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CHAPTER FOUR

The Smallest Viable Market

What change are you trying to make?

It’s a simple question, but a loaded one, because it implies that you’re responsible. You are an actor with intent, an agent of change, a human being working hard to change other human beings.

It might be your job, it might be your passion, and if you’re lucky, it might even be both.

The change might be trivial (“I’m trying to make the market share of OZO brand laundry soap go up 1 percent, and to do that, I need to change some Clorox users to OZO users”) or it might be profound (“I’m trying to help the twelve kids in my after-school program realize that they have more potential and skill than the world tells them that they do”).

Perhaps it’s “I’m going to turn nonvoters into voters,” or “I’m going to transform people who seek to dominate into ones who desire affiliation instead.” Regardless of what the specifics are, if you’re a marketer, you’re in the business of making change happen. Denying this is a form of hiding; it’s more productive to own it instead.

Stumble 1: It’s tempting to pick a grandiose, nearly impossible change: “I want to change the face of music education and make it a top priority across the country.” Well, sure, that’s great, but it’s never been done before, not by someone with your resources. I’m a huge fan of game-changing home runs. I love the inspiring stories of people who beat all the odds and changed everything.

But . . .

That’s a heavy burden, as well as a convenient excuse in moments of despair. It’s no wonder that you’re stuck—you’re seeking to do the impossible.

Perhaps it makes more sense to begin with a hurdle you can leap. Perhaps it makes sense to be very specific about the change you seek to make, and to make it happen. Then, based on that success, you can replicate the process on ever bigger challenges.

Stumble 2: You want to defend what you’re already doing, which is selling what you’ve already been charged with selling. So you reverse-engineer a “change” that matches that thing, and you load it up with buzzwords that mean nothing to anyone. Here’s one I just found: “Activation and engagement for TNT’s new thriller that makes a meta-statement about viewer identity.” Really?

On the other hand, here’s an example from By the Way Bakery, which my wife founded. It’s the largest gluten-free bakery of its kind in the world. Their change? “We want to make sure no one is left out. By offering people gluten-free, dairy-free, and kosher baked goods that happen to be delicious, we let the entire community be part of special family occasions. We change hosts from exclusive to inclusive, and guests from outsiders to insiders.” What promise are you making?

When the marketer shows up with his or her message (in whatever medium), it always takes the form of a promise: “If you do X, you will get Y.” That promise is often hidden. It can accidentally be set aside or intentionally camouflaged, but all effective marketing makes a promise.

The promise isn’t the same as a guarantee. It’s more like, “If this works for you, you’re going to discover . . .” And so we can invite people to our jazz club to have more than a pleasant evening. Or promise that if they listen to our tapes, they’ll begin a spiritual journey. Or that our special kind of cheese will transport them to Old Italy . . . We’re not talking about slogans here, but these slogans give you an insight into the kind of promise I’m talking about.

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano . . . but when I began to play . . .” is a promise about status.

“Roll Tide!” is a promise about dominance.

“Choosy mothers choose Jif,” is a promise about status and respect.

“I pledge allegiance . . .” is a promise about belonging.

“The Earth needs a good lawyer” is a promise about affiliation and justice.

Your promise is directly connected to the change you seek to make, and it’s addressed to the people you seek to change.

Who are you seeking to change?

As soon as you ask yourself about the change you seek to make, it becomes quite clear that you have no chance of changing everyone. Everyone is a lot of people. Everyone is too diverse, too enormous, and too indifferent for you to have a chance at changing.

So, you need to change someone. Or perhaps a group of someones.

Which ones?

We don’t care if they all look the same, but it would be really helpful if you had some way to group them together. Do they share a belief? A geography? A demographic, or, more likely, a psychographic?

Can you pick them out of a crowd? What makes them different from everyone else and similar to each other?

Throughout this book, we’ll return to this essential question: “Who’s it for?” It has a subtle but magic power, the ability to shift the product you make, the story you tell, and where you tell it. Once you’re clear on “who it’s for,” then doors begin to open for you.

Here’s a simple example. Both Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks sell coffee. But for the first two decades of its existence, Starbucks didn’t try to sell coffee to people who bought from Dunkin’, and vice versa.

While there are external hints about the two groups (in Boston, you would find more taxi drivers and construction workers at a typical Dunkin’ Donuts than you would at a Starbucks) the real distinction wasn’t external but internal. Starbucks set out to serve someone with a very precise set of beliefs about coffee, time, money, community, opportunity, and luxury—and by obsessing over this group of someones, Starbucks built a brand for the ages.

Worldviews and personas

But which market?

Which people?

If you have to choose a thousand people to become your true fans, who should you choose?

Begin by choosing people based on what they dream of, believe, and want, not based on what they look like. In other words, use psychographics instead of demographics.

Just as you can group people by the color of their eyes or the length of their ring fingers, you can group them based on the stories they tell themselves. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls these clumps worldviews.

A worldview is the shortcut, the lens each of us uses when we see the world. It’s our assumptions and biases and yes, stereotypes about the world around us. Loyal Fox News viewers have a worldview. So do fox hunters. So do people who show up at the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Everyone deserves to be treated as an individual, with dignity and respect for their choices. But as marketers, we must begin with a worldview, and invite people who share that worldview to join us. “I made this” is a very different statement than, “What do you want?” We can make pretty good assumptions about how someone will react or respond to a piece of news or a work of art if we have evidence about their worldview.

When Ron Johnson was hired as CEO of JCPenney in 2011, one of his first acts was to end the constant stream of discounts and urgent sales that the store was always pitching to its customers. Johnson took that action based on his worldview, on his bias about how to shop. He didn’t think it was possible that a quality retailer, a store he’d like to shop in, would be constantly pitching clearances, coupons, and discounts, and so he tried to transform JCPenney into his kind of store. As a result, sales plummeted by more than 50 percent.

Coming from his previous position as senior vice president of retail operations at Apple, Johnson saw the world of retail through a lens of elegance, of quiet, mutual respect. He was a luxury goods buyer, and he liked selling luxury goods as well. As a result of his worldview, he abandoned Penney’s true fans: people who loved the sport of bargain hunting. Or the urgency. People whose worldviews differed from his. Penney’s customers were playing a game, one that made them feel like they were winning.

Yes, we’re typecasting—willfully exaggerating people’s attitudes and beliefs in order to serve them better.

A convenient shortcut in this exercise is to identify the different personas we might encounter. There’s Bargain Bill, who’s playing a sport when he shops at the same time he wrestles with his narrative about money. And there’s Hurried Henry, who is always looking for a shortcut and is rarely willing to wait in line, read the directions, or think it through, at least not when he’s traveling for business. Next to him in line, though, is Careful Karla, who’s suspicious of the cab driver, sure that she’s going to get ripped off by the desk clerk, and would never drink out of the hotel mini bar.

Everyone has a problem, a desire, and a narrative.

Who will you seek to serve?

Forcing a focus

The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring, because mass means average, it means the center of the curve, it requires you to offend no one and satisfy everyone. It will lead to compromises and generalizations. Begin instead with the smallest viable market. What’s the minimum number of people you would need to influence to make it worth the effort?

If you could only change thirty people, or three thousand people, you’d want to be choosy about which people. If you were limited in scale, you’d focus your energy on the makeup of the market instead.

When the Union Square Cafe opened in New York, its founder, Danny Meyer, knew that he could only serve six hundred people a day. That’s all the dining room could serve. If you can only delight six hundred people, the best way to begin is by choosing which six hundred people. Choose the people who want what you’re offering. Choose the people most open to hearing your message. Choose the people who will tell the right other people . . . The magic of Union Square Cafe wasn’t the real estate (it was in a lousy neighborhood when it opened) or in the famous chef (they didn’t have one). No, the magic was in the guts it took to carefully curate the customers. Choose the people you serve, choose your future.

The smallest viable market is the focus that, ironically and delightfully, leads to your growth.

Specific is a kind of bravery

Specific means accountable.

It worked or it didn’t.

It matched or it didn’t.

It spread or it didn’t.

Are you hiding behind everyone or anyone?

You’ll never be able to serve everyone, which is comforting, since you’re less likely to be disappointed when it doesn’t happen.

But what if you committed to the smallest viable audience? What if you were specific about who you were seeking to serve and precisely what change you were trying to make?

Organize your project, your life, and your organization around the minimum. What’s the smallest market you can survive on?

Once you’ve identified the scale, then find a corner of the market that can’t wait for your attention. Go to their extremes. Find a position on the map where you, and you alone, are the perfect answer. Overwhelm this group’s wants and dreams and desires with your care, your attention, and your focus. Make change happen. Change that’s so profound, people can’t help but talk about it.

Lean entrepreneurship is built around the idea of the minimal viable product. Figure out the simplest useful version of your product, engage with the market, and then improve and repeat.

What people miss about this idea is the word viable. No fair shipping junk. It doesn’t help to release something that doesn’t work yet.

When we combine these ideas, we can think small and think quickly. Our agile approach to the market combined with a relentless focus on those we seek to serve means that we’re more likely to be of service.

Entrepreneur and Silicon Valley pioneer Steve Blank introduced a focus on the customer as the only project of a startup. Customer development is the act of gaining traction with customers, of finding a fit between what you make and what they want. This traction is worth far more than fancy technology or expensive marketing. That, and only that, separates successful projects from unsuccessful ones. Are there people in the world who want you to succeed so badly that they’re willing to pay you to produce the change you seek to make?

Everything gets easier when you walk away from the hubris of everyone. Your work is not for everyone. It’s only for those who signed up for the journey.

Shun the nonbelievers!

There’s a filter bubble. It’s easy to surround ourselves with nothing but news we agree with. We can spend our days believing that everyone shares our worldview, believes what we believe, and wants what we want.

Until we start marketing to the masses.

When we seek to serve the largest possible audience, that audience will turn us down. The chorus of “no” will become deafening. And the feedback may be direct, personal, and specific.

In the face of so much rejection, it’s easy to sand off the edges and fit in. Fit in all the way. Fit in more than anyone else.

Resist.

It’s not for them.

It’s for the smallest viable audience, the folks you originally set out to serve.

Where does love lie?

Pioneering technology journalist Clay Shirky understood how community-driven software changes everything: “We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have Wikipedia. Suddenly big things can be done for love.” But it doesn’t end with software.

The goal of the smallest viable audience is to find people who will understand you and will fall in love with where you hope to take them.

Loving you is a way of expressing themselves. Becoming part of your movement is an expression of who they are.

That love leads to traction, to engagement, and to evangelism. That love becomes part of their identity, a chance to do something that feels right. To express themselves through their contributions, their actions, and the badge they wear.

You can’t hope that everyone will feel this way, but you can do your work for the people who do.

“Winner take all” rarely is

Even in a democracy, a situation where second place rarely pays off, the idea of “everyone” is a mistake.

I was talking with two congressional campaign organizers, and they kept talking about getting the message out to everyone, connecting with everyone, getting everyone to the polls.

I did a little research and discovered that in the last primary in that district, only twenty thousand people voted, which means that in a contested primary, getting five thousand people to the polls is the difference between winning and losing. The district has 724,000 residents; five thousand people is less than 1 percent of that.

There’s a very big difference between five thousand and “everyone.” And for your work, five thousand of the right people might well be more than enough.

A simple one-word transformation

Now that you see that your work is to make change, and that you can do it by identifying who you want to change, earning enrollment, and educating on the way to that change, let’s transform how you can describe those you’re changing.

Perhaps instead of talking about prospects and customers, we could call them your “students” instead.

Where are your students?

What will they benefit from learning?

Are they open to being taught?

What will they tell others?

This isn’t the student–teacher relationship of testing and compliance. And it’s not the power dynamic of sexism or racism. It’s the student–mentor relationship of enrollment and choice and care.

If you had a chance to teach us, what would we learn?

If you had a chance to learn, what would you like to be taught?

Coloring the ocean purple

There’s a dangerous prank that relies on thief-detector dye. This dye, sold as a powder, is quite bright and a tiny bit goes a long way. Once the powder touches the moisture on your skin, it blooms into a bright purple and won’t easily wash off.

Drop a teaspoon of it into a swimming pool, and all the water in the pool will become permanently bright purple. But if you drop it in the ocean, no one will notice.

When you seek to share your best work—your best story, your shot at change—it helps if it’s likely to spread. It helps if it’s permanent. But even if it’s extraordinary, it’s not going to make a difference if you drop it in the ocean.

That doesn’t mean you give up hope.

It means you walk away from the ocean and look for a large swimming pool.

That’s enough to make a difference. Begin there, with obsessive focus. Once it works, find another swimming pool. Even better, let your best customers spread the idea.

“It’s not for you”

We’re not supposed to say that. We’re certainly not supposed to want to say that.

But we must.

“It’s not for you” shows the ability to respect someone enough that you’re not going to waste their time, pander to them, or insist that they change their beliefs. It shows respect for those you seek to serve, to say to them, “I made this for you. Not for the other folks, but for you.” Two sides of the same coin.

It’s the freedom to ignore the critics who don’t get the joke, the privilege of polishing your story for those that most need to hear it. . . . This is where you will find work that you can be proud of.

Because it doesn’t matter what people you’re not seeking to serve think. What matters is whether you’ve changed the people who trust you, the people who have connected with you, the people you seek to serve.

We know that every best-selling book on Amazon has at least a few one-star reviews. It’s impossible to create work that both matters and pleases everyone.

The comedian’s dilemma

One of the great comics of our time is booked for a gig in New York City. His agent isn’t paying attention, though.

The comic shows up at the club; he’s in a good mood. He brings his best material. He’s up there, working the room, and no one is laughing.

Not a peep.

He’s bombing.

After the show, he’s beating himself up, thinking of quitting comedy altogether.

Then he discovers that the audience is an Italian tour group, and no one understands English.

“It’s not for you.”

It’s entirely possible that your work isn’t as good as it needs to be. But it’s also possible that you failed to be clear about who it was for in the first place.

The simple marketing promise

Here’s a template, a three-sentence marketing promise you can run with: My product is for people who believe _________.

I will focus on people who want _________.

I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get _________.

And you thought that all you were here to do was sell soap.

Case Study: The Open Heart Project

Susan Piver was a respected teacher of meditation. She had written a New York Times best-selling book, and her classes were well attended. She, like many before her, had a practice and a small following.

What she found, though, was that after a retreat, people from out of town would ask, “How do we find a local teacher we can connect with to continue our practice?” To meet this need, she decided to build an online meditation center, a sangha.

A few years later, the sangha has more than twenty thousand members. Most of them get periodic updates and video lessons, and pay nothing for the interactions. Some, though, are more deeply connected. They pay a subscription fee and engage with their teacher (and with each other) as often as every day.

How did she get to twenty thousand? Not in one fell swoop. In thousands of small swoops.

After just a few years, this small project has become the largest meditation community in the world. With just one full-time staff member, it connects and inspires thousands of people.

There are countless meditation instructors in the United States, all of whom have access to a laptop as connected to the world as Susan’s is. How did the Open Heart Project make such an impact?

Start with empathy to see a real need. Not an invented one, not “How can I start a business?” but, “What would matter here?” Focus on the smallest viable market: “How few people could find this indispensable and still make it worth doing?” Match the worldview of the people being served. Show up in the world with a story that they want to hear, told in a language they’re eager to understand.

Make it easy to spread. If every member brings in one more member, within a few years, you’ll have more members than you can count.

Earn, and keep, the attention and trust of those you serve.

Offer ways to go deeper. Instead of looking for members for your work, look for ways to do work for your members.

At every step along the way, create and relieve tension as people progress in their journeys toward their goals.

Show up, often. Do it with humility, and focus on the parts that work.