Have you ever watched a movie or an episode of something that included a fight scene, yet found it extremely boring to watch?
I know I have.
One of the best well-known (and modern) examples I can give is the latest John Wick film. Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved the series. It’s a great movie, with top-tier moments, and I very much enjoyed watching it… but not because of the fighting/shooting scenes. Those scenes simply took too long and there were too many of them.
If you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen all of them.
More.
Even Chris Claremont, the famous comic book writer who single-handedly took it upon himself to take X-Men, one of Marvel’s worst-performing titles back then which nobody cared about, and was on the brink of cancellation, to one of the most recognized, well-known, and best-performing comic book series of all time, resulting in tons of storylines, dozens of media adaptions, hundreds of toy lines, video games, and so, so much more, once told an interviewer, “To me, the fights are bullshit”.
Yes, the creator of one of the most successful action-packed comic book series of all time thought the fights were bullshit. All he cared about were the emotional relationships between the characters, how they interacted with the world, and the consequences these emotions had.
And so it goes in almost every other form of fiction as well.
A good fight is nothing else but an opportunity to further the plot or the emotional relationship between characters, developing them as people in the process.
That’s also why the lightsaber fights in the Star Wars prequels are often criticized as being lackluster and much worse than the original trilogy, even though the prequels had better choreography with much more flashy moves and a more dramatic and exciting setting… but they didn’t carry the same emotional baggage as the original trilogy did, nor did they further the plot most of the time.
So the fights, were in fact, bullshit.
Even more.
This isn’t just about fiction.
It perfectly applies to business as well—with one slight difference. This time it’s not “the fights are bullshit” but instead, “the value is bullshit”.
Just as any beginner fiction writer makes the mistake of thinking the fights are the end-all-be-all, so does the beginner marketer make the mistake of thinking the value is all that matters.
Spoiler alert: is doesn’t.
In fact, it’s probably not even in the top 10 of things that matter. What matters more is the relationship you have with your reader/viewer/listener/customer, the relationship they have with your offers, the mindset (inherently different than pure “how-to value”) you bring, the motivation you give, the opportunity to think differently, the feeling of being understood, the community to be a part of, and the “World” you welcome them in with open arms (as well as the barriers you put up to keep the people you don’t want as far away from your world as you possibly can).
So the next time someone comes to you, shouting “Provide more value!!”, probably expecting you to give it all away for free as well, then know…
They don’t know what they’re talking about and you’re simply better than them.
As to how to get even better yourself and learn how to actually write content that gets you sales and keeps people reading every day (without resorting to “giving more value”), then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla