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As someone with an entrepreneurial mind I often have business ideas, marketing sparks or even just insights that I think might prove valuable for a future article, book or speaking engagement. Sometimes I am able to work through the idea on my own, either pursuing it further or deciding it was best as a passing thought – but often I want to get some real world opinions or reactions and I certainly am not about to pay a real focus group. Problem? Absolutely not…
If you’re looking for a variety of opinions or a sounding board for ideas, sometimes your best bet is to turn your thoughts inward to your own life and to your real life group of friends and other contacts. Something I have recently been able to do with different groups of people in my life.
Case in point…
Being a good Canadian boy once a week I grab my hockey gear and lace’em up in men’s (beer) league with a group of good friends and last week something struck me when we were chatting over a cold one after the game, my hockey team serves as a great personal focus group.
Now stay with me for a minute because I realize that 14 men all around the same age all participating in an organized sport is not exactly the cross-section of society you want for a focus group. However with that said when I look up and down our roster and I think about the wide variety of topics that come up amongst the boys both pre and post game it struck me that in just that one little group I have a pretty great cross section of professions, technology acumen and even stages of life.
To offset the fellas, on another night I sat in on my Mom’s famous Mahjong game and chatted with women who crossed several generations and had an extremely wide set of technology and business acumen. Finally, to round it all out I took my friend’s teen-age brother and 5 of his friends to lunch and talked to them about their use of everything from Facebook to Twitter.
I know enough not to make any life or business decisions solely on the basis of what I discern from these gatherings, but as a sounding board or a place to get some real world (non sterilized) opinions it absolutely makes sense and helps me quickly get the pulse of any number of different people/groups.
What about you, who do you use as your personal focus group?
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