Somewhere along the way we fucked up. Or maybe it was just me.
But what happened is that we tried to get too smart with business. We figured that everything could be broken down into a formula even when we had the most the basic formula.
The Pocket Business Formula is as simple as it can get:
Audience x Offer = $$$$$$That’s it. You can’t break it down any further. And yet not matter what the aspect of business is we want to believe that we can break it down into a formula.
This is why templates are so popular. Because we want to believe there we can plug-n-play with our business and that isn’t the case at all. If you don’t feel in those templates with the right words then everything goes to shit.
Every day thousands of people are failing and quitting online business because they want everything to be a framework. If they could simply follow a blueprint then they’d be good.
But even the best do that and those people still fail.
So what’s the problem?
We Aren’t Rational
This has always been the main problem. Our audience isn’t raitional and yet we try to force in ideas that have rational backgrounds.
For example, if I told you that I had a 5-day email sequence that converts like crazy you’d want that sequence. If I asked you why you bought it you might say the following.
- I need a better email sequence
- I need more sales
- I don’t know where to start
- I was curious
All of these are very rational answer but none of them describe why we bought. All they do is rationalize something to make it seem like we had a proper answer to this.
A great example of this is Prime. By all shapes, measures, and metrics it’s not a great drink. In fact, it doesn’t even do what people think it should do.
And yet…
Prime Hydration has seen an exceptional rise in the hydration market, achieving a valuation of $3.2 billion by 2023. The company reached $250 million in sales in its first year and was forecasted to surpass $1.2 billion in annual sales for 2023.
This was reported in 2023, and there is no reason (at the time of writing this essay) to show that things have slowed down.
If you asked someone why they bought it you’d probably get the following answers.
- I like being hydrated (it doesn’t do that well based on studies)
- I like the taste (doesn’t taste any different or better than its competitors)
- I like the people behind it
Again, all of this seems completely logical. Rational even.
But it’s still wrong.
The 3 Egos and Mistress
The 3 Egos are the big niches:
- Health
- Wealth
- Love
For the longest time I completely separated them from the Mistress. The Mistress is the fourth category of niches: Irrationally Passionate. Some people also refer to this as Happy which means the list of niches looks like this:
- Health
- Wealth
- Love
- Happy
You can see how the fourth category doesn’t feel like it fits with the first three, but I was wrong. The fourth one actually explains the first three very well.
The Shoe Collector
I’m a shoe collector.
This is my favorite shoe ever.
To buy it today (as of this writing) I’d need to spend $1,600 and I mostly definitely would if I needed to. And this is where your logic kicks in because you’re going:
- That shoe is ugly
- There is nothing that warrants spending that much on shoe
- I could use $1,600 on a million other most useful things
And here’s the rub. I don’t care that you think those things. It doesn’t me from wanting the shoes and getting it at any means possible.
If you asked me why I love the shoe I could be rational and say:
- It’s a collector’s item so I could sell it for more down the road
- It feels like Jordan’s first true collaboration where the designer went outside the box
- If I wore them then I would stand out
And again, all of these make sense, but they wouldn’t be the reason why this shoe is my favorite. Do you want to know why I think this shoe is my favorite?
The Random LEGOS Playtime
When I was little I was always by myself. My brother wasn’t born until I was 11. This meant that I had to find ways to play and once of those ways was by dumping my LEGOs all out and building stuff.
I never knew what I was going to build. My mind doesn’t work that way. I start building and see where it takes me.
But whenever I was done I was always happy with the results because I felt the journey of getting there. That’s what the shoes above remind me of. Not having a complete vision of the shoe but piecing things together randomly until you have something you like.
What’s funny is that I didn’t like the shoe when I first saw it. But then I read the story behind its creation. I held the shoe in my hand and I thought, “I wish I had made this“.
Nike couldn’t have planned for my thought process. They didn’t know how I played with LEGOs as a kid. They didn’t know that I respect people who build random things.
They knew none of these things.
They had their own logic and told their own stories behind the shoe.
Seeing Our Own Futures
What if every time we spent money we did so because wanted to feel better? That was it.
I collect the shoes because they bring me happiness. They make me feel better.
The reason why the 3 Egos work so well is because we can visualize ourselves with those things and that makes us feel better.
The thought of making more money in one year than most people make in a lifetime can make someone feel extremely good so why wouldn’t they buy something that can help make that happen for them?
The logical person will sit on the sidelines and ask why the person is spending $1,000 on a course. Logically it might not make sense because they say you can find everything for free on the Internet.
And yet you buy the course because it makes you feel differently than the free stuff.
If you go through the free stuff and still feel an emptiness then that’s not a feeling you want to maintain. So what do you do?
You buy the $1,000 course and now you feel better.
Do you want to know why most people don’t complete the courses that they purchase? It’s not because of the length of the course. It’s not because of a lack of time.
It’s because they bought it chasing a feeling and by buying it they achieved it, it’s hard to go back to the course or complete it until there is a new feeling to chase.
Lots of People Buy Pins
This is Rubeena Ianigro’s shop The Gray Muse. She mostly sells enamel pins and last time I checked in on her, she was doing over $750,000 a year.
Here’s the thing, there is no logical reason for anyone to buy a pin. There is no need for a pin. There is no logical reason why she should be making this much money.
And yet she does.
I know she’ll clear $1,000,000 in no time unless she overthinks it and loses the feeling.
But this is also where we start to find problems and it goes back to us wanting to find frameworks and instructions that work.
You could look at everything Rubeena does, duplicate it and still not find the same success? Logically we would find rationale behind this by saying that she has already created those pins and nobody likes a copycat.
But what about the people who don’t know about Rubeena? Shouldn’t they be buying your pins?
Rubeen does something that some of her competitors don’t. She provides them with the feeling that they need. How does she do it?
Here’s the frustrating thing. Neither you nor I can know exactly.
Through the combination of colors, images, products, and other things, there comes about a feeling that people are chasing. Buying the pins makes complete sense to them, even though they couldn’t rationalize it either.
Everything Is for More Feels
We are constantly looking for solutions to grow our business. We continue to buy things because they help us to achieve a feeling that we want.
If we want to break things down to their essence, then we can keep it as simple as possible. Your business isn’t doing as well as you want because it isn’t offering more feels.
That’s crazy to think about because the rational business says:
- more content
- maybe paid ads
- higher-converting funnels
And all of these make sense as long as they continue to amplify the feels. I know it sounds silly me stating it like this but looking at a successful business versus an unsuccessful one then we can see that’s what it comes down to.
One business is great an scaling the feels while the other isn’t.
But because that doesn’t feel concrete, we need to come up with rational ways to scale our business. I can tell you to send more emails, but is the act of sending more emails making the difference, or is it the fact the emails continue to compound the feeling the customer has?
There is a funnel course within Full Stack Engines called Feel Good Funnels. The entire premise is that everything that you’re doing is meant to scale the feelings you want your customers to have.
Before Internet video was a thing there were some Internet millionaires. When video was introduced, the number of millionaires started to exponentially grow.
We can look back and try to be logical as to why that happened, but it was the fact that now instead of words (tapping into one sense) you had a medium that used multiple elements to do a better job of bringing the feels out.
We’ve Been Choosing the Wrong Customers
You know how you’re supposed to target one person with your message? That was and still is correct. But the problem is that we didn’t break our customers down further than we needed.
- They don’t care
- They care and…
- They think logically
- They follow their feelings
We know going after people who don’t care if futile. So what happens is many of us turn to those who care and think logically and that’s where we screw up. Because if someone is thinking logically about our business then chances are we’ve already lost them.
It means there wasn’t a feeling strong enough to get them to act.
But what if we focused our efforts on the few people who have strong feelings around what we’re trying to do? Do you think we could grow our business?
I think you could because those people become passionate. They become the people who tell other people and the reason why this works is because the people being told about your business have strong feelings associate with the person that is telling them.
How many times has a stranger recommended something to you and you followed through on it? I can’t tell you how many times someone has recommended a restaurant, book, or movie and I didn’t check it out.
Don’t get me wrong, I had every intention of doing so but because it came from a person I didn’t have strong feelings about and I didn’t have strong feelings about the thing they were telling me, then I didn’t act on it.
There Are Two Levels We Are Working With
I can sell my offers here because they help you make more money. You have a feeling already around making more money.
Just like we have feelings around better health and more love.
We can call this Level 1. It’s there by default so no matter what I should make money.
But Level 2 is the level where I build up something that takes your emotions and makes them go beyond what you were ever feeling. To where there is now an attachment to the brand of Makers Mob.
How many courses, books, workshops, and whatever else have you purchased that helped you feel closer to the brand where there was an attachment? It rarely happens.
We buy most of these things because already have attachments to wanting more money, more health, and more love.
This is why it’s harder to create a successful business outside of the 3 Egos and yet it happens al of the time.
In fact, you’ll find more people making millions outside of the 3 Egos than within it. Why?
There are stronger feelings attached.
Going back to Rubeena’s site, The Gray Muse, you can see this in action. A pin isn’t a means to an end. It is the end.
When you buy one of my programs, you’re doing it to get somewhere. There is no reason to feel attachment to it. That makes it harder to spread it naturally.
But people can be very excited with pins. They are so excited they share them with others without asking. The idea can spread more easily.
I added shirts to Makers Mob not because I think there is big money in shirts. Any money made from them is simply a bonus.
The idea is that the brand itself needs to evoke a feeling that helps you grow more attached. It’s hard to become attached to a digital product. Again, it becomes merely a tool unless you’re an affiliate for it.
Then you have a different feeling because it’s directly attached to you making more money.
But when you think of Makers Mob and The Billionaire Makers Society, I want there to be a positive feeling behind it. This rarely happens with one thing and it becomes almost impossible with an entirely digital experience.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make money without it. Plenty of people making millions of dollars with courses who don’t have any physical products.
However, what is the overall feeling if you join The Billionaire Makers Society and start to interact with people or read an essay that unlocks new knowledge in you? What happens when you get your Members’ Only shirt? What happens when you earn your first patch?
You receive this patch when you make your first $1 with your business after joining The Billionaire Makers Society. To someone on the outside, this patch isn’t a big deal.
There is no reason to buy the patch. It’s just a thing.
But to earn it and then have someone else buy it for you as a reward? That’s a completely different feeling. One that can’t be put into words.
Good vibes.
Your New Business Plan? Vibes
I know what you want. You want the 7-point checklist to making this work for your business.
But there isn’t one.
You don’t control the feelings that others have. The only thing you can do is cultivate a world in which you think those feelings will grow.
This is why world-building in business is so important. If you look at everything from your social media content to your emails to your offers, you can see if you’ve cultivated a world that brings out the best feelings in those who have them.
How do you create an environment where people can freely chase after the feeling they want?
After someone buys from you and captures that feeling then what happens? Is there something else they have to buy to capture the next one? How do they find the next one?
Think about the tactics we all take the time to learn.
- The best social media content to create
- How to grow on social media
- What to send to our mailing list
- How to create an irresisitble offer
- How to get people to spend more on you over their lifetimes
The list goes on but everything that we learn is to help us capture the feeling we want. However, we have to implement it so our audiences know we have the means to help them capture the feeling they want.
That doesn’t mean these tactics should be ignored. They 100% should be applied. Hell, I talk about this stuff in my courses and it’s things I do for my clients.
But the tactics should be viewed through a lens of do they help to amplify this vibe. If they aren’t making the vibe stronger then they could be a waste.
Your message compounds which means your vibe compounds. So even if you’re selling digital products the question has to be how do you create an experience that outshines everyone else?