How To Build a Business Around a Customer - Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Clifford, who asks, "Hi Evan, it's Clifford. I would love a bit more detail about how to build my business around the customer. P.S., I have a new goal to cross paths with you and shake your hand and thank you." Well, thank you Clifford for the kind words, and if you're ever in Toronto, I'd love to grab a coffee and shake your hand. To answer your question about how to build a business around the customer, it's one of my favorite pieces of advice for entrepreneurs because if you can build around the paying customer, then your chances of success are much higher because you have money coming in and you know you have a customer who likes what you do and is willing to pay you for it. So that's the first step to getting your business started. In order to make that happen, you need to start connecting with potential customers and finding out what their main challenges are. So there's a number of ways to do it, but you start by hanging out where your potential customers are hanging out. So if there's networking events or different conferences or different meetings that you know your potential customers are going to be at, you want to go there. You can also look online. If there's different forums or on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn groups where you know that your customers are hanging out, you want to be there and you want them to start to get to know you. As you start talking to them and as you introduce yourself, you're not selling anything yet. All you're trying to do is add as much value to them as possible and try to help them out. Get them to think, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about and can potentially help Then as you start building that relationship with them, you ask some of the challenges that they're facing. And that'll come up in the course of your conversation. Find out what problems they're facing, and hopefully there's something in there that you can work out a solution to. And you can ask them, "Hey, I understand that's a huge challenge for you. If I were able to help you do XYZ, would that make sense for you?" And as you get to know these people and as they build up confidence with you, then they're more likely to want to come on board and work with you. And it's really as simple as that. Try to get to know as many people as you can who are potential customers, find out about the challenges that they're facing, and try to be as helpful and valuable as possible to start a relationship, to develop rapport, and to really start to get to know some of their challenges. And once you hit on a challenge that you think you can really help them solve, work with them to solve that problem, and it's the start of your new business. So I hope that helps, Clifford. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment. And stay tuned for next episode!