Two businesses. Same category. Same city, even. One shows up when a customer needs them. The other doesn’t — and it isn’t because their work is worse. It’s because they built their entire presence around what they are rather than what they’re for. And that distinction is about to matter a lot more than it used to.
Hi, I’m Jeff Payne. You’re listening to The Jeff Payne Show, Episode #62: Nobody Hires a Milkshake.
Here’s a number worth sitting with: roughly 30,000 new consumer products launch every year, and most of them fail. Not because the products are bad — because the companies behind them guessed wrong about why anyone would buy them. They sliced the market by category. They sliced it by demographic — age, income, job title. And both approaches miss the actual question a customer is answering, which isn’t “what type of product is this” or “am I the target buyer” — it’s “what do I need done right now, and what’s going to do it.”
There’s a well-known case study about a fast-food chain trying to boost milkshake sales. They asked their target customer profile what they wanted in a milkshake — thicker, thinner, more chocolate — built exactly that, and sales didn’t move. So someone changed the question. Instead of asking who bought milkshakes, they watched who actually did, and found that 40% were bought first thing in the morning, alone, to go.
Turns out those customers weren’t hiring a milkshake to be a milkshake. They were hiring it to make a boring commute more interesting, and to hold them over until lunch, with one hand on the wheel. Once the company understood the job, they fixed the product— making it thicker so it would last the whole drive.
That’s the whole idea in one story: people don’t buy categories. They hire something to do a job. And here’s why that matters right now, more than it did fifteen years ago when this study first made the rounds — AI search runs on the exact same logic. Nobody asks an AI assistant “who are the dentists in category X.” They describe a job: “I chipped a tooth, who can see me today.” A business organized around its category — dentist, photographer, advisor — is stocked on a shelf that AI search isn’t browsing. A business organized around the job it does is the one that gets named.
I’ve been a fan of Christensen’s writing for a long time. His book The Innovator’s Dilemma is one I’d call a classic, and the jobs-to-be-done idea, from his later book Competing Against Luck, is one of those frameworks I keep coming back to because it’s just… correct.
Daniel Goodwin at Provident 1031 is a clear example of getting this right. He’s not positioned as “a financial advisor” — that’s a category, and it’s a crowded one. He’s built around a specific job: an investor is about to sell a property, faces a serious tax event, and needs to defer it correctly without a costly mistake. Everything downstream traces back to that job. A number-one Amazon bestselling book on the subject. A standing biweekly byline in Kiplinger. A video Masterclass series that’s outperformed every other lead source he has, five to one. Our team leads that content strategy, and none of it was built to say “hire a financial advisor.” All of it was built to answer one job, from every angle, so thoroughly that when someone — or something — is trying to solve that exact problem, his name is already attached to the answer.
So here’s the test. Don’t ask, “What category are we in?” The question to ask is: If a customer described their situation out loud, with no product names, no industry terms — just the actual problem — would our content, our site, our story, show up in that description? Or would you only show up if they already knew what to call you?
Pull up your own homepage and your last five pieces of content. Are they organized around your category — what you are — or around the job — what you’re for? If you can’t answer that in one sentence, that’s the gap.
If this one landed, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or TrueFans, and leave a five-star rating — it’s the fastest way to help another business owner find the show.
I’m Jeff Payne. See you next time.
Every year, roughly 30,000 new consumer products launch — and most fail. Not because they’re poorly made, but because the companies behind them are answering the wrong question about why people buy.
THE SEGMENTATION TRAP
For decades, companies have planned products around two lenses: product category (function, price, features) or customer demographic (age, income, education).
Both approaches assume people shop by conforming to a segment. In practice, people take life as it comes — and when a job needs doing, they “hire” whoever will do it, regardless of the category it falls into or the demographic box they check.
The Milkshake That Wasn’t About Milkshakes
This case study comes from Clayton M. Christensen’s 2016 book Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, co-written with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan, and popularized through the “jobs-to-be-done” framework the book lays out.
A fast-food chain trying to grow milkshake sales asked its target demographic what an ideal milkshake should taste like, built it, and saw no lift in sales. A researcher instead looked at who was actually buying and found that a large share were commuters purchasing alone in the early morning.
The milkshake wasn’t hired to be delicious. It was hired to make a long commute more interesting and hold off hunger until lunch — one-handed, without making a mess. Once the company understood the actual job, the fix was straightforward: a thicker shake built to last the whole drive.
40% of the milkshakes were bought first thing in the morning, alone — to go.
This is one of the best written, most informative email newsletters I’ve ever read!
Thank you for sharing your expertise, and hope you’re doing well.
Beth Zimmerman
Founder, Executive Director
Beyond Milkshakes: A Broader Pattern
The milkshake story is the most memorable illustration, but it’s one of many in the book. The jobs-to-be-done approach Christensen and his co-authors describe shows up across some of the world’s most respected companies and fastest-growing startups — Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt among them — each built around solving a specific job rather than defending a product category.
This shows up in some of the world’s most respected companies and fastest-growing startups.
Why This Is an AI Search Problem Now
The jobs-to-be-done lens isn’t just a marketing history lesson — it describes exactly how AI search behaves today. Users don’t query AI assistants by category (“dentists near me“) the way they once queried a Yellow Pages listing. They describe a situation: a problem, a constraint, a desired outcome.
A business whose content, site structure, and authority are all organized around its category name is optimized for a filing system AI search has largely moved past. A business organized around the job it solves is the one an AI system can match to that description — and cite.
A business organized around its category is stocked on a shelf that AI search isn’t browsing.
Built Around the Job, Not the Title
Daniel Goodwin of Provident 1031 illustrates the shift in practice. Rather than positioning around the category “financial advisor,” his content strategy — led by our team — is built entirely around a specific job: an investor selling a property who faces a real tax event and needs to defer taxes correctly to avoid a costly misstep.
That focus produced a #1 Amazon bestselling book, a standing biweekly byline in Kiplinger, and a video Masterclass series that has outperformed every other lead source by five-to-one.
Each asset answers the same job from a different angle, building a body of proof so substantial that when the question comes up — from a person or an AI system — his name is already attached to the answer.
None of it was built to say ‘hire a financial advisor.’ All of it was built to answer one job.
The Self-Audit
The test is simple to run and uncomfortable to answer honestly. Take your homepage and your last five pieces of content. Are they organized around your category — what you are — or around the job — what you’re for?
If a customer described their exact situation out loud, without product names or industry terms, would your content surface in that description? If you can’t answer that in one sentence, that’s the gap worth closing before your competitors close it first.
Would you show up in that description, or only if they already knew what to call you?
Source: Clayton M. Christensen (with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan), “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice,” Harper Business, 2016.
Additional background: Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School), “Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing,” HBS Working Knowledge. https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/clay-christensens-milkshake-marketing
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