I am glad I am on Twitter. I don’t post relentlessly in this medium. I do keep my presence alive and mostly enjoy the connections. Once in a while a good thing happens. Some one you don’t know connects to you. You don’t know why they did, so you go out to check their profile, a bit of what they post and make a decision to follow.
It happened to me today and I am glad David decided to follow me. That is how I discovered 1000 True Fans and a bunch of very interesting sources. If you are an entrepreneur of any kind, I am sure you would enjoy reading this.
A few snippets:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.
One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.
The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. …You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.
You don’t need a million fans to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient.
This formula – one thousand direct True Fans — is crafted for one person, the solo artist. What happens in a duet, or quartet, or movie crew? Obviously, you’ll need more fans. But the additional fans you’ll need are in direct geometric proportion to the increase of your creative group. In other words, if you increase your group size by 33%, you need add only 33% more fans.
At my company iMorph, we want to serve a small number of customers extremely well. Some of them pay a mere $25 and some of them more than $25,000 every year. It does not matter. Interacting with customers, the users of your products, listening to their suggestions and watching them use your products in ways you never thought of, is one of the greatest joys. That is why I like the philosophy of 1000 True Fans. A few thousands is a small number, enough to support a small business and still provide enough time for innovation and improvement and interactions.