Joshua Fraser explains why products fail despite great features and introduces the Jobs-to-Be-Done framework: customers hire products to do a specific job, not for features. He breaks down the three layers of a job (functional, emotional, social) with examples like the milkshake study and Airbnb, then walks through how to interview customers and identify what they actually need. His company Estated won a major client by cutting a 250-point data catalog down to eight essential data points.
The Jobs to Be Done Framework why do some products take off while others flop, even if they seem better? Why did Uber beat the taxi companies? Why did Airbnb win against hotels? Why do customers say one thing in surveys, then do something totally different? It's because you're asking the wrong question. The secret isn't what your customers want, it's what they're trying to get done. Let's unpack one of the most powerful frameworks in business.
Jobs to be Done we actually hire products to do things for us, and understanding what job we have to do in our lives for which we would hire a product is really the key to cracking this problem of motivating customers to buy what we're offering.
Master this, and you won't just build products people like. You'll build what they can't live without. What is the Jobs to be Done Framework? The JTBD is a powerful insight. Customers don't buy products. They hire them to do a job in their life. Think of a product like an employee. If it helps them make progress, helps them make more money, they're going to keep it. If not, they're going to replace it. The framework was formalized by the late Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, the author of the Innovator's Dilemma, a book Steve Jobs once called the most important business book he's ever read. Christiansen's research has shaped how product teams at Intercom, Basecamp, Airbnb, Microsoft think about innovation. The Job to be Done framework gets to the core of why people buy. And once you understand what job they're hiring your product to do, you can stop guessing and start building what truly matters. The Milkshake example Here's the classic story. To bring it to life, a fast food chain wanted to boost milkshake sales. Of course, they tried New Flavors promotions, and nothing worked. Christiansen's team studied the behavior and asked, what job is the milkshake doing? It turns out commuters were buying milkshakes in the morning not as a dessert, but as a portable breakfast. Something quick in the morning to stay full on their drive to work. So the company made the shakes thicker and they added a longer straw. Sales increased by seven times in some locations. It's not about the features, it's about fitting into the customer's life. Every job has three layers. Functional, what does it help me do? Emotional how does it make me feel? And social how does it make me look? Tesla isn't just a car, it's a statement. Slack isn't just your chat app. It helps Teams feel organized and everything is done so quickly. Let's talk about some real world examples. Airbnb versus hotels. Hotels thought they were selling rooms. Airbnb realized the job was help me feel like a local, not a tourist. That emotional job helped Airbnb become a hundred billion dollar disruptor. We also have Zoom versus Skype, the legacy platform. Like Skype thought the job was to make a video call. Zoom focused on making virtual meetings effortless and instant. A result, a 355% spike in revenue in 2022 and a brand that became the default word for video conferencing. When we say we're going to have a meeting, jump on Zoom. TikTok versus YouTube shorts. YouTube thought people wanted to watch shorts. TikTok realized users wanted to participate in culture quickly, creatively and with their own spin. The job wasn't consumption, it was creation and connection. The difference? Billions of views and one of the fastest growing companies ever, TikTok. So how do you actually apply this? Here's how you start. Interview your best customers. Ask what were you trying to solve when you chose the product from the moment of struggle? What triggered the switch? What were they frustrated with? Uncover what they found and and what they needed to switch. And it could be a competitor or a pen or a paper or do nothing at all but build the messaging around the job. Don't just list your features. Show how you could do the job better than anyone else. One of the things we really focused on when we were building estated and we were doubling in revenue every single year. And what I think differentiated us from the competition is we were always focused on what the result was that the user was trying to get with the data. So for an insurance company like State Farm, for example, they're looking to underwrite 180 million insurance insurance policies on homes in the United States every single year. And so they're literally running an entire scan of the entire nation to underwrite policies. We realized they only needed 8 of our 250 data points. Now, at the end of the day, when we realized that we had the best coverage of those eight data points, they purchased a lot of data from us and became one of our best clients we ever had because we knew what they were trying to achieve. We went through our entire product catalog of like 250 different data points and they needed less than 10. So we had a more competitive offer because we could offer them something to just what they needed. They didn't need 250 fields, they needed 10. And so it was a game changer. For us when we knew exactly what they needed. So when a situation happens, I want what motivation so I can get the desired outcome. The Jobs to be Done Framework flips that script Customers hire products to solve jobs. Jobs are functional, emotional and social. The best products win by doing the job better, not by having more features. If you got value from this video, you definitely got to join our everyday entrepreneur community. There's a school link below. You can see every single tool we used building estated over the years. And honestly, we're just trying to add value to founders. I'm working with a bunch of startups right now. I had the blessing to go through SaaS, Academy, work with Dan Martell, also go through Techstars. So I'm constantly meeting founders and I find that often these products, they are building lots of features, but they're not focused on what one of the customer needs. I was working with a company recently where they built all of these features and then they sold someone a $50,000 package with a great monthly recurring fee. And then the customer said to them, we don't want any of your bells and whistles, we just want it to look like this. I thought it was a blessing in disguise. But to the founders, it was almost scary because they realized that they'd spent months building features that won't actually always be used by the customers. The customers were like, strip all these features out, we don't need them. And that's a massive difference. And so I love this framework because so often we need to focus on what the result is for the end user, our customer, even our employees. But anytime we want to get something done and to sell something, you have to know what the result is of what your product's going to give to these people. And often I see founders overlook it. So I hope you enjoy this lesson. Like, subscribe. Hit us with a comment. What's one thing you're going to change in your business after seeing this video? Thanks for tuning in.
