#04 The Clarity Sessions - How To Figure Out Your Ideal Audience

Ryan has thought about doing a book or putting together a course and was wanting my insight on how to figure out his ideal audience.

1. Identify your ideal reader.

Ryan said that his ideal readers are guys who are getting in business trying to build their own confidence and platform and some guys who may have or may not have had good examples to guide them.

It's important to narrow in your audience. So I walked Ryan through this process. Let's say that there's guy, we'll just call him John. He's 29 years old, so we sit within your target audience. He was working for a company and he decided to go out on his own as a consultant and start his own kind of consulting firm -- just a one-man shop. He got started because he saw some opportunity, landed a couple of clients, and now things aren't going well. He's googling his pain because that's what people search for: "How do I do (this or that)?"

2. Think about what questions he/she is googling.

My next question for Ryan is: "What are a couple of questions from your experience that he might be asking?"

Ryan responds with the following: "Where do I go for resources when I'm struggling with the time crunch of the technical and application process of my business? I need time, money, budgeting skills, tracking inventory and work orders, creating systems and processes to balance and handle all of that while maintaining my family, my opportunity to participate with my church and community and serve there. How do I balance it?"

3. Write from your zone of genius.

So you have your zone of competence, which is what you can do, but most other people can do. And maybe you're not the best at it, but you can do it. There's your zone of excellence, which is something you're really good at, probably the best in your area. And then there's your zone of genius, which sets you apart and is your secret sauce. So I asked Ryan: "Out of all the questions that John would be asking, is there a particular area that you're excited about, you're passionate about, and you're really good at?"

Lean into the pain of your reader. Go meet some John's and figure out his most urgent need out of that list mentioned. You don't want to be all the things, for John. You don't want to be a Walmart, you want to be a food truck.  If you try to create every single topic on your blog, it becomes all watered down because you can't keep the shelves stocked. You won't have enough content to be an expert in every single area.

They say there's riches in the niches. It's better to focus on a small niche and be the go-to guy that helps you stay in business when you want to quit or the one go-to guide that helps you reengage as a dad and as a husband when you're overwhelmed running your business.

My friend Amanda says, your mess is your message. You've been given this gift of having gone through that challenge and now you can help someone who hasn't hit that challenge yet or is just hitting that challenge. You can say, "Brother, I've been where you are, but I've gone through a process of really hard stuff. Because I've been through that, I'm here to help you not go through that or go through it faster."

Look at the blog posts of potential people that are independent consultants in the oil and gas industry. Invite them onto your email list because you give them something valuable such as the five mistakes oil and gas industry consultants make and how to avoid them. That's a great download, because they want to know what are the mistakes. And then from there, you're writing blogs, answering questions you have on your email lists where you're just mailing it your blog, "Hey, I wrote a new blog today. If you struggle with this, this will help you." You do that for a few months and they'll start writing you back. Almost every email I send out I say, "Hey, hit reply, let me know." And I get responses every single time I do that.