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Scott Adams: "How To Know Your Product Will Succeed"

MJ DeMarco

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amp0193

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So in other words, he's talking about a productocracy (Unscripted, Page 228 ) specifically, gravitons (Unscripted, page 231 ) generated from the productocracy.

He's spot on, but I hope this isn't new to anyone who has read Unscripted .

It's not new, and your section on the Productacracy is what stuck with me the most from Unscripted , but I do like the way Scott Adams clearly states it. It's very memorable.


My last business:

Everything as expected. Customers bought my product. Then used the product. Mediocre success. Very few unexpected actions taken.


Unexpected and Physical actions from my current business (launching this week):

  • Strangers seeing me with the product and asking if they can take a pic and share on Instagram.
  • Strangers yelling compliments at me from a distance on a daily basis (or from their vehicle as they pass by me).
  • Strangers giving me advice on how to improve the product.
  • Strangers asking if they can use the product.
  • Instagram influencers Following ME and asking ME if they can pretty please get me to collaborate with them.
  • Instagram influencers sharing screen caps of my account in their Instagram stories... completely voluntarily and of their own accord.
  • Strangers on Instagram offering to volunteer to help spread the word about the product to their network, for nothing in return.
  • Acquaintances of mine are telling their friends about it. And introduce me to their friends, as "oh yeah, he's the guy with the __________s!"


Objectively, the business predicts to be a hit, based on Scott's criteria.

The desert of desertion has left me with lingering doubts however, especially as I get ready to pull the trigger on the launch.
 

loop101

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Scott Adams of "Dilbert" fame:

Scott Adams' Blog

"I’ve started dozens of businesses if you count the ones that died before they even got named. And that experience has given me a fairly reliable pattern for predicting which types of products will succeed. At least I hope it is reliable. So far it has been spot-on. The pattern is this:

Look for unexpected positive physical action from potential customers.

I’ll have to give you several examples before you can see what I mean."
 
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Sean Kaye

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Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big" was one of those books I read just because I find him amusing and it ended up being super important to the way I think about stuff. His idea that goals are for losers and systems are for winners is something I think about every single day.

I recommend that book to everyone.

Unlike Mark Manson's "The Art of Not Giving a F*ck" which is stupidly overrated - the first half is ok, the second is just blog posts he's repurposed to fill out the page count. When someone talks that much about picking up chicks, they have no game.
 
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loop101

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Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big" was one of those books I read just because I find him amusing and it ended up being super important to the way I think about stuff. His idea that goals are for losers and systems are for winners is something I think about every single day.

I recommend that book to everyone.

Unlike Mark Manson's "The Art of Not Giving a F*ck" which is stupidly overrated - the first half is ok, the second is just blog posts he's repurposed to fill out the page count. When someone talks that much about picking up chicks, they have no game.

I like Adams a lot, but he is a little weird to read, especially his blog. He seems to describe his process ("systems"), as almost an after-thought. He LOVES to talk about Persuasion, Affirmations, Hypnosis, Trump, his life, and world-events.

Yet in the middle of all the weird stuff, you'll find a Fastlane-esque gem like:

"The idea was to create something that had value and—this next part is the key—I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit. And I didn’t want to build my own automobile factory, for example, because cars are not easy to reproduce. I didn’t want to do any sort of custom work, such as building homes, because each one requires the same amount of work. I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce."

Other than not using a barrier to Entry, he had stumbled on to 5 of the 6 FL tenets:

(N)eed = "Widely desired"
(E)ntry =
(C)ontrol = "create, invent, write"
(S)cale = "easy to reproduce"
(T)ime = "didn't want to sell my time"

He also says some funny/weird stuff in interviews, like "I used to host Mensa meetings at my house. Intelligence is very over-rated. I'm very intelligent.", "I don't use affirmations anymore, everything is going my way.", "I will live on as software", and my favorite, "I'm 59, let me show you my abs."
 

MJ DeMarco

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  • Strangers seeing me with the product and asking if they can take a pic and share on Instagram.
  • Strangers yelling compliments at me from a distance on a daily basis (or from their vehicle as they pass by me).
  • Strangers giving me advice on how to improve the product.
  • Strangers asking if they can use the product.
  • Instagram influencers Following ME and asking ME if they can pretty please get me to collaborate with them.
  • Instagram influencers sharing screen caps of my account in their Instagram stories... completely voluntarily and of their own accord.
  • Strangers on Instagram offering to volunteer to help spread the word about the product to their network, for nothing in return.
  • Acquaintances of mine are telling their friends about it. And introduce me to their friends, as "oh yeah, he's the guy with the __________s!"

Nice! Gravitons baby!
 

JAJT

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Unlike Mark Manson's "The Art of Not Giving a F*ck" which is stupidly overrated

Agreed.

Read it for the funny title on a whim, had a few really solid tidbits (although nothing I hadn't heard a million times before though) and yeah, a lot of drivel. I think I was reading a sentence or two per page by the end of the book because I just wanted to be through it.
 
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Sean Kaye

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Lol on this last part.... reminds of silicon valley when Gus haniman (sp?) tells Jared "this guys F*cks".... When ya do, you just let results speak for themselves.

Ok, sight tangent, but the writing on that show is awesome. There is this subtle thing happening with Jared from the moment Russ makes that comment.

Slowly, Jared is becoming darker and more mysterious. In culminates (so far) with Richard turning up at Jared's condo and there are a couple young girls giggling but he won't let Richard in.

It's a ridiculously long, multi-season arc that kicks off with that one comment. The writers have said it's intentional and came out of the writers' room when they wrote that Russ dialogue.

That show is awesome.
 
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Bellini

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Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big"

I recommend that book to everyone.

+1

Great book. Just recently read this book from Scott Adams and I was pleasantly surprised. Casually written with great insight and very practical examples. It kind of gives you some relief from thinking you have to be perfect or do everything right the first time.

I also noticed many similarities between Scott and MJ in their books regarding passion, goals, systems, scaling, etc. I was glad to see this because it means the word is getting out to different audiences.
 

Tim Allen Jr.

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Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big" was one of those books I read just because I find him amusing and it ended up being super important to the way I think about stuff. His idea that goals are for losers and systems are for winners is something I think about every single day.

I recommend that book to everyone.

Unlike Mark Manson's "The Art of Not Giving a F*ck" which is stupidly overrated - the first half is ok, the second is just blog posts he's repurposed to fill out the page count. When someone talks that much about picking up chicks, they have no game.

Lol on this last part.... reminds of silicon valley when Gus haniman (sp?) tells Jared "this guys F*cks".... When ya do, you just let results speak for themselves.
 

loop101

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Adams starts talking about processes and systems at about 17 minutes in to this talk. I'm terrible at chess, but it sounds like his system is not unlike a chess game where you are moving all your pieces forward with a certain faith that you are making progress as you move them up, even if you are not sure how the end-game will play out. This method would be opposed to trying to plan too many moves in to the future, while acknowledging there are some outliers (chess Masters) who can do exactly that.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy6-fq8PwNk&t=54s
 

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