An innovative approach for creators’ biggest challenges in the midst of a down economy and the explosion of A.I.

Creativity, life, and the creator economy have leaped out of the frying pan of COVID into the fire of A.I.

Alpine Trail, Denali National Park, Alaska — photo by the author

We need better ways to dig deeper and be more relevant, compelling, and unique. Creators' biggest challenges require better, more authentic approaches.

From my decades of professional work in market research and user experience research and helping the best brands solve their biggest challenges, I’ve mastered the methods to reveal ‘hidden requisite truths’.

That invisible knowledge can be the differentiator for creators.

Hidden requisite truths are the insights discovered reading the minds, touching the hearts, and mapping the lives of those you intend to serve.

The insights are hidden because unless you observe your audience interacting with your digital productions, they occur only in private.
The insights are requisite because they’re necessary and required for you to succeed.
The insights are truths because all your outcomes, which add up to your success or failure, occur only within the experiences you provide your audience.

Your success is in their hands, through the experiences you create. But it’s invisible. And you must reveal the secrets to survive.

Revealing hidden requisite truths can be transformative and shocking, but are always useful. They will challenge and reset your own misconceptions, your closely-held misinformation, your four-walls data, your obsolete assumptions, and all data past its expiration date.

Post-covid, most old data is long past its expiration.

There is only one way to reveal the mysteries of hidden requisite truth: experience how your audience experiences you and anything you offer them, as they experience it. This ‘experience-experience’ delivers a level of intimacy, genuine rapport, and dramatic insights not available any other way.

The experience-experience is the answer to revealing your necessary secrets. And it is the tool for overcoming the scariest, hairiest challenges and fears that creators face in 2023 and beyond.

By setting up and masterfully conducting excellent interviews via the experience-experience, you can address many of the concerns, challenges, barriers, and fears that creators face in 2023 and beyond:

Is my solution, product, or service relevant, useful, and marketable?

The best way to answer this most essential question is to put your idea in front of your potential target user or customer or prospect and watch them interact with it real-time.

Without uncovering this hidden requisite truth, you risk the failure of your venture. Worse, you risk trashing your dreams and yourself in the process. You may be off by only a few degrees, or you may be hopelessly deceived. But that truth is hidden, you must go find it, and that’s a requirement.

Will I be able to create enough relevant content?

The world, the marketplace, and the population of those who you intend to serve are endless. The number of real-world, in-depth stories, challenges, triumphs, failures, and compelling narratives you will reveal in hidden requisite truth will far exceed the content you can invent in your little brain.

All those stories from real people are true. But they are all hidden. Go find them. Truth is far more compelling and relevant than the fictions or marketing spin you might invent.

What you believe about the problems in the world and the ways that you can address them is a small, distorted slice of reality. You’ll amaze yourself with what happens when you go out in the world and search out true needs, the true pains, and all the stories and humanity that go with that.

How will I know where to start?

The lives, hearts, minds, jobs, needs, and dreams of your audience and your chosen niche are the best and really the only source of guidance on where to start.

You only get one chance to make that first impression to the world and your audience. Why not uncover where your people are going, so you know what they need to take with them?

How will I know if this expensive course or training program or business system is what I need?

All the self-development programs, launch recipes, business planning systems, professional secrets, and gurus who know all the answers will tell you to “know your customer”. They offer brief, abrupt, abbreviated, and totally ineffective approaches to finding your hidden truths.

Knowing if these investments will work is a big challenge.

So, why do all these experts and their canned approaches gloss over the need for deep, intimate knowledge and the need to uncover those hidden requisite truths?

Here’s why: the real hidden truths will often disprove or displace your need for those programs, courses, templates, coaching, etc. The experts would rather you believe you have the answers about the real world. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be ready to spend all that money on their programs and systems.

For the entire guru industry to exist and survive, the vast majority of their audience or students or customers must be ready and willing to charge ahead with their closely held misinformation about themselves and their ideas. Don’t count yourself one of those suckers.

The experience-experience process and the quest for requisite truth, if followed rigorously, negate a serious portion of income for all the experts who want your money.

What if I’m not good enough?

How do you know? How can you possibly find out?

You don’t want to remain paralyzed by that fear if it’s simply not true.

Do you know what “good enough is”? Only your prospective audience and their definition of “good enough” matters.

There’s only one way to find out.

And what if you aren’t good enough? You need to uncover that hidden truth. That’s called self-awareness and self-honesty. With that truth, you can pursue informed learning and personal or professional development as required.

How will I stay focused and motivated?

Some of that inspiration comes from within. But my experience proves that the more powerful source is hidden out there, in your audience.

telescope pointed into the distance across a large lake against a gray sky with mountains on the horizon — Photo by Daniel Lerman on Unsplash

I have:

Interviewed mothers with terminally ill children.
Discussed life with small business owners failing during the great recession.
Listened to college freshmen cry when they found their focus and passion and discovered how to succeed.
Watched artists get excited about new creative tools to advance and enjoy their craft.
Consoled elderly citizens afraid to go out and vote during a global pandemic.

All these people? All their stories were true. All were invisible until I simply asked and listened. All the answers fundamentally changed the course of the businesses and creators who took the time and had the courage to ask the questions.

I could name a hundred more examples. But any one of them provided me far more motivation than I could muster myself, far more inspiration than I needed to keep going, stay hungry, and care.

It was never about me.

Do I have the right skills, knowledge, and data?

See ‘am I good enough’ above. The same dynamics and opportunities apply here. Having the right data and knowledge is required for any venture, business, or side gig to succeed. That truth is requisite.

The number one reason ventures, start-ups, and small businesses fail is tied directly to data, knowledge, and truth: not enough of it, the wrong kind, incomplete or inaccurate or outdated or just wrong, used at the wrong time, or not believed or acted on or applied effectively.

Or never revealed rigorously to begin with.

How will I generate enough exposure, interest, traffic, and conversions to monetize my ideas?

This is the most important question of all. The answers apply directly to your survival and validation of you and your ideas.

Success for creators is always driven by two things: creating relevant value and delivering the value as a compelling experience.

Mastering the experience-experience is how you’ll realize the intimate, real-time, visceral insights that peer directly into how your audience and your prospects experience the experiences and value you offer — and you’ll experience that as they do.

My long experience over the decades working with Apple, Google, Amazon, HP, and many others has demonstrated that hidden requisite knowledge revealed in the experience-experience provides insights, motivates creators, connects with real people in the real world, and drives business success like no other method available.

Have you figured out by now that this is all about the experience?

Because all your outcomes will occur only within the experiences you provide.

I can design for any creator or business the best approach to the experience-experience and getting at the most elusive hidden requisite knowledge. I’ve done this for hundreds of companies, creators, and professionals, large and small, for decades.

All outcomes in business happen only through the experiences we create.

$995 value, now FREE: The art of compelling experiences

In-depth Masters-level Course, e-Workshop, Virtual Toolkit, and weekly Newsletter on User Experience and Human-Computer Interactions: the art and science on how to influence users to engage, respond, sign-up, and buy

Or sign up for The Experience-Experience Newsletter

I’m Bob Berry — researcher, speaker, writer, and innovator on the art of compelling experience.bob@itstheusers.com / LinkedIn