Evan Carmichael explains Henry Ford's strategy for winning investors: show them a working prototype instead of a pitch. Ford took lumber magnate William Murphy for a test ride in his quadricycle, and Murphy funded the venture on the spot. A demonstration beats slides every time.
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Welcome to another Famous Friday where we look at famous entrepreneurs and help you model their success to make your business grow. Today's lesson is show me. If you have a new idea, a new concept, something that's revolutionary, something that's going to change the world, then you need to show me how it works. Don't just come to me with a piece of paper or PowerPoint file or an email and say, "Here's the blueprints, here's how it's going to work." Show me it working! Because the bigger the idea is, the more unique it is, the newer it is, the more people are going to be skeptical that it's going to work. So instead of just trying to sell them with an email or PowerPoint presentation, sell them by actually showing them how your product or service works. So one of my favorite examples is from Henry Ford. Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, legendary entrepreneur. When he first started, he was an engineer. He was an engineer at Edison Electrical and was helping create electricity for America. And he wanted to do his own thing, you know, he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He had ideas too. He didn't want to just work for somebody else. And so he wanted to get into the car business. And the car business was super new. Nobody was really making cars. A whole bunch of engineers just creating their own inventions. And so he came up with his own invention and he called it the quadricycle. And the quadricycle were basically two bicycles that were attached together with a gasoline engine in the middle, and that was one of the very first cars in America. It was a primitive design, and he wanted to get funding for this, and he wanted to quit his job, and he wanted to go and create a company building quadricycles. And it was such a new crazy idea, you know, people are used to riding horses. Why would I ride this contraption quadricycle thing? And so instead of just going out and pitching people on— with the prospectus on paper, what he did was he built his first quadricycle. And he wanted to go to William Murphy, who was a highly successful entrepreneur in the lumber business. And when he went to pitch him, he showed up in his quadricycle, a working quadricycle prototype unit, and he took William Murphy for a ride on it around town. And by the end of the ride, they were in business together. That's how it works. It's so much easier to convince people to give you money, to buy from you, to refer people to you, to put you in the media, to have you be guests on their shows, whatever it is you're looking for, it's so much easier for people to understand what you do when they can experience it. When you're not just talking about it, but they can feel it. And so if you want to sell your idea, if you want to get investors, you want to get customers, you want to get momentum, then show me. Make me feel it. Belief. For those of you watching, you like this video, you can support me by clicking on the link in the description. Leave a comment, let me know what you think, and click on my face to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
