A milk crate started as a solution to hold milk, then became useful for everything else. The speaker traces how that origin story and problem-driven design apply to marketing and product strategy, showing why solving one problem well often opens doors you didn't expect.
I just happen to have a milk crate right next to my desk. What were milk crates initially invented for? Okay, they were initially invented to hold containers of milk, obviously. Did you not take history? Okay, so how would I turn the milk crate into a piece of content about my business? What was its origin story? Is there anything that ties to what I do with my clients? Imagine the milkman trying to juggle all these containers of milk and maybe dropping some and then spilling others. And then someone at some point was like, you know what? We need a container, we need a crate, and we will call it the milk crate. Later on, people started looking at these, like, really handy, dandy cube shaped things. Being like, you know, I bet I could put other things in here. I bet I could put some files in here. I bet if I'm moving, I could put things, some things in here. So the milk crate, like, started off as solving just one little problem and then evolved into just its own product.