Tell me what you want

What you really, really want

Hi Reader,

Being in community helps you feel less alone in business, gives you access to opportunities, genuine connection and referrals.

But the best thing community gives you, for your marketing at least, is the fresh perspectives and collective learning.

The part I love most about being engaged in the community any business operates in, is that you hear what the market wants, needs, or is getting stuck on. You’ll find out about trends (not the TikTok audio kind) and what’s changing. They ask you questions or tell you something they’ve been doing and that sparks ideas. It’s not always in a Q&A format, it might just be a general discussion, but those conversations get the brain juices flowing. Let’s pretend that doesn’t sound gross.

Even when you work with lots of clients, the feedback isn’t as raw. By the time someone is a client, they are too far in, even though what they ask is still valuable. Their questions are usually filtered by the project you’re working on and they’re paying for your time. For product businesses, customers tend to be a little too far out of reach to have this process work as well. Course students will ask about what’s in your curriculum but they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why being involved in a community is helpful.

As the Spice Girls say, tell me what you want, what you really really want

I take this one step further and I take note, literally, of what I’ve talked to people about. I essentially keep a document of the advice I’ve given. I note where and when, and I copy and paste or write in their words what the question or problem was. I then document what I shared as an answer, so that this document serves many purposes. This helps me to not only look back and see what I’ve been asked, but how they asked it, so I can use their language. I also have what I said and usually the reaction to that, so that when it comes to writing a piece of content about the idea I had, I don’t have to remember what someone said, it’s right there. I can also more easily notice when I’m having similiar discussions over a broader length of time.

I don’t document (in this space) what clients ask me because it’s too specific to them and their business, this is solely focused on public conversations and often very general advice from my side, even when their question might be quite specific. I often don’t have access to their analytics or a full working knowledge of how their business operates.

Looking back, since I’ve had this document for a long time, the most entries are when I was very involved in various communities, often online.

I was showing up as a villager in a very active way, and the village supported me even when they didn’t know it.