Start With a List of Customers and Problems That Build on Your Experience and Relationships

Identify what is unlikely to change: e.g. problem area, type of customer. Build on experience. Join communities that focus on these.

Start With a List of Customers and Problems
That Build on Your Experience and Relationships

“Start building network, blog, educating one year before you make the leap.
Build community.
The first sales will always be to friends. Make those friends.”
Conor Neill in “Entrepreneur: Start a year before you Start

I think Conor Neill offers this is a great framing for the need to identify the things about your plan that are not likely to change–a problem area, a category of customer–and join communities that are already focused on these. Build on experience and relationships.

He advises “build community” and not “build new community” and I agree, I would build new only where you cannot find existing communities.  If it’s a real customer category or a real problem there is almost always one or more communities formed that are addressing it at least partially. There may be several each using different terminology and focused on a different aspect of the same set of problems, but this is a search you can start well advance in crafting a product.

I don’t know if your first sales come from “friends” but certainly from people that trust you, if you can start the trust building process in advance of the sales process by becoming a member in good standing of communities they are already a member of or by writing or speaking about topics that they are interested in, then you effectively start in advance of the direct sales process.

Build on Experience

Another way to look at this is to “always start in phase two of a five phase plan.” Look into your past experiences and projects for examples of problems solved and relationships that you can build on as you start your new venture. If you are going in to a new area and cannot identify aspects of prior experience or expertise that will have an impact then be careful: you may be attracted to the new new thing without a way to differentiate your offering.

It’s OK to start over from scratch but if you are effectively setting fire to ten or twenty years of experience you may want to look instead at problems and fields that are adjacent or can take advantage of your experience in preference to one where you don’t bring relevant experience. Green fields are seductive because you know the problems of the areas you are more familiar with and can fall victim to the “grass is greener” when speculating about how easy a new field may be.

“An early start beats fast running.”
Michael Bowen (@mdcbowen) “Cobb’s Rules

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  1. Pingback: SKMurphy, Inc. Quotes For Entrepreneurs- August 2014 - SKMurphy, Inc.

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