There’s no such thing as a chicken knife

June 3rd, 2008

You might have seen this beek advertisement sometime ago. Say what you want but strangely enough, it hit me. It helped me clear my mind and focus on good ideas. You might find it funny but follow me for a bit and it might help you too.

The knife analogy helps me redefine if an idea is good or not. You can eat a steak with a regular knife but it’s so much easier with a steak knife. Chicken on the other hand, can be eaten with a regular knife (sometimes without a knife at all!). Steak can be seen as first class meat in a sense because it has its own knife. If you want to truly enjoy a steak, you must buy a steak knife.

This relegates chicken as second class meat. It is so easy to eat that anyone can eat it easily without investing into fancy knives.

So think about your business idea. Do you want to cater to people who won’t mind buying but also investing more money in your own product (as they see the extra value) or do you want to focus on people who don’t want to invest at all? In other words, is your idea so interesting that people won’t mind paying for it AND for extraneous services/add-ons just like they won’t mind buying a nice set of steak knives to truly enjoy their steak?

I believe you want customers who not only want to buy steaks, but also want to buy steak knives. These people are experts and truly appreciate your service or product.

In other words, if your product is not top quality, you’re basically trying to sell chicken knives. No one wants to buy a chicken knife