YOU ARE NOT YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER!

Something many business owners take issue with whenever I bring it up. You are not your target customer. Even if you're proposing a solution you've personally experienced, you're still not your customer. And the main reason for that is because you are now the seller and not the buyer. As a result, you need to be directly comfortable with the fact that the choice of marketing message and distribution channel may not align with your own personal worldview. Let me give an example. Perhaps you get your information by listening to podcasts or scrolling through LinkedIn, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your customers do the same thing. You may use an iPhone, they may use Android. You may spend the first half an hour reading various news sites. Maybe they spend their first half an hour scrolling through cat videos. You see what I mean? Never assume anything about customers based upon your own personal opinion. Validate your assumptions based on regularly speaking with customers. Most of all, have enough humility to be comfortable with being wrong now and again.