Is Your Launch Cursed? (A Quick Test)

It’s crazy how often problems come back to the same thing…

We’re gearing up for the Launch Intensive next week – me and my team will spend a few days in a hotel room, helping a small group of entrepreneurs map out their next launch. 

It’s always intense… and exciting. And I can’t wait to get stuck in. 

But looking back at my notes from the previous Intensives got me thinking…

Even though some attendees were seasoned pros already doing six or seven-figure launches… their biggest leaps didn’t come from a top secret, next-level, never-seen-before strategy…

… they came from getting clear on the fundamentals.

I’d say this is true 98% of the time – if a launch underperforms, it’s because one of the fundamentals is off. And a big reason this happens is because some people are cursed… 

… with knowledge. 😉

When you’ve been so close to your business for so long, it’s easy to forget that your customers don’t know what you know… and they can’t see the idea you have in your head as clearly as you.

The Curse of Knowledge is nothing new, but it’s easy to forget. And there’s one spot in particular where it loves to show up and cause some damage in a launch…

Let me show you how it works with my pen and a table. Because once you hear this, you’ll never unhear it…

You got it? you got the song? here we'll go one more time…

So I'm Jeff Walker and I was just reading. I was revisiting a book that I got a lot out of it's called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and one of the core things in there they call the Curse of Knowledge and this is this idea that when we become expert in something or we have a lot of knowledge about something we underestimate how hard it is to communicate that knowledge to someone else.

And this holds a lot of us back if we want to be a leader for our team, if we want to market and sell something. It's almost impossible to not assume a lot of knowledge in your audience when you're communicating to them. We just assume that we can just tell them a few words because that will communicate whatever the idea is – because we have that idea running through our heads. We might have been thinking about that idea for a day or a week or months or even years. We've been thinking about this idea.

So when we go to communicate that idea to our audience – whether they're potential clients or whether they're team members – we undercommunicate. We have this song running through our head and it's almost impossible for us to imagine what it's like to not have that song running through our head.

When I just tapped out that song it was so blatantly obvious to me what it was, but the odds are you couldn't get it. There was a study where they had people do this exact exercise where they tapped out a melody and they estimated what the odds were that their audience would be able to guess what it was. And they vastly – they 10x overestimated the ability of their audience to be able to hear the song.

That song that I was playing – at least if you're from the United States, probably most of the English-speaking world – it was a very obvious song: Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Gently Down the Stream.

Now that you know the song, it's probably – I'll tap it out, I won't sing – and it'll be almost impossible for you to not hear it, even though a couple minutes ago you couldn't hear it.

It's a funny thing when we have a song running through our head, when we have an idea running through our head. We just assume our audience can understand it, they know what it is.

If you're trying to sell something, it's so easy to make these assumptions about your offer, about your product, about how it's going to make an impact on your client's lives. We've got that song running through our head and we way undercommunicate.

When I teach product launches and when I see people have a problem in product launches – if the launch doesn't do well – one of the biggest reasons is because the person doing the launch does not communicate the offer well. They think they've communicated what the offer is, think they've communicated the impact that it's going to make on their prospective clients, on their prospects. But in general, they've way undercommunicated. They have the curse of knowledge running through their head.

It's really an amazing thing. Try this out – just pick out some super simple song and try it out with someone. That song will be running through your head – it's like, they have to get this, how could they possibly miss it? But the reality is, they will almost surely miss that song.

And so you have to remember this curse of knowledge when you want to communicate – maybe it's a strategic plan or a vision to your team, or an offer to your clients. You’ve got to overcommunicate – or at least overcommunicate in terms of what you're thinking.

So I'm Jeff Walker. If you're watching this anywhere else besides my blog at jeffwalker.com, head on over there – that's where all the goodies are. Scroll down, leave a comment for me, and let me know what the song is that's playing in your head. Give me some shares on social and let's go get 'em this week.