🔄 2X Growth Unlock: How One Weird Ski Trip Revealed The Fix You Need Now

Picture this: I'm standing in a "luxury" ski apartment in the French Alps that looks like it was last updated when ABBA was topping the charts. The bathroom tiles are cracking, the furniture seems sourced from a yard sale, and yet... I paid more for this place than a night at the Ritz.

What gives?

Welcome to the strange world of ski resort real estate, where traditional rules of luxury get tossed out the frost-covered window. You see, in most industries, luxury follows a predictable playbook: modern design, high-end finishes, impeccable service. But ski resorts? They dance to a different tune, and that tune is all about one thing: location, location, loca— sorry, I mean access to the gondola.

This isn't just about real estate though. It's about something I call "power magnets" – those invisible forces that actually control value in any given market. In ski resorts, proximity to the gondola is such a powerful magnet that it can make a dated, mediocre apartment command premium prices while a genuinely luxurious place a shuttle ride away struggles to attract bookings. Access is so privileged over every other symbol of luxury – modern design, high-end amenities, impeccable service – that it completely rewrites the rules of what "luxury" means in this context.

At MotivBase (my previous company), we bumped into our own version of this phenomenon. When we first transitioned from services to launching our technology platform, our revenue literally halved. Talk about a white-knuckle moment! We had built this incredible technology that could map human belief systems and values. Revolutionary stuff, right? But guess what the market was magnetically drawn to? Good old charts and graphs. PowerPoint-friendly demographic models. The comfort food of corporate research. Once we understood and worked with these power magnets though, everything changed. Within a year, we were back on track, and then began doubling our revenue annually. The secret wasn't just in having great technology – it was in understanding how to introduce it to a market that wasn't quite ready for revolution.

So here's where it gets interesting for anyone launching something new or struggling with growth: You can't just bulldoze these power magnets. If you're developing those genuinely luxurious apartments but they're a 15-minute walk from the gondola, you can't just say "But look at our Italian marble countertops!" and expect skiers to come running.

Instead, you've got to play the long game. Maybe you start by offering complimentary valet service to the gondola. You're essentially paying admission to be considered in the luxury category. Only after you've built credibility can you start charging for that priority parking spot right by the lift.

The trick isn't fighting the power magnets – it's using their pull to your advantage while quietly building something better. Think of it like a ski traverse: sometimes you have to move horizontally before you can head up.

At MotivBase, we took inspiration from an unlikely source: children's books with those little pull-tabs that reveal something new. You know the ones – pull here, and suddenly there's a butterfly, a hidden door, a whole new dimension to the story. We designed our platform the same way: on the surface, we gave clients the charts, graphs, and demographic models they were magnetically drawn to. But behind each one, we tucked our deeper cultural insights, our human belief systems analysis – pull here, and suddenly there's a whole new way of understanding consumer behavior. Our clients got their comfort food of data visualization, but with each interaction, they discovered richer, more nuanced layers of insight underneath. By the time we'd built enough credibility, they were coming to us specifically for those deeper cultural insights we'd been quietly introducing all along.

Ask yourself: What are the power magnets in your industry? What do people reflexively privilege over everything else? If your product is truly innovative, it will – and should – be challenging these existing power magnets. But here's the crucial part: to create lasting change, you have to work with and through these power magnets first. There's no skipping this step, no matter how revolutionary your solution might be.

And if you're wondering – yes, I did eventually find a great place to stay in the French Alps. But that's a story for another newsletter... 😉

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