MBA2031 Why Your Audience Is More Important Than Your Product

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Your daily business workout every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episode you will learn why your audience is more important than your product. I hear so many entrepreneurs when they're getting started, they say if I just come up with the right idea with the right product or service, people will come. I'll have customers galore. I'll have no problem selling my product. Now while there is some truth in that in theory, the reality is is that your audience is actually more important than the actual product itself. And I'll explain why in today's episode. I actually have a few major reasons why. When you start with a product, you're kind of walking blind. But when you start with an audience, you know exactly what to do, how to do it and all the details in between. I'm going to walk you through a couple of examples, a couple scenarios where when you put your audience first, when you prioritize identifying and serving a particular audience, the product and service part is easy. I'll also outline why your audience equals Money and not the product. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Whether you have a product, a service, a software, a book, a course, a clothing line, whatever it is, you are in the service industry. What I mean by that is that your job is to serve your customer. And serving your customer might be through a product, through an app, through a course, through some online training, whatever it is. But the bottom line is, is that when your customer wins, so does your business. Many people think that if I create a product, the customer will come next. No, it's the other way around. You have to identify and grow some sort of audience that you can learn from, that you can understand their problems, their pain points, their needs, their wants, their desires, and then cultivate and create the perfect product for them. By the way, this lowers your risk in creating products that don't work, that don't sell, because you will have no doubt that people want this, because you, your audience, will tell you. This is why a lot of tech companies fail, because the founder of the company has a great idea for an app. The app can be brilliant, and in their head, it's sure to be a winner. But when they go to market, it just falls flat and they spin their wheels. And they might even raise capital and give up equity and even go into debt and lose years of their life and then realize, wow, I didn't really understand my customer. I spent years building this thing and trying to sell it. Instead, they should have built an audience, understood that audience very well, and built solutions for them. Specifically, this is exactly why I built this podcast, because I wanted to serve an audience that I knew well, a community that I was a part of, which is the entrepreneurial community, the small business community, the online business community. These are my people. I'm one of them. And I want to serve them and help them, but at the same time understand them, because I'm one type of entrepreneur. But there's all different kinds of entrepreneurs that have different kinds of challenges and different skill sets. And when I did this, I was able to run webinars, build my email list and just really get some free R and D, understand the pain points of my audience, of the people I serve, understand what they're struggling with. I literally have a list of problems that I can solve for my audience based on all the different conversations I've had with them over the years, through email, through social, on webinars, like I mentioned, through one on one calls. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people I've spoken to in my community. And from that I have this long list of problems that I can solve. And guess what? I built products to solve some of these problems. I actually chose the problems I felt like I can solve best. I can add unique value to whether there were courses or training or coaching or our software. Webinar Ninja. When we built our software, I didn't have to guess what our customers wanted. I already knew. I heard from them. I've created several surveys and had them complete them. I went to conferences and took notes and heard all the different kinds of pain points and questions people were asking. And because I built my audience first, when I went to sell my software, it was easy because I can just email all my community members, all my audience members. In fact, we pre sold Webinar Ninja when it launched before it was even available. And we sold out our 250 spots in 48 hours. That would be impossible if I didn't build an audience first. It's so much easier to create and then sell a product and service when you have the audience first. Now it's not just about being first. It's also more important because your audience and the market may change. You might need to pivot your product, you may need to offer a new product. You may need to change your business altogether. But guess what? The audience never changes. This is why the audience is so important. You can continue to sell to this audience with your new business, your new product, your pivoted new venture. This is why I've seen so many entrepreneurs launch product after product and fail over and over again because they never solve the audience problem. They kept creating these products and there's no one to sell to. But if you focus on cultivating and growing an audience and serving that audience, regardless of what's going on in your journey, it's simple. So what are some ways to grow your audience so that you can solve this problem? So you can put your audience first and then the product or products or services. Second, one of the easiest ways to get started is with a blog and and a newsletter. Create great articles on your website and publish them weekly and then get people to sign up for your newsletter so they can be alerted and they can read that new article every single week. I know Justin Jackson, the founder of Transistor fm, a great podcasting hosting platform. If you're looking to start a podcast, he has a personal blog at justinjacksonca and a newsletter and he has grown his audience through writing some great articles. This has also helped him grow his social media audience over at Twitter. Start a YouTube channel and make sure that you give a call to action to sign up for some sort of cheat sheet or bonus content so you can grab their email and continue the conversation off YouTube. Grow podcasts and here's an underutilized way to grow an audience. Write a book. Writing a book can be a great way for people to find you out. If you write a great valuable book sell on Amazon, people will go to your website, check you out. Especially if you have calls to action in your book to maybe get some cheat sheets. Get some guides that go along with the book, maybe some videos. They join your email list on your website because you've put that book out there that lures them in. If you're interested in writing a book, I recommend Chandler Bolt's program Self Publishing School. It's a good program to show you how to self publish your own book. From A to Z. Audience Audience audience Gas snacks tolls this trip is draining my wallet.

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To wrap up today's lesson, your audience is an important element of your business. In my opinion, it's the most important element and therefore you need to choose wisely. About 15 years ago I started my own clothing line and it was one of my bigger businesses that I started at the time. It became a huge success. We had warehouses in three major cities and I even would see people on the street wearing my own clothing. It was called Zenum Designs. But I ultimately shut down that business because I chose the product over the audience. I focused on the product and I didn't really think about choosing my audience before I started that business. You see, I would custom tailor clothing myself because I'm 6 foot 5 and it's not easy for me to find shirts that fit me. I have a slender build and long arms, so you get the point. I had to get things tailored. My friends and family used to love the shirts I used to create and say, hey, can you create some for me? That snowballed into a fully fledged online business where we custom tailored clothing for men. The issue is that I never actually chose the audience. I just went with the idea and ran with it. And what happened is that I started to really resent the business. My customers were more passionate about my product than I was and it burnt me out really quick because I couldn't meet the demand. Nor did I actually feel like continuing to build new styles or new products and to keep it going. But now I'm actually serving my people. I can talk about business and help entrepreneurs day and night. I eat, breathe, drink it all day long. But if you know me, or maybe in person, I'm not a huge fashion guy. And therefore, because I chose the wrong audience unintentionally, that business didn't do well. Not because the product wasn't good, but because I was not a good match for the audience. I was not the best person to serve those people. So choose your audience wisely and invest your next 12 months in building that audience. And by the way, building your audience, nurturing that audience, serving that audience doesn't stop. It becomes the engine for you to learn more about the people you serve and create more exciting and profitable products and services for them. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love it, you hear hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Also, by hitting subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, you get access over 2,000 episodes in our archives. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the best parts about prioritizing audience over product is that you become a thought leader. You become a prominent member of that community. It's like being part of a family. You make lots of friends, like minded friends, people that enjoy the same things you do. And therefore that builds your network. And your network, as we know, is your net worth. You can always rely on it. When things don't go according to plan. There you have it. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you guys in tomorrow's episode. Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Oh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now, you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big.

It feels good to geico.