⭐️ Finding Your Goldilocks Locks Tribe: A Community That Is Just Right Is Key 🔑

Like a unicorn or goldilocks when bootstrapping a business need to find the perfect community to sell to, it shouldn’t be to generic, but it also can’t be to specific and small.

👇 Lets deep dive into finding a tribe that is just right! 👇

🎟️ Audience is too big?

When you start out looking for your tribe if you find that your community is to large start niching down by adding constraints. We can go back to our frequently used example with dogs, this might be to large for us to start with so we are going to bring it down even further to a specific type of dog owner, Italian Grey Hounds. The one thing that we want to think about when we start to niche down our large audience is do these people communicate with each other, and do they have a community already built up that they interact in?

We also want to make sure as we niche down our community that we like the target niche b/c we are going to be spending a significant amount of time with them. “Talking to prospects about their problems is not only necessary sales tactic, but also necessary for good product development.” - Traction.

💸 If you build it, will they pay?

Sometimes this is described as “Product Market Fit”, but if you build a solution to a niche audiences problem will they be willing to pay for it is what we are trying to figure out ahead of building the product here. Some things to look for are…

• Is there an existing product in the niche?

• Are niche members typically low-wage or have low disposable income?

Think about how easy it might be to scale your company to this community, is there multiple problems they have, opening up opportunities for multiple products. You should also look at is there an existing large player in the field that the community has rallied behind, as this could spell problems for your bootstrapped project.

💪 Does this count as a good fit?

You want to find a niche that includes decision makers, this allows you to market directly to the person making the purchasing decision, there is a reason door to door sales people ask “Can I speak to the owner of the home”. You don’t want to get tied up with corporate BS here. Ideally this market will be underserved and the customers will appreciate that your looking to solve their problems. This allows you to continue to grow your tribe.

🚩 Red flags in your community!

As a bootstrapped company picking the wrong community could spell the end of your journey before it ever starts. Look out for a few red flags when looking for your tribe.

• Someone else is selling something similar to my product or service in the community

• The target community isn’t already buying this or its not a problem costing them time or money.

• The community isn’t emotionally charged over the problem.

• Someone else has tried and failed to sell to this community.

Things to weed out in your search here are lazy offers, something like a post for 10/20% off posted directly to the community. This offer didn’t build value or trust so doesn’t count as a red flag in my book.

As I learned from growing a past company if you are going to bootstrap your product expect a long hard road in the B2B space and more so if you will need C-Suite approval or are selling a product that will need company wide by in to use. If you see these problems in your community look for something else.

🎁 Wrap Up

When you find your Goldilocks community it will be just the right fit for your bootstrapped startup. It could feel just like sleeping in the right bed but come with a life changing outcome. Spend time doing the research to find the right community b/c they are the ones that will give you your next business idea.