My dad served his mandatory year of army service with a particular guy from the backwater highlands. They were on good terms and often talked about their life back home. On one such occasion, my dad asked about the kinds of animals that lived on the other guy’s home mountain range. His candid and direct response was “Oh, all of them”.
The guy had never once heard about any animal not found in his region, so he was sure that all of the world’s animals must be represented there, and he knew all of them.**
Ridiculous, right? Except, that’s exactly what I was like when I thought I understood what industry my service belongs to.**
So here’s the process of finding your own:
1. Define the problems you solve from a particular audience’s perspective.
2. Try to find a solution from that audience’s perspective on Google. For example, a job search can be a problem for a job-seeker, a company trying to fill a role or a recruiter that needs to be a matchmaker. Looking at the same problem from each of their perspectives will be different.
3. Check adjacent markets closely related to yours, they usually offer something that can partially overlap with what you do, as well as help identify trends or technologies that shape client preferences.
4. Asking clients directly who they turn to for the problems you solve will help you fill in the blanks.
May you be as surprised with the result as I was:)