You're Looking in the Wrong Place for Customers — Do This Instead

I spent years believing that if I built something great, customers would find me.

It’s an appealing idea. Build a beautiful website. Create a solid product. Optimize for SEO. Then wait for the traffic to roll in, the sales to accumulate, the business to take off.

I believed this for longer than I’d like to admit. And it cost me — not just money, but time I’ll never get back.

Here’s what I eventually learned: most entrepreneurs are looking for customers in exactly the wrong place. They’re waiting for customers to come to them, when they should be going directly to where their customers already are.

The comfortable lie we tell ourselves

There’s a reason so many founders fall into this trap. Building feels productive. You can spend months perfecting your website, tweaking your product, writing blog posts, and optimizing page titles. At the end of each day, you’ve accomplished something tangible.

Meanwhile, the hard work of actually finding customers — reaching out, having conversations, facing rejection — feels uncomfortable and slow. So we convince ourselves that if the product is good enough, the marketing will take care of itself.

I know this because I lived it. Multiple times.

Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I launched products I was absolutley certain would succeed.

I had done research. I understood the problem I was solving. I built something I would have wanted to buy. I set up my SEO, created content, even ran some ads.

And then I waited.

The traffic trickled. A few curious visitors here and there. But paying customers? Almost none.

I blamed the algorithm. I blamed timing. I blamed my marketing budget. What I didn’t do — not for far too long — was question my fundamental assumption: that a great product naturally attracts customers.

It doesn’t. Not without you doing the work to put it in front of them.

Why we get this backwards

The “build it and they will come” fantasy persists because it feels safe. If you’re heads-down building, you don’t have to face the possibility that nobody wants what you’re making. You don’t have to hear “no.” You don’t have to confront the gap between your vision and the market’s actual needs.

There’s also a comforting logic to it. We see successful businesses with great products and assume the product came first. We don’t see the years of customer conversations, the pivots, the outreach, the relentless work of finding and understanding the market that preceded the polished thing we’re looking at now.

And then there’s SEO — the ultimate passive income fantasy. The idea that you can write some blog posts, optimize some keywords, and have Google send you a steady stream of ready-to-buy customers forever. It’s not impossible. But it’s slow, competitive, and far less reliable than most people realize. Building a business on the hope that Google will notice you is not a strategy. It’s a wish.

The shift that changed everything

The turning point for me came when I read that smart founders were using something called validation – to learn whether the market cared about what they were doing.

So I tried something different. Instead of building first and hoping customers would appear, I decided to find customers first and let them tell me what to build.

I identified communities where my potential customers spent time — online forums, social media groups, industry events. And instead of showing up with a pitch, I showed up with questions. I asked about their problems. I listened to their frustrations. I paid attention to the language they used to describe what they were struggling with.

Then I tested. Before building anything substantial, I described my potential solution and asked directly: “Would you pay for this? How much? What would it need to include?”

The feedback was uncomfortable. Some people told me my idea wasn’t interesting to them. Some had objections I hadn’t anticipated. Some pointed out competitors I didn’t know existed.

But some said yes. And those yeses — real expressions of interest from real potential customers — were worth more than all the SEO optimization in the world.

When I finally built the product, I wasn’t guessing anymore. I knew there was demand because I’d confirmed it with actual humans who had no reason to be polite to me.

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Where your customers actually are

The insight that transformed my approach was simple: your customers are already somewhere. They’re gathering in communities, reading specific publications, attending certain events, following particular accounts. Your job isn’t to build something and hope they stumble across it. Your job is to figure out where they already are and go there.

This sounds obvious when I write it out. But most entrepreneurs don’t do it. They build websites and wait. They post on social media and hope for viral magic. They optimize for search engines and pray for traffic.

Meanwhile, their ideal customers are in Facebook groups answering each other’s questions. They’re on Reddit threads debating solutions. They’re at trade shows talking to vendors. They’re in Slack communities sharing resources. They’re subscribing to newsletters and podcasts that speak directly to their problems.

Your customers aren’t hiding. You just haven’t gone looking for them yet.

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How to actually find them

Here’s the process I use now, before I invest serious time or money in any new venture:

Get specific about who you’re trying to reach.

“Small business owners” is too broad. “First-time founders in their 30s trying to launch a service business while still working a day job” is something you can work with. The more specific your picture of your ideal customer, the easier it is to figure out where they congregate.

Map their world.

Where do they spend time online? What do they read? Who do they follow? What events do they attend? What problems keep them up at night? Build a detailed map of their information ecosystem.

Show up and listen first.

Join the communities. Read the threads. Pay attention to the questions people ask over and over. Notice the language they use. Understand what they’re actually struggling with — not what you assume they’re struggling with.

Start conversations.

Once you understand the landscape, begin engaging. Not pitching — engaging. Answer questions. Share relevant experiences. Build credibility by being genuinely helpful. Let people get to know you before you ask for anything.

Test your assumptions directly.

When you think you understand a problem worth solving, describe your potential solution to real people in your target market. Ask if they’d pay for it. Ask what would make it more valuable. Ask what concerns they’d have. Listen carefully to what they say — and what they don’t say.

Let the market shape your offer.

Use what you learn to refine your product, your pricing, your positioning, your messaging. The businesses that succeed aren’t the ones that force the market to accept their vision. They’re the ones that discover what the market actually wants and deliver it.

Customers come from many places

You will need to cast a wide net” as they say. Customers from come from many different places. 

You’ll need to establish a presence on a number of social media channels that makes sense for your customers. It might be TikTok, it might be X, it might be Instagram, it might be LinkedIn –  but most likely it will be a combination of three or four different social media channels that makes sense for your users. 

Get used to posting regular content on those channels to cast a wide net and give your customers a chance to find you.

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The hard truth about traffic

Here’s something I wish someone had told me earlier: traffic without targeting is almost worthless.

A thousand random visitors to your website will generate almost nothing. Ten highly qualified visitors who already have the problem you solve and are actively looking for a solution? That’s where real business happens.

The conversion math is brutal. A typical website converts maybe one to two percent of visitors into customers. That means you need fifty to a hundred visitors just to make one sale. If those visitors aren’t well-matched to your offer, the numbers get even worse.

This is why the “build and wait” approach is so inefficient. You’re trying to attract enough random traffic that statistically, a few of them happen to need what you’re selling. It’s possible, but it’s slow and expensive.

The alternative — going directly to where your ideal customers already are — flips the equation. You’re not trying to filter a flood of indifferent visitors. You’re starting with people who already have the problem and building relationships with them directly.

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What you can do starting today

If your business isn’t getting the traction you want, stop waiting for customers to find you. Go find them.

Identify three to five communities where your target customers spend time. Join them.

Spend a week just observing — reading posts, noticing patterns, understanding the culture.

Then start contributing. Answer questions. Share useful information. Be genuinely helpful without any expectation of immediate return.

Have real conversations with real people. Ask about their challenges. Listen to what they say.

Let those conversations inform how you talk about your business, what you offer, and how you position it.

Test before you build.

Before you invest months in a new product or feature, describe it to potential customers and see if they actually want it.

This isn’t complicated. It’s not even particularly clever. But it requires something that many entrepreneurs resist: leaving the comfortable world of building and entering the uncomfortable world of selling.

The founders who make this shift — who stop waiting for customers and start actively pursuing them — are the ones who build businesses that actually work.

The ones who don’t? They end up with beautifully designed websites that nobody visits, and great products that nobody buys.

Your customers are out there right now, looking for solutions to their problems. They’re not going to magically appear on your website. But if you go to where they are and show them you understand what they’re dealing with…

…that’s when things start to happen.