Stop selling features and start selling understanding

The highest leverage you have isn’t your product. It’s how well you know the user’s pain.

Your marketing feels flat, your content is noise, and your sales calls land nowhere.

You’re missing the highest and most convincing level of communication. It’s not about being clever or slick. It’s about being Known.

Most people stop at clarity, mistaking it for connection. That’s a low-leverage mistake.

You need to operate at the top level, what I call Knowingness.

Knowingness is when you say things that only your ideal target audience would understand. You display a deep, almost visceral knowledge of their exact emotional pain. This goes beyond understanding what your customer needs; it’s demonstrating you understand why they need it, and how it feels to need it.

When people feel known, they stop negotiating price and start demanding your solution.

The Strategic Power of Reflection

Think about the best marketing you’ve ever seen. They didn’t sell the product; they sold Knowingness. They captured a hyper-specific, embarrassing challenge that only the customer understands. That level of insight captures attention because it reflects their reality.

When people see their specific emotional experience reflected back to them, it triggers what psychologists call “felt understanding.”

How to Achieve Knowingness (The Two-Step Audit)

You know who you’re trying to reach. Now, find the shared emotional experience that connects them.

Step 1: Audit Their Nuanced Complaints You need the complaints they don’t share publicly. Imagine your customers are two drinks deep at a bar, finally venting. What specific, small, yet deeply personal frustration do they share that makes their peers say, “That happens to me too!!!” That shared frustration is your asset. Ask: How does the current problem make them feel personally? What does it stop them from doing at home?

Step 2: Use Surgical Language Your language must scream: “I know your problems at a granular level!” Stop using industry generalities. Start using human-specific pain points.

Instead of: “I help overwhelmed entrepreneurs”
Try: “I help founders who lie awake at 3 am wondering if they made the right decision about that product, while also feeling guilty for how tired they’ll be with their kids the next morning.”
Instead of: “Time management for busy professionals”
Try: “For the executive who feels guilty every time they leave the office before their team, even though they know they need boundaries to be effective.”

Instead of: “I help overwhelmed entrepreneurs”

Try: “I help founders who lie awake at 3 am wondering if they made the right decision about that product, while also feeling guilty for how tired they’ll be with their kids the next morning.”

Instead of: “Time management for busy professionals”

Try: “For the executive who feels guilty every time they leave the office before their team, even though they know they need boundaries to be effective.”

In each case, you are moving from a functional statement to an emotional truth. That truth closes the deal.

Knowingness Closes the Deal

Clients don’t buy your solution because you’re clever. They buy it because they believe you fundamentally get their struggle. The more deeply you understand their emotional experience of the problem, the more they will trust you to change it.

We shouldn’t just want to sell stuff. We should want to make lives better. Which means we must know those lives.

So listen closely. Dig deep. Communicate the struggle. Live in nuance.

Onward.

Relevant

Why Emotional Intelligence Is the Secret Weapon in Marketing Right NowBrands that leverage emotional intelligence (EI) outperform those that rely on features alone.

Study: Emotional Understanding Outperforms Demographics and Features in Predicting Consumer Decisions https://www.jmsr-online.com/article/emotional-intelligence-in-marketing-connecting-brands-with-consumers-a-theoretical-framework-161/?utm_source=chatgpt.com&_bhlid=04e9a39ff0631dcc6c75fd0fac7c26405f2618e3Research shows that emotional engagement built through empathy, narrative, and emotional insight is a stronger driver of brand loyalty and purchasing behavior.

60% of Consumers Will Dump Brands That Don’t Feel Human — New Global Empathy Study”A global study finds that empathy isn’t just a feel‑good strategy, it’s a competitive edge.

Mindset

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

— Aristotle

Hot Takes

Mastering Accountability

Feel free to forward this on to someone who might benefit.

Thanks for reading.- Jason

p.s. When you’re ready, here’s how I can help. Ready to stop working so hard in your business? I help growing companies break free from unpredictable revenue, founder bottlenecks, and manual processes that kill competitive advantage. Using the exact same frameworks from my 8 and 10-figure exits, I build complete operating systems that generate predictable growth, eliminate your dependency, and deploy AI where it actually matters. The goal isn’t just bigger revenue, it’s systematic growth that works whether you’re there or not.Connect with me on Linkedin, X, or through my blog.