"An orchestrated campaign to change surface appearances without
changing
the underlying reality." I read this from Zero to One by
Peter Thiel, and it really
strikes me.
One experience I had with this is that I built and sold an online
yearbook during
my high school years to my classmates. However,
the truth was that initially, I
had the idea to build a website for
my classmates to communicate, like
Facebook. But the beautiful
thing was that when I completed building the
product, I realized
that this was so much more like a yearbook, and we didn't
have one
that year because of COVID. So I literally changed how I was telling
my classmates about the website at the very last minute!
I said: "This is the first digital yearbook." The idea came very
naturally to
everyone. Looking back, what changed was the perception
of users about
the product. Had I told them, "This is where we will
talk to each other," I bet that no
one would have cared, because
they would ask: "Why would we need this?"
Whereas, the message
completely changed people's behavior, although the
underlying
product was absolutely the same. This made me see the true power
of sales. It completely changed people.