When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he did something quite brilliant. He made the presentation the grand climax of a development process that had been going on for a decade.

He said that Apple had been very lucky. Twice before, its products had changed an entire industry. First, the Macintosh changed the computer industry. Then, the iPod did the same to the music industry.

Only then did he say, “Well, today we are introducing three revolutionary products of this class.” He didn’t need to say any more. Our System 1 immediately concluded that the new products would change a whole in- dustry in the same way as the previous two. It was priming of the first order!

You can do the same by making the future the latest part of a successful journey. For example: “Two years ago, we did this and succeeded with this...”, “A year ago, we did this and succeeded with this...”, “And the time has now come to...” and then present your message.