Derek Johanson <derekjohanson@gmail.com> [Day 4/7] The two qualifier method 1 message Ramit Sethi <ramit@iwillteachyoutoberich.com> To: derek@copyhour.com Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:03 AM Hey, Derek It's sad when you meet someone who is really good at their craft, but doesn't know anything about business. A few years ago, I met a woman who has been working on "dog training" (not her real industry) for over 10 years. We talked on the phone and I told her how impressed I was with her product. So I started asking her what she was working on -- was this her main business? She proceeded to tell me 8 or 9 things she's working on. "Uhh..." she said, "sometimes I can't even remember all the things I'm doing." Red flag #1. After we talked more, I shared a little bit of my business. She listened patiently. Then she finally opened up. "Ramit," she said, "I've been doing this for 10 years and I just cannot figure out a way to make money from it." She's written a book. She's appeared on TV. Looking at her, you'd think she has it all together. In fact, she belongs to some prestigious organizations that I admire. But while she is very good at dog training, she's never taken the time to learn about "business stuff" like understanding her customer, marketing, pricing, and crafting her service offerings. So many people think that "business stuff" is intimidating, or something to do "later," or something they can outsource. But then you end up like this woman -- with valuable skills that nobody knows about, and certainly won't pay for. For her, spending 10 hours reading 2-3 marketing books would change her business. Taking my Earn1K class would change her world. Or even taking 3-5 people out to coffee would totally re-shape the way she looks at her operation. But she's "too busy" for that. * * * From yesterday's post, we know that I could throw 50 TACTICS at the woman above, and it wouldn't work. FEAR is one of the things holding her back. Maybe it's fear of discovering that she's been spending 10 years on something that will never be profitable...or fear of having to "choose" one idea from the 10 that she spends time on. Whatever the case, it's critical to acknowledge and begin working on those fears.
Once you at least acknowledge your fears, tactics start mattering. That's why in Earn1K, we spend the first HALF of the course on strategies and techniques to deeply understand other people -- and yourself. We don't jump into the tactics like so many other courses do. This serves two purposes: It measurably helps people learn the "building blocks" of earning money so they're more successful...and it drives away losers who want the shiniest social-media tricks. Good riddance. So, back to it. Yesterday we briefly covered fears. Today and tomorrow, we're covering tactics. To be clear, we're just scratching the surface. The real meat is inside my Earn1K course. But I know that by giving you incredible information and insights you can use for free, those of you who are ready to take the next step will join Earn1K and TAKE ACTION. Today and tomorrow, I'm going to give you two techniques to accomplish both of these. But I'm also going to give you homework each day to send in to me. Don't skip over this. Stop and do the exercise immediately, or you'll never do it. (Don't believe me? Think back to all those other emails/blog posts you "should" have taken action on.) Now let's get to it. * * * How to virtually GUARANTEE that your idea will pay......before you invest a year of your time. One of the biggest problems with earning money is that you just don't know if your idea is a good one. Will people find it useful enough to pay? How do you know? What if you waste 2 years pursuing an idea that's doomed? What MOST people do: Think of a random idea, start doing "fake business" (building a website, getting business cards printed, opening Twitter/FB accounts), and then slowly discover that they have no idea how to make money. After a few months, they'll shift to another idea...then another...always sure that if they find the "right" idea, money will fall from the sky What EARN1K students do: They make a list of ideas -- no matter how good or bad. Then use simple and advanced techniques to "narrow" down the market, so they know precisely who they're targeting. Then they refine even further by testing for profitability before they begin. This way, if an idea isn't profitable, they've only spent a few days (or weeks) on it. By the time they settle on an idea, they can virtually GUARANTEE that it will be profitable. Instead of spending time "seeing" if the idea will make money, they know it will -- so they focus on growing it as quickly as possible. Here's what a few Earn1K students had to say about pre-testing their ideas: "There are people out there still floundering trying to pick their niche, just like me. I have found at least 3 small businesses that are willing to pay someone to come in monthly and virus check/clean their computers, didn't think there would be a market for that." -Craig Goodwin "It forced me to see idea in concrete way, not fuzzy abstraction. It also helped me accept that it was OK to not have the perfect idea, that if first ideas suck that it doesn't mean permanent failure."
"You don't have to be married to the first idea you decide to pursue. Test it and learn from it. If you like it, keep developing it, if not, move on." --Jessica Today's lesson is part 1 of a 3-step process that you can follow to target your niche, make sure your idea will pay, and start getting paying clients. 1. Niche it down - Two-Qualifier method 2. Be virtually certain of profitability - Pay Certainty technique 3. Get inside their heads - Briefcase Technique At the end of this 7 day course, you'll have AT LEAST 1 PROFITABLE IDEA to execute right away, along with techniques to help you identify your skills, manage your time, and close a sale. Today, we're going to go over one of the most important areas today of earning your first $1,000 -- defining a crisp, narrow target market of customers who will not only pay you, but pay you well. It's called... The Two-Qualifier Method Let's pretend you've got an idea to earn money on the side. Say you've decided to be a music tutor (just play along). Do not jump into tactics. Too many people start saying, "Yeah! I could blast that out on Twitter! Music lovers unite!" Get a life. The first question: Who are you trying to market to? The average person's response will sound something like this: "Well, you know, people who are interested in music." Or, "Uh... women!" If this sounds like you, then you have joined 99% of other small-business wannabes who think they should target EVERYONE instead of a small, focused niche. To get your first 3 customers freelancing, and then go far beyond that, you'll need to learn how to target your individual customers in extreme detail. With the right niche targeting, you'll be able to tailor and optimize not only your services, but also your pricing. And when you target your services SPECIFICALLY to someone -- making it truly personalized -- they will pay virtually anything. Targeting the right market isn't easy. Let's go through a quick example to set the stage. Imagine you've just been hired by a company that makes ski jackets and they say, "Help us reach more people." The first question that occurs to you is probably, "Who are you trying to reach?" They say, "Well, anybody. We just want to reach a lot of them." You are doomed.
What's wrong with this approach? Think about it: If you see a product that's just right for you...but it's also "just right" for your grandma and some 18-year-old hoochie, what are you going to do? Buy it? Of course not. You're closing the window and moving on. We want something that serves OUR needs -- not our needs + everyone else's. This is why men buy MEN'S RAZORS even though cheaper women's razors would work just fine. This is why there are restaurants that can charge 10x what other restaurants charge. The food might be essentially the same...so what justifies the price difference? And this is why I don't target everyone in personal finance, but a smaller group of people who I (1) understand, (2) like writing for, and (3) who don't just want to talk about "cutting back" on everything all day. This is just one example of how going broad will hurt you. Your ski jackets will sell to NOBODY if you're randomly marketing them to EVERYBODY. It's counter-intuitive but true: The more niche you go, the more you can earn. You're not offering piano lessons...but piano lessons for new mothers. You're not selling editing services...you're selling ready-to-post blog posts for bloggers with 5,000-10,000 monthly pageviews. You're not selling marketing consulting...you're helping companies with 5-10 companies grow from $500,000/year to $1m/year using information products. See the difference? How to target people There are a variety of ways to begin your targeting, but today's exercise will walk you through it. First, here are three very basic targeting methods to get us started: GEOGRAPHY I've got a friend, who actually is starting a Chicago-based events business. So he's got a very narrow set of options, which is great. He can do bus ads, he can do Chicago TV, he can do online stuff, etc., but it's all geographically based. DEMOGRAPHICS Political marketers are masters of demographic targeting. Have you ever noticed how there will be advertising in different ways for different age groups or demographics? This manifests itself as vastly different messages going out to people in their 20's versus to grannies in their 60's, 70's and 80's. PRICE Where do you want your customers to be on the socioeconomic scale? Are they middleincome, or wildly affluent? What about them makes them want to divert some of that income to your services? This applies to 'customers' who are really organizations (companies, businesses of all sizes) as much as it applies to individual customers. You'll need to craft your offering itself (and not just your pricing) in a vastly different way if you're aiming to close affluent customers versus middle-of-the-road customers. This is the fastest, easiest technique for niching down...
The "Two Qualifier Method" The Two-Qualifier Method takes you from one level -- say, tutoring for high-school kids - and layers another qualifier on top of it -- say, tutoring for private high school kids. Of course, you can take this a lot further In essence it looks like this: [QUALIFIER 1] -- [QUALIFIER 2] who need (YOUR SERVICE) So here are three examples: 1. Small-business companies in the financial services industry who need copywriting for marketing materials 2. Bloggers with 1,000 to 5,000 subscribers who want to develop information products 3. Working parents in the San Francisco Bay area who want tutoring for their high school kids Now, how does this help you? Let's say you live in LA and you've decided to tutor, and based on this, you know your target from the Two-Qualifier Method is the following: Working parents in Los Angeles who want tutoring for their high school kids What do you know about this group of people? You know that they need more time, they probably have extra money to spend, and you know that they care about their kids -- probably more than they care about anything else in their lives. They live in L.A., so you can already start thinking through your geographic niche. You could find out where these working parents hang out. Do they read mommy blogs, specifically based for the Los Angeles area? Do they subscribe to Los Angeles-area lifestyle magazines? Where do they shop? Where do they eat? What about the schools where the parents drop their kids off? And then, of course, you've got your offering, which is tutoring for private high school kids. Not all high school kids, private high school kids. The Two-Qualifier Method takes your ideas for targeting your service and structures them in a way that gets you many steps closer to reaching that exact customer. Once you've mastered this, you can much more easily pick pricing, marketing methods and all kinds of more advanced work. But, the hard part is really getting in their heads and identifying who your niche is. Now here's what you need to do to "Niche It Down" yourself. Step 1: Make a list of customer characteristics Create a list of ALL the different characteristics and qualifications that your potential customer might have. It's ok to stereotype. Start with three and BE AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE. If you say "they like computers," I am going to kill you. 1). 2). 3). (This includes everything from demographics like age, gender and perhaps ethnicity if that's relevant, to their
sub-groups just yet -- simply write down every characteristic you can think of. Step 2: Shape Your Customer Characteristics Pyramid You've listed out all of the characteristics of your potential customer. Now, organize the customer characteristics from Step 1 into a Customer Characteristics Pyramid: What aspects of their identities are most important? What are least important? For example, if you're selling boutique clothes to a 30-year old high-earning woman, the your pyramid would look like this: 1st MOST important: being a woman 2nd most important: earning a high income 3rd most important: being a 30-year old Don't get offended by this. It's OK to make broad approximations at this point. You will be testing them later. Now you do it for your idea: 1st MOST Important Characteristic: 2nd MOST Important Characteristic: 3rd MOST Important Characteristic: Step 3: Define Your Niche With the "Two-Qualifier Method" Based on the examples above, create your Target Market using the Two-Qualifier Method below: Remember: [QUALIFIER 1] -- [QUALIFIER 2] who need (YOUR SERVICE) Good job. Now here's what I want you to do... I never do this but I'm going to do something rare for you today. Send me your target market via the link below and I'll examine it. For tomorrow's email, I'll pick one very good example (hopefully yours) and one horrendous example, and tear them apart. Submit your Two-Qualifier Method here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/twqjs23 Tomorrow I'll release step 2: The Pay Certainty Technique so you can make sure your idea will be profitable. - Ramit If you no longer wish to receive our emails, click the link below: Unsubscribe I Will Teach You To Be Rich 2269 Chestnut St Suite 160 San Francisco, California 94123 United States