8. Customer (definition)

NOTE: if you’re new to Ground-Up Governance, or are finding anything a bit strange or confusing, you might want to START HERE.

For most forms of business, someone needs to give you something you want in exchange for your idea, product, or service.  Otherwise, your business will be over before it starts!  Whoever gives you that “something” is your customer.  Your customer might even be a company themselves, or a government, or any other person or group who might want what you’re selling. You – and other Billie Eilish fans like you – proudly refer to yourselves as “Eyelashes.”  That’s already millions and millions of potential Reallie Steilish customers. If Reallie Steilish’s products are funky enough, all those Eyelashes might want to pay for them using cash, dogecoin, concert tickets, babysitting services, or anything else that you’d like in return.

A lot of people who know about making businesses successful will say that understanding what your customers are looking for is the best way to make money. If that’s true, then it’ll be really helpful for you to go out and learn as much as possible about what the most fashionable Eyelashes like to wear, and then use that information to design Reallie Steilish products that Eyelashes will get excited about.

A different kind of super smart business people are really good at imagining what their customers *could* want, even if the customers themselves don’t know it yet. How else could you have come up with your idea of coveralls-with-integrated-keytar-strap-and-“You’re italic, I’m in bold”-in-flashing-LEDs-across-the-back? You’ve got an idea to nab the burgeoning Eyelash-keytarist-workwear market before anyone else even realized it existed. Once Reallie Steilish is off the ground, that is…