Follow The Problem

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, this is Julie Chenell, and today I want to talk about probably the biggest mistake that I see business owners make. I coach people day in, day out, all levels, whether they're making their first $1,000 all the way up to multi-millions, and this is the consistent mistake that is made. I say to them, okay, tell me your idea. They tell me an idea for a new offer. It doesn't matter what kind of offer it is. And my next question is, What problem is this tied to? So today's episode is called Follow the Problem, and I will argue that most people who build offers, they start by thinking, gosh, I need to make more money, or I need to make money, just, you know, if they're starting out. And so then they think, well, what can I sell? And that's fundamentally the wrong question to ask. Instead, you want to focus on what problems are there out in the world that I can solve with my eyes closed? And then once you've identified the problem and you have come up with the solution and the value that you're going to bring to the market, then you have a better foundation on which to build on. So obviously this— there's some, some things to discuss here when it comes to following the problem. The first is that You know, we automatically assume in that idea that people know what their problem is, and some people don't. If you're starting out in business, it's easier to work with people who are already problem aware than to try to make them problem aware. But there is a very common scenario that happens in business where you want to solve a particular problem. But you have a solution that's different than what they're thinking. That's okay. But as a marketer, you have to go to the problem that they think they have, even if how you're going to solve it is different than what they're thinking. So let me take this out of the theoretical and start talking about it in terms of a story. Back in the day, it was 2012, so it was like 11, 12 years ago now at this point, I was a mom blogger and I had a WordPress blog and I would tinker with this blog and I would play with the header, the theme, all this kind of stuff. And I had followers who were also mom bloggers and they would watch my blog change, you know, every couple days. I was like playing dress-up with my blog, if you will. And they would say, "Man, I love how you did that header. I want that header too." So what was the problem? The problem was their header sucked, mine was cool. They wanted the cool header, but they didn't know how to do it. And so this is a problem, and when I have the solution, I know that value follows. So at first I said, well, you know, here's how you do it. And I just kind of gave it away for free, quickly realizing that I could actually charge money and design these people's sites. Well, a couple of these moms weren't on WordPress. They were on Google's platform at the time. It was called Blogspot. And they were like, well, that works on WordPress, but it doesn't work over here on Blogspot. And I thought, oh, huh, yeah, that's funny. And so I actually, in an attempt to solve this problem originally, I opened up my own Blogspot blog, right? And I was trying to make my headers work over there. It never quite worked the same way. And so I could have just stopped there, but I realized that the true problem was that they weren't on WordPress. It wasn't that they didn't know how to create a cool blog header. And so I thought, well, if I can convince these mom bloggers that they need to move off of Blogspot and come over to WordPress where they have full control over their design and look and feel of their site, then they'll get the header that they want. And so some of these people listened, and I showed these women that their real problem wasn't the designing of the header on Blogspot. It was that they were on the wrong platform. And that educational, you know, information that I gave them convinced them to migrate over to WordPress, which, if you are a good business person, the problem you solve at first should invariably create another problem. And in my case, it did, because now they wanted to move over to WordPress, but now they had another problem, which was, how do I get my site with 300 blog posts? How do I move all of that over to WordPress? And so by following the problem, if you imagine me a little bit like one of those dogs, a beagle, you know, who always has their nose to the ground, they're always sniffing a scent and they're like on the hunt for a bone or what have you, a rodent in the ground. This is how I was 11 years ago. I was on the hunt. I had my nose to the ground and I was thinking about problems. And by solving the problem of, hey, you have a header that looks ugly and you want a cool one, I'm not just going to try to solve it one way by like figuring out how I can make Blogspot headers look good. I'm gonna solve it, uh, a second way. I'm going to actually educate you. On why you are on the wrong platform. I will move you over. And now I ended up solving both problems. So I set up migration services. I ended up writing a big long blog post about how to migrate your site from Blogspot to WordPress. It got ranked as number one, and it was such a good blog post. It was so complete and it was kind of overwhelming that people would say, they would just comment and be like, hey, you, You clearly know what you're doing. Can you just do this for me? That was one of my first big hit offers, were these Blogspot to WordPress migrations. And I became known for them. And of course, in the process of migrating sites, they wanted new headers, new designs, things like that. And I offered that. And so you can see how following the problem leads you to money. So if you're listening to this podcast and you are thinking about a new offer, I want you to really sit with what is the problem that you're solving. And if you are in the position where you know that your customer thinks problem is solved by, you know, ABC, and you're saying, no, it's EFG, you have some education to do. And so in order to sell offers where there's education needed, you need to have your free education be closing that gap, right? So if I write a blog post on why WordPress is, is so much more versatile in designing for headers and things like that, that education needs to be free. I need to be able to meet people where they're at, which is Why can't I get my Blogspot header to look amazing? Right? I need to target, I need to go to that corner on the market. I need to hit them right there. I need to make sure I'm using language that they understand, that they're thinking. Once I've got them, I can then educate them. I can make them solution aware instead of, hey, just become a better designer. It's actually, hey, become a better designer, but also change platforms. That could be a blog post. It can be a webinar. It can be a YouTube video. It can be a workshop. And then once they understand, then you can go ahead and make the offer. So for me, I had education to do and I did it in the form of blog posts. That was a problem-aware customer, potential customer, who ended up spending more money with me than they initially thought. Solution-aware customers were the people who had already figured out that Blogspot sucked, right? They already had figured that out and they wanted to go to WordPress. Those were the people that were Googling how to migrate from Blogspot to WordPress. And so when they Googled, they found me. And so they were already solution aware. And then instantly my blog post made them product aware, which was aware of my service, and they purchased. And they purchased without a sales call. They just bought right with this janky little PayPal button that was in my blog post. And so the other lesson here, as you are listening to me tell this story, is that problem aware folks are often Googling. If they are Googling, they're Googling the problem, right? How to design a better header in Blogspot, right? Or how to make my header in Blogspot look, look awesome. That's very problem aware. Those people, problem aware people also frequently hang out in Facebook groups, right? I could have probably found them in some blog, mom blog Facebook group back in the day, and they would've been asking those questions. Solution-aware people are most definitely searching because they already know the solution, they're just looking for the how, right? And so that's why you'll find a lot of search-based traffic with solution-aware people. You know, it's kind of like moms of newborns and they, you know, their kid is crying, they don't know how to get their kid to sleep, they're gonna go into a Facebook group or they're gonna go follow some person, they're gonna say, how do I get my kid to stop crying? They're very problem-focused. But if they've heard about the MamaRoo blah, blah, blah, right? Or some like cool contraption that helps your kids sleep. Now they're solution-aware. They need a contraption. They're gonna go to what? They're gonna go to Google. They're gonna go to Pinterest and they're gonna Google like reviews and best, you know, sleep help assistant or what have you. Search-based traffic on Amazon, Pinterest, Google, those places are often more solution-aware folk. And then you've got more problem-aware people, you know, they do Google, of course, but they're also oftentimes in the comment sections on social media, which is why when you're running ads, you want to think very much about the problem. So I hope this was helpful. If it was, please don't forget to leave me a review. Tag me on social media. I'll talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey. With resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.