I had lunch with a friend today, and he reminded me of something I have told a lot of people over the years. Something I completely forgot to tell myself.
Start with curiosity. Listen to your market. Your first idea is almost never right, so you listen, you learn, and you keep changing it until it fits what people actually want.
Good advice. I have given it many times. And then I went and did the opposite.
My first startup
A few years ago I started a company in New York called New York Foodbox. We delivered recipes and the exact ingredients to your door so you could cook restaurant-style food at home.
I loved the idea. I really did.
So I did what a lot of first-time founders do. I asked my friends and family if they thought it was a great idea. Every single one of them said yes, of course, sounds amazing.
That should have been my first clue. Nobody tells you your baby is ugly.
We spent way too long getting everything perfect. The perfect logo. The perfect box. The perfect product. Then we launched.
And nobody bought.
I kept at it for a full year. I kept telling myself the idea was great and people just needed to find it. Slowly, way too slowly, the truth showed up.
Nobody moves to New York City to cook. People move to New York to eat at restaurants. And when they are hungover on a Sunday, they order in. I had built a cooking company in the one city full of people who do not want to cook.
Same idea, different city
Here is the part that still stings a little.
Around the same time, a company called Blue Apron launched almost the exact same model across the US. They became huge. A unicorn.
The difference was not the idea. The idea was basically the same. The difference was that they launched in places where people actually wanted to cook. They listened to their customers and went where the need was.
I did not listen. I just kept insisting my idea was great.
What I took from it was simple: always listen to your customer. Talk to the market first. Build for the need you find, not the need you imagine.
And then I did it again
Now for the awkward part.
It turns out I have been failing at my own advice again, this time with my coaching business.
I had a strong idea of what people might love and need. And I pushed it onto the market without checking. One of my offers is built around making a personal narrative video for clients. I was sure people would want it. But that hunch has never really been proven, not even with the people who pay me.
I fell into the same trap. I fell in love with my idea and forgot to ask if anyone else wanted it.
What my friend reminded me
His advice was the same advice I used to give. Get curious again. Talk to as many people in my market as I can. Not to sell them anything. Just to listen for what they actually struggle with and what they actually need.
Then come back with something built for those exact needs, and offer it to them.
If someone tells me what they need, and I show up with a solution shaped to that need, the odds of it being a fit are much higher than me showing up with a hunch I have been carrying around. This is the same reason you cannot think yourself to the answer. You have to go out and gather real evidence.
It is so obvious when I write it down. It is the thing I have told other people for years. And it took a lunch with a friend to make me see I had stopped doing it myself.
The takeaway
If you are building something, a business, an offer, a new chapter of your career, do not fall in love with your idea before you fall in love with the problem.
Get curious first. Go talk to the people you want to serve. Ask what is hard for them, what they wish existed, what they would actually pay for.
Then build for that.
I am taking my own medicine now. Over the next few weeks I am going to have a lot of these conversations. I am not going to sell anything. I just want to listen, and I will let you know what I learn. (This is the same instinct behind how 50 Lunches started.)
Funny how the advice you give the easiest is the advice you take the slowest.
Hang in there :)
