Discover & Define Your Target Audience (FS049)

There’s one question that can get to the heart of whether what you’re working on is a soon-to-be-failed side project or a business with a good shot at financial success.

This is the question that kickstarted my career as a designer. After wallowing and fiddling with side projects for years, I finally grokked the bit I was missing.

In this episode you get to hear a handful of experienced entrepreneurs, people who are actually earning a living doing something they care about (in many cases a handsome living), answer that question along with some insights from the Fizzle team about:

• The audience who, if you aim at it, will kill your business… every time.
• The difference between a side project and an actual business with earning potential.
• Two failsafe questions you’ve got to answer for your business to earn enough to support you.

The Best Info In A Free Guide

Defining your audience is a critical step on the journey. The insights from the interviews in this episode (and the next, wink wink, nudge nudge) are massive, so I’ve compiled them into a free guide including:

• Bullet point notes on each of the expert interviews with links to specific tools they use.
• Worksheets and exercises to get to the truth about your audience so you can resonate and sell to them.
• The big list of questions to ask about your audience (including the two failsafe questions).
• Quick summaries of the most important concepts in customer development (that’s what the startup world calls it) to keep you on track (without wasting a bunch of time).

Download the guide and start getting to clarity and insights for your audience:

Download the Fizzle Audience Guide

In one of the many surveys Corbett’s done with the ThinkTraffic.net audience, I stumbled into a story about an entrepreneur who fk’d up big.

She spent 14 months building her audience, creating great stuff for them, delighting them, only to realize THEY COULDN’T PAY FOR ANYTHING, no matter what she made. She had created a decent sized audience of people she could never create a sustainable income from (at least not in any way she’d be comfortable with).

Eventually she realized the mistake, pivoted, and recovered in time. But she wasted over a year building something without doing a few bits of critical research that would have saved her the heartache, money and time.

So, get the book. Even though we have an excellent course within Fizzle on this topic, and we earn our living when you pay for this kind of thing… take it. (We’ll try to figure out something else to sell you later.)

Folks we Heard From

Rob Walling — “Lessons learned by a Solo Entrepreneur.” — GetDrip.com

Pat Flynn — “Lead by example. Be honest. Hold nothing back.” — SmartPassiveIncome.com

John Lee Dumas — “EntrepreneurOnFire: Awarded Best in iTunes 2013 IGNITE!” — EntrepreneurOnFire.com

Tara Gentile — “Helping small business capitalize on big ideas.” — TaraGentile.com

Jason Glaspey — “It’s not just that I’m good at not working, it’s that I’m good at making not working work. #mountainbikes #dad #husband #geek” — JasonGlaspey.com

Steve Kamb — “Rebel Leader of @NerdFitness. Frequent traveler. Strength training enthusiast. Complete goofball. Decent piano player. Awful singer. Ostrich whisperer.” — NerdFitness.com

Confident you’ve got the right audience?

Send us your questions and we’ll answer them on the air. (We’ll be doing another Q&A episode on Apr 25th.)

In the mean time, tell me in the comments how confident you are that you’ve targeted the right audience? What bit, from the numerous interviews in this episode, sticks with you and helps you most?