Audience is Everything

I am listening to a Pod Cast from Pat Flynn and Clay Collins. The podcast is called Laddering Up. What it is talking about is how Apple, Netflix, and LeadPages all started as something different then they have become. You may remember Apple started as a little gaming computer.

Anyway there are four rungs on the ladder. The first rung is build an email list (TrafficWave). Ladder rung two is start selling your first product.  Ladder rung three is about optimizing and building a real business. Ladder rung four is leveraging the opportunities your new vantage point affords you. 

Ladder rung four for Netflix was production of films and entire character franchises. They began their business competing with Block Buster and now they are contenders with HBO and many other Movie studios.

Collins says, “I’ve heard a lot of people talk about creating a minimum viable product, and a lot of folks start with product creation. In my view that’s absolutely not the right way to go. You should start by learning how to build an audience and then letting your interaction with that audience dictate the product you create or offer.”

Or as I have said a million times, Let the Market tell you what to sell, do not tell the market what it wants.

Even the SFI opportunity is a product. Instead of developing the promotion of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) we should start by developing a Minimum Viable Audience (MVA)

Clay Collins suggests, “What I would encourage folks to do is take three to six months and get an audience of around 2,000 email subscribers.” This is what he defines as MVA.

I agree 100%. People ask me where to start what tools to buy to start, I would start with your email subscriber list. Grow that to 2000 subscribers and you will have:

1. People Buying Product Consistently. I have a list of over 30.000 Thai Food enthusiasts. Not everyone buys consistently but someone is always buying so I am selling consistently.
2. A consistent stream of Affiliates (PSAs) into your primary business (for me SFI). I do not have one off, tire kicking affiliates. I have people join SFI trained, motivated and ready to go.
3. A consistent stream of people using your ad products providing an additional income stream by buying ads and building a huge bank of Credits for you. I have 360 people willing to use Ad Services that I find valuable.
4. A consistent stream of people becoming your TrafficWave affiliates. They need an MVA also. By meeting the needs of fellow Business People, helping them build their audience provides you additional income as well.

This is what I have done.