I watched the new Steve Jobs movie last week.<\/p>\n
Spoiler: he invents the iMac.<\/p>\n
The point of the flick: paint a portrait of the guy that created the iPod, the round, partially-translucent, magenta colored\u00a0desktop computer, and giant smartphones called iPads.<\/p>\n
It seems the writer-director combo decided\u00a0the best way to do this would be to time-travel the viewer to three (maybe four, I lost count) separate moments right before Jobs\u00a0was about to go on stage to share his latest brain-melting gadget.<\/p>\n
Without fail, each pre-stage moment is\u00a0full of last minute technical issues, conversations with the mother\u00a0of his\u00a0child whom he denied for years was his own, and employee\/coworker-Jobs conflict (the same employees and coworkers each time...before every major launch...launches that are years apart from one another...).<\/p>\n
While the story structure was admirable, I couldn\u2019t help but feel like sometimes I was watching a Birdman-esque comedy, not a memoir-drama (I mean, there had to be a better time to discuss paternity tests, or challenge the CEO's leadership style than right before he\u00a0goes on stage every year, right?).<\/p>\n
Anyway, this got me thinking about the concept of \"target audience\" - the people\u00a0for whom you make your product, art, or writing.<\/p>\n
Two questions came to mind:<\/p>\n
The answer to the first question is die-hard Apple fans, as far as I can tell<\/p>\n
The answer to the second question? Steve Jobs built the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad for people who:<\/p>\n
1. want to be seen with the product in their hands (they want the status symbol)<\/p>\n
2. who can afford to buy the product (they have wealth)<\/p>\n
3. who do <\/strong>buy the product (they take action)<\/p>\n The third point here is key.<\/p>\n You see, it doesn't matter if Jobs only\u00a0accomplished 1 and 2 above. That's all well and good, but that just puts it in the same category as every other high-end consumer\u00a0product that doesn't sell and fails (like Apple's own Newton).<\/p>\n Where\u00a0Jobs\u00a0excelled\u00a0was getting people to do number 3: buy his product.<\/p>\n He was a master salesman for the upper and middle-upper-class (and their kids).<\/p>\n As a result, Apple is now the most profitable\u00a0company in the world.<\/p>\n And according to the movie, that's not an accident. It was by design.<\/p>\n Steve knew who he wanted to be known by:<\/strong> the people who would put money in his hands for the work he did.<\/p>\n And just as crucially: he never catered to anyone else.<\/p>\n (there's a reason the company is the most profitable...and it has everything to do with why most of the world operates on hardware and operating systems not produced by Apple)<\/p>\n Who do you want to be known by?<\/em><\/p>\n This is not a rhetorical question.\u00a0And if the answer is everyone, you're off to a bad start.<\/p>\n Defining, finding, and getting in front of\u00a0a specific\u00a0group of people who are willing to pay for your products and services is the only way to get traction in business; it's the only way to develop\u00a0systems and processes that can scale; it's the only way to build profitability.<\/p>\n Who do you want to be known by?<\/em><\/p>\n This is the question that will help you define your\u00a0target audience; this is the question that will help you\u00a0find\u00a0your first 1,000 true fans in a specific, well-paying niche;<\/a>\u00a0this is the question that will help you become the best in the world at what you do<\/a>.<\/p>\n Who do you want to be known by?<\/em><\/p>\n This is the most important question - everything else is secondary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I watched the new Steve Jobs movie last week. Spoiler: he invents the iMac. The point of the flick: paint a portrait of the guy that created the iPod, the round, partially-translucent, magenta colored\u00a0desktop computer, and giant smartphones called iPads. It seems the writer-director combo decided\u00a0the best way to do this would be to time-travel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[234],"tags":[335,336,404,409,423,427],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommorkes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
The Most Important Question:<\/h2>\n