Blue Tick

When Twitter gave blue ticks to journalists and public figures, they meant something. Not because a blue tick is inherently valuable. It’s a tiny icon. It meant something because not everyone could have one.

The moment Elon opened them up to anyone with eight dollars a month, they became worthless overnight. Straight away pointless.

The people who originally had them removed them from their profiles. And not only was it no longer valuable, it became a signal of the opposite - having one said something about you that you probably didn’t want.

This is an important lesson in how scarcity works. It requires two things: scarcity and rivalrousness. Scarcity means not everyone can get it. Rivalrousness means if someone else takes it, you can’t have it. Like Wimbledon tickets, or seats at a hard to get in restaurant - If I don’t book it, someone else will.

Most coaching programmes have neither. They’re available all the time, there’s no moment where ‘if I don’t act, someone else gets my spot.”’

Nobody is losing anything by waiting. The programme will still be there on Monday, and the Monday after that, and the Monday after that. And coaches know this is a problem - so they try to manufacture urgency. ‘Doors close Friday!’, ‘Only 5 spots left!’

But the audience isn’t stupid. They’ve seen the doors reopen, they know the spots refill. The scarcity is theatre, and theatre only works when people believe the performance.

This is part of a deeper problem, however. We shout about our programmes constantly - buy this, join this, sign up now - which tells the audience it’s always available, always accessible. We use the same templates as everyone else.

Same everything. Which means the content signals nothing about you, because if a product appeals to everyone, it cannot signal anything about the consumer. So they shop on the basis of features and price. That’s the commodity trap.

No scarcity because the programme is always open, no rivalrousness as nobody loses anything by not buying, there’s no signal - so you’ll get compared on price.

The Prius is an interesting counterexample. When Toyota launched it, 57% of buyers said they chose it because ‘it makes a statement about me.’ They paid a $4,200 premium over comparable hybrids for the signal.

The Prius looked different to every other car on the road. You could see one and know exactly what the driver was telling you about themselves. If they’d made the Prius look like the Corolla, it would have sold on fuel economy and nothing else. That’s what most coaches have done to their own businesses without realising it.

There’s never been a more important time to build something different to everyone else.