The gambling marketing column where Lee Davy plagiarises marketing advice from people much smarter than he and applies it to the gambling industry, this week with a focus on the poker training business: Solve For Why.
The sound of a violin can make you want to put your nob in an elevator door and press “Floor 12.” Or, it can make you feel like dough kneaded by a keen baker.
Light.
Gooey.
And that’s how I feel, sitting in my local coffee shop, listening to Everything That Rises from Moby, preparing to put fingers to keys on a new column.
I know more than some, and not as much as others. I’m no expert, but I would like to share what I’m learning in the form of intelligent questions laid at the door of people who call the gambling industry home.
So settle down, listen to some vivacious violin voices, and read as Matt Berkey talks about the audience of the poker coaching experience Solve For Why – who they are, and how they intend to provide what they believe they want.
Who is your audience? Why are they here? What do they care about?
Much like anything in life, the original vision rarely aligns with the reality of the outcome. When I first decided to enter the poker training market, I recognised there was a major hole in regards to the material available for astute players looking to capitalise on the live environment which is riddled with exploitative opportunities. I envisioned propelling mid-stake grinders through self-imposed barriers, created through a combination of risk aversion and processing years of subjective luck by any means necessary. More importantly, I felt the market was ready for a shift. I saw an absolute need to abandon the emphasis on spot dissection (or micro learning) for a more holistic approach which would couple strategy with business acumen and mental toughness. I felt I had formulated a well thought out path to success, built off the back of my own failures and flaws. Unfortunately, I failed to consider how much perception and pride can impact the ability to command the attention of those I could benefit the most.
We’ve largely failed at acquiring the mid-tier pro who is one beat away from dropping stakes or considering other employment– despite having been a massive winner in the same games just a few years prior. Where we may have fallen short in obtaining our target audience, we made a huge splash among the up and comers and the ultra-competitive (working) professionals. And truthfully, it’s for the best. These clients are not just willing but excited at the idea of taking a big risk and investing in themselves. They care about abandoning the crutches of assisted learning to trail blaze a path carved out of independent thought and analysis. Ultimately, our mission is to have students leave with a heightened sense of self-trust to critically think and problem solve without a need to look for permission from someone they deem to be an authority. We aren’t attempting to breed winners. Instead, we’re focused on promoting innovators.
What do you want the audience to think, feel, say and do as a result of hearing your message?
Our biggest challenge is two-fold and both my responsibility. I feel we do an inadequate job educating the market on exactly what our product offers. It would be disingenuous to package such an abstract objective in a neatly wrapped product that sells itself. Instead, it’s kind of on my shoulders to demonstrate what the strategy looks like in action, which leads to the next challenge Solve for Why faces. My limited time playing televised poker comes, of course, with mixed results. Unfortunately, most of my big scores came in the infancy of the company while my more recent appearances have had less than desirable results. It’s important for us to rely on more than just a small sample of televised hands to tell the story, which is why I’m so thankful for the many articles and podcasts which have given me a platform to speak my mind.
Moving forward we plan to put a much larger emphasis on marketing, specifically as a unit. I have two colleagues in Christian Soto and Jordan Young who are regularly beating mid stakes cash and tournaments. These guys are hungry and are dedicating as much time to being educators and innovators as they are to becoming elite in this game that tends to humble even the most self-aware.
How can you craft and deliver the message in a way that helps you to achieve your goal?
We have a lot of exciting things in store for the upcoming quarter. Jason Somerville and Run It Up have decided to partner with us for the second annual Heads Up Challenge which will benefit REG this year. We started the event last year just as an attempt to bring something new and innovative to the poker streaming community. Jason and I have always been on similar pages in our vision to grow the game to a more mainstream level, so it was a no-brainer that we bring our technology to his platform. To no surprise, half of my production team was introduced to me through Jason back in 2012 when I was working with him and Russell Thomas on the Final Table project where we ran sims to prep Russ for the conclusion of his Main Event run.
We’re also planning to run our first Tournament Academy in late May (24th – 26th). Though live cash games have always had my heart, some of my crowning achievements have come in the MTT arena. Our team bolsters a full resume of tournament success, and it was a natural expansion for us to shift into.
Finally, we plan to launch a subscription-based training site. We feel that aside from our unique approach to the game, we are also afforded the best production crew in the poker industry. It would be a crime to not lean on such an asset, so we’ll be tapping into multiple forms of multimedia and learning tools. Once a week we will release original content to our subscribers, the first of which, Origins, will be a backstory on how Solve for Why came to be and who the characters are that have helped build the company into what it is today.
I’m excited for what the future holds both for us as a company as well as for the poker industry. I’m very convinced that we’re just surpassing the infancy of this game and though the likelihood of seeing another Moneymaker boom is improbable, it seems reasonable that the game, or community as a whole, will continue to evolve and take on a different shape. Afterall there remains many untapped demographics, the largest of which is accessible by simply finding a way to lessen the barrier for women to enter the market. Positioning Solve for Why to be at the forefront of making this game more inclusive would be representative of the type of success I hope to see this company achieve both in the poker realm and beyond.
You can find Matt Berkey and his team at Solve For Why right here.
