When I first started my business I was fumbling around like a fish out of water. And honestly I still do in many ways as business is has many dynamic facets you must learn to master and new levels of growth come with new sets of problems to solve.
Business is about constant innovation and the world is changing faster than ever because of technological advancements. For some people that freaks them out and they contract into their comfort zone. For others it means possibility and they expand into the unknown.
In the beginning I was enamored by the success stories I saw of companies hitting it big. I wanted that too! I wanted to scale from 0 to tons of customers overnight. By trying to get everyone as my customer, nobody was my customer.
In truth I was more focused on me vs. my clients and what I was actually doing for them! Like most people who get into business I fell into the trap of doing it solely for my reasons and focused on my needs vs. trying to meet my customers’ needs and solve their problems.
I read an article by Kevin Kelly founder of WIRED Magazine called ‘1,000 True Fans’ and it gave me a new perspective on how to approach my business. In essence as the title suggests if you focus on nurturing your core audience you can run a successful enterprise. It’s cool if you want to grow a bigger business than 1,000 customers but the principle is that you must focus on starting with your core audience and it ripples out from there. Most people do it backwards in that they look to get thousands of customers without adding any deep value and cultivating a relationship with them. Even the biggest companies that exist today (Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook) started with a small group of customers and grew from that base because they created so much value for them to start with.
It is totally achievable to create a successful business where you can share your creative work and live a financially independent lifestyle. If you can get your 1,000 customers to pay you $100/year that’s $100,000 in revenue!
Here’s the article (1000 True Fans) and I also made a video for you below:
How can implementing this concept help you in your business? Comment below!
Abrazo!
Naeem
