Learning from Myron Golden on Problems, Pain, Value, Story and Transformation
Francis E. Madojemu
A NOTE ON ATTRIBUTION
This article is developed substantially from the public teaching of Myron Golden, particularly his ideas about problem-centred communication, pain and pleasure, storytelling, value, transformation, and selling solutions rather than products.
I have brought several of those teachings together here, researched some of the psychological ideas that support or qualify them, and then developed my own reflections and applications for communication, leadership, business and ministry.
Where a principle or formulation belongs specifically to Myron Golden, I have tried to identify it as such. The synthesis, commentary, cautions and applications are mine.
This is not an authorised summary of Myron Golden’s work, nor does it imply his endorsement of my conclusions. It is my attempt to learn carefully from ideas I have found valuable while giving appropriate credit to their source.
— Francis E. Madojemu
What if the reason people are not responding to what you are selling is not that they do not need it?
What if you are simply talking about the wrong thing?
You are talking about your product.
They are thinking about their problem.
You are describing your programme.
They are wondering whether anything can change their situation.
You are telling your story.
They are living theirs.
You are explaining what they will receive.
They are asking whether the result is worth the cost, the effort and the risk.
That tension runs through much of Myron Golden’s teaching on marketing, selling and communication.
The more I have listened to him, the more I have realised that the individual statements make more sense when they are placed together.
There is a system underneath them.
The question is not primarily:
How do I persuade people to buy what I have?
The better question is:
How deeply do I understand what they are trying to change?
That is a very different starting point.
START WITH THEIR PROBLEM, NOT YOUR PRODUCT
Most organisations naturally begin with themselves.
We have this facility.
We offer this service.
Our programme runs for twelve weeks.
Our church meets at these times.
Our school has these resources.
Our product has these features.
None of that information is necessarily wrong.
But it may not be where the person listening begins.
The customer begins with a problem.
The woman planning a wedding may not initially care how many square metres your hall contains.
She may be thinking:
“I cannot afford for this day to become a disaster.”
The entrepreneur may not initially care how many modules are inside your course.
He may be thinking:
“I am working harder every year and the business is still stuck.”
The parent may not be looking for a seminar.
She may be thinking:
“Something is happening with my child and I do not know how to help.”
The person coming to church may not be thinking about your sermon series.
He may be thinking:
“I have prayed about this for months. Why does nothing seem to change?”
People arrive carrying a story already in progress.
Communication becomes useful when it enters that story.
“NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR STORY”
One of Myron Golden’s most provocative statements is aimed at people who say:
“I want to tell my story.”
His response is deliberately sharp.
Nobody cares.
Taken literally, that cannot be true.
Human beings love stories.
Stories have shaped civilisation, religion, families and culture for thousands of years.
But that is not really his point.
His next statement explains it.
People care about how to fix their story.
The task, he says, is to find an efficient, effective and elegant solution to the problem they are facing.
Now the provocation becomes useful.
The problem is not storytelling.
The problem is self-centred storytelling.
There is a difference between:
“Listen to what happened to me.”
and:
“Let me show you what what happened to me may help you understand about what is happening to you.”
The first makes my experience the destination.
The second turns my experience into a bridge.
That matters far beyond sales.
A testimony is more powerful when somebody listening can locate themselves in it.
A leader’s story matters when it illuminates the journey of those following.
A teacher’s experience matters when it helps the student understand the subject.
A failure becomes valuable when it helps another person recognise a trap.
A success becomes valuable when it reveals something transferable.
The question is not simply:
Is this a good story?
It is:
What does this story enable somebody else to see?
THE PROBLEM BEFORE THE PROMISE
Another Myron Golden idea concerns the way we attract attention.
He compares two possible headlines.
One says:
“Seven Steps to Seven Figures.”
The other says:
“The Seven Biggest Mistakes Keeping Entrepreneurs from Seven Figures.”
The destination has hardly changed.
Both are about reaching seven figures.
But the psychological starting point is completely different.
The first asks the entrepreneur to believe a promise about a future they have never experienced.
The second begins with a problem for which they already possess evidence.
They already know they are not making seven figures.
They already know making money is difficult.
They already know something is preventing the result they want.
So the language of mistakes may feel more believable than the language of seven easy steps.
This is more interesting than simply saying:
Negative headlines work.
The deeper principle is:
Begin with something the person already knows to be true.
The pain.
The frustration.
The missed target.
The failed attempt.
The gap between where they are and where they want to be.
A promise asks the person to believe you.
A correctly identified problem may demonstrate that you understand them.
That changes the conversation.
WHY PAIN CREATES URGENCY
Myron pushes the idea further.
He says that people may be willing to trust a stranger to lead them away from pain before trusting that stranger to lead them towards pleasure.
His examples include warnings about things that could destroy a marriage or mistakes blocking financial independence.
There is something recognisable here.
Consider the difference between:
“Five Ways to Build a Better Marriage”
and:
“Five Things You May Be Doing That Are Slowly Destroying Your Marriage.”
The second creates urgency because the possibility of loss is already inside the message.
The same thing happens in business.
“Ten Ways to Grow Your Business” is attractive.
“Ten Mistakes Quietly Killing Your Business” creates a different kind of attention.
Why?
Because loss feels immediate.
Potential gain can wait.
Potential damage feels as though it requires investigation now.
Behavioural research gives us some language for understanding this.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work on prospect theory showed that, in many decision situations, people respond more strongly to potential losses than to equivalent gains.
That does not mean pain is the only human motivator.
People also pursue joy, meaning, love, curiosity, significance, achievement, beauty and belonging.
So I would not turn Myron’s teaching into a universal law that says:
People always move away from pain before moving towards pleasure.
That would overstate the evidence.
I would say something more careful:
Recognised pain often creates urgency faster than an unfamiliar promise creates desire.
That is strong enough.
And it explains a great deal.
DO NOT INVENT THE WOUND
But the moment we understand this principle, something dangerous becomes possible.
If pain attracts attention, then perhaps we should increase the pain.
Make people afraid.
Tell them their marriage is collapsing.
Tell them their children are being destroyed.
Tell them their business is dying.
Tell them disaster is coming.
Make the threat larger.
Then present yourself as the solution.
That is manipulation.
The correct lesson cannot be:
Find a fear and exploit it.
It should be:
Find the real problem and describe it honestly enough that the person recognises it.
There is an enormous difference between discovering a wound and manufacturing one.
One begins with service.
The other begins with exploitation.
This distinction becomes especially important in ministry because spiritual authority can multiply the effect of fear.
A frightened congregation can be moved very quickly.
That does not mean it has been moved truthfully.
The fact that a method produces a response does not make the method right.
SELL THE ANSWER, NOT THE PRODUCT
Another idea closely associated with Myron’s teaching is this:
Sell the answer, not the product.
People are rarely interested in a product merely because it exists.
They are interested in what changes because they have it.
The familiar marketing illustration says that someone buying a drill does not really want a drill.
They want a hole.
But even that may not go far enough.
Why do they want the hole?
Perhaps they want to mount a television.
Why?
Perhaps relatives are visiting and they want the sitting room completed before Saturday.
Now we are closer to the real value.
The farther we travel into the customer’s actual life, the better we understand what the product means.
This is where many suppliers get confused.
We know how difficult the product was to create.
We know how many years it took to develop the expertise.
We know the equipment we purchased.
We know the research.
We know the labour.
Those things affect our costs.
But the customer is asking something else:
What changes for me?
That is why merely listing features is often weak communication.
Features have to be translated into consequence.
PAYOFF BEFORE PIECES
Imagine a training programme advertised like this:
Twelve sessions.
Forty videos.
Six templates.
Weekly Zoom calls.
Three workbooks.
WhatsApp support.
Eight bonuses.
That may sound impressive.
But it is still an inventory.
The customer has to perform the mental work of turning all those components into:
“So what?”
What will actually be different?
The stronger communication begins with movement:
Where am I now?
Where am I trying to go?
What is preventing me?
How does this help bridge the gap?
Now the components make sense.
The Zoom calls matter because they solve something.
The templates matter because they remove some friction.
The workbook matters because it helps produce an outcome.
The value is not in the number of pieces.
It is in their relationship to the transformation.
TRANSFORMATION BEFORE TRANSACTION
This may be one of the most important ideas in Myron Golden’s broader teaching.
There is a fundamental difference between trying to complete a transaction and trying to produce a transformation.
The transactional seller is thinking:
“How do I get this person to pay?”
The transformation-oriented seller is asking:
“Can what I have actually help this person move from where they are to where they want to be?”
Those questions produce different behaviour.
When the transaction becomes the centre, pressure enters the conversation.
Neediness enters.
The customer begins to feel like the solution to the seller’s cash-flow problem.
But when transformation becomes the centre, the seller has to ask harder questions.
Is this person actually a good fit?
Does this product solve their problem?
Are their expectations realistic?
Can we deliver what we are promising?
Should they buy this at all?
Sometimes the correct answer will be no.
That matters.
Because if every conversation must end in a sale, then transformation was never really the priority.
The transaction was.
THE CUSTOMER ALREADY HAS A METHOD
Another mistake is assuming that people are simply sitting around waiting for us to arrive with a solution.
They are not.
Most people already have some way of dealing with the problem.
The method may be poor.
But it exists.
They may be doing the work manually.
Using another supplier.
Ignoring the problem.
Living with the inconvenience.
Asking family members for help.
Using a free alternative.
Improvising.
Doing nothing.
Even doing nothing is a method.
So the real journey is not simply:
CURRENT STATE → DESIRED STATE
It is:
CURRENT STATE → CURRENT METHOD → WHY IT IS NO LONGER ENOUGH → BETTER METHOD → DESIRED STATE
That middle section matters.
If you do not understand why people continue using their current method, you may misunderstand what is actually preventing change.
Maybe their method is familiar.
Cheap.
Comfortable.
Safe.
Good enough.
Socially accepted.
Or maybe the problem simply does not hurt enough yet.
Understanding that is part of understanding the person.
OBJECTIONS BEGIN BEFORE THE CLOSE
Salespeople often imagine objections as things that suddenly appear at the end.
“I need to think about it.”
“It is too expensive.”
“I need to talk to my spouse.”
“I am not sure this will work for me.”
But many objections begin much earlier.
They are unanswered questions carried quietly through the entire presentation.
The price objection may really be:
“I still do not understand why this is worth this much.”
The trust objection may be:
“I have seen people make claims like this before.”
The delay may mean:
“You have not helped me understand why this needs to happen now.”
The scepticism may mean:
“You have described the result but not shown enough evidence.”
This is why good communication has to anticipate honest doubt.
Not manipulate it.
Answer it.
That requires empathy.
You have to stop admiring your own offer long enough to look at it from the other side.
What would worry you?
What would be unclear?
What sounds exaggerated?
What evidence would you require?
Where would trust fail?
These are useful questions long before the sales conversation reaches the end.
MARKETING AS EDUCATION
One reason I find this school of thought useful is that it allows marketing to be understood as something more dignified than persuasion.
At its best, marketing can become education.
Not:
How do I make this person want something?
But:
How do I help the right person understand the problem, understand the possible solution, and make an informed decision?
That is very different.
Good educational marketing can help somebody name a problem they have struggled to describe.
It can explain why their present method keeps failing.
It can show the difference between alternatives.
It can reduce confusion.
It can demonstrate expertise by being useful before any transaction occurs.
It can allow trust to develop through understanding rather than pressure.
But there is still a test.
Would I want this person to understand what I am teaching even if they eventually decided not to buy from me?
If the answer is yes, we are probably closer to education.
If the information is useful only when it pushes them towards my purchase button, we may simply have disguised a sales pitch.
ONE IDEA. ONE PERSON. ONE PROBLEM.
There is another very practical implication.
Content becomes clearer when we stop asking:
“What should we post?”
and start asking:
“What problem is the person we want to serve trying to solve?”
Those questions produce completely different material.
Imagine a venue.
The supplier-centred content says:
“Our hall seats 800 people.”
The problem-centred content might say:
“Five things couples discover too late when choosing a wedding venue.”
The hall can still appear.
But now the facility sits inside the customer’s problem.
A church can make exactly the same mistake.
Supplier-centred communication:
“Join us Wednesday at 6 p.m.”
Problem-centred communication:
“Why do I keep praying about the same problem without changing what I already know I should do?”
Now Wednesday’s meeting may become relevant because the subject has become relevant.
The event is no longer the message.
It is the place where the message continues.
THIS IS NOT ONLY ABOUT SELLING
The principles become more interesting when they escape the boundaries of business.
Consider leadership.
The leader has a vision.
The people have a present reality.
If the leader only describes the future and never connects that future to what people are presently experiencing, the vision may remain private enthusiasm.
Teaching has the same challenge.
The teacher possesses knowledge.
The student possesses confusion.
Good teaching builds the bridge.
Parenting too.
A parent may be offering wisdom.
The child may only be hearing criticism.
The content can be right while the communication fails.
And ministry?
That deserves even more careful thought.
THE CHURCH AND THE QUESTION BEFORE THE ANSWER
The church claims to possess Good News.
But even Good News answers a question.
We say:
Jesus saves.
Someone may reasonably ask:
From what?
We speak about forgiveness.
What is sin?
We speak about grace.
Why is grace necessary?
We speak about justification.
What is the accusation?
We speak about freedom.
What is the bondage?
We speak about life.
What is death?
A person may hear the vocabulary without understanding the problem to which the vocabulary responds.
That does not mean the church should manufacture bad news so that people will buy the Good News.
It means the Christian story itself includes a diagnosis.
Creation.
Fall.
Sin.
Alienation.
Judgment.
Promise.
Redemption.
Restoration.
Remove the diagnosis and the remedy becomes difficult to understand.
That subject deserves a separate article because it would be dangerous to reduce the Gospel to a marketing framework.
But Myron’s question gives us something useful to examine:
Are we sometimes giving answers to questions people do not yet understand?
That is worth thinking about.
WHAT I WOULD NOT IMPORT UNCRITICALLY
Learning from someone does not require turning every strong statement into doctrine.
I would put at least three boundaries around these ideas.
First, pain is not the only human motivator.
People also move toward love, curiosity, meaning, aspiration, worship, beauty, belonging and hope.
Pain can create urgency, but human motivation is larger than avoidance.
Second, response is not proof of truth.
Fear works.
Anger works.
Tribalism works.
Manipulation works.
The fact that communication moves people does not tell us whether it should have moved them.
Third, people must never become merely prospects.
The language of conversion, pain points, objections and transactions is useful inside business.
It becomes dangerous when applied carelessly to every human relationship.
People are not behavioural machines waiting for the right trigger.
They are people.
That distinction is especially important in ministry.
WHAT I THINK MYRON GOLDEN GETS VERY RIGHT
After putting these teachings together, there are several principles I want to keep.
Become deeply interested in other people’s problems.
Begin where they are, not where your presentation begins.
Describe real pain without inventing it.
Solve the problem before celebrating the product.
Make your story useful to theirs.
Translate features into outcomes.
Care more about transformation than transaction.
Anticipate honest questions instead of manipulating objections.
Teach before demanding trust.
And finally:
Let reality verify the promise.
That last one matters.
Because eventually marketing meets delivery.
The customer experiences the product.
The student experiences the programme.
The attendee experiences the event.
The congregation experiences the ministry.
At that point, language stops being enough.
Reality gets a vote.
THE QUESTION WE SHOULD KEEP ASKING
The most useful legacy of this research may not be another marketing formula.
It may be a better question.
When we create content:
What problem does the person already know they have?
When we write:
Am I telling my story, or using my story to help them interpret theirs?
When we develop a product:
What really changes for the person using it?
When we design an event:
What difficulty are we helping somebody solve?
When we advertise a venue:
What is the organiser actually worried about?
When we preach:
What question does this truth answer?
When we make an offer:
Are we communicating our effort or their outcome?
When somebody does not respond:
Do they reject the solution, or have we failed to establish the problem?
Those questions can save us from a great deal of unnecessary activity.
THE PRINCIPLE BENEATH THE PRINCIPLES
The more I study Myron Golden’s teaching, the less I think the deepest lesson is about headlines.
Or lead magnets.
Or closing.
Or high-ticket offers.
The deeper lesson is orientation.
Most poor communication begins with the sender.
What I want to say.
What I have built.
What I know.
What I want to sell.
What I want you to do.
The better communicator turns around.
What are you trying to solve?
What hurts?
What have you tried?
What do you believe about the problem?
What are you afraid of losing?
What does success mean from where you are standing?
Now return to the product.
Does it genuinely help?
If it does, explain the connection.
If it does not, marketing is not the first problem.
The solution is.
That may be the principle I want to preserve most clearly:
THE BEST MARKETING CANNOT SAVE A SOLUTION THAT DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
But the reverse is also true.
A genuinely valuable solution can remain invisible when the people who need it cannot recognise themselves in the way we describe it.
So before you tell them about your product—
understand their problem.
Before you tell your story—
understand theirs.
Before you make the promise—
understand the pain.
Before you ask for the transaction—
understand the transformation.
Because people do not enter our communication carrying our agenda.
They arrive carrying their lives.
That is where good communication must begin.
SOURCE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The central ideas examined in this article were prompted by and developed from teachings by Myron Golden contained in the videos, transcripts and public materials referenced throughout this study. I am grateful for the clarity with which he has articulated principles around problems, pain, storytelling, value and transformation.
The research comparisons, interpretations, cautions, theological reflections and applications to my own work are mine.
Francis E. Madojemu
THINK • BUILD • PERSONALIZE
