I’d like to write an eBook; what topics make the most money?
I’d like to start selling on Amazon; what’s a good product?
What companies drop-ship, so I can start my eCommerce empire?
A productocracy is an afterthought. Products that put smiles on customers
and solve problems, a non-sequitur. Instead, the product is a mere spoke in the
wheel, as nearly inconsequential as picking the color of your toilet paper. Value
creation, and executional improvement are nowhere to be found. Instead,
pushers and BRO-marketers sell mediocre products, or surrogates, just so money
can be made. A productocracy is then supplanted by slick copywriting and
marketing.
The Internet marketing subculture is rife with push marketers who lipstick
pigs, repackaging stale and ineffective information into coaching programs,
PDFs, and whatever else carries a hefty price tag. Behind the slick copy, the grand
promises, and the cheesy bonuses, what you don’t see are the poor metrics: 0
reorders, 25 percent refunds, and 10 percent chargebacks. As they say, all hat and
no cattle. This isn’t a business; it’s a racket.
When your product sucks and no one reorders, or most customers leave bad
reviews, advertising is the only card you can play in the deck. And when the
advertising stops, so do the sales, and so does the company. In this case, there is
no fire, just the spark of marketing to push a substandard product into the hands
of the deceived.
Instead of selling actual value, push entrepreneurs are selling
perceived value.
At this point, you might think I hate advertising, sales, or marketing. Or that
it’s unnecessary.
It’s neither.
In fact, sales, advertising, marketing, and copywriting are probably the most
critical life skills you can have.
My advertising rants aren’t to spurn its organizational imperatives but to
demonstrate its relationship to the pull of a productocracy. In a product-
centered organization,
advertising doesn’t float the boat; it steams the boat
.
So if you already have a business, how long would you survive if you stopped
advertising? If the answer is weeks or months, you’ve got a product problem.
And with a product problem, ultimately, you will have a business problem.
Perceived value hustlers are interested in having the best marketing, the best copy,
and the best sales funnels—not the best product.
ENGINEERING A PRODUCTOCRACY: IF IT MAKES CENTS, IT MAKES SENSE
As a newbie entrepreneur, whether you live in Menlo Park or in Podunk
Park, your number-one goal shouldn’t be sales, but a confirmation of a
productocracy. A productocracy is entrepreneurship’s grease fire: exploding
growth, filling wallets, and keeping spouses happy.
Within the
UNSCRIPTED
Entrepreneurial Framework, a
Fastlane
productocracy intersects with the right beliefs and a strong purpose. Engineering
your productocracy isn’t as simple as a great product or doing something
different from the market. While these help, a productocracy goes beyond your
product.
A productocracy has five core Commandments called CENTS. They are:
The Commandment of Control
The Commandment of Entry
The Commandment of Need
The Commandment of Time
The Commandment of Scale
Consider the CENTS framework the scaffolding for a productocracy and an
UNSCRIPTED
yellow brick road. In other words, if your business eventually
makes CENTS, it makes SENSE.
CHAPTER 33
THE COMMANDMENT OF CONTROL:
OWN WHAT YOU BUILD
Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the
entrepreneur contributes to production.
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