Every book tells you to start with “who is your target market.” It’s a reasonable question, just the wrong place to start. You need to know who the brand is before you build it around a market.
Three reasons leading with the market is dangerous. The market might not take to you, and then you’re stuck in an identity crisis. Your customers outgrow you, and chasing them as they go quietly changes who you are. And building everything around an audience leaves no room to scale without losing the personality that made you worth choosing in the first place.
Identity comes first, and then you treat it as a compass, the thing you check every decision against. If you actually know who you are, you’re still you in front of any audience. The phrasing shifts, the room changes, but the core holds. Same for a brand. Get that right and the market becomes a choice you make, not a cage you’re trapped in.
Did you define who you are, or just who you’re selling to?