This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Weekend workshop time. We're gonna talk today about finding your ideal customer. In this new segment we're doing for 2025, it's all about helping you learn the key steps to a new hustle, one step or concept per week. Each episode includes activities, examples, and more. Of course, it's all free.
As mentioned, we're gonna talk about understanding your ideal customer. We're using the book "Side Hustle" from idea to income in 27 days. It's available wherever books are sold, including an audio version. If you don't have the book, I'm gonna take you through these key steps along with those stories and examples throughout the year. So we're on to day eight now, and I use this phrase ideal customer more frequently than I talk about a target market.
If you've watched "Shark Tank" or otherwise had some business education, you might be familiar with the term target market. I like to think of it more granular. Like to think of it just very individual. Who is the one ideal customer out there that is most suited for the product or service that you are developing, for the offer that you are creating? And so our learning objective here is to deeply understand the needs, desires, and pain points of your target customer, that ideal single individual, to create an offering that they truly want.
And it's so important because when you get this right, everything else is so much easier. You don't have to worry about all these different technical questions that people have. There are a lot of different marketing strategies that will work or be effective. You're gonna have a better profit margin, which allows you to take more risks and experiment a bit more. Again, it all comes down to understanding that ideal customer.
So specific solutions for specific people generally outperform general solutions for everyone. That's kind of the key principle. Rather than trying to serve everyone, successful side hustlers and small business owners intensely focus on serving this ideal customer exceptionally well. And just consider how ineffective most marketing feels when it tries to appeal to everyone and contrast that with marketing that seems to speak directly to you as if there's a business that understands your exact situation. And that's the kind of connection that you want to create.
It's not always easy, but as I said, it's worth doing this work. Last week, we talked about this process of becoming a side hustle detective. This week, the process is customer profiling. Instead of thinking about broad demographics like age or income, that's what people tend to think about when they think target market. We're gonna create a detailed picture of one specific person who perfectly represents that ideal customer.
And this imaginary individual is the person we constantly keep in mind as we develop the business. Now, this approach might seem counterintuitive. You know, you might say, why would I focus on just one type of customer? But actually this doesn't limit your business. It grows.
It allows your business to expand. You often attract many similar customers who share the same needs or at least similar needs and preferences. And the goal is to move beyond surface level characteristics to understand what frustrates them about their current situation. What do they wish was possible? What would make their life significantly better?
And last but not least, what would they gladly pay to solve or achieve? So as an example, imagine a personal trainer who's building an online fitness coaching business. Rather than trying to help everyone who wants to get in shape, that's way, way too broad of a market, she creates a detailed profile of her ideal client. She decides her ideal client is a busy professional woman in her mid 30s who used to be active, but now struggles to find time for exercise in between career demands, family obligations, whatever else might be the case. She actually gets even more specific than that, but that's a start.
And this specific focus helps her design programs that perfectly address the real challenges this customer faces. From workout length to exercise selection, to plateauing in exercise, to flexibility and so on. Again, focusing on an ideal customer will help you so much better than focusing on a bunch of people. So keep that in mind. We're gonna take a short break when we return some key questions to consider as you think more deeply about your ideal customer, along with the action exercise of the week.
[Music]
All right, the process of understanding your ideal customer requires moving beyond basic facts and toward developing genuine empathy for their situation. And this deeper understanding then guides every aspect of your business. So I mentioned some key questions. Imagine you are sitting down to have a coffee meeting with your ideal customer and you're just hanging out. Like what do you learn about their daily life?
What does a typical day look like for them? What's difficult? What do they wish they had more time for? What about their goals and aspirations? Like what are they trying to achieve?
What stands in the way? What would success look like to them? What are the current solutions? Like what are they trying now? How do they currently address this need or problem?
And why isn't that solution ideal? What's missing? Finally, decision-making. How do they choose products or services? What makes them trust a business?
What makes them commit versus what gives them hesitation? So these are the kinds of things you want to go deeper on because again, with this understanding is very powerful and it makes your business just so much more likely to succeed. Now your action exercise for the week, we talked about this in the side hustle book, it is to write a short letter to your ideal customer. Whoa, that's a commitment. Write a short letter.
You could do this pretty quickly. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but the more time you put on it, the better your results are probably gonna be. Most likely, I had some examples in the book as well of people who've done this. So write a short letter. I have one page written down here, but it could be just half a page.
But basically write down what you understand about their current situation based on this process of kind of thinking it through. Address the challenges they face. Explain how your offering will help them. And note why you care about solving this for them. This exercise like why are we doing this?
Well, it kind of forces you to articulate your understanding of their needs and demonstrate how your business is gonna serve them specifically. And if you struggle with having specific answers to these questions, it likely means you haven't really thought it through. Or you need to think it through at a deeper level. Or the way you've been thinking about your ideal customer is too broad. Now as a quick little self-check here, you ask yourself, can you describe your ideal customer's typical day?
Once again, do you understand their primary frustrations? And can you clearly explain how your offering helps them? I really think this is gonna be helpful to somebody out there, hopefully a lot of people. And just remember that the goal isn't to exclude other customers. It is just to focus your efforts on serving one type of customer exceptionally well.
This often leads to better results than trying to appeal to everyone. Finally, it's better to have a simple idea you can start immediately than a brilliant idea that never launches. I always wanna encourage you and nudge you gently towards taking action. That's the whole point of this series this year. And really it's the point of everything that we do here at Side Hustle School every single day, seven days a week.
So you can always subscribe, follow, wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the entire archives, more than 2,900 episodes on sidehustleschool.com. And of course, I'll be back again tomorrow. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.
[Music]
