How I learned to get out of my head and listen to my customers

Megan Raposa is an award-winning journalist and lifelong South Dakotan who’s deeply rooted in Sioux Falls—she’s lived, worked, played, and raised a family here. After more than a decade covering local news—with nearly six years spent as a reporter and editor at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader—she launched Sioux Falls Simplified in early 2021. Through her hyperlocal outlet and twice-weekly newsletter, Megan delivers no-frills, bite-sized news that helps her community feel smart about the forces shaping their city.

I was certain I knew what people wanted – classic mistake.

It was the summer of 2020. I was on maternity leave with my oldest daughter, and I was the
most uncertain I’d ever been about the security of my newspaper job. So, I started thinking
about what a career in journalism might look like as an entrepreneur.

As a new mom with a background on the education beat, I was certain I could start a publication
focused on education-related news. People want that, right? Of course they do.

So, I went to work. I joined an entrepreneurial bootcamp through the Google News Initative and
LION Publishers (very similar to what folks in Co.Starters go through at Startup Sioux Falls), and
a big part of that program was audience research.

I had my idea, but was anybody interested? And, most importantly, would anybody pay me for
this kind of work?

Internally, I knew the answer: of course they would. I thought about that famous quote attributed
to Henry Ford about how “if I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said faster
horses.” Obviously I, the 20-something, mid-sized town, early-career journalist knew exactly
what Sioux Falls news consumers needed, and it was a super niche, deeply in-the-weeds
publication focused on schools. (Come on, I can’t be the only one who was a little too big for her
britches in her 20s, right??)

Spoiler: that’s not the business I ended up building.

Thank goodness I had good mentors. They encouraged me to ask around, to get out there and
talk to the people I was hoping would read the news I planned to write. So, I did.

Here’s what I did:
The goal was to focus my research on the existing habits of people in Sioux Falls.

• I didn’t want to get too hypothetical, because when you ask folks “would you ever
  consider buying XYZ” they’re probably going to tell you what you want to hear.
• But, one of the best predictors of future behavior is past behavior, so I asked a lot of
  questions about where people were getting their news, were they paying for any email
  newsletters/substacks/podcasts/other media, how often were they reading news, etc.

Then, the next step – and this can be a hard one – was to stop talking and just listen.

• There was so much temptation to just start every phone call with a 20-minute
  explanation of everything I have in my head for this business and my hopes and dreams
  and just hope that they respond with a “that’s so brilliant, you’ll do great!” But that’s not
  the goal here.
• I had to force myself to stick to the script. “Hey, I don’t want to take too much of your
  time, but can I ask you a few questions about your news habits as part of some research
  I’m doing in looking at starting a new business.”
• Then, I listened.

Here’s what I learned:

The majority of my target customers weren’t really reading local news. This was an absolute
shock to me, who’d spent the last five and a half years working at the Argus Leader newspaper
surrounded by passionate, civic-minded journalists all the time.

But, amid a pandemic and an increasingly toxic political climate, a lot of people started tuning
out. The news made them sad, so they stopped reading it.

• These folks didn’t need another hyper-niche publication. They needed a journalistic
  palette cleanser.

It was those initial customer interviews that eventually led to the creation of Sioux Falls
Simplified, which, I like to joke, is local news for people who don’t like reading the news.

If I hadn’t taken the time to listen to my customers and instead listened only to my own internal
“I’m right about everything” ego, I would’ve started a publication that almost certainly was
doomed to fail.
Ok, ok, enough about me. What’s the real takeaway?
Whatever you’re selling, make sure somebody wants to buy it.

You’ve got an idea for your target customer in your head, so go out, find people who fit that
description, and talk to them. The more customer conversations you have, the earlier on in your
business, the sooner you’ll be able to pivot to what people actually want and will actually pay for.
You can save yourself a lot of time, money and heartache if you just listen to your customers
before you build a whole business on an idea you haven’t fully vetted.