Ten minutes ago as I write this, I was begging to spend $60 for a service that I didn’t really, on any normal level, need or want at all. It was a surreal demonstration of the power of urgency-based purchasing.

Wait.

Wait, before you start expecting me to write something all deep and shit.

Let me be honest. I’m sort of on vacation here. I hope you’re okay with this being a laid-back sort of post, with a laid-back sort of point to it. I’m going to tell a story, and it has a moral, but I’m going to kind of saunter up to it slowly while holding a beer. Hope you’re cool with that.

Let me explain.

My family has a cottage on a small island full of nothing in the middle of Lake Erie, on the Canadian side. It’s quite the place. Only like three roads are paved, the post office is behind the counter of the co-op, and the local handyman is known to everyone as “Uncle Kevin.” If you send a FedEx to the island, it will take two weeks to arrive, and even then, if the recipient doesn’t have a mailbox (they’re clustered at random points along dirt roads flanked by cornfields and vineyards), your FedEx goes into limbo and probably… I don’t know… gets burned or something. Imagine that TV show Green Acres, put it on an island, get everyone saying “eh?” at the end of their sentences, and you’ll have the right general idea.

Anyway, there’s only one ferry that runs there from the USA. It runs once a day and is pretty much the only way to get there unless you want to pay a king’s ransom to fly over in an airborne heart attack. On Friday, that boat leaves the dock at 8pm. There are no planes after that. If you miss the boat, you’re fucked.

Anyway, my son Austin and I were going up this weekend, and as we started out, my GPS said that we had left way in advance and were going to arrive really, really early. So, to kill time, we stopped at Starbucks. I got a latte, and Austin got a steamed milk with raspberry syrup in it. Then, in the car, he spilled it on his bear, so I stopped at Taco Bell and got wet napkins to clean that up. This errand was going to take about 20 seconds, so I left him in the car. When I came out, he had spilled it on himself again. Cleanup followed cleanup.

The GPS said we were now only somewhat early.

Then, unexpectedly, there were some traffic delays. Some construction. Slow drivers. At this point, we were only just “kind of early.” Then Austin needed to stop twice to use a bathroom. Then crazy traffic as we neared the general vicinity of the ferry dock . By now, we’re actually looking at the nervous end of “just sort of on time.”

I said to myself — and I quote — “Crap.”

As we approached the dock, we ran into this giant street fair, with detours and streets blocked off. The area was jammed with motorcycles and mullets. Every stop light grabbed us. I watched the arrival time tick later on my GPS, starting to get really nervous.

At this point, if we’re lucky, I’m figuring we can park the car and sprint to the boat. Then, after a few more detours, I figured we’d better buy the tickets first, so they at least knew we were there and wanted on. But as we got closer, I realized that the parking lot around the ferry was jammed. There were no parking spots there. There were no parking spots anywhere.

I put the car in Park in the middle of the lot and ran to the ticket booth. At this point, the ferry blew that big fog horn that says, “Hurry up, stupid ass.” They were taking off the dock lines. I’ve got like three minutes at this point.

“Where can I park?” I asked the girl in the ticket booth.

And she says, “Yeah, that’s a problem.”

I thought quickly. A one-way passenger ticket on the ferry costs $13.75. But… But! The ferry takes cars over, too. $30 one way. $60 total. $60 to park the car on the ferry, and take it over whether I need it or not.

By now, the ferry is honking repeatedly and shit and they’re raising planks and my car is running in the middle of the parking lot, not in a legal spot, with my kid inside with all of our luggage, and I know that if I don’t do something in like three seconds, I’m going to miss the ferry, miss my little vacation, endure a crying fit from my son, and face a very long hour drive home.

So I say, “Is there room for one more car on the ferry?”

Now, pay attention to what’s happened here. I have no need to have my car on the island. In fact, having my car on the island is like having it condemned. When you have a car on the island, thousands of spiders move into it and build nests. But there I was, facing the fact that whatever I did, I couldn’t leave my car in the middle of a parking lot, so even with a ticket, I was screwed.

“No room on the ferry,” she said.

“Oh come on, can’t you squeeze one more in?” I begged. “What if I pay more?”

So now this service I don’t want or need in any normal way? This mobile, spidery parking spot I’m trying to buy for $60? Now I’m begging for it.

Cue the sales lesson.

I was a desperate customer. In an urgent situation. With a big problem. I would have paid $200 and let them kick me in the nuts if they could have solved that problem.

Now, as it turned out, I just parked in an illegal spot and am currently praying that the ticket I’ll get won’t cost me too much. But yes. If they had doubled the car rate, I would have said, “Yes, please take all of my money and fill my car with spiders. While you’re at it, twist my nipples until they bleed. And thank you.”

Look, sales and its connection to problem-solving is nothing new. I mean, think of Desperate Buyers Only, the e-book based on the idea that if you can find people in dire straits — people like that guy trying to get on the ferry with his 4-year old who can’t figure out how to unload his car — they’ll pay whatever you want without hesitation if you can solve their problem. It’s nothing new, but it’s worth reminding ourselves about, as entrepreneurs.

I mean, are you selling solutions to problems? Or are you, like most people, just trying to sell your product?

This was a timely reminder for me.

I’m going to be launching a product soon. It’s going to be like an internet business in a box… a Johnny B. Truant style step-by-step info product designed to take you from absolutely no online presence to a functional internet business with all of the major bases covered — website, mailing list, e-commerce, affiliate setup, and so on. And I was thinking that I’d promote it as a way to assemble the technological components of an internet empire. But now I think that would be a mistake.

Instead, I thought: What problems will I be solving?

Problem: People are bound to their jobs, which they often hate.

Solution: If they build their own successful businesses, they’ll be free from their nine-to-fives. (This is also the foundation solution that drives Online Business School. Luckily, my product will complement — not overlap — OBS.)

Problem: Internet technology is daunting at best. Even if a person wants to build a blog, create a mailing list, create and sell products, and start an affiliate program, chances are he or she doesn’t know where to start. Every component of it can be incredibly confusing.

Solution: If I provide step-by-step instructions in the true Johnny B. Truant style of making things stupidly simple, they’ll know they can do it. Hell, my site is full of free tutorials in this vein, so they’ll know that if they understand that stuff, they’ll follow the stuff in my business-in-a-box product.

Problem: Even if they can find all of the moving parts, and even if they can figure it out and manage to set those parts up, they’ll never know if they got it all, if they’re doing something wrong, or if they could be doing things in an easier or better way.

Solution: I’ve been doing this for over a decade. I do it every day, for a lot of people. If you just follow my lead, you’ll know you’re setting things up “the right way.”

There’s a famous expression that says, “People don’t want to buy drill bits. They want to buy holes.” If you run a business, are you remembering to sell holes? Are you constantly thinking of what your customers need and want, rather than touting the features of this thing you have to sell? Those two things are not always the same, especially in the mind of the customer.

I don’t know if what’s above makes sense. Hey, I’m on a fucking ferry in the middle of Lake Erie. I’m on vacation. Cut me a break. Tomorrow, I’ll be sitting in the sun with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Because you know, I’ll be in Canada. The island couldn’t keep a grocery store in business, but the state liquor store has never faltered. Eh?

Cheers!