Start With Why

 someone
else has 
tested it. They need that trusted, personal recommendation.
According to the Law of Diffusion, mass-market success can only 
be achieved after you penetrate between 15 percent to 18 percent of 
the market. That's because the early majority won't try something 
new until someone else has tried it first. This is why we have to 
drop our price or offer value-added services. We're attempting to 
reduce the risk tolerance of these practical-minded people until they 
feel comfortable to buy. That's what a manipulation is. They may 
buy, but they won't be loyal. Don't forget, loyalty is when people are 
willing to suffer some inconvenience or pay a premium to do 
business with you. They may even turn down a better offer from 
someone else—something the late majority rarely does. The ability 
to get the system to tip is the point at which the growth of a business 
or the spreading of an idea starts to move at an extraordinary pace. 
It is also at this point that a product gains mass-market acceptance. 
The point at which an idea becomes a movement. When that 
happens, the growth is not only exponential, it is automatic. It just 
goes.
The goal of business then should not be to simply sell to anyone 
who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people 
who believe what you believe, the left side of the bell curve. They 
perceive greater value in what you do and will happily pay a 
premium or suffer some sort of inconvenience to be a part of your 
cause. They are the ones who, on their own volition, will tell others 
about you. That 15 to 18 percent is not made up of people who are 
simply willing to buy the product. It is the percentage of people 
who share your beliefs and want to incorporate your ideas, your 
products and your services into their own lives as WHATs to their 
own WHYs. They look to WHAT you do as a tangible element that 

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START WITH WHY 
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demonstrates their own purpose, cause or belief to the outside 
world. Their willingness to pay a premium or suffer inconvenience 
to use your product or service says more about them than it does 
about you and your products. Their ability to easily see WHY they 
need to incorporate your products into their lives makes this group 
the most loyal customers. They are also the most loyal shareholders 
and the most loyal employees. No matter where they sit in the spec-
trum, these are the people who not only love you but talk about 
you. Get enough of the people on the left side of the curve on your 
side and they encourage the rest to follow.
I love asking businesses what their conversion is on new busi-
ness efforts. Many answer proudly, "Ten percent." Even if you ig-
nore the principles of The Golden Circle, the law of averages says 
you can win about 10 percent of the business. Throw enough spa-
ghetti against the wall and some of it sticks. To grow the business, 
all you need to do is more prospecting, which is why growing your 
business by aiming at the middle of the curve is so expensive. 
Though the business may grow, the average will stay about the 
same, and 10 percent is not enough for the system to tip.
Likewise, 10 percent of your existing customers or clients will 
naturally show loyalty to you. But why are they so loyal? Like our 
inability to explain why we love our spouses, the best we can mus-
ter up to explain what makes them such great clients is, "They just 
get it." And though this explanation may feel right, it is completely 
unactionable. How do you get more people to "get it"? This is what 
Moore refers to as the "chasm," the transition between the early 
adopters and the early majority, and it's hard to cross. But not if you 
know WHY.
If you have the discipline to focus on the early adopters, the majority 
will come along eventually. But it must start with WHY. Simply 
focusing on so-called influencers is not enough. The challenge is, 
which influencers? There are those who seem to fit the influencer 

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HOW A TIPPING POINT TIPS 
135 
profile more than others, but in reality we are all influencers at 
different times for different reasons. You don't just want any 
influencer, you want someone who believes what you believe. Only 
then will they talk about you without any prompts or incentives. If 
they truly believe in what you believe and if they are truly on the 
left side of the curve they won't need to be incentivized; they'll do it 
because they want to. The entire act of incentivizing an influencer is 
manipulative. It renders the influencer completely inauthentic to his 
or her group. It won't take long for the group to find out that a 
recommendation wasn't made with the group's best interest in 
mind, but rather because of one person's self-interest. Trust erodes 
and the value of the influencer is rendered useless.
Refusing to Consider the Law of Diffusion Will Cost You
In 1997, TiVo was racing to market with a remarkable new device. 
Few would debate that from the time the product was introduced to 
the present day, TiVo has had the single highest-quality product in 
its category. The company's PR has been extraordinary. They have 
achieved an unaided awareness that most brands can only dream of. 
They have become more than generic terms, like Kleenex, Band-Aids 
and Q-tips. In fact, they have been able to achieve more than generic 
status; they are a verb in the English language, "to TiVo."
They were well funded with venture capital and had a tech-
nology that could truly reinvent how we consume television. The 
problem was, they marketed their technology directly to the middle 
of the bell curve. Seeing the mass-market appeal of the product, they 
ignored the principles of the Law of Diffusion and targeted the 
masses. Compounding that bad aim, they attempted to appeal to the 
cynical majority by explaining WHAT the product did instead of 
stating WHY the company or the product existed in the first place. 
They attempted to convince with features and benefits.
They basically said to the mass market:

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START WITH WHY 
136 
We've got a new product.
It pauses live TV.
Skips commercials.
Rewinds live TV.
Memorizes your viewing habits and records shows on your 
behalf without your needing to set it.
Analysts were intrigued by the prospects of TiVo as well as its 
competitor, Replay, a well-funded start-up backed by venture cap-
ital. One market researcher estimated that these so-called personal 
TV receivers would reach 760,000 subscribers by the end of the first 
year.
TiVo finally shipped in 1999. Mike Ramsay and Jim Barton, two 
former colleagues who had founded TiVo, were certain the TV- 
viewing public was ready. And they may have been if only TiVo 
knew how to talk to them. But despite the excitement among ana-
lysts and technophiles, sales were hugely disappointing. TiVo sold 
about 48,000 units the first year. Meanwhile, Replay, whose backers 
included the founders of Netscape, failed to gain a following and 
instead became embroiled in a dispute with the television networks 
over the way it allowed viewers to skip ads. In 2000, the company 
adopted a new strategy and a few months later was sold to 
SonicBlue, which later filed for bankruptcy.
Analysts were stumped as to why the TiVo machines weren't 
selling better. The company seemed to have everything going for it. 
After all, they had the recipe for success: a great-quality product, 
money and ideal market conditions. In 2002, after TiVo had been on 
the market nearly three years, a headline in