You Keep Networking at the Wrong Events Because You Never Defined Your Where

You're Everywhere and Getting Nowhere

Let me paint a picture that might feel painfully familiar.

It's Tuesday night. You're at a networking event in a coworking space, making small talk over lukewarm beer. You've been to three events this week. You're active in seven Slack communities. You posted on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and TikTok today. You joined a new Discord server yesterday.

You're exhausted. And you have zero new customers to show for it.

So you tell yourself: "I just need to network harder. Be more visible. Show up more."

No. You don't.

You need to stop moving and figure out where you should actually be. Because right now, you're not networking — you're wandering.

The Real Problem: You Skipped Station 5

In any business, there's a critical question that most founders either skip entirely or answer with a shrug: Where does my specific customer actually spend their time, attention, and money?

This is what we call Station 5 — Audience. It's not about demographics or market size or TAM. It's about the literal, practical, tactical question: Where do I find the humans who need what I built?

And here's why most founders get it wrong: they treat "audience" like a broadcasting problem. They think, "If I'm loud enough in enough places, the right people will hear me."

That's not a strategy. That's a prayer.

A real audience strategy means you can answer questions like:

What 2-3 specific places (online or offline) do my ideal customers congregate?
What are they already reading, listening to, or attending?
Who do they already trust and follow?
When they have the problem I solve, where do they go looking for solutions?

If you can't answer these with specifics — not "LinkedIn" but "the SaaS Growth Hacks LinkedIn group with 14K members" — then you haven't done the work yet.

But Wait — The Problem Usually Starts Earlier

Here's the thing about Station 5 that trips people up: you can't define your "where" if you haven't nailed your "who."

That's Station 3 — Personas.

And this is where the cascade of vagueness begins.

Watch how it unfolds:

Vague Persona (Station 3): "My customer is small business owners who want to grow."

Vague Audience (Station 5): "I guess I should be on LinkedIn and go to business networking events?"

Result: You spend six months posting generic content to a generic audience and wonder why nobody's buying.

Now watch what happens when you get specific:

Specific Persona (Station 3): "My customer is a solo freelance graphic designer, 2-4 years in, making $40-70K, who's drowning in admin work and wants to spend more time on creative projects."

Specific Audience (Station 5): "They hang out in r/freelanceDesigners on Reddit, they follow The Futur on YouTube, they attend local AIGA chapter meetups, and when they're frustrated, they vent in the Freelancing Females Facebook group."

Result: You show up in four places with a message that resonates so deeply people DM you asking if you're reading their mind.

See the difference? The specificity of your persona directly determines how findable your audience becomes.

The "Be Everywhere" Trap

Let's talk about why "be everywhere" feels so logical even though it's a trap.

When you don't know where your customers are, every platform and every event feels equally promising — which means they all feel equally important. You can't prioritize because you have no criteria for prioritizing.

So you default to volume. More events. More platforms. More posts. More communities.

This creates three brutal problems:

1. You spread yourself so thin that you're memorable nowhere. Posting once a week in twelve communities is worse than posting daily in one. You never build the recognition, trust, or relationships that actually lead to sales.

2. You burn through your most limited resource: energy. As a solo founder, your energy is more scarce than your money. Every networking event that yields nothing doesn't just cost you an evening — it costs you the creative energy you could have spent building, selling, or resting.

3. You collect vanity signals instead of real traction. You get LinkedIn likes from other founders. You get "great idea!" from people who will never buy. You mistake visibility for progress. Meanwhile, the 200 people who would actually pay for your product are having a conversation in a niche forum you've never heard of.

How to Actually Find Your "Where"

Okay, let's get practical. Here's a process that works.

Step 1: Go Back to Your Persona and Get Brutally Specific

Before you think about where, revisit who. Can you describe your ideal customer so specifically that you could pick them out of a crowd? Not an industry — a person.

Give them a name. What's their job title? What tools do they use daily? What podcasts do they listen to during their commute? What do they Google at 11pm when they're stressed about work?

If this feels hard, that's the point. The difficulty is the diagnosis.

Step 2: Research Like a Journalist, Not a Marketer

Don't guess where your persona hangs out. Investigate.

Search Reddit for the problem you solve. Which subreddits have active conversations about it?
Search podcast directories for topics your persona cares about. What shows have engaged audiences?
Look at conference attendee lists (many are public). Are your people actually there, or is it all other founders and vendors?
Check Facebook and LinkedIn groups for relevant keywords. How active are they? Who's posting?
Ask existing customers (even if you only have two): "Where do you go when you want to learn something new about [your field]? What communities are you part of?"

That last one is gold. Five customer interviews will teach you more about audience location than five months of guessing.

Step 3: Test Two or Three Channels — Max

Based on your research, pick two or three places where you have evidence (not hope) that your customers spend time. Then go deep.

Show up consistently for 30 days
Add genuine value — answer questions, share insights, be helpful before you pitch
Track whether you're getting real engagement from real potential customers (not just other founders being supportive)

After 30 days, evaluate honestly. Are you having conversations with people who match your persona? Are they expressing the problem you solve? Could you see them becoming customers?

If yes, double down. If no, try the next channel on your list.

Step 4: Build a Presence, Not Just a Profile

There's a difference between being in a community and joining a community.

Being in a community means you have a profile and you occasionally post. Joining a community means people know your name, they've seen you help others, and when someone asks "does anyone know a good solution for X?" — three people tag you.

That second version is where customers come from. And it only happens when you commit to a small number of channels and show up like you mean it.

A Real Example

I talked to a founder who built a bookkeeping tool for food truck owners. For months, she was attending general small business meetups and posting on LinkedIn about entrepreneurship.

Zero customers from those efforts.

Then she got specific. She found three Facebook groups for food truck owners (one national, two regional). She joined a forum on a food truck industry website. She started showing up at local food truck festivals — not with a booth, just as a person talking to owners.

Within six weeks, she had her first eight paying customers. All from those channels.

The tool didn't change. The founder didn't change. The where changed. And that made all the difference.

The Questions You Should Be Able to Answer

Here's a quick self-check. If you can't answer these confidently, you haven't finished your Station 5 work:

Where do my ideal customers go to learn about their craft or industry?
Where do they complain about the problem I solve?
What events (online or offline) do they actually attend — not events they should attend, but ones they do?
Who are the 3-5 people my ideal customer follows and trusts?
If I could only be visible in one place for the next 90 days, where would give me the best chance of reaching real buyers?

If your answers are vague ("social media," "conferences," "online communities"), you're still guessing. And guessing is expensive.

Stop Wandering. Start Mapping.

The fix isn't to network harder or post more or attend another conference. The fix is to step back and do the foundational work you skipped.

Define your persona with uncomfortable specificity. Research where that persona actually spends time. Pick two or three channels and commit.

It's not glamorous work. But it's the difference between six months of exhausting, fruitless "visibility" and six weeks of showing up in the right room and having the right conversations.

Your customers are somewhere specific right now, talking about the problem you solve. The question is whether you've done the work to find out where.

If you're not sure whether your Audience station — or the Persona work that feeds into it — is where you're stuck, Clari Station's free diagnostic can help you find out. It walks you through all 10 stations of your business and shows you exactly where the gaps are. Sometimes the most valuable thing isn't another strategy — it's knowing which strategy to work on first.