What is the cost of the opposite of what you do?

Your company’s biggest source of competition is the status quo.

The fact that customers would rather choose the option of doing nothing than buy your product.

Even if your thing is amazing, if their current solution is not really that bad, then they have no compelling motivation to buy.

It’s simple economics. When the cost of doing nothing is cheaper than the pain of change, stay the same. The greatest product features in the marketplace can’t overcome that very human experience.

And for the record, it’s not only the fear of change, but the fear of the additional effort that change requires, and the ensuing loss that change causes. Everyone wants to avoid momentary distress.

What’s an entrepreneur to do?

Well, step one is recognizing the powerful draw of doing nothing. Accepting that your product vision, fiercely as you may believe in it, will be perceived by many customers as yet another entrepreneurial hallucination.

It’s painful to admit, but nobody wants to buy your piece of crap. It’s just another goddam thing to keep up with.

And so, humility is the greatest safeguard you have in the early stages of your launch.

Step two is addressing the negative impact of staying the course. Physically calculating their cost of inaction. Because the price of doing nothing is rarely nothing. The status quo quickly adds up to significant expenditure, either in time, money, labor or some other form of currency your customer values.

Allow me to use this very software as an example.

Prolific is a product where customers pay for an annual subscription to gain unlimited access to over three hundred personal creativity management tools. Among the numerous benefits of subscribing, a big one is time savings. Because once customers pick the tools that work for their unique personality and start using our software to execute their ideas faster, the clock becomes their friend.

And here’s why. Imagine how much time most people spend managing their idiotic notifications, updates and notes on their unproductive apps, calendars and project management software applications.

Prolific gives you the tools to thrive as a creator without the need for any of those distractions. Even if it’s only ten minutes a day, that’s an hour a week. That’s an entire week a year. Multiply that by the number of people on your team, and we’re talking about a significant labor expense.

That’s the negative impact of staying the course. The cost of inaction.

Prolific costs eight bucks a month, and saves you seven days a year.

What’s the cost of the opposite of what you do?

If you haven’t calculated that number yet, give it a crack. It will show your customers what they lose by succumbing to the powerful draw of status quo.

What momentary distress does your product help people avoid?