I was on a call a couple of weeks ago with a founder who was ready to fire his copywriter.
"We've rewritten the homepage headline six times this month," he said. "Nothing feels right."
Sound familiar?
Here's what I told him …
The problem isn't your words. It's what's upstream of your words.
Messaging feels hard when you're trying to write without constraints.
Think about it. If I told you exactly …
Who you're talking to
What they're feeling (not just their "problem" ... the actual pain)
What outcome they want
What they're afraid of
How they already talk about it
... then writing becomes a translation job. You're just converting truth into sentences.
But if any of those inputs are fuzzy?
You're forced to "write around the unknown."
And that's where messaging turns into …
Vague statements
Generic benefits
Careful hedges
Laundry lists of features
"Let's test 40 angles and see what sticks"
Not because you're bad at copy. Because the system can't produce clean output from unclear inputs.
Here's the uncomfortable truth …
When PMF (product-market fit) is clear, messaging stops feeling like creative work.
It becomes obvious.
When PMF is soft, messaging feels like pulling teeth. Every headline is a debate. Every ad is a gamble. Every week you're rewriting something.
So if you're stuck in an endless loop of "what should we say?" ...
... the answer probably isn't a better copywriter.
It's a sharper truth.
Tomorrow, I'll show you the hidden reason most founders get stuck here. (Hint: they're trying to solve multiple problems with one headline.)
See you tomorrow,
Jeremiah
P.S. If you've rewritten your main headline more than three times this quarter, that's a symptom. Stay tuned ... I'll explain what it's a symptom of.
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