You ever heard of Spanx?

They make undergarments for women.

I guess they call it "Shapewear," because it’s “designed to smooth and enhance the body's silhouette.”

(As you can tell, I’m not the target market for their product, but stick with me here…)

Forbes estimated the company’s value at $540 million in 2021.

So ya, they’re crushing.

What’s their secret?

Well, for starters… they have product-market fit.

The founder; Sarah Blakely, identified a gap in the market for comfortable, flattering undergarments.

The product was created to meet a very specific need for a very specific audience.

This is good.

But you know what’s even better?

They have product-market-founder fit.

Blakely’s direct personal experience lead to frustration with traditional shapewear, and drove her to create Spanx.

She was her target customer. She knew exactly how it felt to wear unflattering undergarments.

She set out to create a product to solve her own problems first.

One of the reasons most online businesses fail is because:

They are trying to sell a solution to a problem that they themselves have never faced and therefore never solved.

Here’s how they usually start:

“There’s money being spent on ______. We should come up with our own version of ______ and sell it!”

And although this follows the great advice of ‘sell whats already selling’… it has one big downfall.

To truly develop a great product AND great marketing - you have to really understand the people you’re selling to.

(If you’ve ever studied copywriting, this is the underlying premise to writing good sales copy…)

If you’ve personally overcome the problem you’re selling a solution for, then you quite literally ARE your target audience.

And there is no guesswork when it comes to your marketing and messaging.

When this happens, your prospects and customers feel like you ‘get them’ because you understand what they’re going through.

Because you did go through what they are going through.

And you have genuine empathy for the challenge they are facing.

For example…

When I started my online basketball training business 12+ years ago…

I was creating and selling products that I wish existed when I was a high school basketball player.

Because I knew exactly what it was like to be overlooked and underestimated on the court.

This lead to massive success in the business because there was resonance with the players that I was helping.

So instead of looking at whats selling to try and make a quick buck, look at your story...

What have you overcome in your life that you can help others with?

To quickly recap:

The most important thing for any company is to find product-market fit.

The most important thing for any entrepreneur is to find product-market-founder fit, where you are naturally the right person to build the right product for the right market.

Hope this helps.

- Adam