You conduct a statistically valid survey among your target audience.

If you have the resources, conduct qualitative research like focus groups or individual interviews too.

There are thousand of market researchers like me that do this for a living. Find one you trust and ask them for help.

Why Geography Mattersby Harm de Blij

It gave me a whole new perspective on virtually everything. It answers a lot of the ‘why’ questions about how we got to the place we are in this world.

I’ve known people who work at Microsoft. Their attitude is we are the biggest so we don’t need to be good. This may seem too simple, but it’s their corporate culture.

I use a platform that amazing and 10% the cost of competitors. But run by one dude. I’ve even asked him about the hit-by-a-bus scenario. He didn’t have a good answer. My concern is always there.

I’ve even discussed buying him out because it’s such a worry.

I became a specialist. In my industry there are a ton of general consultants. Some make millions, most get by.

When I chose to specialize, not compete with the general consultants, but make all of them clients, that’s when business took off.

There's a reason all those consultants went general though isn't there?

Historically speaking, building your practice as a specialist consultant is difficult. It works for certain niches only.

Awesome.

I recently had to reserve six hotel ballrooms/conf. rooms for focus groups. Hotel sales offices suck. They are not responsive, sometimes taking days to respond, they have old technology (if any). They require signatures on multiple documents (almost none use online forms). For some inexplicable reason sales and catering managers all have assistants, who by the way, cannot actually do anything or give you any information, they are just clerks to take info. It was a coordination nightmare to set up all six locations and dates. There is great opportunity here to automate and streamline this process.

Not true.

It wasn't but I am happy to give props to people who help me. I am pollster - so feel free to hate me even more for that. But have like 100 web and mobile app ideas I want to make and I want to learn how to develop them. More coming soon. Other than the true haters, I've really enjoyed the process and look forward to getting deeper into coding.