Show, don’t just tell them

The best entrepreneur I know once gave me a piece of advice that I have never forgotten:

"Before building anything, speak to as many potential customers as possible."

This advice has always resonated with me, and it still holds true. Many entrepreneurs rush into building websites, writing code, and creating intricate designs and processes without even talking to five potential customers.

Inherently, many of us assume that we understand our customers simply because we solve a problem that seems obvious to us, assuming they must feel the same way.

Reading Ray Dalio’s book “Principles”, I discovered that there are two types of people: talkers and builders. The exceptional individuals can do both, but most people eventually team up with someone who complements their strengths. A famous example of this dynamic is Jobs and Wozniak. This principle extends beyond business; even in politics, you can find effective combinations like Nixon and Kissinger. While Nixon would talk to open relations, Kissinger would build the policies that put them into action.

I firmly believe in doubling down on your natural talents and abilities. Although I advocate for working on your weaknesses, life becomes much harder when you try to be someone you are not.*

So, this is a case for the builders out there who may not excel at talking.

Building is particularly effective in overcoming poor visualization skills, a challenge that many people face.

While talkers can explain ideas well, especially when discussing values, the builder’s advantage lies in allowing others to decide and interpret for themselves. When people process information firsthand, their true priorities come to light.

Unlike guiding the conversation, where it tends to be one-sided (“hey man - you’ve thought about this much more than me, I don’t know”), showcasing something turns an interaction into something dynamic.

While ideas may come and go in people’s heads within two sentences, the builder’s showcase has the advantage of pointing at and discussing something concrete, making it easier to center the conversation around a few points.

Customers can just as easily bias themselves towards characteristics as they do towards value.

Here are some use cases where early customer conversations strongly benefit from a builder’s approach:

1. If the talker speaks too strongly and confidently, it may not elicit a natural response from the target audience. This can be considered “The Talker’s Fallacy”, rooted in people’s fear of intellectual inferiority in conversations.
2. If the target customer is too likely to get swayed far from how they would react to being advertised to in the wild (for example, with limited context akin to a 40-character billboard), their response may differ from what you need.
3. If you are looking for customers who can tell you what to build, you’re looking for people with builder traits themselves. Builders love talking to builders, don’t they?
4. If the product lacks many words or context to be discussed.

So, if you are a builder, don’t be afraid to build; it will ignite your passion. This, in turn, leads to you being at your best, engaging in more natural conversations with your target customers, and avoiding the sterile version that comes from pretending to be a talker.

And who knows, you might even find a talker along the way.