Crippled CEO Blog #155:
Batman has no superpowers. He is just a human being, born on Earth, with incredible intellect, a lifelong dedication to training, and limitless financial resources.
Superman is often considered to be the strongest and most powerful superhero in the comic book universe. Besides magic and kryptonite, he is physically invulnerable, he is strong enough to move planets, he moves faster than the speed of light, and he has a host of other powers, like flight, heat vision, ice breath, and x-ray vision. He also has superhuman intelligence.
He’s essentially a god.
Batman has way more fans than Superman. I actually talked about this in a previous blog. You can read it here: https://crippledceo.com/2020/11/crippled-ceo-blog-058-why-i-❤%EF%B8%8F💙-superman/
Because a lot of people like Batman more, there is often a debate around who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman, with Batman fans claiming that with time for planning, and a whole other gang of advantages given to the Dark Knight, that Batman would win.
Obviously, this is silly. Batman is a regular dude. Superman is godlike.
It wouldn’t even be a fight. It would be a massacre. He moves faster than the speed of light. He shoots laser beams from his eyes. Superman turns Batman into a dark smear on the ground in a nanosecond.
So, why are so many Batman fans convinced that he would win, when all logic and evidence says otherwise? And why the heck am I talking about this?
Batman fans want him to win because they like him more, because they have an emotional attachment to him, and then they go through mental gymnastics to try to use logic to justify the decision they made emotionally.
The truth is, we all do this. For everything.
You, me, your mom, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
We make a choice because of our emotions, and then try to justify it with logic and our intellect. It is never the other way around.
This goes for everything in our life, and that includes our purchasing decisions, and your customers’ purchasing decisions.
The real reason we buy anything is emotional, and most of the time, that emotion is us trying to reinforce the identity we have chosen for ourselves. If you think of yourself as a funky, non-traditional, outdoor loving type of person, you don’t choose a Jeep over a Honda Civic for practical reasons. You choose the Jeep because that fits the person you believe yourself to be better, and THEN you tell yourself all of the practical, logical reasons why the Jeep is the better choice for you.
If you think of yourself as young, hip, and successful, you get a Tesla — not because of the features or the gas mileage or all the other things — but because you think that’s what people like you often do. And then you use all the other stuff to justify it. There’s a good reason — the reason that you tell people (and yourself) — and the real reason, the emotional reason.
Seth Godin, a hero of mine, describes this idea very succinctly: people like us do things like this.
We don’t stop wanting to fit in when high school ends.
So, if we make decisions emotionally, why are you always trying to appeal to logic when you are trying to convince someone to do something — like buy your stuff, for instance?
You are far better off trying to appeal to them emotionally first. You will get a lot further demonstrating that this is a choice made by people who think, talk, dress, and act like them.
If you get that right, people will come up with all of the practical reasons why your features and benefits made it the obvious choice. Do this well enough, and you might even get people to believe Batman could defeat Superman.
(Do you know who was moving faster than a speeding bullet last night? Your mom. Also, she has this little bullet of her own, and… ahem. Your mom also gets a text from me every Sunday with a link to the latest blog post. Send a text to 561-726-1567 with the word CRIP as the message to get a link to the blog as soon as it’s up.
Did you know that I have a YouTube channel now? I do! I am putting up two videos every single week. Go search for Crippled CEO and you’ll find me. I would appreciate it if you subscribed.)
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