Olivia: Everyone says 'build your personal brand.' It's the mantra of our time. But what if all that effort is a complete waste? What if you're just polishing a cannonball, hoping it will fly? It turns out, the engine is what matters, not the paint job. Jackson: Okay, I'm intrigued. Polishing a cannonball... I feel personally attacked. That's basically my entire professional strategy. What are we getting into today? Olivia: We're diving into Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt. And what's fascinating is that Hyatt isn't some fly-by-night marketing guru. He was the CEO of a major publishing house, Thomas Nelson. He saw countless authors with brilliant ideas fail because they missed the one thing we're talking about today. Jackson: Ah, so he's seen the cannonballs up close. He's seen them roll off the table and thud onto the floor. Olivia: Exactly. He saw the whole assembly line of them. And his book became a New York Times bestseller precisely because it offered a blueprint that felt grounded in that reality. It cuts through the fluff and starts with a pretty brutal truth, summed up by a quote he uses from the marketing legend David Ogilvy. Jackson: I'm ready. Hit me with it. Olivia: "Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster." Jackson: Ouch. That feels like a direct hit on about half the internet. It’s so true, though. You see these huge ad campaigns for a new app or a new movie, and if it’s terrible, the bad word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire. The marketing just amplifies the disaster. Olivia: That’s the entire first pillar of Hyatt’s argument. Before you even think about a platform, a brand, or getting noticed, you have to answer one question: Is what you have to offer actually any good? In fact, is it better than good? Is it a 'wow' product?

Jackson: I like the term 'wow product,' but it also sounds a little intimidating. Isn't that like telling someone, 'The secret to being a successful musician is to just write a hit song'? How does a normal person, who isn't a certified genius, even begin to create a 'wow'? Olivia: That's the perfect question, because Hyatt argues it's less about a lightning strike of genius and more about a deliberate choice. It's about baking the 'wow' into the very DNA of your idea. He gives this incredible, almost legendary example: the story of TOMS Shoes. Jackson: Oh, I know them. The 'buy a pair, give a pair' company. Olivia: Precisely. The story starts in 2006. An American entrepreneur named Blake Mycoskie is traveling in Argentina. He sees firsthand the intense poverty, and specifically, that countless children have no shoes. This isn't just a comfort issue; it means they can't go to school, and they're exposed to all sorts of soil-transmitted diseases. He's deeply affected by it. Jackson: Right, so he feels that classic impulse to help. Most people would maybe donate to a charity and move on. Olivia: But he did something different. He didn't just want to donate shoes; he wanted to create a self-sustaining system. So he comes back to the U.S. and founds TOMS Shoes with a radical business model: the 'one for one' promise. For every single pair of shoes they sell, they give a new pair to a child in need. The very next year, he went back to Argentina with a team and hand-delivered ten thousand pairs of shoes. Jackson: Wow. So the marketing, the mission, and the product are all the same thing. You're not just buying a canvas shoe; you're buying a piece of that story. You're participating in the solution. Olivia: That's it! That's the 'wow' baked in. The product wasn't just the shoe; it was the feeling of doing good. It created this intense emotional connection with customers. By 2010, they had given away over a million pairs of shoes. The 'wow' wasn't an ad campaign they slapped on later. It was the entire reason the company existed. Jackson: That’s a powerful story. But it’s also a best-case scenario. What happens when you have all the hype in the world, but you forget to bake in the wow? What does the opposite look like? Olivia: The opposite looks like a $65 million train wreck on Broadway. Hyatt tells the story of the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Jackson: Oh boy, I remember the headlines about this. This was supposed to be the biggest show ever, right? Olivia: The expectations were astronomical. The director, Julie Taymor, was famous for the smash hit The Lion King. The music was written by Bono and The Edge from U2. It's Spider-Man, one of the most beloved characters on earth. The budget was massive. People were expecting to have their minds blown. Jackson: A recipe for success. What could possibly go wrong? Olivia: Everything. During the first preview in November 2010, it was a technical catastrophe. The plot was confusing and muddled. The expensive, high-tech flying equipment kept malfunctioning, leaving actors literally stuck, dangling in mid-air over the audience. Jackson: You cannot be serious. They were just hanging there? Olivia: Just hanging there. The show had to be stopped multiple times during the performance. The audience, who had paid top dollar expecting a masterpiece, started getting angry. People were shouting, demanding refunds, walking out. The 'wow' they were promised turned into a 'what is happening?!' Jackson: That is an epic failure. It’s the perfect flip side to the TOMS story. All the marketing, all the star power, all the budget in the world couldn't save a product that simply didn't work. It failed to exceed, or even meet, the most basic expectations. Olivia: And it failed faster and more spectacularly because of the hype. Hyatt's point is that a platform amplifies what's already there. For TOMS, it amplified a beautiful mission. For the Spider-Man musical, it amplified a disaster. Jackson: Okay, so the lesson is clear: have a great product. But let's bring this down to earth. What does 'baking in the wow' look like for someone who isn't starting a global shoe company or a Broadway musical? What about a freelance graphic designer or an author writing their first book? Olivia: Hyatt would say it's about exceeding expectations in your specific context. For the designer, maybe it's delivering the project two days early with a personalized video explaining your design choices. For the author, maybe it's creating a free, incredibly useful resource guide that complements the book. It's about finding that extra ten percent of effort or thoughtfulness that makes someone say, "Wow, they didn't have to do that."

Jackson: That makes sense. It’s about creating unexpected value. So, let's say you've done that. You have your small but mighty 'wow' product. Now what? You still need to get noticed. This is where the 'platform' part comes in, I assume. Olivia: Exactly. And once you have that 'wow,' even a small one, Hyatt says you need a stage to put it on. But he argues you have to build the stage yourself, and it starts with what he calls a 'home base.' Jackson: What exactly is a 'home base'? Is that just a fancy term for a website? Olivia: It is, but the distinction is crucial. Your home base is the digital property you own and control completely—typically, a self-hosted blog or website. Everything else—your Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook page—those are 'outposts.' They are rented land. Jackson: Hold on, a blog? In this day and age? That feels a bit... 2012. Isn't all the action on social media now? Why would I spend time on a blog when I could be making a video that might go viral on TikTok? Olivia: That's the trap everyone falls into. The algorithms on those platforms can change overnight. Your account can get suspended for reasons you don't understand. The platform could lose popularity and die out. Remember MySpace? Or Vine? Building your entire audience on a platform you don't own is like building a beautiful house on land you're only renting. The landlord can change the rules or evict you at any time. Jackson: That’s a great analogy. I never thought of it that way. Your home base is your asset. The outposts are just marketing channels to bring people back to your asset. Olivia: You've got it. The goal of the outposts is to engage people and lead them back to your home base, where you can build a deeper relationship, maybe get them to sign up for an email list—which is another asset you own. The book was written when Facebook was king, and he cites this survey from the time by ReverbNation and Digital Music News. It found musicians considered a Facebook 'like' to be three times more valuable than an email subscriber or a Twitter follower. Jackson: That's wild. And I bet that has completely flipped now. A 'like' feels so passive today, whereas an email is a direct line of communication. It proves the point about not trusting the rented land. Olivia: It absolutely does. The principle remains the same even if the platforms change. Own your stage. But this brings up a common critique of the book, which I think is fair to address. Jackson: I’m curious. What’s the catch? Olivia: Some readers have pointed out that setting up a self-hosted blog, creating all this content, and managing it all takes time and, frankly, some money. They argue that Hyatt's advice might feel out of reach for someone starting with a zero-dollar budget. Is this really for everyone? Olivia: It's a valid point. There can be costs involved. But Hyatt's perspective, I think, is that this is an investment in your most important professional asset. You can start small. A basic website doesn't have to cost a fortune. The real investment is time and consistency. It's about seeing it not as an expense, but as the foundation of your future business or career. It's about taking personal responsibility for your own message.

Jackson: So when you put it all together, it's a really clear, two-step process. First, obsess over making your thing—your product, your service, your art—genuinely amazing. Bake in the 'wow.' Then, build your own stage, your home base, to share it with the world. Olivia: It's a two-part formula, and you can't have one without the other. A brilliant product with no stage remains a secret in a drawer. A huge stage with a mediocre product becomes a very public failure, like our poor Spider-Man dangling from the rafters. The magic is in the synergy between the two. Jackson: It feels like it re-centers the whole conversation. Instead of chasing vanity metrics and follower counts, it forces you back to the fundamentals: Am I making something good? And am I building a real connection with people? Olivia: That's the core of it. It’s about earning attention, not just grabbing it. Jackson: So, what's the one thing someone listening right now should do? Stop posting on Instagram for a week and go write one amazing blog post? Olivia: Maybe. Or even simpler. Hyatt's core message is about exceeding expectations. So the action is to ask yourself a very small question: 'What is one way I can create a 'wow' experience for one person this week?' Jackson: I like that. It feels manageable. It brings it back from this huge, scary 'platform' idea to something human-sized. Olivia: Exactly. It could be in an email you send to a colleague, a project you deliver for a client, or just a conversation you have. Don't think about building a global platform. Think about creating one moment of genuine, unexpected value. That's the first brick. Jackson: And the whole platform gets built one 'wow' brick at a time. Olivia: That's the idea. So the question to leave everyone with is: Where can you bake in a little bit of 'wow' tomorrow? Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.