There's this pithy advice (e.g., example) about how to make money in only 3 ways:

1. help people make money

2. help people save money

3. help people save time

Let's analyze all 3 using market risk and execution risk.

Market risk is the risk that people may not want what you’re building.

If we rank the 3 ways in order of market risk, then "Help people make money" has the lowest market risk of the 3.

Execution risk is the risk that y

ou may not be able to pull off executing the product/service.

If we rank the 3 ways in order of execution risk, this time "Help people make money" is the hardest to pull off hence, has the highest execution risk of the 3.

If you can pull off the "Help people make money", good for you. I cannot. This thread is not for you.

This thread is more for people like me who are engineer-brain first.

Fellow engineer-brains, you need to split your full brain in two.

Engineer brain and Marketing brain.

People like us, the trick is to

1) focus on the stuff we can build, i.e. help people save time or help people save money,

2) and then have better positioning to lower your marketing risk

Here's a great example by @asmartbear where after repositioning a ad costs saving software to focus on value, resulted in 8x jump in selling price.

https://blog.asmartbear.com/more-value-not-save-money.html

The pithy way to understand this is:

• ❌ help people save money

• ✅ help people save money .. so they make more money

It's like there's two parts to the help people save money. Your engineer brain still focuses on the save money part.

That's what you build.

Your marketing brain focuses on "so they make more money" part

That's what you sell.

In summary,

1. "Help people MAKE $" easiest to sell hardest to build
   

2. "Help people SAVE $" easier to build harder to sell
   

3. Solve with 2 🧠 brain
   

4. Engineer 🧠 build product to help people save $
   

5. Marketing 🧠 position same product to ultimately make more $ for people