3. The Ignorance Problem

People don't buy from you because they don't know. Not because they decided against you; most of the people who could buy from you have never had the chance to decide anything, because the information never reached them. Ignorance here is not an insult. It's a condition, and it has layers.

Someone doesn't buy from you because they don't know you exist. Or they know you, but don't know what you do; you're "the coach one," or "the one who posts about Buddhism," and that's as far as it goes. Or they know you and what you do, but don't know how to buy from you; there's no link, no page, no price, no "here's what to do next." Or they know all of that and still don't know what they'd actually get; the button is there, and behind it is a fog.

Notice that each layer is a different piece of work. Being everywhere on social media solves the first layer and nothing else. A crisp bio solves the second. A link and a price solve the third. The fourth is solved by the Value Problem, which is why the loop exists: the last layer of ignorance is your value statement not having reached them.

Most of this problem is solved by actively talking about your stuff and actively showing up. That sounds too simple, which is exactly why people don't do it. The internet being full of information does not make anyone less ignorant of you. And you have to know what you're selling in order to educate anyone about it; if the Value Problem isn't done, you'll notice it here, because you'll open your mouth to explain and nothing simple comes out.

This gets easier later, once you have a body of work: a year of emails, a shelf of replays, articles that answer the question before it's asked. In the beginning, you don't have that, so you need a skill instead. The skill is teaching.

Marketing is teaching

Everything can be looked at as an education problem. Marketing is teaching people why your offer is valuable. A job search is teaching people why your skills are valuable. Anti-procrastination is teaching yourself to act. Overcoming social anxiety is teaching yourself that you're safe. So the ignorance problem isn't a promotion problem; it's a teaching problem, and teaching has mechanics.

Teaching needs two things, a teacher and a student, and the student is the more important of the two. When I teach to zero students I'm just a guy talking. So the first job is not to deliver information; it's to produce a student. The usual way to try is to give people "the point": here's why you should care. The trouble is that the point varies person to person. Some people are driven by career, some by spirit, some by their kids, and no single point lands on all of them. What's more universal than the point is curiosity.

You inspire curiosity by having someone confront the end of their wisdom. Have them notice the lack of the thing you teach and how that lack leaves them uncontented. Have them imagine the result and ask whether they know how to get there. Have them picture their usual life uprooted and ask whether they could rebuild it. When a person hits the end of their knowledge, they know what to do: go look it up. When they hit the end of their wisdom, they can't look it up, and that's the moment they become a student. Your content, your emails, your conversations: their first job is to walk someone to that edge, kindly.

Once they're a student, they'll have specific questions, and this is where you play the game of isolation. Someone who wants to surf and keeps falling has a dozen possible reasons: position on the board, paddling speed, where the wave breaks, timing of the pop-up. If you dump all twelve on them, they quit. Isolate. Find the one thing they don't know, and while you're isolating, help them fall in love with the ocean, so that every attempt is worth it on its own.

And when you've isolated the ignorance, resist the urge to hand over the answer. The greatest teachers answered questions with questions. Don't confuse the painting with the last brushstroke: you want them to keep painting, not to put the brush where you'd have put it. Three questions I use to unblock people: what opens up because of this block? What paradox is created by holding on to this belief? What minimal pair would isolate it (two situations, nearly identical, where one works and one doesn't)?

Last thing. Understanding is not the same as knowing. Knowing is retrieval; understanding is a feeling, like a magnet snapping into place. You can't make the snap happen, and you can't predict when it will. All you can do is keep nudging the magnets closer, and that's the whole job: you're a creator of chances, not a dictator of anyone's inner experience. This is why ignorance is never a sin, why repetition is expected and welcomed, and why you don't get to be discouraged when someone doesn't get it the fourth time. They may get it the fifth. Say it again.

One more, because it matters for this room: if you're teaching a way to live, live it. Nothing I say about daily practice teaches as well as people watching me do 108 bows and enjoy it. Your marketing is mostly people watching how you live.