Why being aligned to the market is so critical for professional success

I was talking to a friend today. She is a specialist in work like SEO and social media. She is hard-pressed for some work, and I suggested trying out online marketplaces. After all, these services are in really high demand these days, and there is a lot of freelance work out there one can do.

She told me that she is not able to get any work from Upwork or Fiverr. Those platforms don’t work for me, she said.

Why is that? Well, I have posted some amazing services but nobody buys them!

Crazy. How is the service amazing if nobody wants it? Why are you creating novel and unique services? Why not provide the services people already want and posting about? 

If you want to create a new category of innovative services that people are not already asking for but you want to offer, it is way harder to do so even if it actually makes economic sense. It will take more time, patience, and marketing firepower to pull that off. Why not start with what people already want, and something that does not require immediate marketing?

There are too many people out there who are so much in love with their idea of what they want to do, or what they already know, that they would not take the trouble to find out what people really want. 

Van Gogh, a great artist, well ahead of his time, died poor and unknown. I don’t want to be like him. I like success!

We cannot succeed unless we give people what they really want.

At LawSikho, we know that we can build the greatest courses in the world, but unless it is connected with what people already want, we will never succeed.

So we always try to identify the courses that people already want. We sometimes fail, but we often get it right, because we prioritize feedback from the market over all else. 

For example, I may think that there would be a great demand for a certain kind of law course amongst journalists. I mean, isn’t that a no brainer? They are getting trolled and abused on social media all the time. They are getting notices for defamation. They are getting threats for reporting on politicians and bureaucrats. They are reporting on issues that involve the law - often the constitution, or some other laws and judgments. What if we had a course that explained all these concepts to them in a simple enough language?

Wouldn’t that be great? Would journalists not line up to buy such a course?

Well, on paper, that does not sound bad. It may just work. I have even been approached by journalists who wanted to know if there was such a course. However, is there a large enough market to justify developing a full-fledged course for the same?

I am not sure. I cannot be sure. The only way to find it out will be to test the market. Maybe I should interview at least 20 journalists to see if they are interested. Maybe I should offer an online workshop and see how many journalists show up. That would be a cheap way to test the water. 

I need to take into account that a large number of journalists are seriously underpaid and work in vernacular media, and not the English media where payment is way better. 

If I speak to 20 journalists, I may discover some pain points that journalists will be very happy to pay to resolve. Or there may be no such pain points. 

Perhaps, instead of a course to teach law to journalists, I should create a service to connect lawyers with journalists who will explain the law to a journalist happily in lieu of getting quoted or featured in a story!

Or maybe even that is a dud idea. I have to admit that I do not know if that’s worth doing unless the market validates it. I have to see if either lawyers or journalists would pay for any of it.

I have to keep testing and pivoting until I find an idea that the market approves of.

I can’t be in love with an idea because I came up with it. I have to go to the market and understand what it will actually pay for.

But that’s not how most lawyers approach their career

I want to be a criminal lawyer. I want to do arbitration. I want to do corporate law. I want to be an environmental lawyer. I want to be a senior counsel. I want to argue in court. I want to help women who are in distress. I want to do sports law.

People are in love with some images, some ideas, some stories that they heard about other people and got hooked.

Well, sure. But what will you do? Who will pay you to do it? What way is the market headed? Where are the new opportunities arising? What are the gaps in the market?

If you are not thinking in those terms, if you are not training yourself with the skills needed to succeed in the next generation of law practice, if you are aligning yourself with the market, you may get a rude shock after spending much money, time and effort, that people do not want what you are offering.

Many lawyers think that if they had a nice office in some specific area of town, racks of books to decorate the same, some juniors to go with the furniture, and had a nice big luxury car, then clients will come to them and give the big cheques. That such trappings of success or lack of access to power and privilege is what is preventing them from being successful.

Or worse, they are stuck in a low-paying, stunted market that does not have good economics. They are able to make ends meet, although barely, and then blame the entire legal profession for their troubles. 

That is the fate a majority of lawyers meet.

Or you could spend some time trying to understand the worst pain points of your potential clients and therefore, flourish by addressing those. 

There is not much profit to be made from emulating seniors who did not have to face the market realities of today.

Or maybe you hope to just get lucky by stumbling onto the right practice area by chance! Some lawyers indeed just get lucky. 

How are you thinking about your career? Are you consciously aligning yourself with the market?