Feed The Right Crowd

Where is the best place to put a hot dog stand?

In his book, $100M Offers, Alex Hormozi shares an anecdote about a marketing professor who asks students what single advantage they’d choose if they were opening a hot dog stand to maximize their sales.

The students suggest factors like price, quality, or location, which all make sense.

The professor later reveals that the optimal advantage is to place your hot dog stand in front of “a starving crowd.”

While this may be sound advice, we need to realize that not all starving crowds are the same.

If you place your hot dog stand in front of a crowd of starving vegans, you won’t sell any hot dogs.

If you placed your hot dog stand in front of a crowd of starving children who had no money, you wouldn’t sell any hot dogs.

And if you placed your hot dog stand in front of a crowd of starving people who don’t eat pork, you’d also fail to sell any hot dogs.

The truth is you need a starving crowd who will eat hot dogs.

What about your business?

Is it currently in front of the right starving crowd? Or are you trying to market and sell to folks who have no interest in buying?

I see this happen often on social media.

People get fooled by vanity metrics. They get excited by posts that have lots of likes and comments, and they are thrilled when the size of their network grows, but…

If, for example, all your LinkedIn connections are from India and you only do business with folks in the USA, this crowd is not helping you.

In fact, it could be hurting you.

If your hot dog stand was in front of a crowd of vegetarians who told you this was the best place ever for you to set up shop, and you believed them, you might have fallen for feedback that wasn’t useful, and you may be left wondering why you couldn’t sell any hot dogs.

The same thing happens on social media when people with no interest in doing business with you tell you you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It also happens when you focus all your efforts on growing an email list by giving away free stuff and never have an offer to follow. All you have is a crowd of broke folks who want more free stuff.

Find your starving crowd and make sure they are hungry for whatever you’ve got to offer. Then, you’ll have a true competitive advantage.