People come up with terrific ideas. A lot of new products and services are truly amazing, and no one knows it better than the folks who spawned them.
For the people with the ideas, getting all jazzed about their thing is natural. They put in the hours to create it and develop it and build a team to put it out there. And now they want everyone else to share in their creation. They can’t wait to tell you all about how their thing works and what makes it so wonderful.
The problem is they forget that nobody cares. They too often don’t realize that everyone else is too busy to consider all of the new things that are going to change the world. We all have hundreds (or thousands) of messages coming at us every day. So no one eagerly anticipates their wonderful new thing.
“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson in the late 1800s, and maybe that was true 130 years ago.
Now, getting people to pay attention only happens when creators take the time to make their thing relevant to the people who can use it. Marketing a new thing is a discipline, and when it’s done well it can make the thing a big deal.
But the thing-in-itself is no longer enough, if it ever was. The world won’t beat a path to your door, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a path. You just have to help people find it.