An Email Players subscriber asks how to get more of the stuff:
I feel like I don’t really have that feeling about who I serve and have pivoted from a few markets over the years — all of them dying out due to my lack of obsession.
I guess my question to you is:
What would you do in such a situation?
I’m a copywriter by trade and not a bad one at that, and I genuinely love marketing, business and helping people. But I’ve not had that real passion to serve any one person in particular that you talk about.
His is the first and most important question.
And I liken it to a sack of flour or feed:
Rip the cord mindlessly down the middle and everything spills out. It’s total chaos, impossible to clean up, and you’ll always be finding residue all over the place for years and years. But if you rip it correctly across the top, neatly, as intended… everything is good, clean, in order.
So what do you do?
The answer is:
Look around at the world for things that viscerally bother you.
As in, it genuinely bothers you and ideally ANGERS you, to see a certain market suffering or confused or not getting something they want. A market suffering from something and it just gets you in the gut and to the point where you think about it constantly.
Now see what they are buying.
Are they spending money to solve that problem?
No?
Then they ain’t it.
But, if they are spending money to solve the problem, and if you can find and/or create a solution, or multiple solutions, that are better than what they are spending money on… you will never really “work” another day in your life. Because it ain’t work, it’s something you want to do, enjoy doing, would do it even if you weren’t getting paid because it just friggin’ bothers you that the people in that market are suffering in some way.
All kinds of forces work for you in this situation.
Examples?
Okay, below are a few off the top off my head I’ve seen:
* Frustrated parents of autistic children needing guidance and answers
* People helpless to stop violence being imported into their communities by their politicians from God-knows-where and wanting home security options
* Overweight people you see are good, salt of the earth types, slowly killing themselves
* Husbands who can’t “get it up” for their wives, maybe terrified they’ll lose their marriages
* Wives trying to get pregnant but for some reason it ain’t happening even though medically all is fine and good
* People who suffer from crippling low energy levels
* Business people watching their products or services become obsolete or no longer in demand, wondering what to do now
* SaaS providers plagued with insomnia over so-called AI
* Retired boomers watching their life savings evaporate, realizing they’re probably just a year away, tops, from having to collect shopping carts at Walmart to stay afloat
* Middle-aged men who have to get up several times per night to pee, feel pinprick pain while having the secks, and want to avoid gruesome prostate surgeries (never, EVER Google “TURP surgery.”. . . You just did, didn’t you? I told you not to do that…)
And the list goes on and on and on.
The above are just spit-balling.
But I can say there always have been, are now, and always will be markets to sell to.
The key is to start with the PROBLEM, then find a solution. This is the exact, polar opposite of what most do. The vast majority have or build out a solution looking for a problem. But what you want are problems you viscerally want to solve for people, and start there, then build or find a solution to sell them.
That’s how you get that passion.
Do it right, and life gets a whole lot more interesting.
A whole lot more fun.
And, yes, a whole lot more prosperous.
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Ben Settle
