ReWork

hot dogs, and other hot sandwiches, it test-marketed the products at just ten select locations.
    Broadway shows also provide a great example of testing ideas on a small stage first. They routinely do a trial run in a smaller city before coming to New York. Testing out of town lets actors get some reps in front of a live audience before the show goes up in front of harsher critics and tastemakers.
    Would you want the whole world to watch you the first time you do anything? If you’ve never given a speech before, do you want your first speech to be in front of ten thousand people or ten people? You don’t want everyone to watch you
starting
your business. It makes no sense to tell everyone to look at you if you’re not ready to be looked at yet.
    And keep in mind that once you do get bigger and more popular, you’re inevitably going to take fewer risks. When you’re a success, the pressure to maintain predictability and consistency builds. You get more conservative. It’s harder to take risks. That’s when things start to fossilize and change becomes difficult.
    If millions of people are using your product, every change you make will have a much bigger impact. Before, you might have upset a hundred people when you changed something. Now you might upset thousands. You can reason with a hundred people, but you need riot gear to deal with ten thousand angry customers.
    These early days of obscurity are something you’ll miss later on, when you’re really under the microscope. Now’s the time to take risks without worrying about embarrassing yourself.
     

     
Build an audience
    All companies have customers. Lucky companies have fans. But the most fortunate companies have
audiences
. An audience can be your secret weapon.
    A lot of businesses still spend big bucks to reach people. Every time they want to say something, they dip into their budgets, pull out a huge wad of cash, and place some ads. But this approach is both expensive and unreliable. As they say, you waste half of your ad budget—you just don’t know which half.
    Today’s smartest companies know better. Instead of going out to reach people, you want people to come to you. An audience returns often—on its own—to see what you have to say. This is the most receptive group of customers and potential customers you’ll ever have.
    Over the past ten years, we’ve built an audience of more than a hundred thousand daily readers for our Signal vs. Noise blog. Every day they come back to see what we have to say. We may talk about design or business or software or psychology or usability or our industry at large. Whatever it is, these people are interested enough to come back to hear more. And if they like what we have to say, they’ll probably also like what we have to sell.
    How much would it cost us to reach those hundredthousand people every day the old-fashioned way? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? And how would we have done it? Running ads? Buying radio spots? Sending direct mail?
    When you build an audience, you don’t have to buy people’s attention—they give it to you. This is a huge advantage.
    So build an audience. Speak, write, blog, tweet, make videos—whatever. Share information that’s valuable and you’ll slowly but surely build a loyal audience. Then when you need to get the word out, the right people will already be listening.

Out-teach your competition
    You can advertise. You can hire salespeople. You can sponsor events. But your competitors are doing the same things. How does that help you stand out?
    Instead of trying to outspend, outsell, or outsponsor competitors, try to out-teach them. Teaching probably isn’t something your competitors are even thinking about. Most businesses focus on selling or servicing, but teaching never even occurs to them.
    The Hoefler Type Foundry teaches designers about type at Typography.com . Etsy, an online store for things handmade, holds entrepreneurial workshops that explain “best practices” and promotional ideas to people who sell at the site. Gary Vaynerchuk, who owns a large wine shop, teaches people about wine online at Wine Library TV, and tens of thousands of people watch every day.
    Teach and you’ll form a bond you just don’t get from traditional marketing tactics. Buying people’s attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing. Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection. They’ll trust you more. They’ll respect you more. Even