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Over the last month, I had six strategy sessions. Same question every time, different person. "Can you help me use AI to find customers?"

Here's what I realized: They weren't asking the right question.

They weren't asking about AI at all. They were asking for permission to skip the thinking part. They wanted me to hand them a prompt, plug their data into Claude, and somehow produce a list of customers they should chase.

But that's not how it works.

Every single one of those six sessions had the same underlying problem: They didn't know which market to own. They had no idea what opportunities were hiding in their own data. They were looking outward—chasing leads, networking, hoping something stuck—when the real money was hiding inside their business the whole time.

By the end of each session, something shifted. Not because I gave them a better AI tool. But because we thought first.

The Trap: Looking Outward When the Opportunity Is Inside

Most people chase customers the way everyone else does. They network. They cold call. They run ads. They post on social media. They hope.

It works. Eventually, but it's exhausting. It's expensive. And it's commoditized. Everyone's doing it. So everyone's competing on the same battlefield.

Meanwhile, there's a different game being played by people most never notice.

These people aren't chasing customers. They're finding markets nobody else can see. They're identifying data gaps that reveal $M in opportunities hiding in plain sight. They're building systems to own those markets before competitors even know they exist.

Here's the difference between the two approaches:

Chasing customers: "I need more leads. Who should I call? How do I reach them?" → You're always hustling, always one deal away from zero, always competing on features and pricing.

Finding markets: "What are my best customers doing? What problems do they face that I'm not solving? What data do I already have that reveals a pattern?" → You're building recurring revenue. You're owning a category. You're scaling.

The first person thinks like a vendor. The second thinks like a strategist.

Real Example: What Thinking First Actually Looks Like

One of my recent sessions was with Boma. Financial advisor. Solid business. But she was stuck in the vendor mindset. More clients meant more work. More work meant more hours. Hours were capped. Growth was capped.

She came to me saying, "I need help finding customers with AI."

But that wasn't her real problem.

We spent 90 minutes working through it. Started with questions instead of tools:

What's happening in the market right now? Where are problems emerging that your expertise solves?

We talked about healthcare practices, how they're expanding hiring, opening new locations, and growing teams—what happens when practices grow: turnover. People leave. Practices lose institutional knowledge. They lose momentum.

Why do people leave? Money. Healthcare workers earn high incomes, but they struggle with financial wellness. They're worried about college. They're concerned about retirement. They're afraid of protecting income. Practices know this is the problem. But they don't have a solution to offer.

That's the blindspot.

Boma knows financial wellness. She knows how to help people plan for college, retirement, and income protection. Healthcare practices don't have that in-house. But they need it.

So we didn't ask "how do I find customers?" We asked, "Who's facing a problem I already know how to solve, and how do I reach them at scale?"

Different question. Completely different answer.

Here's what we built:

We identified an ideal customer profile: Healthcare practices in his region, $600K–$5M in revenue, 5–50 employees, actively hiring or expanding (job postings, health plan changes, and recent relocation). Women-owned or minority-owned preferred.

We identified trigger signals: When a practice posts a job, they're hiring. When they change health plans, they're evaluating benefits. When they relocate, they're entering a new market and hiring fresh.

We identified the lead magnet: "Employee Retention & Benefits Strategy Audit" - practice owner fills out a form, Claude auto-generates a report showing retention gaps, benefits gaps, and financial wellness impact, then qualifies them for a discovery call.

We identified partnership channels: Insurance brokers and tax service providers already serve these healthcare practices. They become referral partners who introduce Boma to practice owners.

We identified speaking targets: Medical societies, chamber of commerce chapters, practice management associations, and places where practice owners gather.

In one conversation, using thinking first and tools second, we went from "help me find customers with AI" to a complete go-to-market strategy with validated leads, clear trigger signals, segmented outreach, and multiple activation channels ready to execute.

He didn't get a generic list. He got a $500K–$1.25M pipeline strategy.

The thinking changed everything. The tool (Claude, for research and analysis) was just the execution layer.

My Own Blindspot: The National Scan

But here's the thing—I realized I had a blind spot too.

I was building one market at a time. One client, like Boma. One opportunity. One geography.

What if I could see patterns across entire sectors? What if I could identify $B in markets that are hidden in federal appropriations, state legislation, and corporate announcements? What if I could apply the same thinking framework at the national scale instead of the local scale?

So I built a system. Every Monday morning, I spend 30 minutes mapping infrastructure investments against my internal activity data.

I check federal appropriations: CHIPS Act ($280B for semiconductors), IRA ($369B for clean energy), BIL ($1.2T for infrastructure), Defense spending ($820B+).

I check state legislation: Which states just passed AI action plans? Which ones funded workforce development initiatives? Which ones are investing in manufacturing reshoring or clean energy?

I check corporate announcements: Which companies announced facility expansions over $500M? Which companies are building data centers? Which companies are opening manufacturing plants?

I checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Where are acute workforce shortages emerging?

Then I map it against my data: customer conversations, proposal patterns, internal opportunities, and funding signals we're tracking.

Then I use Claude to process it.

Here's where AI actually comes in.

$1.9 trillion is being spent on AI infrastructure right now. Driven by policy. Driven by state AI action plans. Driven by federal mandate. That infrastructure is real. That policy is real. Those patterns already exist in my data.

AI doesn't discover them. I do. My thinking does. My pattern recognition does.

What Claude does is process the data faster. Synthesize across conversations I've had. Spot connections I might miss if I were doing it manually. Turn 3 hours of manual analysis into 30 minutes.

That's orchestration, not replacement.

Most people think "use AI to find customers." What actually works is "use AI to process my thinking faster and at a greater scale."

The infrastructure signals are there. The customer pain points are there. The proposal gaps are there. My job is to think about them strategically. Claude's job is to help me process them faster and see connections across more data than my brain can hold at once.

Last week, I found one.

$369B IRA for clean energy. Battery manufacturing is expanding rapidly. Solar installation is booming. Wind farms scaling. But here's the opportunity: Installation crews. Thousands needed. Shortage acute. And the entire process is manual.

Installation crew scheduling? Spreadsheets. Quality assurance? Manual checklist. Supply chain visibility? Paper trail. Predictive maintenance? Reactive firefighting.

That's the gap. That's the market.

Using the same 4-step framework I used with Boma:

Step 1: Find Infrastructure Investment $369B IRA for clean energy. Battery manufacturing + solar + wind + EV charging expanding.

Step 2: Identify Workforce Gap: 100K+ installation crews needed. Acute shortage. Manual processes dominate the entire workflow.

Step 3: Find the AI Exploitation Angle. What can be systematized? Crew scheduling + quality assurance + supply chain visibility + predictive maintenance. All of it. All are manual today.

Step 4: Scale Through Institutional Partnerships. Who's the institutional node? Solar industry associations. State energy offices. HBCU programs that train installers. Partner with them. They need this. They havea mandate funding. They can distribute.

Same framework. Different scale. Local blindspot = $500K–$1.25M opportunity. National blindspot = $2B–$5B opportunity in 24 months.

The thinking is identical. The market size just changes.

Here's Why This Matters

Most people are stuck in the vendor game. Chase more customers. Add more services. Compete on price. Hope.

But the people building real wealth? They're playing a different game. They're finding markets. They're identifying patterns in data that others miss. They're building systems to own those markets. They're scaling through institutional partnerships instead of individual sales.

And it all starts with thinking first.

Not "I need better tools." Not "I need better prompts." Not "I need a better platform."

But "What market am I ignoring? What data do I already have? What pattern does that data reveal? Who else is facing this problem? How do I reach them at scale?"

That's the thinking. Everything else is execution.

The 4-Step Market Blindspot Scanner Framework

Here's the exact process I use. You can use it too.

Step 1: Find Infrastructure in Your Business (or in the Market)

Local version: What assets do you already have? What expertise? What relationships? What's not being used at full capacity?

National version: Where's capital flowing? Federal appropriations? State legislation? Corporate announcements?

Step 2: Identify the Gap

Local: What do your best customers need that you're not providing? What manual processes are they stuck with?

National: Where's the workforce shortage? Where's the mandate? Who needs to hit employment targets?

Step 3: Find the AI Exploitation Angle

Local and national: What data exists? What manual processes can be systematized? What's missing nobody's addressing and connecting?

Step 4: Scale Through Partnerships

Local: Who's the institutional node? Insurance brokers? Tax providers? Chambers of commerce?

National: Who's the institutional node? Industry associations? State agencies? HBCUs?

The formula is the same at every scale:

Infrastructure Investment + Workforce Gap + Manual Processes + Institutional Partnership = Market Opportunity

Here's the Market Finding Playbook

How to Use This

You have two options:

Option 1: Run this yourself with Claude

I built a Claude Playbook that walks you through the framework. You answer the questions. Claude synthesizes the data. You identify your blindspot market. You build your go-to-market strategy.

Upload your business data. Your customer files. Your expertise. Your market research. Then run the 4-step scan. Claude asks the right questions. Claude synthesizes patterns. Claude builds your strategy.

Takes about 3 hours. Produces a complete market strategy.

Option 2: Work through it with me

If you want guidance, I do THINK Strategy Sessions. We spent 90 minutes doing this together. We talk through your business. We identify the blindspot. We build the strategy. I give you the playbook to execute on your own.

I limit these to 8 per month because they matter. Each one produces a legitimate $M+ opportunity that the person usually didn't see before.

What's Actually Happening Here

Notice what's not here: No AI hype. No "use Claude for everything." No magical prompts.

What is here: Thinking first. Systematic thinking. Framework-based thinking. Data-informed thinking. Then, there are tools to execute that thinking at scale.

Most people have this backwards. They get excited about tools, jump to prompts, and wonder why nothing sticks.

Strategic builders think first. Build a hypothesis. Design the experiment. Use tools to execute. Measure results. Build it into a system. Repeat.

One person stays frustrated. One person compounds.

The difference isn't intelligence. It's a process.

One Question

What if you took 3 hours this week to map your actual blindspot market? Not guessing. Not hoping. Thinking through: What infrastructure do I have? What gap exists? What data reveals the pattern? Who else needs this? How do I reach them?

What if you went from chasing random customers to owning a specific market?

What if you stopped being a vendor and started being a strategist?

That's what's available. Not through a better AI tool. But through better thinking.

Next Step

If you want to find your blindspot market:

Free trial option: Start Your Free Trial of THINK School Today. Learn the 4-step framework. Run it yourself with the Claude Playbook inside.

Direct option: Reply "THINK Strategy Session" and we'll set up a 90-minute session to map your market together. I limit these to 8 per month because they're intensive and they work.

The people finding $M markets aren't smarter than you.

They're thinking systematically. They have a process. They're looking inside instead of outside.

You can do the same.

Stop looking for customers. Start finding markets.

Marvin