Welcome to the very first edition of the Pulse Check newsletter. This is a repost of our weekly email newsletter. If you enjoy this consider signing up to get these sent straight to your inbox every Friday.
It looks like most of you wanted a weekly email newsletter. That’s great! Monthly was a close second for frequency, so I've come up with an idea to make both groups happy.
(Video got a lot of requests too. Stay tuned, I’m working on bringing my YouTube channel up to speed.)
I'd like to have a monthly theme, and each week I'll go a bit deeper on that topic. This first month I'm going to start with an overview of the topic, and then the next three weeks go more in-depth.
I think this is a great way to serve you best. It'll give you a chance to decide upfront if this month's topic is something you want to learn more about. If you like the topic great, check out the next three. If you don't, we'll try again next month.
If you respond to the first email in the series with any questions or feedback, I'll do my best to incorporate it into the next three. You'll be doing me a huge favor by helping me make sure the topic is relevant to you, and in return, I'll be able to provide more value to you.
(It's a win-win, and those are the only situations worth pursuing in business.)
The first topic we'll be covering is your audience. It's probably one of the most critical parts of business and one that's often overlooked.
Your audience is who you serve—the people you want to matter too. And the people who will give you money in exchange for what you do.
Figuring out who your audience is will be critical to your success, and as a rule, you want to go smaller instead of bigger. When you try to be too broad with your audience, it's almost impossible to appeal to them.
Instead, if you go narrow, you can speak directly to them. Almost like you're talking over a cup of coffee. You only need 1000 loyal fans to have a successful business. That's 0.0003125% of the U.S. population.
Once you figure out the audience you want to serve, the next step is to find the biggest problem they face and solve that.
Businesses exist to solve people's problems. Remember that and internalize it. The iPod allowed people to carry a thousand songs in their pocket. Amazon gets you anything you want in 2 days or less. Netflix allows you to stream every episode of your favorite show without touching your remote (until it asks if you're still there).
These are all meaningful problems worth solving. You may disagree, but then it’s likely you aren’t part of the narrow audience they’re trying to serve.
Your next step is to build a relationship with that audience. The best way to do that is to take on all the risk and start giving value before money ever changes hands.
This is also where things get a little tricky because if you give too much value, people won't ever buy your products. If you don't provide enough value, they won't trust you enough to buy your products. (There's a certain way to do it that we'll talk about later.)
The ultimate goal is to get people to buy your products. Don't forget that you won't stay in business if you aren't making sales.
Another mistake business owners often make is that they believe they’re done once someone buys their product. That couldn't be further from the truth.
It's kind of like marriage. If you want a good one, you have to keep putting in effort long after you say I do. And if you stop putting in that effort for too long, they're going to find someone else who will.
The best way to grow your business is by selling new products (read: solve new problems) for your current customers. Which means you need to continue building that relationship with your audience.
Hopefully, you're beginning to see how important it is that you put a lot of time thinking about your audience. And this applies equally to new and existing business owners.
If you're just starting, then pay attention because this will save you a lot of time and frustration. If you already have a business and you're trying to grow it, then these next few weeks will give you some new insight into how to serve your audience better.
Next week will be all about finding your audience.
Let me know what questions you have around this topic. Feel free to hit reply and let me know.
– Jason
P.S. There's a more profound lesson hidden in these newsletters that I'm going to let you in on when we talk about building relationships with your audience. As you read these emails, try to think beyond what is said in them.
I know that may sound confusing right now, but it'll make more sense in a few weeks.