18A - Create a Customer Avatar

My perfect customer has a full time job that gives them the space and time away from work to focus on their family and on participating in activities that help to sustain them over time. 

That means that they’re not tied to a job with a chaotically variable schedule, nor or they constantly on call for work.

This individual has a love for nature and for learning and for life itself. They have a knack for being around other people with the same passions and interests. They know that learning in a community is equally as important to learning on one’s own. 

They spend time outside every day, no matter how busy they are, just to breathe in the air and appreciate the little things in nature. 

They might drive a green subaru or a red pickup for loading up their canoe or kayak for when the weather is nice. They probably have children, and a dog or two. They may have really enjoyed or even have a major in a natural history field such as dendrology, botany, entomology, ornithology. 

They take their vacations at spring or fall migration so that they can enjoy the birdlife in the area they are heading to. Once a decade they may even go overseas to watch birds or board a ship to watch wales in Alaska. 

There is so much of life they want to go out and see and experience and at the same time they can feel content right at home with the nature and people around them. 

They are conscious of their impact on their local environment and put their money where their mouth is on this topic. They plant native plants in their garden to support the bird and insect populations around them. 

They attend local bird club meetings and occasionally participate in group hikes at local state properties. Their age skews towards the older end of the spectru. Their kids may be grown and gone, and they themselves may be approaching retirement and looking for a way to spend time outside with new friends. 

They watch lots of nature shows from NatGeo and Animal Planet. They avoid the news mostly. They read (inhale, really) books by great naturalists such as Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold and Berne Heinrich. 

They are middle to late aged but feel like a 17 year old does looking at a hot, long and beautiful summer ahead of them. They’re wanting to get to know the land around them better and the people in their community who love it too. 

What do you have in common with the customer avatar? 

Most attributes are those of my own. The age is one of the biggest differences between me and my perfect customer in this scenario.

If you have anything in common with the avatar, do you think that is a coincidence? Why?

I think this assignment go to show that we interact with the world based on what we pay attention to (values, interests, skills). There’s a quote from a book called Night Train to Lisbon. In it, the main character says that “When we go to a place we travel ourselves.” We find out who we are, what we know and want and do. 

I think talking about interacting with the world in an entrepreneurial capacity brings out the essence of who we are or perhaps that which we want to become. 

If this is not the case, one should beware. One should ask themselves, is this something I really want to be doing for the next 5-10 years? Can my interest in this endeavor be sustained?