The Second Right Answer

The temptation is to go with the first right answer: the first idea that really seems to click, the first concept you think could have traction. You don't even think of it as the first right answer. You think of it as the right answer, or the best one.

But in almost every case, 90-plus percent of the time, if you step away for a little while and come back and say, I bet there's something even better, you'll come up with the second right answer. And the second right answer is what separates your messaging from everybody else's in your category.

It often comes from combining the first right answer with something pretty much unrelated. You listened to a podcast four years ago and haven't thought about it since. You come back to the whiteboard and remember where a guy said a great line in an interview. If we combine that with this concept, we'd have something really striking. I don't know where it comes from. The deep recesses of your mind.

But if you don't try to get to a second right answer, you won't get one. So assume that whatever you've come up with, if you put it away for a little while, even just an hour, go have lunch, then come back and ask what else we could do that's beyond that, you'll nine times out of ten find something beyond it.

That's when people say, wow, that's really good. It's so simple, and we'd never have come up with it. They'll say it's so simple. They won't say they never would have come up with it. People don't say that. But you know they wouldn't have.