Most founders map the customer journey starting from the moment a buyer discovers them.
That is the wrong starting point.
Your buyer’s journey started somewhere else entirely. In a moment you weren’t there for. A late night, a new hire, a broken process, a conversation that stung. That moment is the trigger. And if you don’t know what it is, every dollar you spend on marketing is arriving at the party after the decisions were already made.
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I spent years thinking I understood my customers because I talked to them. Hundreds of conversations. I asked what they wanted, what features they needed, what would make the product better.
And I built everything they told me to build.
Then I shut the company down.
The problem wasn’t that I talked to people. The problem was I talked to them the wrong way. I asked them to describe what they wanted. I should have been asking them to tell me the story of why they bought in the first place.