About a year ago, I went to see the musical Hamilton in Los Angeles with my wife Lauren.
It was a high-brow event, with people paying as much as $500-$1000 a ticket. We managed to get tickets for $180, but it still was not what I would call a cheap night out.
The show was great. As we left the Pantages Theatre, I was surprised to see a line forming in the street. At the front of the line was a hotdog vendor serving $3 hotdogs to a hungry crowd.
These people had come from paying top dollar to sit in a posh theatre, and now they were lining up for a street hotdog at 11pm. Why? Because they were hungry.
This might be the most important lesson I have learned in marketing – and it is even more true in the age of AI: find a crowd that is hungry for what you have, then stand in front of them.
A Hotdog for a Hungry Person
This idea is not new. Gary Halbert taught it in his newsletter decades ago. But that night at the Pantages I saw it firsthand. High society men and women, dressed to the nines, chomping on hotdogs on a street corner.
It made me realize that before I do anything else in business, I need to make sure I am standing in front of someone who is hungry for what I have to offer.
The question for entrepreneurs in 2026 is: how do you find those hungry people faster? And this is where AI changes everything.
AI Makes Finding the Hungry Crowd Faster
In the past, finding your ideal customer was a slow process. You would run some ads, test some keywords, talk to people at networking events, and gradually figure out who your best buyers were. It could take months or years of trial and error.
AI tools compress that timeline dramatically. AI-powered audience research tools can analyze thousands of data points to identify who is actively searching for what you offer, where they spend time online, what language they use to describe their problems, and what triggers their buying decisions.
Tools like Google Analytics 4, SEMrush, SparkToro, and even ChatGPT can help you build a detailed picture of your hungry crowd in days rather than months. You can discover audience segments you never knew existed and validate demand before you spend a dollar on marketing.
Everyone Values Differently – AI Helps You See It
Not every customer values the same thing about your product or service. Each has their own reasons for buying. Some care about speed. Others care about quality. Some want the cheapest option. Others want the most prestigious.
Understanding these different motivations used to require expensive market research or years of customer conversations. AI tools can now analyze customer reviews, survey responses, support tickets, and social media comments to surface these patterns at scale.
When you understand what each segment of your audience truly values, you can tailor your marketing to speak directly to their motivation. AI for entrepreneurs is not about automating away the customer relationship – it is about understanding it more deeply than you ever could manually.
Marketing Like a Modern Traveling Salesman
I have always viewed marketing as taking your product or service into the market. Like a traveling salesman venturing into a town, you set up shop in one location, hoping to gain interest. If nobody buys, you try another spot.
Today, AI gives entrepreneurs the ability to test multiple spots simultaneously. You can run ads on different platforms, test different messages, target different audiences – all at the same time – and let the AI tell you which combination works best.
This is fundamentally different from the old approach of picking one thing, trying it for three months, and hoping it works. AI for entrepreneurs means faster iteration, less guesswork, and more data-driven decisions about where to show up and what to say.
The Question That Matters Most
With all the AI tools available, one question still matters more than any technology: what does my customer value?
I still ask myself this regularly and try to write out every single answer I can think of. I go deep into the psychology, as well as the most simple, obvious things. I get them all down and pay close attention to which ones matter to the majority of the people I sell to.
AI can help you gather the data, analyze the patterns, and test the hypotheses. But the strategic thinking – the ability to truly empathize with your customer and understand their hunger – that is still the entrepreneur’s superpower.
Use AI to find the hungry crowd faster. Then stand in front of them with something they genuinely want. That is the formula that works in any market, at any time – with or without technology.
Ready to put AI to work in your business?
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