Your ideal customer is you
We were on a weekend vacation in Northern California.
My girlfriend and I were drinking tea, sitting on the futon in the cabin.
I was talking about how it's weird how people need to get out of the city to take a break. Why is there this need to “escape” from the city and spend time in nature? Doesn't this mean the city is unnatural? Our working lives are unnatural?
I started to ramble about the vacation market and how I saw a business opportunity.
But my girlfriend stopped me and said, you need to focus on yourself. What is your own story? What has been your own experience?
There are other people like you.
Go there and help them solve the problems that you faced.
This totally changed the way I think about starting businesses.
Help others who are like you
You are most capable of helping others solve problems that you have already solved in your own life.
You're basically creating the solution that you wish you would have had when you were facing the problem.
You didn’t have the solution either because it didn’t exist or you just couldn’t find it. So you had to create a solution yourself or do the research to find a solution.
You went through the process of solving the problem on your own.
As a result, you already have a product: the solution you created or the research you did to find an existing solution. Both are valuable to others who are currently facing the problem that you were facing before.
And you’re the ideal salesperson for the product because you have firsthand experience facing the problem, struggling with it, not knowing what to do, and finally figuring out something that worked.
You know what's actually helpful and what’s not.
What's legit and what's bullshit.
So, if you're trying to start a business …
Instead of analyzing the market to define the market opportunity, analyze yourself. Analyze the problems you've solved in your recent life.
Document how you solved the problem for yourself. Now you have a product.
Find other people who are like you who are still facing the problem that you were facing. Those are your ideal customers.
This is a better way to define your ICP
To contextualize this in tech/startup jargon, you are your ICP.
ICP = Ideal Customer Profile
Your ICP is the perfect person to buy your product.
Companies spend a ton of time and money to figure out their ICP.
Too many entrepreneurs try to come up with business ideas by reading marketing research, looking at data, sitting in meeting rooms, and drawing on whiteboards.
They analyze the market from a third-person perspective.
When you’re attempting to serve a market that you don’t belong to, you’re on the outside looking in.
On the other hand, if you belong to the market, if you’ve experienced the problem—you have a firsthand perspective.
It’s totally different to actually go through solving a problem yourself. You realize the nitty-gritty of it.
To get to know your ICP, instead of conducting interviews, you can just ask yourself. What was it like when I was experiencing this problem? What solution did I wish I had?