Once upon a time, a barber named John realised that his boss was not the sharpest blade in the drawer. He sat around barking out orders and could not even cut hair as well as he did. Whenever clients came, they demanded John and would rather wait for hours until it was their turn.
Then he decided, to hell with working for someone. I am quitting to start my own barbershop. But he was unsure. So he sat on the fence for a few weeks, until one day, his boss yelled at him for not sweeping the floor properly. On that day, he stormed out of the shop, forgetting to raise his middle finger.
The following morning, he wrote messages to his customers, telling them he would be starting his own shop down the road. Many of them replied with congratulatory messages, promising to follow him in his new venture. With a spark of hope and glee, he got up and looked for a shop.
To his surprise, the rent was much more than he thought. But he had savings, so he paid double the deposit to get his perfect spot. Then there was plumbing. He called Peter the plumber, his dad’s friend, who agreed to do the job at a good, family-friendly price.
After that, he turned his attention to furniture. For this, he asked his friend Calvin the carpenter to outfit his shop. However, Calvin fell ill halfway through the job, which delayed his reopening. While waiting for Calvin’s recovery, John hired a secretary, got signage, applied for Wifi, bought a till, registered his company, set up a website, and, since he no longer had an income, used what was left of his savings to pay for his personal costs as well.
By the time Calvin returned, John had run out of money. The shop was not ready, salaries and other overheads were due, and some of his best customers had turned to other people. He sat down in his empty shop, tormented by the echo and half-done furniture. He took a deep sigh as expenses kept piling up while income remained scarce.
Now in a quagmire, John realised that running a business is not cutting hair. He also realised that passion only gets you so far, and that something else must keep you going.
Make things happen.
Business is hardest in the beginning. The journey of finding the right partners and the first few customers is often the difference between a startup’s survival and death. Hence, the holy grail of startup life is finding product-market fit, the moment when a product fits the market like a glove. The path to this glorious moment is often marred with emotional torture, sleepless nights, mental breakdowns, loneliness, divorce and other hardships. But I think there’s a hack.
Like my previous post, this is inspired by Seth Godin’s This is Marketing. In addition, I draw on Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point. Both authors talk at length about how ideas spread, remarkably making the same general point, which is that ideas do not spread because we make them. Instead, ideas spread like epidemics; they latch onto one person and spread to another like a cold. So, how do we apply this insight to overcome the hardships at the beginning of a business?
My premise is that people hate change. I know that Obama’s winning campaign was on change. I know that frustrated people cannot wait for change; in fact, people sometimes go to war to create change. But change destabilises the status quo; it is disruptive, and we do not like it. We prefer that things remain relatively the same, with some novelty; we want winter to be cold and summer to be warm, with slight variations.
However, there’s a small group of people who embrace change. In fact, they thrive on it. Their entire worldview is centred around what’s new. They want to break world records, create disruptive companies, lead revolutions, and enjoin the world on new paths. They gain status in society because they have the latest news and gadgets, and because they are different. Often, they dress up differently and are never afraid to make a statement. These are the neophiles, the nerds, the geeks, the early adopters, the people whose love language is anything new.
So, here’s the hack. Perhaps the point of the early stages of the startup journey is not to find your customers as they are idealised in your strategy or business model. Rather, it should be to find and excite the neophiles closest to your customers. They love invitations to exclusive events and special occasions. They yearn for early access to products and services. Above all, they want to be the ones who tell the world about what’s new. The hack, therefore, is not to find your customers, but to find the neophiles and let them convert your customers by word of mouth.
Sadly, neophiles hardly stick around because they get bored easily. Sooner or later, they leave in search of the next cool thing. So, there’s no point in retaining them. They were never your customer in the first place. Their job was to bring your real customers who will likely stay because you are boring and because you are not changing what works. Your real customers do not think you are boring, they think you are stable and established. These laggards, as they are called, make up the greatest number of people in society. They are reason companies scale and become large behemoths. However, they will not budge unless and until they see that it is safe to take the next step.
Case Study.
The Cybertruck is ugly and outrageous for a reason. It was not designed for the masses because the masses hate change. It was designed for the crazy neophiles. Rather predictably, they took to social media to tell everyone who cared to listen. They are walking billboards whose trigger to stop will be when too many people become like them, at which point they will hunt for the next new thing.
So, do not look for your ideal customers during the startup phase of your business or the launch phase of your product. Instead, look for the crazy few, the joiners, the neophiles.
And if you like, put this idea to the test. Ask your friends with established businesses about their first few customers or their first partners. They might say, “In the beginning, there were joiners.”
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