Exploring ideas and applications of a technology can benefit from broad exploration in the early days. By taking the ‘scatter gun’ approach, casting your net wide, talking to as many people as possible, and tinkering with as many variations of your tech as possible, can all help identify the elements of your effort that fall into two broad camps.

Push

Where and with whom do you find yourself having to turn on the heavy sales routine? Who doesn’t get it. Who thinks the idea or the tech is nice, but doesn’t walk the walk as well as they talk the talk. When are you most having to push your valuable idea on others?

Pull

Conversely, where and for whom does your idea and tech prove most attractive? Who finds it magnetic? Who sells it for you? Who shares the pain they have and the gains they’ll get from having access to what you are offering?

One of these camps is far easier to sustain than the other. When you follow the pull rather than the push, you might not end up where your ego and formulation of your work would’ve predicted…but that’s the fun part, right? And allowing yourself to be pulled in the direction of most interest is much less energetically demanding than having to constantly push your technology on those who don’t really want to hear about it.

Consider exploring the furthest reaches of your conceivable user base. That’s how you’ll find out who your work is truly for. This is how you seek those you can best serve.

If you have a question for Marc, upload an audio recording for it to be featured on a later Q&A episode!