Great stories and great businesses start the same way: by knowing your audience.
If you want to succeed in business, you have to know who your audience is. It doesn’t matter whether you’re creating the latest techno-widget or releasing the coolest Pixar-animated movie. You aren’t creating this product for yourself. It’s for an audience. If they don’t connect with your product, service, or brand, you have wasted your time.
To learn more about finding your audience, I spoke with my friend Matthew Luhn, author of The Best Story Wins. He’s also an animator, storyteller, and director who has been working in the entertainment industry for more than 30 years at Pixar, The Simpsons, and Netflix.
“Many people in business forget to find out the most important thing before releasing a product or service — knowing who your audience is,” Luhn said.
Why do you need to know your audience?
If you want to connect with a single person or the entire world, you need to take the time to know who they are. When you don’t connect with the right person or group, you can have a business failure.
Take the sponsorship of star NBA player Steph Curry in 2013 and why he decided to sign with Under Armour, rather than Nike.
Nike thought they knew their audience, in this case, Curry. Curry had worn Nike shoes for the past four years in the NBA. So, they didn’t make a strong effort to persuade Curry to stay with Nike. In the meeting, the Nike team mispronounced his name and used the same pitch deck they had used for Kevin Durant. Curry left unimpressed.
Under Armour, on the other hand, treated Curry as important and desired by the company. They offered him a chance to grow the brand, so Curry signed with them.
You don’t have to appeal to everybody.
Not every product, service, brand, or story must appeal to everyone to be a success. Stories that appeal to all people risk being too generic and watered down, while stories that are too specific risk alienating a broad audience. The key is to figure out who your audience is.
For example, the latest Pixar movie, Hoppers, and Luhn’s animated short, Sprite Fright, both have similar themes involving humans, animals, and respecting nature, but appeal to different audiences.
Hoppers appeals to a broad Pixar family audience. Meanwhile, Sprite Fright appeals to a specific mature audience, the kind of audience that would enjoy the animated series Rick & Morty. Both stories succeed because they know who their audience is. That’s why it’s important to figure out who your audience is.
How do you know who your audience is?
When Luhn gives his popular storytelling keynotes to Fortune 500 companies, they often engage him for an additional 90-minute storytelling workshop in which he teaches them how to create a successful business pitch or presentation, which starts with four questions. These are the same four questions Luhn started with when he wrote on the Toy Story films, Finding Nemo, UP, and Ratatouille.
- The Hero: Who is the protagonist? Who is your end-user?
- The Goal: What do they want? What is the desired outcome?
- The Obstacle: What is the conflict? What are their pain points?
- The Change: How do they evolve?
Paint a picture for your end-user on how their future goals can be reached successfully if they engage with you and your business.
As Kindra Hall, author of Stories that Stick, wrote, “If you’re telling a story in business, you’re telling it to an audience for a reason.” These questions help you find that reason.
Test your audience with previews.
Answering these four questions is just the start of your journey. Once you know who your audience is, test that idea with previews or focus groups.
At Pixar, they don’t rely on guesswork. During the final year of production, Luhn shared that they hold audience previews to monitor where people laugh and cry, and whether they understand the hero’s journey.
Luhn advised that a business should also adopt a “preview” mentality. Don’t wait until your product is finished before seeking feedback. Test your idea early to determine if your product, service, or message is landing correctly with your end user.
“You want to fail early and fail fast,” Luhn said.
In the end, remember, you and your business are not the ultimate hero in your great business story. Your audience is the hero, and you have to know who they are so you can help them successfully reach their goals.
As Nancy Duarte, the author of Resonate, wrote, “You are not the hero who will save the audience; the audience is your hero.”
This article as originally published by Inc. March 28, 2026.