Understanding Your Ideal Customer

All right, guys. Welcome back, everybody. Huge round of applause. Good to have you back. Nice.

So again, Tracy Walker did an amazing job. Now we're going to follow it up with a deeper take. So here's the topic. The topic is going to be how to understand your clients better than anyone else so you can sell more than anyone else. Because really, the way that you get leads, the way that you get sales, is by deeply understanding the psychology of your client, and then communicating to them in a way that they want to be communicated with.

And if you do that, you're setting yourself up for success. And we've got somebody who does that better than anybody. So Rob runs all of the marketing here at Empower Network. And Rob, he's a young guy. When you see him, he's 22 years old.

He's been able to set up a company with about 100 employees. Is that right? He's got about 100 employees working for him. And he's a marketing genius. And I say that sincerely.

Anybody who knows him, I've sat down in little small masterminds, me, him, and Dave, while we're thinking through things. And he does marketing exceptionally well. So what I recommend is if you want to grow your company up to the next level, if you want to take the actions that are going to set you up for success, pay very careful attention to what Rob's going to say. He's good at what he does. And he knows a lot.

So he's going to give us about the next 30 minutes in marketing fundamentals. And everybody, give Rob a huge, warm welcome. That'd be great. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I love how they play the black music to the black guy.

They've been playing the black music the whole time. How's it going, everyone? Good? First of all, Tracy did an amazing presentation. It really set this one up.

So give a round of applause for Tracy. Thank you. Thank you. So as Will mentioned, today I'm going to be talking to you guys about how to understand your customers better than anybody else, so you can sell to them better than anybody else. Today, what I'm going to be talking to you guys about, as you may have heard before, but I'm going to be introducing new concepts in a much different way.

Now, before we dive into this topic, I want to ask you guys a question. I'm going to pass the mic around. It's the event, possibly. I want to know why are you in this business. What inspired you to get started?

What is your why? What is your driving motivation? So just a couple people, raise your hand if you want to share. Lawrence? Sure.

Yeah. I wanted more time freedom. I found that working an engineering job on a salary, no matter how many more hours you put in, it's either climb the ladder, or you'll just get brushed aside. And everyone I was working with had masters and PhDs, and I was just a bachelor dude. So this is not a good way to make a living and have a family.

And I saw the people I was working with, they never spent time with their family. And that's probably not the path I'm going to go down. So that's why I went into entrepreneurship. My parents were obviously entrepreneurs. So it was just a matter of time.

I saw that. That's so cool. Martin Andre, Canada. One main thing is to help people. And that's definitely something, self-development is something that I love.

And so being with Empower, I totally saw that. And advertising and marketing has always been something that I love. It's how to influence people. And so I'm here to influence, I'm here to help, and really guide people in the right direction. So that's why I got into this business.

Very cool. Thank you for sharing. I just don't care for me. Yeah, so three things. One, to retire my mom.

Two, travel the world. And three, help as many people as I can. That's awesome. Tracy. All right.

I'm actually in this business for a couple of reasons. One was to create freedom in my life. And at this point, now that I have a son, it allows me to have that freedom. He travels with me. We go everywhere together.

He's exposed to different things. And I want to be in a position to be the integral mentor or model for him as he grows. And so this business, this industry, helps me to do that. In addition to that, it is to help create that for other people as well. So I'm on a continuous journey to create that for myself.

So I want to be able to take my lessons. But I want to be able to take my lessons in my learning. And help my dad so that he can experience that freedom, too. Give him a round of applause. So I was listening to the responses.

And that's a pleasure to a lot of people many times. And I think we can all agree that the reason why we're in this business is because we want to build a business that allows us to provide a better life for ourselves and the people we love. By a show of hands, do we agree? That's awesome. So how do we do that?

How do we build a better business? How do we take care of the people we love? Well, in today's economy, the way we do it is kind of make more money. You can make more money. You can provide a better lifestyle for the people that you love.

It's really simple. Right? Make more money. You have more time. And so on and so forth.

So what happens when we pose the question of, do I want to go on that dream vacation? Do I want to take my business from X to X and grow my income? What do we do? Well, most of us, what we do is we look at the next tactic or technique or whatever. It's one weird email trick that increases open rates and we get more open rates and make more money and so on and so forth.

Right? And the thing is, these techniques, these tactics, they work. They make us more money. They do. But the thing is, they make us more money for a very short period of time.

And that was a lesson I learned the hard way. It actually cost me one of my most profitable businesses. It was a mistake. And I don't really consider it a mistake. It was a great learning lesson that I learned back in like 2010, 2011.

Back story is, back in 2010, 2011, I had a really, really popular blog. And the blog was doing really good. It was doing about 200,000 people per month. It was making me good money for my age. And then, I was on the phone with one of my friends.

He's like, yeah, I did this product launch. I was like, really? He said, huh. So I was like, $600,000 in seven days. That's more than I made this entire year.

Fuck this. Let me go over to that. That was my mindset. So I completely dropped this long-term, sustainable business to go to what I thought was my lucky ticket, my lottery ticket. So I got into the product launch space.

Back in the ClickBank days, if you know where that was, before the FTC came in and did what they did. And I got into the product launch space. I did a product launch. Made a bunch of money. And then, I had a bunch of money, but I had no more money coming in.

So what did I do? I did another product launch. What did I do? Built an email list. Mailed my list excessively using all these techniques.

Mail your list twice a day. Mail your list offer after offer after offer. I did all these techniques, and I kept just running myself in a hamster wheel. And what I found is I was always jumping from technique to technique to technique. I got frustrated.

I was making money, but I wasn't really doing and achieving the life that I set out to achieve, the life that we all wanted. So I spent more time, more freedom, family, sustainability, and then something changed. I changed the people I started hanging around with. So a lot of my time in the early days, I was hanging around a lot of marketers. And if you're at the table with a lot of marketers, we're always talking about techniques and tactics and add this little emoticon to your subject line, and you're going to explode your open rates or whatever.

And I started hanging around business owners, really successful business owners. People were doing seven, eight, and nine figures. And here I am, I'm sitting at the table thinking our conversations are going to be the same, but they weren't. Well, I'm sitting here talking about, yeah, I did this one technique. I added this little emoticon to my email list, and it just exploded open rates.

They all kind of looked at me like, oh, that's cool. And I'm like, you guys don't know about that? I'm thinking, they're so much more successful than me. They're so much more smarter than me. They make so much more money, and they don't know about this.

I'm like, hmm. So at that point, I shut up, closed my mouth, and I listened. And people listening to the conversations that were being had at dinner tables from ultra-successful people, people who have net worths of $600 million or more, they weren't talking about techniques or strategies. They were talking about principles. They were talking about psychology.

They were talking about things that didn't last just for a couple minutes, but things that lasted for years and decades on to come. I said, hmm. And I got intrigued by it. So instead of looking at stuff at the surface level, I said, alright, let me peel back a layer. Let me go deep.

Let me start asking myself, why were these techniques working? What are the psychological principles? What are the laws, if I may, that made these things work? I wanted to find something that was proven to work in any market, any industry, for any person. Because I did consulting for a couple years, and typically when I get phone calls, they're not always the right time.

I can't meet payroll this week. What do I do? And I can't come in with my opinion or my theory or what I think works. I have to walk in and share with people what I know works. It's just like gravity.

If I drop my phone, it's going to go on the ground. So I started studying. The first question I asked myself, are there laws that we all abide by? Are there actual laws of selling? It's not like laws like you're going to go to jail or something like that.

Actual laws that trigger us as human beings. And my curiosity led the way. I started reading tons of books on psychology and neuroscience and neuromarketing, and the answer is, yes, there is. That's what I'm going to be sharing with you guys today. And see, here's the thing.

Today, in my business, if you guys have heard me speak before, you know that I'm not here to give you guys information. I'm not in the business of giving information. I'm in the business of delivering information. I'm in the business of delivering you guys a result. Because your result that I help you guys achieve is the only thing that matters to me.

So if a lot of people are like, Rob, you don't talk much, or blah, blah, blah, blah, or show your opinion much, honestly, I don't care to. I care to deliver your result. That's it. It's my only focus. Get you the result that you're after to achieve.

If I can do that, I'm happy, I'm fulfilled, and you guys are living a better life, your teams are living a better life. So what I'm here to share with you guys today is the underlying principles and strategies that you can walk away with. That you can apply to any business, any market, and it's going to work. Because they're laws. Every single time you apply them, they will work.

I'm not going to share with you techniques or tactics or any of that. And it's funny because when people hear, oh, you run a really big business, what tactics are you using that we're not using? What clever market research techniques are you using that I don't know about? Or spying techniques or black hats? The truth is, I don't know any of those things.

These are the principles that got my company where it's at, and these are the same principles that I've applied and I'm going to apply and take my company to the next level. And I'll take another company to the next level as well. Okay? So what is your job as a business owner? It's really simple.

It's to break down the mental limitations that are holding you back. It's really simple. When we first get started, we think a lot of this is like, we think it's external. We think it's about knowing this right thing or whatever. But it's not.

It's internal. 80% of success is psychology. And that's what we're going to be focusing on today. We're going to be focusing on the 80% that's going to drive the bulk of your success. And the first thing is, one of the biggest limitations that people make is they don't really understand their customers.

And that's one of the reasons why they don't sell as well as they could be. A lot of people come to me and say, Ralph, I'm not making as much money as I'd like or I'm not connecting with my customers as well as I want to. I don't understand why. And when I sit down and I have a conversation with them, I look at their marketing, I look at what they're doing, what I realize is I realize they don't understand their customer. And what was interesting, there was a reason why I asked you guys, why are you guys in this business?

And if you notice, not one single person said, I'm in this business to make more money. Did you notice that? Not one single person here said, I'm here to make more money. Not one. And guess what?

Every single time I've asked that question, not one person, I've asked it hundreds if not thousands of times, not one person has ever said to me, I just want to make more money. Why is that? And that's really important when we do our marketing because especially in the info marketing space, the home-based business space, capture pages and lead pages and sales presentations are only focused on one thing. How to make more money. But if that's not what we want, why are we selling it?

So when we go out and we do a presentation and we're preaching to the choir, here's how you make more money, here's how you make more money, and your entire sales presentation is focused on how to make more money, then you're not getting the conversions you want or you're not attracting the type of people that you desire and Tracy did a great job of talking about how to attract your ideal avatar. It's not working. It is working. You're just not attracting, you're not communicating to people on the right level. People ask themselves the question what is money?

Most people have never asked this question and it's not our fault because the way we've been ingrained and everything we've been taught growing up is wrong. We've been taught that money is the end all be all or money is the outcome but the truth is no it's not. What is money? Money is a resource. Money is a means to an end.

Money is not the outcome. Money is not what people want. What people want is what money can do for them. Right? See, the reason why we're in this business is we're going to make more money but that's not our goal.

Money is the vehicle to achieve what we really want. More time with our family. More time with our son. More time to travel the world. More time to buy our dream home.

Go on our dream vacation. Whatever it may be. Have financial freedom. So when you start coming from a more authentic place and understanding what your customers really want, things change. We're going to go through a couple of exercises today for you guys to know what your customers want because in my business and I teach my team this all the time and this is as true for me in my business as it is true for any one of you.

You cannot guess. No. You cannot guess. You have to know. You have to know.

Because there's this saying that what you don't know can't hurt you. Excuse my French, but that's complete bullshit. Because what you don't know can hurt you and it probably is hurting you and you're just unaware of it. Which is why as we have this presentation, as we have this conversation that everybody today has to make a decision if you want to get to the next level. If you don't want to get to the next level, that's fine.

You don't have to make the decision. But if you do, you have to make the decision that you're going to step up or you're going to step out. Because if you don't step up, you're going to step out and somebody else who is more willing and serious than you are, they're going to step in and they're going to take your place. Right? I work in a very, very competitive industry.

It's one of the most competitive industries in the world. It's in the health and wellness space. It's in the beauty space. It is competitive. Right?

And if I'm not on my A game, if my team's not on their A game, we're out of business. If we're not first, we're last. And if you're not willing to step up and grow and evolve, somebody else will. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to go through some exercises.

We're going to go through some paradigm shifts that are going to allow you guys to step up if that's a decision you chose to make. So, the first question that you really want to ask yourself is you want to ask yourself why are my customers buying? We kind of surfaced this a little bit. They're not buying the money. Customers aren't buying money.

They're not buying information. They're not buying any of that. Money is a means to an end. So what you want to ask yourself is why are my customers buying? Right?

What is the reason why they're buying? And you have to reframe the way you look at things. So when you reframe the way you look at things, you reframe the way you speak to people. Money is a means to an end. So you can do X, Y, and Z.

So you can whatever. But when you know that end result, it makes your marketing message so much more powerful because you're communicating to people on a much deeper level. And when you communicate to people on a much deeper level, you're going to attract a higher quality client. You're going to attract a higher quality customer. You're going to be able to sell more and you're going to get that customer bonded to you.

My prime example. I was telling you guys today, I'm not here to give you guys information because you guys, when you buy an e-book, when you buy a video course, when you buy a product, when you buy whatever, you're not buying information. You're buying the result that information can give you. And as we keep diving down into this conversation, you're going to realize there's something more about the people that subscribe to the fitness channel on YouTube. They're really good at what they do.

But they also understand what they're selling. So on the surface, people think, Oh, yeah, they're buying a product on the foods not to eat so they can get abs or whatever. No, they're not. They're buying the result. What is that result?

Nobody cares, oh, buy this diet plan. It's not the diet plan they want. It's not the information of the diet plan they want. They want what that information can do for them. What is that result?

Are they losing weight? Are they bulking? Do they want to achieve that star figure? What is it? But above all else, above buying a result, people are buying to fulfill a need.

I learned this from a mentor of mine. When I get on and draw this on the board, you guys will probably know who shared this. People are buying to fulfill a need. I was actually having this conversation today at breakfast. There's like 8 billion people in the world.

And we're all different and unique in certain ways. But at the end of the day, there's 6 human needs that drive us. Right? So yeah, there can be millions of people in the world, billions. But if you know the human needs, you can speak to those.

Let me go ahead and draw those real quick. What are these basic human needs? How do they affect you and your marketing? Now I'm going to give you guys a fair warning as I draw this. I am a terrible drawer.

Okay. So this might look a little crooked. I remember I was in art class and my teacher told me to draw a picture of a person. I drew a stick figure and she kicked me out. So I was like, oh, she's not my thing.

So there's the needs of the personality and then there's the needs of the spirit. The first need is certainty and then there's variety. I'm going to explain these in just a moment. First I'm going to draw them out. The next one is significance.

Other one is love and connection. No, I don't want love. Then there's a need for the spirit. There's growth. And then there's contribution.

And to some degree, we all operate by these needs. Some needs more than others. So let's talk about this for a second. When you're doing your marketing, and this is really good to know, what emotional needs are people wanting to get fulfilled? Because when you understand this, you can understand things a lot better.

For example, there are some people who crave certainty. What type of people crave certainty? Type of people that crave certainty are people who want residual income. They want passive income. They want to know there's consistency in their life, there's consistency in their income.

More times than not, people who crave certainty, they're a little bit older because they have a little bit more responsibilities. They have family to take care of. They have employees they have to pay. They have responsibilities that, you can't really be that adventurous all the time and just blow money and just hope it's going to come back. Whereas someone younger maybe, or someone with less responsibility or no kids, or someone who's single, might crave more variety or spontaneity.

There's people who crave significance. Who craves significance? When you're seeing sales videos and it's like, how to get the Ferrari and how to get the hot girls and how to pop bottles with models or whatever, these people are craving significance. So what you're selling on the surface is Ferraris and big cars and mansions and private jets and girls or guys or whatever. That's great.

That's what you're selling on the surface. But what people are really buying from you is they're buying this need of significance. They want to feel significant because they know when they get in that Ferrari and they're driving down the street, oh, they're going to feel good. They're buying a feeling. Oh, man, I'm going to feel great.

Love and connection. Why? So for like relationship vibes. Some people buy because they want to achieve that dream relationship. So they go for love.

For some, love is just way too scary so they settle for connection. Why are people buying? Then last, they're called the need of the spirit. It's growth and contribution. These are two needs that we all share.

It's our need and desire to contribute on the highest level possible. A lot of you said you want to give back on a higher level and fulfill. Why is that? On the surface, you're saying, here's what I want to do. But when I listen to you guys, I know what needs you're looking to fulfill.

And when I know what needs you're looking to fulfill, I can market to you a lot more efficiently. I can communicate to you a lot more efficiently. And I can understand you on a level that nobody else can. When people talk to you like, oh yeah, I feel understood when I talk to you. Why is that?

It's not because I know you better than anybody else. It's because I truly understand what you're saying. And the next thing to that is you want to sell to the human needs. And you really want to understand what type of business that we're really in. And the truth of the matter is, I hear it all the time, oh yeah, we're a business to business.

There's no such thing as a business to business. Because businesses are built by people. We are in a people business. It's very important that we understand that. Businesses don't do business with other businesses.

People do business with other people. And when you understand that, you're going to be able to change the way you do business. And you're going to change the quality of your relationships. And speaking of the quality of your relationships, this is a relationship-based industry. Right after I leave Costa Rica, I am flying to L.A.

I'm flying to L.A. Right after L.A., I'm going to Miami. Right after Miami, I'm going to Toronto. Why am I traveling to all these places? I'm traveling to all these places because I'm sitting down and I'm either building new relationships or I'm deepening existing relationships with people I do business with.

Meaning people who are part of my staff, people I do business with, people I'm looking to do business with, vendors, whomever. I understand that I'm in a people-based industry, so I go that extra mile. I get on the plane and I meet with people in person because I know if I can sit down with somebody in person, I can establish relationships much deeper than I can do over the phone, over video chat, or whatever. And when I establish relationships with people, I understand and I learn very quickly how my team wants to be loved, how my vendors want to be loved, how my customers want to be loved. This is important.

Because when I'm growing a team, my team has to perform at their best. If they don't feel loved, they're not going to perform at their best. If my customers don't feel loved, they're going to go to somebody else. If my vendors don't feel loved, they'll still work with me because they're going to make money, but they will probably pull more strings for somebody else who makes them more loved than me if I don't make them feel as loved. So let's talk love.

Love is a language. There is something by Gary Chapman. It's called The Five Love Languages. Some of you may have heard it. It's a book that was written around personal relationships.

But I took it a step further. I started applying it to my team. I started applying it to my relationships outside of just personal relationships, the vendors and my customers. And what I realized is things changed dramatically because people felt loved at such a deeper level. So let me explain what those five love languages are.

The first one is words of affirmation. The second love language is physical touch. The third love language is receiving gifts. The fourth love language is quality time. And the fifth love language is acts of service.

So let me quickly go over these so you understand what they are. These are five different love languages. Each and every one of us have a predominant love language. We all care to be loved, and certain love languages are going to be higher in our hierarchy, but there's one predominant love language that we all live by. For example, if I know that somebody on my team, my customers, or somebody I do business with, their love language is words of affirmation, that means they want to be affirmed constantly good things.

Oh, so if I know that my team member's love language is words of affirmation, I am going to know, hey, you did absolutely amazing on that project. Great work. Oh, my God. That outfit looks great on you. Oh, that report looks awesome.

Thank you so much for double check. I'm going to go out of my way to make sure I affirm people, because when I speak to their love language, I know they're going to feel loved. Does that make sense so far? Physical touch. This is a little different when you're doing business with people, but if it's physical touch, I'll tap somebody on the shoulder, I'll shake their hand, I'll tap them on the knee or whatever.

If physical touch is their leading love language, I'll make sure I do small gestures. If I shake their hand, I'll give them a hug, depending on what culture, kiss on the cheek, whatever it may be. Physical touch. Receiving gifts. I am actually going to L.A.

Right after L.A., I'm going to La Jolla to have dinner with somebody. I know that their love language is receiving gifts. So what am I going to do? This is something that I constantly do for people who I know love language is receiving gifts, and it's really simple. I'm going to go, and I'm going to buy wine.

They love wine, and I'm going to deliver a gift of wine to them, because I know when I deliver that gift of wine to them, it's going to communicate that I love them. Quality time. There are people on my team whose predominant love language is quality time. There's people that I do business with whose predominant love language is quality time. If I know somebody's love language is quality time, I'm going to make sure that I devote one-on-one, uninterrupted time with that person, because I want to let them know they are loved by me.

I'm going to speak to their love language. So if you have people on your team and their love language is quality time, pick up the phone. Hey, I was thinking about you. I was talking to you for hours or somebody. A simple phone call saying, hey, I was thinking about you.

Hey, let's go grab lunch real quick. Let's go grab a quick coffee. And when you do it, just put your phones down. Just be present with that person. The final one is acts of service.

So acts of service is cleaning the yard if you're in a relationship, or if you see somebody on your team is really busy, it's going, hey, I noticed you're really busy, and let me help you out with that. Let me go the extra mile. Hey, I noticed that you're a couple phone calls behind. Let me help you make some calls. Let me help you set up your ad campaigns.

Go out of your way and do an act of service. How do you find out somebody's love language if you don't know it? First suggestion is ask. And a lot of people, when you first ask them, hey, what's your love language? They probably don't know.

And that's okay. If they don't know, pay attention. The easiest way that I've learned to understand somebody's love language is if you don't know what it is, is you observe. More times than not, and you're going to notice about yourself too, more than likely, is that the way we give love is how we want to receive love. If you notice somebody who's constantly praising you, probably they want to be praised back.

If you notice someone who's giving you a lot of gifts, probably means their love language is gifts. If you notice someone who's always touching you, their love language is probably physical touch. If you know someone who's doing acts of service, their love language is probably acts of service. So you can take the love languages, you can take the emotional human needs, and you can apply this to your business. And with that, we're going to have to wrap.

You guys have a good one.