🚀 3.2.1. Transmutation
As a kid, I loved being hypnotized.
The storyteller. The preacher at church. The magician on TV. The kitchen salesman on stage at the Sunday market. I could not look away.
Grown up, a different kind of magician amazes me: the person who can predict the future. Not because they tell a nice story. Because they make a hypothesis, measure whether it is actually happening, then adjust their actions and their product until measured reality equals desired reality. Data, logic, cause and effect. That is the trick.
Here is the problem. Your customers do not know how good you are for them. They do not remember how badly they were doing before you. They walk in and walk out like the saloon doors in a Western. Swing, swing. Nobody stops to read the number on the wall.
If you do not tell them, nobody will.
THREE IDEAS FROM ME:
I. Desired State
Last week I wrote about Activation: the twelve steps to the “aha” moment. That was the map. The desired state is the destination, written down as a number before you start. “Within 14 days, a new client sees X.” Not a wish. A prediction, with a date and a figure, that you are willing to be wrong about in front of your team.
You can only be a magician if you say the card out loud before you flip it.
Question: what does the future look like, in one number, if you are right?
II. Measured State
You have conviction. Good. Conviction without a number is a mood.
Convert it. Every week, put the measured state next to the desired state. The gap is where your conviction gets tested. When the gap closes, that conviction multiplies: for you first, then for your team, who now have proof instead of a founder’s speech.
Then share it. A conviction you keep to yourself is worth nothing. “You made X since you joined.” “Clients like you see Y in 30 days.” Say it to current clients so they stay. Say it to future clients so they come. The number is how they justify you to themselves, and to their boss, and to their spouse.
Question: which number would you be proud to show a client, and which one are you hiding?
III. Transmutation
The alchemist, the magician, Napoleon Hill. They all bend reality the same way: by adjustment. A hypothesis that misses the measured state is not a failure, it is the instruction for the next change. Adjust the product, measure again, adjust again, until measured reality equals desired reality. That is how a good product becomes a great product. That is also how you move from Want to Do: a definite thought, a burning desire, converted into its physical equivalent.
And when you communicate that conviction, something strange happens. Your customer knows. They can repeat it to a friend in one sentence. They recruit for you. You are already living, and acting, at the frequency of the new world before the world has fully arrived.
For us, that new world means AI does the work. Creators everywhere earn.
Question: what is the one sentence a happy customer can repeat to a friend?
TWO QUOTES:
I.
“If a company, even in its early stages, does not have the ability to make clear predictions, that means they are not measuring what they are doing. If they do not measure, they will not be able to improve.” — Ludovic Bodin, Founder at Atomic Scaling
II.
“The iteration of hypothesis, changes, and measurement will make you better at a faster rate than anything else we have seen.” — Gabe Newell, Founder at Valve
ONE ACTION FOR YOU:
Still early? No PMF yet, no CAC:LTV worth printing?
No problem: find at least ten customers who cannot live without you. They were happily living before they met you. Now they cannot imagine going back to their old reality.
Before Spotify, there was a world where I listened to music on CDs and iTunes. I will never go back to that small world now that I have the full catalogue, instantly, anywhere, for free or a small fee.
Find your ten. Write down the number that proves it. Then tell them.
You, beautiful!
Ludovic Bodin
3x Entrepreneur, 2x Unicorn Investor, 1x IPO
Founder of BOBIC Generational Wealth
Author of Atomic Scaling