The Test

Hawaii, Maui. We were there for windsurfing, my girlfriend at the time and I. Young, tanned, didn’t need anything but wind and waves. At the spot, a guy was sitting by the lifeguard tower. He waved me over.

He said: Stand on one leg. Spread your arms. I did. He pushed my arm down. I tipped. No surprise. Then he pressed a plastic card into my hand. Repeated the test. This time I stood like I was nailed to the ground. He pushed as hard as he could. Nothing moved.

I was blown away. Genuinely blown away. It sounded like nonsense, but it didn’t feel like it.

Later on the beach I said to her: If this is real, everyone will buy it.

I didn’t know I’d be right. And I didn’t know that the first part of the sentence was the wrong question.

I came from e-commerce. Studied marketing, ran my own companies, software, online shops. My view of the world was: What works, where is demand, how do you scale? The test fit that framework. A product that sells itself. You just have to show it.

The problem wasn’t that the test lied. The problem was that it worked. Reliably. With almost everyone. At trade shows, at events, one-on-one. People stood more stable, felt stronger, were amazed. Every time.

What I didn’t understand back then: The test works because the body reacts to expectation. When someone tells you this is going to make you stronger, and you believe it, even just a little bit, your body reacts. The muscles tense differently. Your posture changes. That’s not a trick. That’s psychology. Well documented, extensively studied, measurable.

The technical term is placebo. But the word is misleading because most people think placebo means nothing happens. Something does happen. It’s just not what’s being claimed. Does the strength come from a frequency in the hologram? Or from the mind of the person taking the test?

We tried every variation. Different positions, different products, blind tests, with the band, without the band, with a different band. The results varied. No causal link could be proven. In the end, everything pointed in the same direction: Placebo.

But at a trade show with two hundred people who just felt it work, the word placebo isn’t an argument. It’s a footnote nobody reads. The moment matters. The feeling matters. The belief matters. And the test delivered that moment. Every time.

I probably did the test a thousand times. I saw people marvel, laugh, go get their friends. I saw athletes say: That’s unbelievable. I saw women buy three wristbands, one for themselves, two as gifts.

What I didn’t do: think the question through to the end. If the effect doesn’t come from the product but from the mind, what am I actually selling?

The answer could have gotten uncomfortable. So I postponed it. Things were going too well. The demand was real. The excitement was genuine. The feedback was overwhelming.

Looking back, the moment on the beach in Maui was the point where two things collided that are dangerous together: a real experience and a business instinct. I felt something. And I immediately started calculating.

One was human. The other was business. The question I should have asked was: What exactly did I feel? And where did it really come from?

But that question would have killed the business instinct. And the business instinct was louder.