Last year, I started snooping on people.
Specifically, I started snooping on 3-4 online business owners, who have businesses that are doing well, and who I was frankly jealous of, because I wanted something similar.
I won’t tell you all the folks I snooped on, but I will tell you one was a guy named Olly Richards.
I’m not here to hype up Olly — if you wanna find out more about the guy, the Internet’s your friend.
I simply want to share a testimonial I saw on Olly’s site, or rather a video confessional, by one of Olly’s coaching students.
This coaching student runs a 6-figure online education business. In other words, he has an audience. He’s making good money. He’s unlikely to respond to typical promises made in the “creator” economy.
So why did this student decide to work with Olly, and pay Olly tens of thousands of dollars? From the video, in the student’s words:
“You can do things by experimenting and doing things yourself. You learn that way. That is one way of doing things. But in my opinion, I’ve just found it’s extremely exhausting after a certain point. I’m really tired of experimenting. Just give it to me. Just tell me what to do, tell me what not to do.”
At the time, as part of the research for my new 10 Commandments book, I was reading the book I’m OK — You’re OK by Thomas Harris. In that book, Harris writes:
“Structure hunger is an outgrowth of recognition hunger, which grew from the initial stroking hunger.”
That sounded profound to me when I read it, and seemed tightly connected with that testimonial for Olly Richards.
Now, after a year has passed, it seems less tightly connected and less profound, but it does describe the core process that people like Olly’s student go through:
1. They start out by just wanting to feel OK, ie. better about themselves and their place in the world.
2. To do that, they seek out recognition — via work, achievement, and the fruits thereof.
3. Getting recognition, and worse yet, keeping recognition, is tiring, and so people start looking for help, shortcuts, and “structure” eg. simply being told what to do.
Maybe you think I’m telling you something super obvious, and that there’s no need to flog such a poor and common horse.
Fine. In that case, let me just share a few simple takeaways:
1. People like Olly’s student, who have already achieved recognition, make for better customers than people who have not, simply by virtue of having money to spend (on your help) and resources (list, offers, team) to profit from your help quickly and effectively.
2. If you want to appeal to such people, try the “Tired of experimenting?” line, because it comes directly from the mouth of a member of that market.
3. If you yourself are personally tired of experimenting, then take a look at the community below.
It’s a place where business owners, marketers, and copywriters follow proven recipes to get more value out of their existing skills and assets, often while working dramatically less, and having a more fun time of it, than they are doing now: