stop asking your customers what they want (do this instead)

Why You Shouldn’t Listen To Your Customers About What To Make Next

Many years ago Amy Porterfield’s team came to me with a project that was outside my scope, but something they guessed I might want to take on.

Her team was trying to figure out what to create next. 

Amy was great to work for—always paid my rates, provided me with everything I needed, even ran meetings with cameras on at my suggestion, even though that wasn’t her team's custom at the time. (Can you imagine? This was 2017. Being on camera all day was not the norm.)

The project involved watching Ryan Levesque’s Ask Method program then creating a survey and some emails for her audience. 

The survey results were clear: people wanted to learn about systems and operations. They wanted to learn how to build scalable businesses, including which spreadsheets to create, how to organize their virtual filing systems and create standard operating procedures. Amy and her team forged ahead and created a program called Systems That Scale, which was as thorough and well-put together as anyone could want, just as you’d expect from Amy. 

I was on mat leave and not doing much service-based work when the program launched, so I can’t tell you what the exact results were—and even if I knew for sure, it wouldn’t be ethical to share. I can only tell you what I observed, which was a single live launch, after which the program was rolled into bundles or offered as a bonus for some other offer. It’s not on her website and even ChatGPT can’t tell me much about it. 

All the operations people reading this email are like, “Yeah, duh. Tell me something I don’t know.” Programs that teach practical (aka boring) business skills are a much harder sell than How To Make Money Doing X. I know tons of rich entrepreneurs who don’t even have naming conventions for their Google folders. (I weep for them!!)

But that’s a mere side note to this story, not the main takeaway. 

The main takeaway – for me, anyway, and for a lot of the business owners who read my work – is this: 

If you’re trying to find your next big business move, ask yourself what you want to make. What would be in service to your dream, the reason you started this business in the first place? What would put you into such a deep state of creative flow you literally can’t stop working, not even to take a pee or get a snack?

Stay with me, I realize that’s in direct contradiction to what everyone else says. 

Run surveys!

Ask your customers!

Don’t build a product, solve a problem!

Hope is not a marketing strategy!

Hold the phone. My guess is that you are attracted to the promise of online business because you want to do work that lights you up. You want creative freedom as part of your daily routine, right? To feel you have more say in how you spend your day? 

Isn’t that what we all want?

Every six weeks or so I meet with a group of newsletter operators to talk about growth and help each other solve problems. It’s a private group I started with Lex Roman of Revenue Rulebreaker. This week we had a new member, Maliha [Last Name] of The Side Blogger, a daily newsletter I’ve been loving lately.* Someone in the group suggested Maliha run a survey to see what kind of product their subscribers might want. 

“I don’t really care what they want,” Maliha said, absolutely deadpan. “I want to make what I want to make.” 

My jaw hit the floor. I knew exactly what they meant. I thought of all the surveys I ran, the things people asked me for, that, ultimately, they didn’t actually want or were not willing to pay for. All my many variations of Systems That Scale. I thought about the times I looked outward instead of inward for direction on what to create next. 

“It’s not that I don’t care,” Maliha told me later. “I care deeply. They fund my lifestyle. But not at the expense of my vision or peace of mind. That balance is important to me.”

You care deeply about your customers, too, I’m sure of that. Call me selfish, but I care about my personal happiness more. And ultimately, the result is the same. A fulfilled, creatively juiced Tarzan is a better leader, can access deeper wisdom, and show up for you at all stages of the roller coaster ride of running your own business. 

Market demand is important. I’m not pivoting to song circles—I wish! No one wants that. (I know because I ran a secret survey!) When you listen to your customers, they’ll tell you what problems they need help solving. You do need to take those things into account when creating products. 

But for some of us – not ALL, to be sure – the cry of our own hearts is the most important. We want to make the thing that is longing to be made. We want to fall down a rabbit hole and never climb out. 

We want to be creatively swept away like Moana on her raft, shouting to Mother Sky, “And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s insiiiiide me! Come what may, I know the way. I am MOANA!!!”

If that’s not you, there are easier businesses to start that are more predictable and have much greater market demand. Start a garage door repair company or sell car insurance. Go into the HVAC business! 

But a business like mine? 

It’s powered by the heart. So that’s the first place I’d look for direction on what to make next. 

Rebuttals welcome.

XOT

*Maliha recently wrote an incredible email addressing a subscriber who told her, “You shouldn’t be selling right now.” Read her response. 

In full transparency, this is a referral swap. But if it sounds genuine, it’s because it is.