Your Customer: Choose One of Three
You can get super complicated in picking your ideal customer, also called your customer avatar, but let’s go simple.
There are only three people you can serve.
“But Chris, there are eight billion people on the planet!”
Yes, but for your online business, there are only three that you have to choose from.
You can serve:
Who you are
Who you were
Who you love
This choice will shape your business.
If you want to serve the you of today (a thirty-year-old entrepreneur), your business will look different than if you serve the you of back in college. And even more different if you choose “who you love” and decide it is your eighty-year-old grandma Ethel.
Each option has advantages and disadvantages, so let’s look at them one by one.
Who You Are
The easiest person to relate to is someone like you. You know what they’re thinking. You know what they’re asking. You get them.
So, choosing “who you are” as your ideal customer has a lot of advantages. To serve this customer, all you must do is learn something new. You can decide today to serve someone of your competency level and become a master at the things they wish they knew.
But here’s the drawback: you can’t rely on what you already know—because your customer likely already knows it as well.
This is why many people believe you should choose option 2.
Who You Were
Imagine having a beer with your college-age self. What would you tell him? You have a ton of experience and business expertise to pass on. You’re ahead of him. You can offer him the winning numbers for the upcoming lottery of life.
For that reason, “who you were” is the most popular choice for an ideal customer.
You don’t have to learn anything new to get started. You just share what you know. When I started my online business, I had been an independent auto insurance adjuster for seven years. One day, I showed up on LinkedIn and began posting about winning in my industry.
Those behind me on the journey loved it, and my peers sent new people my way.
Nicolas Cole, a popular digital writing teacher, suggests you use the two-year test when writing. Who were you two years ago? Help that person. Two years is close enough for you to remember what happened. And your skills have had enough time to become helpful to that person.
Who You Love
While options one and two are simple, you may not like either. You might want to serve Grandma Ethel and her bingo club. Or a generation of children in the same phase as your kids. Perhaps you have such a heart for a group of people that you have to serve them.
Great, then you choose “who you love.”
You’re passionate about them, and that’s an advantage. But you don’t know them as well as yourself. This ideal customer requires more research, guessing, and trial and error. So, it will take you much longer than the “who you are” or “who you were” customer avatars.
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