Ryan Levesque on Pinpointing Your Avatar's Biggest Struggle: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like inclusion and marketing. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down how to pinpoint your avatar's biggest struggle. To drop these value bombs, I brought Ryan Levesque into EO Fire Studios. He is an Inc. 500 CEO of the Ask Method and the number one bestselling author of Ask, which was named by Inc. as the number one marketing book of the year. And today, our foundation will talk about how you have to ask the right questions, then the answers become very easy.

0:38We'll talk about SMIQ. We'll talk about not having to guess. Your market will tell you everything you need to say to get them to take action and move forward with you and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Ryan and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn.

1:17Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Is today your day? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at Thrivetimeshow.com. What's up, Ryan? Thank you for joining me here today. I mean, first off, I'm just super grateful that you are such an amazing contributor to the Common Path to Uncommon Success. I mean, chapter 10, pinpointing your avatar's biggest struggle.

1:57when I was writing this chapter and when I just, you know, identified that step on the 17 step roadmap. So step 10, you are literally the only person, um, that I was like, I need this person to contribute to this part in the book. Like all the other steps and chapters, I was like, okay, these two or three people could fit. You were the only one for this because of what you've done over the years. As I mentioned, of course, in the introduction with ask and the whole ask method that you've done. And of course, choose and everything that you built over the years, it just is spectacular. So first and foremost, thank you for just being a part of this book.

2:31I really appreciate it. So I'll pass over to you for a second just to respond to that comment. Yeah. Well, listen, I'm, I'm, I'm blown away. I'm, I'm, I'm humbled by that first and foremost, because I think about like the thousand or 2000 or 3000 or 4000, I don't even know what you're up to now. People that you interviewed in your podcast and through everything else that you do. So number one, super humbled by that. Number two, honored to be a part of it. And when you reached out to me and said, hey, would you be down to do this? It was like an absolute easy thing to say yes to because you've given so much to myself and to so many people way back in my early days as an entrepreneur when I was a listener of yours.

3:12And before we were friends and before we knew each other, before we'd hung out, like, and I was just a listener from afar. So easy to say yes to and excited to have our conversation today. Awesome, brother. Well, much appreciated. And, you know, we always talk about our fellow New Englander-isms and, you know, I was a Providence College guy. You went to Brown. So we spent a lot of time in the same city together as well, which is super cool. Wicked great city. Wicked good city. Wicked good city. Love it. But you are much more smart than me. That's why you went to Brown. Wicked smart. So Ryan, you discovered this common denominator of your success when you asked the right questions to the right people.

3:50So break down this process for us. Yeah. You know, so I think when it comes to figuring out who your avatar is really just answering any question in business, I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as entrepreneurs thinking that we have to have all the answers. And it's sort of like, you need to know exactly what product to create, what to price it out, what to sell. But the reality is that your market is infinitely more intelligent than any of us are, than, than I am, than you are, than any of us are. If you only know how to ask the right questions, then the answers become very easy. So when you're asking yourself, what should I create?

4:22What should I build? What market should I go into? If you know how to ask the right questions, then the answers become very clear. And so, you know, I discovered this early in my career when I was, you know, a budding entrepreneur. I was trying to figure out, you know, make my first dollar online and try to figure things out. And I remember it was out of desperation that I asked this question in one of our first markets, you know, why aren't you buying? I just asked the question like, you know, why aren't you buying our stuff? And people responded to that question and gave me clues. And it was kind of at that moment, it was the first epiphany that I sort of had where if I can start asking questions, I can get insight, respond to that and go from there.

5:01So it kind of started this snowball of really becoming obsessed around the science of asking good questions. And I know we're going to talk a little bit about some of the specific questions and one or two in particular that are very powerful that anybody can use to gain insight in your business. Well, I did title this chapter, Pinpointing Your Avatar's Biggest Struggle. And again, just with your body of work, with what you focus on, with the company and the empire you've built, I mean, you're the best person to answer this question. So how important is it to pinpoint your avatar's biggest struggle and how do we go about doing it?

5:38I believe it's one of the single most important things that as any business person, as any entrepreneur, we've got to figure out because nothing else matters. You can have the most efficient process, you know, the best team, you know, the best, the most hardcore work ethic, you can have the most money in the bank. But if you're not selling what it is that people want and need, none of that other stuff matters. So it all starts with that fundamental question, what is it that people want to buy? What is it that people need? And the answer to that question is, the way to ask that question is not the way most people think, because you can't just go out to the market and put a post on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or wherever and say, hey, what should I sell?

6:18No one's going to give you the answer to that question. So you kind of have to go through the side door, so to speak, to get an answer to that question. And so what we need to figure out is not what it is that we should sell, but what it is that people are struggling with, what their problems are, what their pain is. And then once we have that information, we can figure out what is the product or service that's going to solve that need. You know, so whenever we talk about this idea of asking questions, you and I have had this conversation before on your show. We've said, you know, there are famous quotes throughout the ages, like Henry Ford is attributed to have said, if I'd asked people what they wanted, it would have told me faster horses.

6:56Steve Jobs is famous for saying people don't know what they want until you show it to them. So there's truth to the fact that you can't just go through the front door and ask people, what do you want? Because people don't know what they want. What people are really good at is knowing what it is that they don't want. So that clue gives us the kind of first insight around what it is that we want to be asking in our market to figure out what product should I create? What does my avatar need? What direction do I need to go into my business? What market should I pursue? It's figuring out what it is that people don't want.

7:32And I know we're going to get into it, but there's a specific question that you can ask with a very specific wording that gives you remarkable insight into this. And the simplicity of it is something that makes it accessible to anybody. Like you can literally take what we're talking about here today and you can do what we're going to say, like within minutes of this conversation. Fire Nation, I hope you're really absorbing this because this is coming at it from a different angle than you usually hear or most people talk about is instead of like just spending all this time and effort trying to get people to tell you what they want, what they want, what do you want?

8:04And they're just like, well, I feel like I would know it if I saw it. I mean, that's a pretty common answer. people will tell you what they don't want. They will be very positive and they'll be very definitive about what they do not want. So this leads us to what we've kind of been teasing a little bit about here, Ryan, the SMIQ, the single most important question, which we'll dive into as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Happy 2024, Fire Nation. Q1 is here and that means new goals, more growth, and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data, and tracking down leads, let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year.

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10:37Schedule your free 13-point assessment today at Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Ryan, SMIQ, single most important question. Take it away. Yes, so if you were to ask just one question, what is the one question that you would ask? And we call this question the SMIQ, single most important question, because it's the single most important question. If you could only ask one, this is the one to ask. And it gets at everything that we were talking about, which is when you're trying to figure out what you should create, what you should sell, instead of asking your market, you know, hey, what do I create next?

11:07What do you think about this? Like, do you know, what do I do this? Instead, the question we ask people is when it comes to X, X being the thing that you presumably help people with, whether that's losing weight, growing a podcast, moving to Puerto Rico, whatever that challenge is. When it comes to X, what's your single biggest challenge or struggle? Please be as detailed and specific as possible. Now, what you're inviting people to do there is to pour their heart out to you in the form of an open-ended question. So you're not asking people which of the following is your biggest problem. A, B, C, or D, you're saying, tell me, what's your biggest challenge or struggle?

11:43Please be as detailed and specific as possible. Now, the reason why you ask that question in that way is one of the ways in which you measure what problems to focus on is based on the length and depth and quality of response. So if you ask a question, and I learned this in one of my first markets, which we talk about, which was the orchid care market. When I first did a survey in this market. And I paid attention to these responses. What's your biggest question or challenge when it comes to caring for your orchids? As in the flower, the number one response that came back over and over again was watering.

12:17People said, watering, how to water? How do I water, water, water, water? So I was like, all right, this is easy. I'm going to create a book and a guide on how to water your orchids. And when I put it back out to the marketplace, the book sold zero copies. And I said, what did I do wrong? And I took a second look at the data. I said, what did I missed. I had to have missed something. And what I realized is that there's a small subset of responses that didn't sound like the ones I just gave you. They sounded like this. They'd say things like, Ryan, I've been trying to grow orchids for years. And every time I repot my orchid, for whatever reason, I managed to kill the thing.

12:50And I wash my hands. I sterilize my tools. I use gloves. I don't use porcelain pots. I know all of this is toxic to orchid roots. And yet every single time I managed to kill my plant, please help me. What am I doing wrong? Now, those questions came back much less frequently. But ask yourself, which of those two people is more likely to buy a product that solves their pain? How to water? Or the second person who poured their heart out? So I shifted tack, and I decided to focus only on that segment of responses. It's what we call the hyper-responsive segment of your market. So I decided specifically to focus on that sub-segment of the market, and that's when our business exploded.

13:28And that served as kind of the first cornerstone, the first insight, the first discovery around asking the right questions and paying attention to the right responses, paying attention to the right data when you're asking for this information. So that's what we call the single most important question. And you can literally do this right now. If you've got even a modest, for example, following on social media, email list of subscribers, any sort of community of people that you're part of, you can literally do this right here, right now, today. hey, just ask yourself, what's your X? If you help people lose weight, hey, when it comes to losing weight, what's the biggest challenge that you're struggling with right now?

14:04When it comes to juggling social media post-pandemic, what's the biggest number one thing you're struggling with right now or the biggest challenge that you have? Just post that and see what kind of responses come back. You will be shocked. You'll be amazed at the level of insight that that one simple question can give you. Now, there's two, I know our time is limited. I want to give people with two more bonus juicy tips, but I want to turn it back over to you first, John, if there's anything that you want to respond to or focus on that specific thing. Yeah, I'm glad you gave it back to me because I'm not sure we're going to get into those two tips because we got into them in the book, which is amazing.

14:40And so, I mean, Fire Nation, this is why you're here right now listening to Ryan drop these value bombs. And we can't talk about everything, obviously, because the book, he went into such detail on all of these amazing topics, on all of these unbelievable questions, the SMIQ, these three questions that he's alluding to right here. And I do want to end with a bang though, Ryan, because what I did do was pull an amazing quote from your contribution to the common path to uncommon success. I'm going to read it right now. And there's one part of this quote that I really kind of want you to speak to before we say goodbye here.

15:17So you wrote these three questions, which again, we just alluded to, there's two more juicy ones, will help you pinpoint the hyper responsive segment of your markets in the specific language they use to describe that problem. So you can echo it back in your marketing and in your product. So that's the part I actually want you to bring home for us because I'm so obsessed with, you know, telling people and like it's over and over again, like your audience, the people will be telling you that people that are struggling with obstacles and challenges, the words they use, use those in a meaningful way on the sales page when, you know, you're promoting it to them because when they see their words as copy, as, you know, solutions, they're going to be so much more responsive to that than they otherwise would be.

16:08So talk specifically about like what you found about echoing it back in your marketing and in your products. This theme, this idea of the guesswork that we spend a lot of time trying to guess what to create, what to sell. And we spend a lot of time guessing what to write in our emails, what to write in our social media posts, what to talk about in our videos. And you don't have to guess. Your market will tell you everything you need to say to get them to take action and to move forward with you. And the way that you do that is to echo back the natural consumer language that's handed to you almost practically on a silver platter when you ask the right questions in the way that we're talking about right here.

16:51So, for example, when you're trying to think about what should you say in a video, what should your video be about, don't try to come up with some catchy phrase. Take the exact language that your market gives you and turn it around. For example, one of the markets that we've had success with is the memory improvement market, teaching people how to improve their memory. And I remember one time when I was going through these survey responses, literally had someone who said, oh my gosh, Ryan, it's like I'm the poster child for poor memory. I was like, bingo. And then I wrote an email that day that said, are you the poster child for poor memory?

17:25And it was literally as simple as that. So if you only know what to pay attention to and listen, your market will tell you everything that you want. And what I'll end with and what I like to say is that when you can describe your market, when you can describe the thought process going on in someone's mind better than they can even describe it themselves, the only question that they have for you is what should you do about it? What should I buy? What should my next step be? What product do you recommend? Where do I go from here? And the secret to having that response where it feels like you're reading people's minds is to take that natural consumer language that comes from the single most important question and echoing it back in a way that resonates with people perfectly because it's the precise language that they've given you in this process.

18:15Fire Nation, I hope you are just 100 % convinced as to why Ryan was the perfect choice for Chapter 10, Pinpointing Your Avatar's Biggest Struggle. His contribution was incredible. It was spectacular. It's, of course, all in the book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. If you're listening to my voice right now and it's still before March 23rd, you have time to pre-order, which you want to do because we have five bonuses only available for pre-orders. They literally disappear on March 23rd. They're gone forever. Just one of the five bonuses, by the way, I'm shipping all three of my journals, the Freedom, Mastery, and Podcast Journal, to your door for pre-ordering a$17 Kindle or a$28 hardcover or a$15 audiobook.

19:02It's a no-brainer. not to mention four other amazing bonuses. Check it out at UncommonSuccessBook.com. UncommonSuccessBook.com. Ryan, thank you, brother, for your time today, for your value, your wisdom, just your knowledge. We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

19:41A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Is today your day? Visit Thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at Thrivetimeshow.com.