Olivia: Ryan Levesque's clients have generated over $100 million in sales. The wild part? They did it by asking questions that never include the words, "What do you want to buy?" Jackson: That sounds like a magic trick. Or a riddle you'd get from a sphinx before it lets you pass. What’s the secret? Olivia: The secret is the entire premise of the book we're diving into today: Ask by Ryan Levesque. And Levesque isn't your typical marketing guru. He studied neuroscience at an Ivy League school, was on a path to be a neurologist, and then took a hard left into the world of online business, where he failed spectacularly before figuring this all out. Jackson: A neuroscientist marketer. That explains a lot. It feels like he’s trying to find the ‘buy’ button in the human brain. Olivia: That's exactly it. The book argues that most businesses, big and small, are completely wrong about how they try to understand their customers. They're all guessing, and he offers a system to stop guessing and start knowing. Jackson: Okay, I'm intrigued. But also a little wary. Let's see if this is a scalpel or a sledgehammer.

Jackson: If you can't ask people what they want, what do you do? Isn't that the entire point of market research? Going out with a clipboard and asking, "Would you prefer this in blue or red?" Olivia: That’s the exact trap Levesque talks about. He builds on that famous, maybe-not-real quote from Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Jackson: Right, because they couldn't imagine a car. Their frame of reference was limited to what they already knew. Olivia: Precisely. People are terrible at articulating what they truly want, especially when it comes to new solutions. We're much better at describing our problems. And Levesque learned this the hard way. His own story is central to the book. After leaving a high-paying corporate job in China, he and his wife started an online business selling guides on how to make Scrabble tile jewelry. Jackson: Hold on. Scrabble tile jewelry? That was a market? I feel like I missed an entire chapter of the early 2000s. Olivia: It was a huge niche on Etsy for a while! They were making good money, up to $10,000 a month. But it was a fad. And when the market crashed, it crashed hard. They were left with almost nothing, living in a tiny 400-square-foot apartment in Hong Kong on his wife's tiny grad school stipend. He was back to square one. Jackson: Wow. That’s a brutal reset. So how does that connect to the "faster horses" idea? Olivia: Because his first attempts at business were all about creating what he thought people wanted. A one-size-fits-all approach. After the crash, out of desperation, he started doing something different. He stopped trying to sell and just started asking. But he didn't ask, "What jewelry guide do you want?" He started asking, "What is the single biggest challenge you're facing right now when trying to make this kind of jewelry?" Jackson: Ah, I see. He shifted from asking about the solution to asking about the problem. Olivia: Exactly. And the answers were gold. People would write back paragraphs, pouring out their frustrations. "The glue I use makes the paper run." "My photos come out blurry under the glass." "I can't get the edges smooth." He realized there weren't one type of customer; there were three or four distinct "buckets" of customers, each with a unique, specific problem. Jackson: So it's less about their desired destination and more about the potholes on their current road. Olivia: That is the perfect analogy. And that's the foundation of the whole Ask Method. It starts with what he calls the "Deep Dive Survey," which is designed to do one thing: uncover the potholes. You don't ask them to invent a car; you ask them to complain about the horse. Jackson: And once you have a comprehensive list of complaints about the horse—it’s slow, it’s messy, it eats too much—you have the exact blueprint for what the car needs to be. Fast, clean, and fuel-efficient. Olivia: You've got it. You let their problems define your solution. He took that insight from the ashes of the Scrabble tile business, applied it to a new venture in the gardening niche, and went from zero to $25,000 a month in 18 months. All by focusing on the potholes.

Olivia: And once you know the potholes, you can build a system to guide people around them. That's the 'Ask Formula' in practice, and some of the results are just staggering. Jackson: Okay, so this is where the neuroscience comes in. Give me an example. How does this system work in the wild? Olivia: The most powerful case study in the book is for a company called LiveEnergized.com. They were selling high-end water ionizers. These are expensive machines, we're talking a $2,000 price tag. Jackson: Two grand for a water filter? That is a tough sell. The market must be full of skepticism. Olivia: Exactly. It was a brutal, competitive market. The owner, Ross, thought people were buying them for the health benefits of "alkaline water." That was his whole marketing message. But sales were flat. So they did a Deep Dive Survey. They asked potential customers, "What's your single biggest challenge when it comes to your health?" Jackson: And I'm guessing the answer wasn't "My water isn't alkaline enough." Olivia: Not even close. The overwhelming response was fear. People were terrified of the contaminants in their tap water. They wrote about chlorine, fluoride, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals. The desire for "alkaline water" was a weak, intellectual "nice-to-have." The fear of being poisoned by their own faucet was a deep, visceral, emotional driver. Jackson: Whoa. That's a completely different angle. So they threw out the old marketing? Olivia: They threw it all out. They built a new sales funnel, a series of short videos, that started with the problem the customers actually had. The first video was basically, "Did you know what's really in your tap water?" It agitated that fear, that specific pothole. Then, and only then, did it introduce the water ionizer as the ultimate solution to that specific fear. Jackson: And the result? Olivia: They launched this new funnel and generated $750,000 in sales. In five days. They sold out the manufacturer's entire worldwide supply. Jackson: Hold on. Let me get this straight. $750,000 in five days by basically stoking people's fears about their tap water? This is where it gets a little murky for me. Is this empowerment or just high-level manipulation? Olivia: That is the million-dollar question, and it's why the book has such a polarizing reception. Some readers see it as a game-changing tool for empathy, while critics argue it's a blueprint for exploitation. Jackson: Because you're finding someone's deepest insecurity and then building a sales pitch that perfectly targets it. It feels... ethically complicated. Olivia: It is. Levesque's defense is that you're not inventing the fear. It's already there. You're just finally listening to what the customer is actually telling you is their biggest problem, instead of pushing a solution they don't care about. The Live Energized customers were afraid of their tap water. The company just started speaking their language. Jackson: I can see that. You’re meeting them where they are. But it’s a fine line. The book itself has been criticized for being a giant sales funnel for Levesque's own software and high-ticket courses. He’s using the very techniques he’s teaching, on the reader. Olivia: He absolutely is. The book is a masterclass in its own methodology. There are "signposts" throughout that lead you to online bonuses, which then lead you into his ecosystem. He's transparent about it, but it definitely blurs the line between a book and a lead magnet. Jackson: So you're learning the system by being put through the system. It's very meta. And it forces you to decide for yourself whether you feel served or sold to. Olivia: Exactly. And that's the core tension of the whole method. It's an incredibly powerful tool. Whether it's used for good depends entirely on the person wielding it.

Jackson: It seems like the book is really a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's a powerful system for empathy at scale—truly listening to what keeps people up at night and what problems they're desperate to solve. Olivia: It’s a way to get out of your own head and your own assumptions. To stop building "faster horses" just because that's what you think people should want. Jackson: But on the other hand, if you're not careful, that same system can be used to exploit those exact fears for profit. You find the rawest nerve and you press on it, hard, until they buy the painkiller you're selling. Olivia: And that's the responsibility Levesque puts on the reader. He gives you the tool, but in the book, he explicitly says, "Use what you’re about to discover with integrity. Use it for good not evil." The power is in your hands. Jackson: So what's the one thing a listener can take away from this and apply, without needing to build a complex, multi-million-dollar funnel? Olivia: The big takeaway for me is to start by asking one simple question in your own world, whether it's your business, your team, or even your family. Stop asking "What do you want?" and start asking, "What's your single biggest challenge with X?" Jackson: What's the biggest challenge you have with our weekly meetings? What's the biggest challenge you have with the current software? Olivia: Exactly. The answer might completely surprise you. It might reveal a pothole you never even knew existed, and fixing that one thing could be more valuable than anything you could have guessed. Jackson: I'm genuinely curious what our listeners think. Is this a revolutionary marketing tool or a masterclass in manipulation? It feels like it could be both. Let us know your thoughts on our socials. Olivia: It's a fascinating debate. And it all starts with a simple question. Jackson: A very specific, very strategic question. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.