Hi there and welcome to the Everyday Entrepreneur podcast where I, Caitlin Fritz help you reach your entrepreneurial potential. Together we can build your dream social impact business so that you can leave a legacy beyond your nine-to-five. Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Everyday Entrepreneurship. Welcome to current listeners and to new friends. I'm so excited to have you here today. If you're just joining, my name's Caitlin and I have been in your shoes as an entrepreneur, starting from I really, you know, minimal baseline knowledge to building and growing an ed tech business that was later recognized in the likes of Forbes. And a lot of that is through learning as you know, you're building and as you're going and through mentorship. And since that experience, I've really learned a lot. found a passion to support other entrepreneurs and founders, probably like yourself. And I've helped over 700 businesses and founders from across the world to build, grow, and scale their own dream venture. So whatever you're building, whatever you're tinkering on, I've probably seen something like it in the past, and hopefully I can help and support you. So today, I just wanted to share four myths. We really need to debunk in the startup space around understanding your audience and your market. So over the past couple of months, I've been working with various universities, not for profits, and accelerators, and having conversations with founders, both, you know, 18 year olds fresh into the university scene, eager to build, all the way to 70 year olds wanting to make their dream business possible. And one topic that kept coming up is You know, how do you understand your market? And I feel like we're told a lot of myths as founders. And I just want to kind of peel back the curtain and get real with you guys about understanding your audience. So the first myth I feel like we're told is to understand our audience. We need to understand the demographics. You know, you'll see pitch decks, you'll see businesses saying we're a product or service for. 19 to 24 year olds, or women between the ages of 45 and 55 in Kansas City, Missouri, who don't get me wrong, um, demographics are important ages, backgrounds. You know, where they live, their education background, their professional background, even their disposable income. All of those are very demographic data, but I feel like demographics aren't enough to capture the full holistic picture of our customer. They're a great Maybe starting point, but I know a 30 year old in one part of London is very different than a 30 year old in West London. It's not good enough to just keep it to these inside the box demographic figures. What we need to do is dig deeper, understand customer habits, tendencies, their backgrounds, Motivations, frustrations, fears, wants, desires, and also where they spend their time and their money. All of those sort of intangible, maybe even fringe elements of who we are can build a more holistic customer persona. So instead of talking into the air, trying to reach 30 to 45 year olds in London, we know Transcribed Where this person buys their groceries, what kind of habits they have instilled in their kind of everyday lives, what their purchasing power is, what are their likes and dislikes. You know, maybe they're a dog owner who has different sort of empathies than other groups. So demographics, yes, important, but only a sliver. of what it takes to really understand your customer and your market. That's myth number one. Myth number two, bigger means better when it comes to market. You know what I'm talking about. You've heard people pitch Dragon's Den, Shark Tank. We're entering a 12 billion market. We're entering a 15 million market. And I feel like we're using these big numbers to add some sort of gravitas. to what we're talking about. Once again, a market is kind of like a sea. Just because there's fish in that sea does not mean you're going to catch them. I am much more in tune and I respect the founders and the business owners who really can niche down and understand their true target market, who they can actually capture and bring in to their business. So for example, if you're a service provider, maybe providing DEI coaching, saying there are. You know, for 40, 000 corporates who you can sell to, yeah, okay, that's great. But what I want to know is who could you reach within the next three to six months? That might be 40 corporates in this geographical region. You need to understand your audience and your market and who you can actually capture, not just throw around big numbers, the millions, the billions, the floods and seas of customers. Transcribed That's only going to get you so far. So let us debunk that myth. The fourth, the third, because I can't count right now, the third myth, especially for my online business owners, my service providers, or even products that have mass appeal is that quote. Everyone is my audience. Everyone is my customer. Ooh, that just grates me to my core. That is an absolute myth. Everyone is not your customer. Because if you are targeting everyone, you are targeting no one. Maybe you offer, for example, I'm just going to pick a product that everybody uses. Soap. Soap, yes, could be bought by everyone, but there's a very big difference between a twelve dollar luxury hand soap versus that ninety nine cent dish soap. Think to yourself, who is the closest customer to soap? To me. Who are your earliest adopters? Who is going to be the customer group that will be first to buy? The people buying the 99 cent dish soap will not be the same people who will be the first to buy your luxury goat milk hand soap. So it kind of goes back to that first myth. where really understanding your customer tendencies is important. And when it comes to kind of the general phrase, everyone is my audience, what I always come back with is, you need to start somewhere. And I'd rather you start small. Niche down. Capture those people who will be the closest That will pull out their cash, pull out their credit card and buy your business or service. So the myth that everyone is my audience, we need to start somewhere. And last but not least, the fourth myth is that, okay, one and done. I've done my market research, boom, I can go out and sell and I can go out and really target these users and customers. Market research, building out your customer persona. Understanding your user demographic, that is a living process. It is not a one and done situation. Just because you do market research doesn't mean you look at it once, file it away, put it on your desktop in some crazy folder you'll never look at again. As you gain more information, as you get more users, as you do more feedback and research, And understanding your customer touch points, your market understanding and your customer understanding and your audience segmenting is going to get so much richer. And that's an iterative process, you're always going to be learning, developing, and refining So think of this as a living exercise, not something that you do once and throw it in the corner. So those are the four myths I really wish we would talk more about and debunk when it comes to understanding your audience and your market. So just to recap, number one myth that we're throwing out the window. Your audience is just their demographics. Number two myth, the bigger the market, the better. Number three myth, everyone is my audience. And number four myth, Um, market research is a one and done exercise. So hopefully you can take some of this away. I know on my YouTube, I'm launching a video, I want to say this week on understanding your audience, some of the things we're talking about by using a tool called the empathy map. So I will drop that link in the show notes. If you want to work through a really practical exercise on how you can dig deeper and understanding your audience. And if you want to learn more, you know, Be a friend. Join our newsletter community. We're talking about all things entrepreneurship, and I take listeners questions as well. So if you have a question you want answered on this show, drop me a DM on Instagram at underscore Caitlin Fritz underscore, and I'll be sure to feature it in a future episode. If you've liked this, give me a like, share it with a fellow entrepreneur, or give me a rating and review. I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely do a happy dance, um, anytime this reaches a founder's ears or an entrepreneur's ears. So thank you for supporting this. And until next time, this is everyday entrepreneurship. Thank you for joining me for this episode of Everyday Entrepreneurship. To stay tuned and most up-to-date, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow me Caitlin Fritz on Instagram. And if you have any questions about building your business with Impact, drop me an email with the link in the show notes.