Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that’s me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
You’re trying to explain or sell something. But it’s not breaking through.
Maybe you’re selling a product or service. Or you’re pitching an idea. Or you’re just trying to build a stronger relationship with someone.
Either way, they’re not biting — and you can’t figure out what’s wrong.
Here’s the answer: I call it The Invisible Locked Door.
It’s a way of identifying what’s truly holding someone back… even if they themselves aren’t fully aware of it.
Today, I’ll show you how it works, starting with one of the greatest advertisements of the past 30 years. Then we’ll help you become more convincing, and land more sales, contracts, or connections.
The ad that predicted the future
You may have seen this ad circulating on Reddit or LinkedIn recently. It’s amazing.
It’s from 1996, and it opens with a warning: “They say in thirty years a burger & fries could cost $16, a vacation $12,500, and a basic car $65,000.”
Now, 30 years later, we’re living in exactly that world. The ad keeps going viral because it’s eerily accurate.
I wanted to know where this ad came from, so I talked to the two people who made it: Todd Heyman and Bill Bonomo, who were working at the ad agency Ogilvy at the time.
They were handed a brief from a client called TIAA-CREF, a financial firm that helps people invest for retirement. The brief was simple: Tell people they can count on TIAA-CREF to help ensure a comfortable retirement.
“It was generic and bland,” Todd told me. “We were being asked to churn out the same message that pretty much every financial provider pours into advertising’s sea of sameness.”
They knew it wouldn’t work.
But they weren’t yet sure what would work.
So they did the most important thing: They went searching for the invisible locked door.
The invisible locked door
Let’s pause for a second and think about sales.
People often think that if their product is good enough, their idea is strong enough, or their pitch is compelling enough, other people will respond.
But that’s not usually how it works. And here’s why:
Between you and every person you want to reach, there is an invisible locked door.
They didn’t build this door to keep you out. Hell, they might not even know it’s there at all. Their door is made of fear, habit, confusion, skepticism, inertia, or a dozen other things that have nothing to do with you or what you’re offering — but it’s serving as a barrier between you and them.
To get past the door, you must do more than keep knocking. You must understand why the door is locked — and then find the key.
How to find the key
So how do you identify the invisible locked door?
Here’s the most useful question I know — one you can ask other people directly, or ask yourself as you evaluate a situation:
“If you don’t take action, what’s the most likely reason why?”
Ask a potential customer: If you don’t end up buying this, what’s the most likely reason?
Ask a colleague whose buy-in you need: If you don’t end up supporting this idea, what’s the most likely reason?
Ask someone you’ve started dating: If a relationship doesn’t usually work out for you, what’s the most likely reason? (That might feel weird to ask, but I guarantee it’ll start an interesting conversation!)
Once you have the answer, it’s time to reframe how you approach this connection. Think to yourself: “Before they hear about X, I need to address Y.”
That’s how the TIAA-CREF ad was made
Now let’s go back to Todd and Bill, who were trying to figure out how to sell retirement services in 1996.
Instead of just writing an ad, they researched the people they were pitching first. They wanted to know, essentially: If they don’t get retirement services, why not?
Here’s what they discovered: Most people found these services to be intimidating, complicated, and scary. And because of that, they procrastinate until it was too late.
In other words, procrastination was the invisible locked door.
If Todd and Bill’s ad simply promoted TIAA-CREF’s retirement services, nobody would buy. So they needed to make an ad about procrastination, not retirement services.
That’s what they did: Their ad shared how expensive things would be in 30 years, and suggested that, unless you save for retirement now, you won’t be able to afford it later. In doing so, they made retirement investing feel immediate — like something you can’t procrastinate on.
That was the key to the door.
Before you pitch, take a pause
Here’s what I love most about this story: Todd and Bill didn’t have to do any of this.
They were handed a brief. They could have just written what TIAA-CREF wanted. Most people would have.
Instead, they stopped and asked: Who are we actually talking to? What’s really going on with them? What’s standing between this person and the action we want them to take?
That pause — the decision to look for a locked door before writing a single word — is what made the difference between a forgettable ad and one that’s still circulating 30 years later.
Most people act. Very few people ask. But asking makes all the difference.
That’s how to do one thing better.
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