I was at Strategic Coach in Chicago not long ago and… I was talking to Joe Polish. We discussed how, as a society, we fetishize so much the execution and scaling of things.
The discipline of being an operator and taking something all the way up to a billion dollar business - that’s what we value the most. But the stuff that make scaling possible… like figuring out the message, the offer, the sequence, the emails… everything that actually converts one person…
All of those things are quickly dismissed as of less importance. Our society values execution over ideas. But the reality is…
Scalable ideas are where all the magic is.
It’s the difference between a music producer and the performer…
Everybody knows Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. But nobody knows who Max Martin is. However, these artists I mention? The reason you know who they are is because of Max Martin…
Why? Because he wrote those number one songs.
And in a way, a hit song is a scale-ready algorithm. Just like in marketing automation… it’s Max Martin who comes up with the recipe for the song. Then helps Katy Perry in the studio to record it, produce it, package it, making it real and putting it on the album.
And then, as soon as the song is real and it works, his involvement is done. Max has zero interest to take that song and scale the value of it. It’s on the artist to do that.
It’s the artist who has to take the next two or three years to tour the world... promote and perform… and make people love the songs so much they’re willing to pay money to come to a concert...
But here’s the thing: That’s not the creative part of the business. The creative part is coming up with scale-ready ideas (songs).
And while Katy Perry is out touring the world… Max is back in the studio, working with Justin Timberlake… on the next scalable idea.
That’s where the real value is.