When creating a project, we often focus so much on how we are going to tell the story.
How are we going to market it? How is the product going to look in the mind of our imaginary client?
There are so many courses and programs telling people they need: a Canva done, a launch strategy, a perfect pitch deck, a content plan and a perfectly defined client avatar before they even begin.
And while some of this can be useful, I think many people are skipping the most important part: building actual relationships with real human beings.
Because the truth is that you do not really know who your client is until you meet them.
You can speculate. You can create profiles. You can study demographics and consumer behavior.
But reality is always more complex than strategy documents.
Human behavior is messy. People buy things for emotional reasons, practical reasons, symbolic reasons and sometimes simply because they trust you.
And honestly, a lot of the information around “finding your ideal client” already feels outdated to me.
Generations change. Technology changes. Economic conditions change. People's emotional needs change.
There is no perfect formula that can universally predict who is going to buy from you.
This is why my strategic advice is usually very simple: look around you first.
The people most likely to buy from you in the beginning are usually the people who already know you and already believe in what you are trying to build.
And they are probably not buying because they randomly discovered your product and immediately fell in love with it.
They are buying because they know you.
They see your effort. They see you trying. They want to support you.
That is the reality of many first clients, especially inside creative, cultural and community-rooted projects.
Your first sales are often emotional support before they are market validation.
But this creates a very important question:
Are people buying because the market genuinely wants this? Or because you are surrounded by supportive friends and family?
Those are two very different situations.
A lot of people will buy things they do not necessarily need simply because they like you, believe in you or want to encourage you.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
But until you step outside that circle of support, you still do not fully know who your market actually is.
Build with reality, not assumptions.
Enter Market LabReal validation starts when your project enters environments where nobody knows you.
A market. A public event. A local ecosystem. A real conversation with strangers.
That is where things become measurable.
Because when people do not know you personally, their behavior changes.
Maybe the product solves an immediate need. Maybe the storytelling emotionally connects. Maybe the pricing creates resistance. Maybe the presentation creates confusion.
But you need to understand which one it is.
And this can only be discovered through testing.
Through being outside. Through talking to people. Through observing reactions. Through allowing reality to challenge your assumptions.
And I do not mean placing products on a table and silently hoping people buy them.
I mean: asking questions, starting conversations, observing body language, understanding hesitation and seeing how people naturally engage with what you are offering.
Who are they buying it for? Themselves or someone else?
What catches their attention first?
What confuses them?
What assumptions did you make that turned out to be completely wrong?
Local ecosystems reveal what analytics often hide.
This is why I think observation is one of the most undervalued strategic tools in modern business.
Especially now, when so many people are building projects almost entirely online.
Analytics can tell you what people clicked.
Real interaction tells you: hesitation, curiosity, confusion, emotional reaction, resistance, excitement and social dynamics.
These things matter deeply when you are building human-centered projects.
Especially for people trying to create meaningful work inside unstable systems.
Women founders. Migrant entrepreneurs. Queer creatives. Community-rooted initiatives.
These projects need more than visibility.
They need: clarity, testing, sustainable systems, honest feedback and environments where experimentation is actually possible.
Because not all growth is healthy growth.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is slow down and observe reality before scaling something that has not yet been validated.
A project does not become sustainable because it looks professional online.
It becomes sustainable when people consistently engage with it, support it, return to it and integrate it into their real lives.
And honestly, I think more people should test things earlier before investing years of their lives into structures built entirely on assumptions.
Meaningful work deserves real foundations.