Focus on what it takes to create raving fans of your business. The disciplines that come from building a business or a creative practice that has thousands of committed fans will power your growth.
Origins
I first heard of the idea of a focus on a thousand fans from David Hieatt. David Hieatt speaks compellingly on how this has underpinned his success with Howies, Do Lectures and Hiut jeans. I have been repeating the advice for years crediting David.
I failed to appreciate at the time that the idea was actually Kevin Kelly’s. Kelly’s original post reflected that in a network world you can fund a life if your creative endeavours attract just enough fans. I won’t replicate the business logic that Kevin outlines but I do want to highlight the disciplines that come with this focus.
The Discipline of A Thousand Fans
Here are some of the key disciplines that come with a focus on building a connection with fans:
- Fans are people: Shifting your attention from measuring sales into focusing on actual integers of people sounds like a small focus but it is powerful. Sales can be measured and analysed. People can be heard, understood and questioned. A focus on people will bring greater humanity to your thinking about your product and a much richer understanding.
- Fans aren’t just customers: Fans are hardcore. Customers can be accidental or just trying you out. Fans are the people who are passionate about your product. Something you do makes their life way better, not just a little better than the competition. Understand this clearly and treasure it. Don’t ever lose it.
- Fans go deep: Lots of people talk about selling a lot of product to customers. Fans actually buy it. Knowing why might help drive all of your business.
- Looking for fans: Looking for fans will teach you a lot about all the signals in your customer base. Read every complaint lately? There’s a good chance some of those complaints are disappointed fans. If not, you will learn a lot looking.
- Lots of Fans: Both Kelly, Hieatt and others have suggested the number might actually be as low as 100 by making more from each fan. However, my challenge is make it a number to show that there is a deep market of passionate customers. I have seen too many businesses that experienced passion in a handful of MVP customers and then couldn’t scale. The MVP was all of the market prepared to pay for the product. Pushing yourself to look for lots of fans is a reassuring indicator of growth ahead.
- Service Everyone: Fans don’t come with their psychographic profile listed and may not fit an economic segmentation. Segmentation on economic criteria often can have the outcome that the most passionate fans miss out on being valued. Do you want to disregard a key customer group by not serving everyone well enough?
The challenge of focusing on creating a thousand fans is one that will improve any business. Put yourself to the test.