Orwell not only recovered, but in the ensuing twelve years he penned his most notable books, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

He also wrote an essay, “Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War,” which included the following passage:

“At this moment a man, presumably carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained from shooting at him . . . I did not shoot partly because of that detail about his trousers. I had come here to shoot at ‘Fascists’; but a man who is holding up his pants isn’t a ‘Fascist,’ he is visibly a fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t like shooting at him.”

In analyzing this passage in their textbook, “Finding Common Ground,” educators Carolyn Collette and Richard Johnson write: “The life of Orwell’s enemy may have been spared because Orwell noticed a detail, the man holding his pants up with both hands – an awkward, slightly comical, and bizarre detail; lifelike in the extreme . . . “ (p. 4)

The honest detail, “lifelike in the extreme,” can persuade. The telling image – drawn, not from the mind, but from reality — can capture people’s attention and coax them into action.

Most business writing, especially elevator-speech writing, lacks such realism and candor. It stays on the surface, espousing “big ideas” through generalization and abstraction. The writer ends up saying what they think they’re supposed to say, instead of what’s real. Their words don’t make a dent in anybody’s mind.

Statistics as Detail

When I started Levy Innovation, my elevator speech used to talk about how I helped make people memorable and compelling. As I’ve written before, there was nothing wrong with saying those things. I still say them. What I hated was talking about those concepts in unsubstantiated form. Without supporting facts and detail drawn from life, they were mere opinion.

As I examined my projects for facts, I realized something that had previously escaped me. Due in part of my efforts, several clients had become popular enough to raise their fees by 600%, 800%, and even 2,000%.

Figures like those became my substantiation — my telling detail. When asked what I did, I began saying: “Consultants and entrepreneurial companies hire me to help them increase their fees by up to 2,000%.”

Painting a Candid Picture

While creating elevator speeches for other situations, I always sought that telling detail to make my point. Sometimes the detail came in the form of a statistic. Other times it came by painting a picture that let the listener know I understood what they might be going through.

For instance, if I met a consultant who explained their services awkwardly or seemed embarrassed as they spoke, I’d introduce my work in the following way:

“You know how when a businessperson meets a prospect, say, at a conference, and that businessperson starts talking  about who they are and what they do, and the prospect starts looking right past them to see if there’s anyone in the room who is ‘more important’?

“So, not only has that businessperson lost any chance to gain a client, but they also feel awful about their life, because they put so much effort into their business, and this prospect looking past them is, in a way, dismissing their entire being. (At least that’s what it feels like to them.)

“Well, what my work does is to help people like that businessperson who find it tough explaining what they do and why their work matters. I counsel them on writing elevator speeches and talking points that hold attention and make prospects eager to have a conversation with them.”

More times than not, the person I was talking to wanted to find out more about how my work might help them, because the details of the picture I painted struck them as undeniably real.

(Where, you might wonder, did I get those details? From my own life. A couple of decades ago, while I was in my early twenties and manned the trade show booth for a book wholesaler, attendees would ask me, “What does your company do?” As I explained, they’d at times leave while I was in mid-sentence. You don’t forget a detail like that.)

“Help me! Help me!”

The other day I spoke with a consultant, Kathy Gonzales,  whose elevator speech delighted me. It’s not because Kathy meticulously crafted every word, or delivered the speech with flair. It was the realism of her detail. Her speech sounded like it came straight from life. When I asked what she did, she said:

“I work with executives, mostly men, who want to leave the corporate world and start their own business. I don’t make them better at what they want to do. I won’t make a financial planner a better financial planner, or a baker a better baker. I just help them make the jump. They’ve got one hand on the corporate ledge, and they want to let go, but they’re crying, ‘Help me! Help me!’ That’s my client.”

Notice how Kathy didn’t make a lot of promises or claims. That adds to the persuasiveness of her speech.

I don’t know anything about Kathy’s company, Modern Happiness, and I’m not in the market for her type of service. But if I was, I’d be intrigued enough to have an initial chat – a “How do you do that?” talk — and that’s what an elevator speech is supposed to accomplish, isn’t it?

Your Challenge

If you’re struggling to come up with an elevator speech that captures attention, here’s an assignment using a standard speech format:

Think about the three most common problems your product or service solves, and create a speech for each. Don’t labor over the speeches, though. Just talk them out. Consider recording them as you go.

As I did in a speech above, begin with the phrase, “You know how when . . . ,” and describe the type of person you serve and the problem they experience in as much honest detail as you can. Stay true to what really happens. Don’t think you need to make things sound more dramatic than they are.

Once you’ve painted the scene, talk about what your work does to alleviate the problem you mentioned.

You may not get the most telling details right away — the ones, “lifelike in the extreme.” If  not, don’t sweat it. As you do your project work throughout the day, pay attention to what really happens and try incorporating the most intriguing facts into future drafts of  your speeches.

Come Attend the “Accidental Genius” Book Launch Party

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On Wednesday, July 21st, the wonderful Lolly Daskal and I will be hosting a party in Manhattan to celebrate the release of the expanded edition of my book, “Accidental Genius.”

There, I’ll be signing books and talking about freewriting and creativity.

A bunch of cool people from the worlds of business, publishing, social media, and entertainment will be stopping by.

If you’re in the area, I’d love to meet you. It’s a meet up/tweet up type of thing. Informal, and should be lots of fun.

The details:

Date: Wednesday, 7/21/10

Time: 6 pm to 9 pm

Place: Lily’s Bar at the Hotel Roger Smith (501 Lexington Avenue, New York City, which is 47th Street and Lex.)

A cash bar will be available

“A Cheer for The Boom!”: The Grateful Dead’s Timely Lessons for Building a Business Following

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“The two drummers settle in behind their kits. One sends out a cosmic boom from a bass drum, and we in the audience feel it as much as we hear it. A cheer for the boom!”

— David Meerman Scott & Brian Halligan
“Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History”


If you take a look at the one hundred bestselling rock ‘n’ roll singles of all time, you’ll see songs by celebrated performers, like The Beatles (“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and “Hey Jude”) and Nirvana (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”), as well as songs by one-hit wonders, like Zager and Evans (“In the Year 2525”) and Mungo Jerry (“In the Summertime”).

What you won’t see on that list are any songs by The Grateful Dead. No “Truckin” or “Casey Jones.” You won’t even find the group’s highest charting single, “Touch of Grey.”

The Dead obviously didn’t suffer from that lack of a multi-multi-multi platinum single. Their commercial accomplishments, not to mention the adulation of their followers, have eclipsed the success of most other performers on the list.

How did they do it?

Many fans, of course, would point to the group’s music as the sole reason for their success. Others believe that The Dead elevated themselves from gifted musicians to cultural icons by helping to create an uncommon way of life around their music.

Two people who have studied The Dead’s music and culture-building methods are social media gurus and Deadheads, David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan.

David, of course, wrote “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” and “World Wide Rave” (full disclosure: David is a friend and client).  Brian, who authored “Inbound Marketing,” is the CEO and co-founder of Hubspot.

Together, they’ve written a book called “Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History,” which ships from Wiley next week and will be in all stores by early August.

In the book’s introduction, David and Brian call The Dead “one huge case study in contrarian marketing. Most of the band’s many marketing innovations are based on doing the exact opposite of what other bands (and record labels) are doing at the time.” A few contrarian examples:

  • While other bands protected their songs from illegal taping by fans, The Dead set up “taper sections” at their concerts, where fans could openly record music. Later, the fans would share copies with other Deadheads, as well as with people who had never experienced the music before. The pool of Dead fans grew exponentially.
  • While other bands saw touring as a money-draining evil that only served to get word out about their albums, The Dead turned the model on its head and built up their live shows into their primary revenue-generating vehicle. In many ways, the 45s and albums now served to promote the shows.
  • While other band treated their fans as an undifferentiated mass, The Dead would accommodate the niches in their fan base. For instance, one niche, referred to as “The Spinners,” enjoyed whirling to the music during a concert. Rather than ignoring or having them ejected, The Dead erected speakers in the concourse, so that the Spinners could congregate there and gyrate without restriction.
  • While other bands left the responsibility (and profit) of selling concert tickets to the venues they were playing and to other middlemen, The Dead built their own mailing list and sold tickets to fans directly.

The book cites forward-thinking strategies like these, distills them down to their essence, shows how businesses are using these strategies today, and then teaches readers how they might use these ideas in their own business to build an active following.

I’ve seen only the first couple of chapters of this book, but I know David well and have seen his ideas change lives. And, though I’ve never spoken with Brian, I’ve heard raves about Hubspot. I’m guessing, then, that this book should go to the top of any serious businessperson’s reading list. I’m certainly going to read my copy with pen in hand, so I can jot down notes on how I might use the tactics in my business.

A final note: To promote the book, David and Brian have scheduled a “Follow the Band Book Tour” (hashtag #GDbook).

That is, they’re going to be doing book signings and virtual events as they follow Furthur (fronted by Dead musicians Bob Weir and Phil Lesh) and Rhythm Devils (fronted by Dead musicians Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann) to  Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Las Vegas.

The book tour starts on July 26th and ends on September 22nd. To find out more, visit David’s blog, webinknow.com.

Crafting Compelling Messages

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Fast Company Expert Blogger Tom Clifford posted the first of a two-part interview he did with me. In this opening part, I offer readers a couple of tips on how to write clear and persuasive sales messages. I say, for example:

“If you want to figure out what to say to prospects . . . ask your clients.

“After all, your clients are your clients for a reason. They’ve already said yes to your offering. Something you did or said persuaded them. Ask them about it.”

By the way, while you’re on Tom’s blog, take a look around. He’s a wonderful video director and organizational storyteller, and I always learn something when I’m there.

Telling the Same Story Differently

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A few years ago, Matt Madden wrote and illustrated a book of cartoons called, “99 Ways to Tell a Story.” In it, he tells a single story 99 times – in 99 different ways.

The single story is itself uneventful. A man, working on his laptop, gets up and heads towards the kitchen. A voice at the top of the stairs calls out, “What time is it?” The man glances at his wristwatch and says “It’s 1:15.” He opens the refrigerator and scowls, because he’s forgotten what he was looking for. End of story.

Madden first tells it as a monologue. He then tells it from the man’s point of view. He also tells it as a how-to, a flashback, a comedy, a calligram, a public service announcement, a political cartoon, in silhouette, in close-ups, from the refrigerator’s point of view, as if it were overheard in a bar, and as a homage to Marvel illustrator Jack Kirby, among other inventive ways.

Any story can be told from dozens of angles, in countless styles. Each angle and style reveals something previously hidden. It’s an important principle to remember, and doesn’t only apply to cartoons or even fiction. The idea of differing angles and styles is something to think about for your business communications.

Two weeks ago, Kristen Frantz from Berrett-Koehler Publishers asked me to make a video about the forthcoming edition of my book, “Accidental Genius.” The reason: Berrett-Koehler uses a prominent outside sales rep group, Ingram Publisher Services, to sell its books to bookstores, and Kristen thought it would be good if at sales conference the group saw how committed to selling the book I am.

I never before made a video. The result was too long, even though I had left out some important information. I’d have to reshoot it. The thing puzzling me, though, was this:

How could I make a shorter video while giving my audience more information?

Kristen and I came up with a simple strategy. I divided all my information into talking points. Some of those talking points seemed like they should come from my mouth: the book’s main idea, the philosophy behind it, the story of my eighteen years as a bookseller and my understanding of what a crucial job the sales rep has in the selling of a book. Those I filmed, and are in the video below.

Other points, like who’s in my network and how I plan on supporting the book, were important, but didn’t seem like they needed to come directly from me. Kristen, we decided, would talk about those points live at the conference.

Our solution wasn’t a complicated one, but it did the trick. We took a video with too much information, and made it more palatable by breaking its points into recorded and live moments. An optical illusion of sorts.

Take a look. Perhaps my video or performance skills aren’t what they should be yet, but the idea is still valid: Don’t think you’re stuck with one or two ways of delivering information to your audience. Try a different angle. Graft together uncommon styles. You may be surprised at the result.

By the way, near the end of the video you’ll hear me say, “I told you I’m a magician,” and then I perform a small trick. Unfortunately, I had edited out an earlier part of the video where I discussed my background as a magician and professional illusion inventor. Kristen told me not to sweat it. She’d add that to her talking points during the live session.