Business can't be built in a vacuum. You must find your tribe to flourish!
As they say, your network is your net worth. How we do anything is how we do everything, so watch for the signs in other people to find people for your tribe.
Specifically, find people like you who do things you might do. We are all people first.
Grow your tribe! Being surrounded by the right people is a first step toward engineering explosive growth.
How to grow your tribe in 5 steps
1. Conduct market research.
Discover and refine your personal brand and learn how to use it as a tool to find those who work best with you or benefit most from your services and skills.
Analyze and review the needs of your intended audience. Strategies can be built for this around surveys, focus groups and competitor analysis to see what others doing what you wish to achieve are engaging in that seems to work.
2. Network with professionals in your industry.
A conversation with someone in the same industry who might not even be a potential customer can go a long way. Networking without being sales-focused leads to trust, and trust leads to referrals to potential ideal customer fits.
Networking helps better understand who your ideal tribe is as well as who your tribe is NOT. This works both ways. It is important to also know who is not part of your tribe!
3. Don't fear social media.
Social media is a powerful tool for social selling. As you grow your tribe, this creates a wider net that helps drive valuable market insights about your audience so you can better understand “who” your audience is through data analysis.
Social media is also incredible for testing ideas before sinking large amounts of budget and time on an idea or approach. That way, you can know what folks need or want before creating a solution.
4. Leverage customer feedback.
Not all feedback is valuable. Those who are paying us hold the feedback that we can prioritize to cut out the noise from and clutter so we can better understand how to server our best customer fits.
The idea that we can serve everyone and make everyone happy is nice, but it is also not realistic. Often times, one group of potential clients will have opposite opinions to another group, which makes customer fit crucial for long-term business growth.
5. Collaborate with other influencers.
Working with influencers who have larger audiences than you with similar world views helps with the learning process. This can help you find others who might be ideal customer fits. And if nothing else, it's networking!
Someone else has most likely done what you wish to achieve for yourself, so finding influencers who have lived through the days you currently live can help you better understand how to get to greater levels of growth. Influencers you relate to also likely have others within their audiences who might be ideal customer fits.
Now, go forth and change the world around you. Find your tribe!