Market-fit

Great positioning or a happy accident?

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I don’t often talk about this, but I used to be the president of my fraternity about 3 years ago back at university.

(The uni/student culture in Belgium is quite different here, so it’s not exactly a fraternity—a lot more “professional” for one—but that’s the best explanation I can give in just a few words, so let’s stick to that terminology for now)

One of the events we organized was a mentorship-type program where (close to) graduating students get in touch with working professionals in the field to help them figure out what to do and where to go after graduation.

A lot of fun and a lot of help for many students.

Anyway.

During this event, the alumni would start by giving a quick elevator-ish pitch about who they are, where they work, and what they do.

One guy we invited (and accepted) to join as a mentor had started his own company where he builds software infrastructure aimed at helping other maritime transport businesses digitalize the tracking and monitoring of their supply chains.

He gave his pitch in a very corporate and professional manner—almost like a consultant would present his solution presentation to his clients.

Another mentor who joined the event was one of Belgium’s leading experts in explainable AI who, at that time, still worked in the IT department of one of the biggest Belgian banks.

His pitch was the exact opposite of the first guy.

Instead of going for the professional and consultant-like approach, he went for the informal and student-culture type of talk—cracking jokes, making fun, talking about the exciting trips and after-work parties (which may or may not involve lots of drinking).

And this made me think.

At the end of the day, they both share the same type of information (who they are, what they do, where they work). But the way they presented themselves and, by extension, the type of person they were talking to, they were completely different.

Same information, different target audience.

Now I’m not saying one is better or worse than the other.

It all depends on who they were speaking to and what they hoped would happen. Maybe the first guy wanted to attract high-quality profiles to hire for his own while the second guy simply wanted to attract a wide range of students to get a recruitment bonus.

Or maybe I’m completely wrong on that and it was nothing more than the personalities of both those people.

Who knows?

What I do know is that there’s always a million ways to position the same (and I mean the EXACT same) information to a thousand different audiences.

And if you’d like to learn more about how to speak to your target audience, specifically through email, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Why I don’t care about numbers, data, or statistics

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I know many a entrepreneur who live and die by their numbers.

Every offer they make, every email they write, every decision they make is all backed up by market research, customer surveys, focus groups, testing groups, and everything else you can think of.

And I’m not saying it doesn’t work.

It does. In fact, it might even be the best thing to do. It might even be the most profitable (especially in the short run).

But it’s not how I roll.

For one thing, you become a slave of the market, always chasing where the demand goes—always testing, always iterating, always dependent on the whims of your customers.

You’re essentially choosing to be the one who chases instead of the one who is being chased.

You’ll never truly lead your market (which is a whole discussion on its own).

But more.

You’ll never truly have the freedom to do exactly what you want, when you want, and for how long you want it.

You don’t build a business that survives—even thrives—for years, decades, even generations, by being the one who chases.

Still more.

I doubt anyone who does business this way can ever feel truly fulfilled—which is one of the main reasons I don’t do data.

Everything I do, everything I create, everything I sell is stuff I think is cool (and helps my customers, important not to overlook this part). It’s stuff I’d do regardless of whether I get paid for it or not (the only difference is that I can do a lot more of it when I do get paid).

So here’s something important for you to consider.

If you’re a data person. And you’d like to optimize everything you do for maximum profitability. And you’re prone to chasing whatever the market wants (i.e., you saw AI is “the next new thing” and jumped on the bandwagon, until the hype dies down and you’ll jump to something like VR when it’s “the next new thing”).

Then it’s probably not doing you any good to listen to anything I have to say. Let alone try to implement what I do for your own.

Our businesses (and business philosophies) function differently.

Which isn’t a bad thing. But it’s something to consider.

That said.

If you do share the same philosophy to business. If you aim to build something that’s truly yours, to do the leading instead of the chasing, to think long-term, to stick to whatever you think is cool regardless of what others say.

Then you should check out Product Creation Made Easy.

It’s my entire product creation framework where I show you how to create products you think are cool and stuff you want to create—while still making sure it’s something people would want—all the way from ideation to having a profitable launch and beyond (i.e., to keep getting sales months and even years after the initial launch).

Here’s the link for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme