Cover Brand: The Curse of Too Much Knowledge

Richard Byrd runs Bluebird, a Houston shop that markets to rocket scientists and oil engineers, and his new book names the thing that quietly wrecks technical companies: the curse of knowledge. Smart people forget what it's like not to know the answer — and it shows up everywhere in how they sell.

Byrd's workshop trick, the "so what" game, gets clients from 684 product specs down to the one thing that actually matters. Ethan and Richard get into why that's so hard for engineers to do on their own.

Then there's the B2B buying committee — eight to ten people deep, per Gartner, all reading the same pitch differently depending on what's at stake for them personally. Byrd's toilet paper story makes the point better than any case study could.

Ethan debuts a new metaphor for brand awareness involving asteroids, planets, and why your buyer only knows three or four names in your category. Apple's keyboard box makes an appearance. So does a very specific question Byrd asks skeptical engineers about what car they drive — and why the answer usually proves his point for him.

Cover song this week: Any Major Dude Will Tell You, Steely Dan covered by Wilco.

Find Richard Byrd at thebluebyrd.com and on LinkedIn. Cover Brand Covers Playlist on Spotify. Subscribe to Cover Brand, explore the frameworks at appliedbrandscience.com, and come back next week for more of this.