What Job Did You Hire That Milkshake For?

What job do people hire you to do for them?

In his book, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" Clayton Christensen shares a great story of how his team did a research study for a fast-food company.

The fast-food company discovered their best-selling product in the morning was a milkshake — yes, a milkshake in the morning. The company wanted to survey its customers so they could make the milkshake even better.

They spent years messing with the flavor and the thickness to make it even better and got nothing for all their time and effort. It didn't change sales a bit.

So the fast-food company hired Clayton to get some better answers. (Because, if you want better answers, you need to ask better questions.)

Customers were asked a simple, but better question.

What job did you hire that milkshake for?

Clayton explained... the customers were paying for the milkshake to do a job.

Sure, the customers could have "hired" a banana, a breakfast sandwich, a protein bar, bagel, smoothie, coffee, or even a donut, to "do the job"... So why were they hiring a milkshake at 9 in the morning?

It turns out to be surprisingly simple, why. Their customers were looking to fill their stomachs until lunchtime AND to keep them busy during their morning commute of 30-45 minutes (and here comes the most important part to a commuter)... all without messing up their hands or car.

Thicker than juice, the milkshake lasted longer... it filled them up more than a banana... let's face it, have you ever eaten a banana and thought, wow that was filling? And have you tried to spread cream cheese on bagel while sitting in rush hour traffic? Lastly, it didn't leave them with sticky fingers like a donut.

That's why customers hired the milkshake to do the job!

Here's the part most business owners skip right past: the fast-food company almost blew years chasing the wrong fix. They tinkered with flavor. They tinkered with thickness. They were trying to make a better milkshake when nobody was buying a milkshake in the first place. They were buying a solution to "I've got 40 minutes, one free hand, and a growling stomach." Miss the job, and you can perfect the product for a decade and still watch sales sit there flat as a pancake — no pun intended, since a pancake wouldn't get the job done either.

So what job are YOU actually hired for?

This is where it gets uncomfortable, because most of us describe our own business the way that fast-food chain described its milkshake — by ingredients, not by job. I've sat in 40+ years of pitch meetings where the client opens with their features list and never once mentions the actual reason a customer picks up the phone. That's usually the first thing I make them fix before we write a word of copy.

You say you sell "financial planning." Your client hired you to make them feel like the future isn't going to blindside them.

You say you sell "landscaping." Your customer hired you to not feel embarrassed when the neighbors pull into their driveway.

You say you sell "copywriting." Your client hired you to stop staring at a blank page at 11pm wondering why last quarter's numbers were garbage.

Nobody wakes up wanting your product. They wake up with a problem, a deadline, an insecurity, or an itch they can't quite name — and they go looking for whoever can make it go away fastest. Your product is just the vehicle. The job is the actual reason money changes hands. This is exactly why a great headline is a bouncer, not a billboard — it doesn't try to describe the product, it filters for the person who already has the problem and drags them into the copy.

And here's the trap: your competition isn't just the other guy who does what you do. It's everything else your customer could "hire" instead. The milkshake wasn't competing with other milkshakes — it was competing with bananas, bagels, and donuts. Your accounting firm isn't just competing with other accounting firms — it's competing with a spreadsheet, a nephew who's "good with numbers," and flat-out avoidance. You don't know who you're really up against until you know the job.

So how do you find your job? Stop asking "what do we sell?" Start asking "what does my customer's life look like five minutes before they call me, and what does it look like five minutes after?" That gap — that's the job. That's what you're actually being paid for. Everything you put in your ads, your website, your sales calls, should be aimed at that gap, not at your features list. It's the same gap I make clients define before I'll even open a headline document — I've written somewhere north of 100,000 ads over the last 40-plus years, and every single one that flopped had the same root cause: nobody nailed the job before we started writing.

Get the job right, and the marketing practically writes itself. Get it wrong, and you'll spend years — like that fast-food chain did — polishing flavor and thickness on a product nobody needed improved, wondering why the sales needle won't move. And if your agency relationship is part of the problem — if you're getting hired to "do marketing" instead of hired for the actual job your client needs done — that's worth fixing too, the same way we talk about it in why your agency isn't a vendor.

So… what job do people hire you to do for them?