Obsession is a dangerous trade. from Monsters of God
I found Monsters of God by accident on HBO. I was mindlessly scrolling for something to watch, but once I put it on, I didn’t get up.
I was hooked first by the characters, then the history, then the smuggling. It’s a crime story with every reptile I’ve never heard of in it. And the people…the people were exactly like you think they’d be. I kept thinking I’d turn it off after ten minutes and focus on work. I didn’t.
Hank Molt (great name) is one of the main characters and an apparent legend in that industry. He ran a pet store in Philadelphia and stocked it with animals he found overseas, often carrying them into the country in suitcases, which, customs barely checked.
Eric Goode, who created the series, says Molt liked that there were laws at all, because breaking them made it a better game. In the 1970s he went on what he called shopping trips with other dealers. The Wall Street Journal later quoted him on what they packed.
The gun to shoot someone, the machete to cut off our fingers if we were bit by a taipan.
There were no rules, a lot of private deals, and a snake that can kill you if you guessed wrong. They brought a blade to cut their own freakin’ fingers off if they were bit.
Then I got stuck on a price list.
Names, Then Numbers
Molt circulated lists of rare reptiles, snakes and turtles and lizards with prices next to their names, and mailed them to collectors and to zoos that competed for the same animals. Before that, collectors and zoos bought and sold by calling each other, or by shaking hands.
But the list did something more important than advertise inventory.
It told the market what to believe.
People saw prices that seemed absurdly high compared with anything they’d seen before. Yet, rather than immediately destroying demand, the list helped make the animals feel more rare and more collectible. A reptile that had been an obscure creature in a distant part of the world became a named item in a catalog, available through a person who appeared to have unusual access.
→ The price not only reflected the value.
→ The price helped create it.
Then Washington made the sheet more powerful by accident. The Endangered Species Act came into effect in 1973 and Molt’s business boomed, because an endangered label meant rarer, and rarer meant he could charge more. A law written to protect the animals raised their price instead.
Other dealers noticed. Tommy Crutchfield, a Florida rival, ran Molt’s playbook, selling smuggled reptiles to collectors, pet owners, and zoos. Time’s reporting on the series puts his sales and trades at millions a year.
There’s No Pudding
Harry Beckwith named this in 1997 in Selling the Invisible, then said it blunter in 2022 in The Invisible Promise.
“There’s no pudding in a service, so there’s no proof.”
Beckwith said, “Your price is not just your price. It is a quality cue.”
When people can’t inspect the thing, they inspect the tag. He tells the old story about the carpenter who charged $2 for hitting the nail and $43 for knowing which nail. Charge for the years it took to know which nail.
My favorite piece of evidence in his book is about coffee. At $18, buyers of organic coffee got more passionate about it, and they could recite roughly twice as many details about what they were drinking. The higher number made people believe more, and study the thing harder.
The reptile list ran the same experiment with snakes.
Invisible expertise
The blank page test
The $43 in the carpenter story was for knowing which nail. That knowing is invisible expertise. It’s the judgment that only shows up when you’re in your zone of genius. When you’re operating from unconscious competence.
You listen for two minutes and you already know what’s wrong, and if someone asked you to write down how you knew, you’d stall, because the steps aren’t sitting there as steps anymore. They compacted. You got so good at the work that the work disappeared from your ability to articulate it.
Why you can’t say it
That’s why it happens. Repetition sank the skill below words. The better you are, the less you can narrate it. You’ve been doing it for 10+ years and the manual you could have written as you were building those patterns has disappeared.
What’s left is a feeling in the call, a tell in their voice, a thing you notice that a competent person with a checklist will miss.
The borrowed job title
When you can’t say it, you sell familiar language or you borrow a job title. Someone asks what you do. You say you coach, or you consult, or you help people with the thing you’ve spent 10+ years getting really good at. The sentence comes out different every time, because you honestly aren’t quite sure HOW you do what you do. They nod, then they ask what you charge and if you are how I used to be you say “it depends.”
You leave the conversation having been treated like a less expensive version of someone you’re not, and you can’t correct it because you still don’t have a sentence for the actual thing.
I used to do this on my own calls. I can sit with a client and name their offer in one pass, then get on a sales call for my work and describe it as a pile of verbs (help, advise, extract, train). The work was there, I just never put it on a sheet.
What I Put On Mine
One line on my list is called Cognitive Fingerprint™.
The person who buys it is a founder whose team still has to wait for them after a call, because the knowledge is in one head. When we’re done they have a written extraction they can hand to people… their patterns, framework…their thinking, in their language.
That’s the whole card… a name, who it’s for, what they walk away holding, who it’s not for, and a price, which I put on the card I send them, not in this essay.
Here it is, item 001 on my actual sheet.
I have other lines with the same idea. Each one is something a buyer can say yes or no to without me giving a tour of my whole brain.
I can’t tell you how many opportunties I lost at workshops, calls or conferences when people asked how I could help them. I knew I could but I couldn’t articulate it.
The Gap
You can see what the sheet did, and you saw one of mine. Now it’s time to write yours.
The Monster Price List is the prompt (or the Skill) that digs that sheet out of your own calls. You feed it one to three transcripts of you working (your website and LinkedIn help, but the calls are where the expertise actually shows up), and it hunts for the moments a buyer valued… the “how did you know that,” the thing you fixed for free, the “could you also” you never invoiced.
Then it writes one to five cards… a name pulled from words that were actually said, a buyer you can picture, something they walk away holding, who it’s not for, a number they can argue with. Every card is quote-locked to a real moment from your own tape. You shouldn’t have to sit through a questionnaire first.
The full prompt and the downloadable Skill are below. Attach a transcript (or 3) of a coaching call, discovery, onboarding etc.. Send the first card.
It works from the moments your expertise already leaves on tape. It won’t map the whole of how you think (that’s a deeper extraction), but it will name and price what you already sell right now.
The Monster Price List
Paste the prompt below into a fresh chat. Attach your material. That’s the whole intake.
One to three transcripts of you working… a sales call, a coaching session, a client call. Zoom, Fathom, Granola, or Otter exports all work. Messy is fine, that’s the point.
Optional but useful: your website URL and a PDF of your LinkedIn profile, so it can see what you already claim in public.
If a price you have actually charged is not in any of those, add one line: “I have charged $____ for ____.” Do not fill out a questionnaire.
If the model starts retelling reptile history, teaching Beckwith, profiling your personality, or inventing packages you do not deliver, stop and re-run.
Before you send the first card
Check four things.
The price is a number you’ve actually charged, or the card says UNPRICED.
The artifact is a thing they can hold (a file, a recording, a written extraction), never a feeling.
Every card points at a real moment… a quote from your transcript, or a line from your own site. If a card has no quote behind it, the model invented it. Re-run.
The card name comes from words that were actually said. If the model minted a new brand name, even one your client handed it, re-run.
Skill
Download the skill: monster-price-list.zip
Prompt
You are helping me write The Monster Price List for my own work.
I sell expertise I can’t fully explain. It shows up while I’m working… in calls, in sessions, in the questions I ask… and then it disappears without ever becoming a product. When someone asks what I do, I reach for a job title, they ask my rate, and they compare me to the last person who sounded similar. Your job is to hunt through recordings of me actually working, find the moments a buyer valued, and turn them into cards a buyer can accept, reject, or argue with.
This is NOT a brand workshop, a sales-page rewrite, a “charge more” pep talk, a personality profile, or a lesson about Hank Molt, Beckwith, reptiles, or documentaries. You are not mapping my thinking patterns. You are hunting sellable offers. If you start teaching or profiling, stop and return to the cards.
## What I will give you (do not interview me first)
I am attaching, in order of value:
1. One to three transcripts of me working: a sales call, a coaching or consulting session, a client call, a workshop. Zoom, Fathom, Granola, or Otter exports are all fine. Messy is fine.
2. Optional: my website URL or pasted homepage and services copy, and a PDF of my LinkedIn profile, so you can see what I already claim in public and any posted prices.
3. Optional, one line: a price I have actually charged, and for what.
If I gave you only the website and LinkedIn, run anyway, but say plainly that you are working from my public residue, and name what a transcript would let you see.
You may ask at most TWO follow-up questions, and only if a card cannot be sent without the answer (almost always: a real price, or what the buyer walks away holding). If you can write UNPRICED and still produce tonight’s card, do that instead of asking.
## How to read the transcripts (this is the work)
Go through each transcript and collect, with a short quote for each:
- Value signals from the other person. “Wow.” “Say that again.” “Can you send me that?” “How did you know that?” A long pause after I said something. Them writing something down.
- The diagnosis. Any point where I named their problem better than they had. That sentence is often the card name.
- The unbilled deliverable. Anything I made, fixed, rewrote, or handed over inside the call that never got invoiced. Free work a buyer visibly wanted is an offer candidate.
- The side request. Any “could you also...” or “do you do X?” that I deflected, half-answered, or said I would just throw in.
- Prices out loud. Any dollar amount, rate, or “it depends” moment, verbatim.
- Repeats. Anything that shows up in more than one transcript. Twice is a pattern, and patterns become cards first.
## Physics (obey these)
- Every card must be quote-locked. It cites the transcript moment (speaker plus a short quote) it came from. A card with no quote behind it does not exist. Cut it.
- A card only counts if the buyer can reject it. Otherwise it is a vibe.
- The card name comes from words that were actually said, by me or by the buyer, in a transcript or on my site. Do not mint a new brand name, even if the client hands you a cute one in the call.
- Job titles and ingredients (coach, consultant, strategy, training, “I help leaders”) are not products until they have a name, a scene-level problem, an artifact outcome, a not-for line, and a number.
- If a price said out loud and a posted price disagree, show both and flag it. Do not pick silently.
- If the material shows hourly AND a packaged engagement I already ran, the first card is the packaged engagement. Hourly stays in the parking lot.
- If no price appears anywhere, mark UNPRICED and put one price question in Do this tonight line 4. Do not invent a market rate.
- If I have no capacity limit anywhere, write scarcity as UNSET. Do not invent “4 per quarter.”
- Artifact: a file, email, note, recording, program, or written extraction. A feeling does not qualify. If a moment only produced a feeling, mark the artifact MISSING and say what artifact would capture it (usually the thing I said, written down).
- Banned output language: leverage, unlock, transform, game-changer, holistic, premium positioning, thought leadership, “not X, it’s Y.”
## Constraints
- Write as if I have to send the first card this week.
- No em dashes. Full sentences a person would send. No stacked fragments.
- Do not invent client names, fake dialogue, testimonials, or false specificity. Quote what is there and anonymize the client.
- Cite in one short line what you used from each transcript vs the website vs LinkedIn, so I can see you read them.
## Build in this exact structure
### Do this tonight (REQUIRED; write this first)
Four lines max each:
1. The one card name (sayable in one breath, from words actually said).
2. The buyer problem as a scene, taken from a real transcript moment.
3. The artifact they walk away holding (a thing, not a feeling).
4. The exact sentence I can paste that includes the posted price, or UNPRICED plus the one question I must answer before I send this card.
### 1. The dig (what the transcripts showed)
The moment inventory: value signals, diagnosis lines, unbilled deliverables, side requests, prices out loud, repeats. Each with its quote. Short lines. This is evidence, not an essay.
### 2. First card (full)
- Name, and the quote it came from
- Who it is for (role + situation)
- Buyer problem (the scene from the call, anonymized)
- Artifact outcome
- What is included (only what the transcripts and artifacts can support)
- Not for
- Posted price (my number, or UNPRICED)
- Why a buyer can argue with this number (one sentence)
- The one sentence the buyer should be able to repeat to a partner
- Source: transcript 1/2/3, website, LinkedIn, or my price line
### 3. Catalog
Only offers with a quote behind them. 1-5 cards. If only one is real, stop at one.
Name | Buyer problem | Artifact | Not for | Price or UNPRICED | Quote
The give-away ledger: what I delivered free, on tape, that belongs on a card or inside one.
Parking lot: titles and services that are still not products.
### 4. Anti-rate-card check
For each card: what I say if they ask for hourly; where it still sounds like labor; the rewrite; whether it stays on the catalog.
### 5. Earned scarcity rule
Real constraint from the transcripts or artifacts, or UNSET plus one capacity question. Forbidden: hurry, everyone wants this, fake remaining slots.
### 6. Send test
6-10 line note I can paste to the next buyer, ideally the person in the transcript. Card name, artifact, not-for, price or “I will not quote this until X.”
