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The Saturday email your competitors hope you never find. (One coffee. Zero fluff.)

#166: The trick Elon Musk stole

Published about 1 month ago • 1 min read

Issue #166

Reader

The richest man on earth uses it to build rockets. A Nobel physicist used it to see what rooms full of experts kept missing. When NASA buried the Challenger explosion under jargon, he dropped a piece of the shuttle's rubber seal into a glass of ice water on live television. It went stiff. That was the entire explanation, and it fit in a glass of water.

I've used this principle to generate $9.8 billion for clients.

Same method. Three very different rooms.

Here it is: if you can't explain it in plain words, you don't understand it yet.

That sounds like a communication rule. It's a diagnostic.

Try it right now. Say out loud what makes your company different, to someone who has never heard of you. The second you reach for a buzzword, stop. That's the spot. Not where your writing is weak. Where your understanding is.

Feynman called that getting stuck, and he treated it as evidence rather than embarrassment. Most founders treat it as a writing problem, hire someone to fix the words, and get back a prettier version of the same confusion.

This morning I published the full deconstruction. Where the method actually came from, why the popular version of it is useless, and four brands of mine that pass the test. One of them went on to a $4.6 billion valuation on the strength of three words.

​[Read it here →]​

David

P.S. There's a 40-second video inside. Honda makes lawnmowers and jets. Their tagline mentions neither.

The Saturday email your competitors hope you never find. (One coffee. Zero fluff.)

by David Brier, Bestselling Author and Rebranding Expert

I'm David Brier—the guy CEOs call when they've burned so much cash on marketing, their spouses think they have a coke habit. I'm like rehab for your brand, except instead of getting you clean, I get you profitable. Think of me as the Betty Ford Clinic of branding, but with better ROI and no group hugs. (Explains why I wrote the bestseller Brand Intervention that Daymond John calls "Genius.")

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