Less Can Be More

When I started my first business, The Successful Woman, in 1974, I had never heard of a book with a similar title, The Total Woman. That changed quickly when Marabel Morgan’s book became a tremendous success.

In case you missed the commotion, The Total Woman sold more than ten million copies and was the best-selling nonfiction book of 1974. As the Wikipedia listing recounts, the book taught that, “A Total Woman caters to her man’s special quirks, whether it be in salads, sex or sports, and is perhaps best remembered for instructing wives to greet their husbands at the front door wearing sexy outfits, or draped in transparent saran wrap, with nothing (but herself) underneath.”

“It’s only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him,” Morgan wrote.

Needless to say, that bore no resemblance to my plan to create personal growth seminars via The Successful Woman. Although fans of The Total Woman were not likely to be my customers, who was?

Obviously, men were not my target audience, but I knew that not every woman was either. What did my ideal customer look like?

At the beginning, I thought they would be those we often refer to as career women, but that began to change as I met the creative females who came to my seminars and subscribed to my newsletter.

After a couple of years, it became clear to me that I wanted to work with women who, like me, were starting their own businesses and weren’t necessarily interested in the conventional notion of what that meant.

At about the same time, the homebased business movement was quietly springing up all over the place. While not focused exclusively on this group, I felt a real connection with the things that were happening on the home business front and began looking for ways to let them know what I had to offer.

While experience and evolution often changes our definition of an ideal customer, it’s both wise and necessary to spend time figuring out who you want to serve.

One way of doing that is to identify what Mark J. Penn calls (in his book of the same name) Microtrends. Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever to track down these folks who may have specialized interests that are being overlooked by big companies.

In fact, you may be part of a micro trend yourself and are aware of what’s missing for them.

Here are a few of the small trends Penn identifies.

Working Retired

Sun-Haters

Pet Parents

Old New Dads

Young Knitters

Vegan Children

New Luddities

Social Geeks

Home-schooled

International Home Buyers

Can you see the dozens of possibilities in these growing groups—whether you know much about them or not? All these micro trends are ripe for products and services designed for small niche markets.

If you haven’t already done so (or you haven’t done so lately), spend time writing a profile of your ideal customer. What do they love? What problems do they share?

It makes it so much easier to get connected when you’ve figured that out. It’s also the shortest route to building your own natural monopoly.

As Seth Godin points out, “Many of us have realized that big doesn’t equal successful. Maybe you need to be a lot pickier about what you do and for whom you do it.”

Go for less. Get more.