Target Audience: Mano provides a digital growth marketing platform to help restaurant businesses grow. The platform allows busy restaurant owners to execute marketing via social media and email in under 10 minutes per day.
In This Episode:
- Why you should never make assumptions about your niche
- How to get validation from your niche
- Creating from validation not an assumption
- Mano’s exact process for validation
- The genuine approach to solving your niche’s challenges
Mano’s Early Journey of Entrepreneurship
At the beginning of Mano’s entrepreneurial journey, he knew he needed a mentor. He knew he needed to make connections so he could be in the places and spaces where he could expand his horizons. He initially resonated with my talk on: “Find your riches in the niches.”
What He Learned Along The Way
Mano learned a structured process that promotes validations and NOT making assumptions. “Validate, validate, validate!’ he says. This is about letting your target market tell you what is right rather than just assuming what they need.
How To Get Validation First
Go where your market is and let them tell you what they need. What you learn from face to face interactions is important in the beginning stages. Mano says, listen very carefully to your niche and solve their biggest problem. This makes the most impact for them. Create from there!
The challenges of Mano’s niche centered around the fact that restauranteurs are very busy. They don’t have the time to be able to be present on all marketing platforms. Mano solved this problem by creating a platform that could be used in under 10 minutes a day. That means, they can run their social, email and push notifications in 10 minutes or less.
Practical and Actionable:
Get Validation! Mano shares his exact process:
Mano would get into his car and map out 30-40 restaurants he’d intend on dropping into. He’d drop in to introduce himself and his background. He’d clearly state what his aim was which was to work in the restaurant industry. He’d share that he was in the process of understanding what the problems and challenges of a restaurant owner were. People would assume he was trying to sell something, but he was actually just collecting information first.
This gave him the opportunity to ask them about their challenge and they would thank him for that. Mano says, if you are looking for a new niche or project, don’t jump ahead too quickly to the solutions. Prepare your mind. Genuinely ask the questions around their challenges. When you listen closely enough, you will start to notice some trends. That will provide you with many ideas to start addressing.
