To summarize, the most valuable insights focus on individuals who have recently invested resources (time, money, effort) in solving the problem your product addresses, as their experiences will be fresh and relevant.

Individuals Who Purchased in the Distant Past (but Haven’t Engaged Recently) They’re dormant customers. They purchased something a long time ago and will therefore have to rely on decaying/altered memories to give you information (so, yeah, they will also make shit up).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are two types of people to avoid at all costs: Individuals Who Appear Interested in a Solution but Haven't Committed Any Resources

pay attention to folks who have recently invested resources to make progress, mainly: Your recent customers (or clients). Those folks tend to be the greatest source of insights. Don’t worry if you have none because you’re just starting out (or you don’t have access to them). There are other ways to collect juicy insights, which I’ll cover in depth

If you don’t exclusively learn from them, you may pick up poisonous insights. A poisonous insight is a piece of customer information that appears insightful on the surface but leads to harmful consequences.

Exclusively learn from people who have recently invested resources—such as time, money, and/or effort—to address the problem you’re interested in solving

Simply put, an insight is a specific piece of information gleaned directly or indirectly from customers. It gives you a nuanced understanding of why customers do what they do. When pieced together, these insights answer crucial questions about your business, such as: What should I sell? Whom should I focus on? What makes my business unique? How can

The Problem: Juicy Insights Are Hard to Find It’s the same thing with standing the f ck out as a business. The more you rely on prepackaged, generic insights all your competitors have in their possession (such as trend reports, web analytics overviews, or the 12 fictional personas created in a boardroom yesterday) the more likely you are to blend

The Methodology Has Four Stages It’s really a step-by-step guide (see Figure I.3) and it all starts with insight foraging, where you dig deep to uncover what makes your customers tick. Then you’ll use unique positioning to give people a damn good reason to choose you over the rest. With a distinctive brand, you’ll make sure you’re impossible to