Would you spend 10 hours to make $100,000?

The past 5 months had led to this moment…

I could feel my stomach clench tighter and heart beat faster as the countdown came to an end.

I was either gonna make life-changing money…

Or realize I wasn’t cut out for online business.

But despite my uncertainty, I hit “Send.”

A few seconds later, an email went out to my list of 9,000 readers, promoting my first cohort.

I watched my email like a kid watching their dad leave for milk… (hoping he actually comes back this time)

Every second felt like an hour.

I refreshed the inbox again and again, waiting for something—anything—to happen.

And then… ding.

1 booked call…then 3…then 10…

Suddenly, the floodgates openedand the calls started rolling in like a scene straight out of a Wall Street movie (minus the cocaine).

Over the next 2 weeks, I made $155,000.

As a kid who lived in a motorhome for a bit and got used toys in a cardboard box for Christmas, I was mindf*cked.

But lemme tell you, it wasn’t luck.

It wasn’t because I magically sent an email at the perfect time on the perfect day, with the stars aligning in my favor.

Nope.

It was because I stopped guessing what my audience wanted and started knowing.

Why You Struggle To Get Clients On Social Media

Here’s the thing:

Before that launch, I did what most people do…

I assumed:

• What content people liked

• What marketing resonated

• What offers people wanted

And unsurprisingly, a lot of it flopped.

But it wasn’t until I started researching my target audience that I started to understand their:

• Fears

• Desires

• Obstacles

• Motivations

• Frustrations

From that data, I was able to make content, marketing, and offers that resonated (and have a lot more money to fund my caffeine addiction).

So, the $100,000 question is:

How can you do effective market research so you can grow your brand and bank account?

My 3-Step Process For Market Research

Now, there’s many different ways to do market research, but I’ll show you what I did for my upcoming offer, Full Stack Creator.

Step 1: Get on Calls With Your Target Audience

If you want to stop guessing and start understanding, the best thing you can do is speak to your target audience directly.

This means getting on calls with your ideal customers and asking them questions.

Now, I’m grateful to be in a position where I can send an email and get people who are willing to let me interrogate them on a call…

But if you don’t have an audience, no worries, just do this:

• Hit up 15-20 people who fit your ideal customer profile.

Slide into their DMs (professionally, of course). I’d recommend starting with people who are already familiar with you and tell them you’re doing quick 10 minute market research calls.

• Offer them something of value in exchange for their time.

Maybe it’s feedback, maybe it’s a freebie—just make it worth their while. The less familiar someone is with you, the more you’ll have to incentivize them.

• Get on a call and ask them a set of 5-10 questions.

Record the calls and use transcriber (I like Read ai). Ask them about their current situation, their struggles, and their desired outcomes. (Just not their childhood trauma—save that for their therapist.)

I recommend asking everyone the same set of questions so you can identify patterns.

Here’s the 8-10 main questions I asked on all the 20 calls I did:

Step 2: Turn AI Into Your Research Intern

So you’ve done all the calls, and at this point you’re probably thinking, “Great… now what?”

Simple:

Feed it all to ChatGPT.

• Download all the transcripts from your calls into PDFs.

• Go to ChatGPT. Tell it you did market research calls and you want it to read them. Tell it to reply with “yes” once it’s read them all.

• Upload all the transcriptions to ChatGPT.

• Once it’s read them all, tell it to find the most significant marketing data, like patterns in pain points, situation, desires, and obstacles.

ChatGPT will be your unpaid intern (don’t worry, it won’t complain) and give you the roadmap for what your audience really wants to hear.

Even better?

Get it to create 3 Ideal Customer Profiles based on the data and have it spit out the top 25 FAQs, obstacles, and desires your audience has.

Now, instead of guessing, you’ve got a crystal-clear map of what your audience cares about.

Step 3: Turn Data Into Gold

Now that you know what people are really dealing with…

You can create:

• Offers

• Content

• Marketing material

That makes them think, “Damn, this person understands me…”

For example, I used the data from those calls to make a 30-page document on my target audience.

I understand what my target audience’s current problems are, why they’re stuck, and where they want to be.

Sure, it took me many hours to put together, but now I have that data for life.

That means I don’t have to waste time wondering what to post, how to structure my offer, and what angle I should take with my marketing.

Which means all 3 of those are going hit my target audience harder than a breakup text.

Spend 10+ Hours Doing Real Research, Make 10x More Money

Market research is the difference between being ignored and becoming the person everyone has to work with.

It’s not rocket science, it’s just being smart enough to stop assuming and start asking.

It’s what I wish I did at the start of my journey.

It woulda saved me a helluva lot of headaches and wasted time.

I know it was a longer read today, but I hope you found it valuable.

Your Canadian friend,

Dakota “Research” Robertson

P.S.

I made a plug and play system on how to do market research.

It takes out all the guess work and make everything stupidly easy.

It’ll be part of my new community launching October 1st.

If you’re a business owner who wants to grow their personal brand and get more leads from social media:

Join the waitlist to get first access when it launches + the lowest price possible.

Click here to join the waitlist: [link]

Links Of The Week:

• Recent podcast I did about content and online biz [link]

• Podcast I did where I talk about my journey in the online space [link]

• Solid video on LinkedIn growth [link]