“It’s a story mechanism that’s baked into us as humans,” Brendan explains on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. “Every story has to have a villain.” For so many billion dollar companies, so often the villain in their pitches is not a competitor but the old way of doing things. People need to be taken out of their resistance to change. 

There are eight elements in total to a billion dollar pitch, and Brendan reviews them in this episode. They include the “promised land,” “the simple promise,” and “reason to believe.”

On this episode, he explains what a good villain looks like, why they are effective and examples of villains that do and do not work, and examples of each. 

Quotes:

“Change is hard. Most people don’t like change.” ([2:07]-[2:10] | Brendan)

“Your biggest risk is not alienating your audience, it’s being ignored altogether.” ([5:38]-[5:42] | Brendan) 

“They said ‘Slack is killing email,’ and everyone paid attention. By the way, Slack does not kill email. Everyone still uses email. But it made waves.” ([6:18]-[6:27] | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell
Instagram: @thebrendandell
TikTok: @brendandell39

Buy a copy of Brendan’s Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

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Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

About the Author

Brendan Dell

Brendan Dell is an author and the founder of The Daily Creative. As a freelancer he's worked with clients like Expedia, Cvent, Panasonic, Brother, Windstream and 100+ more to build unignorable tech brands. At The Daily Creative, he shares advice and lessons to help freelancers level up.