Soul (Re)searching

“Talk to your customers.”

The first bit of advice anyone creating any type of product or service gets. As a product and strategy consultant, I almost always had to tell my clients to do more market research than they were inclined to. Not understanding customers well enough is the #1 reason products—physical or digital, tangible or intangible, custom or mass-produced—fail.

Yet The Great Steve Jobs said: “Some people say give the customers what they want, but that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I'd asked customers what they want, they would've told me a faster horse.’”

For years, I struggled to reconcile these seemingly contradictory paradigms. Is it only a once-in-a-generation visionary who can take the Steve Jobs approach because of some inherent genius they have? Do the stars align so only they can see something the rest of us mere mortals can’t?

I finally figured it out when I started creating from a different place than before.

When you want to create something because you truly care about the problem you’re solving and the people you’re solving it for—do customer research. People will tell you what they want, what they think about your offering, and how it fits within the context of their life—all the typical market research questions that reveal invaluable information and make your creation infinitely better.

When you need to create something because your soul can’t not create it; when you don’t care if people think they need it, you know they do; when you don’t want to hear what people say because you know in your heart or gut what it should look like and they don’t; when you know you’ll find your audience regardless of the “market size” or “the state of the economy”—that’s when market research will only get you to faster horses. That’s when you need to simply create and release your vision into the world.

It’s a case of “you know when you know”. It doesn’t have to be an iPhone-scale product, it could be a very small thing, but you know you need to make it a reality. Until you find it, you will benefit from market research—and not fully understand the difference, because you’ll know it in your mind, not feel it in your body. That was my struggle.

Steve Jobs created soul-led products. Most people create mind-led products.

Which kind do you want to create?

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