MBA930 Q&A Wednesday: I don’t get the whole customer avatar thing. Do I just make one up?

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Hey O welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show where your business growth is our top priority with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net. If you're just getting started and you want to make sure that you nail your business idea, that you actually create something that people want, then you should check out our free seven part video course on idea validation. This seven part course comes with a free workbook and ensures that you're actually creating something that people want to buy. Just go to100mba.net and you can sign up for free. Today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes I answer a question from a listener. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me at omar100mba.net Today's question comes from Aaron and Aaron asks, I don't get the whole customer avatar thing. Do I just make one up? That's a great question Aaron, because I kind of felt the same way when I first heard about this. You know, about a decade ago I was just like do I just make up some made up person in my head Give them a name. I mean, I see these people saying, hey, this is my avatar. Her name is Carol. Carol works at this kind of company. She has two kids. Da, da, da da. Like, where are you getting this information? I was all confused, you know, like, who is this person? How do you know this information? So in today's episode, I'm going to show you a surefire way to make sure you nail your customer avatar without having to make something up in your head. I know that some people preach this, but I don't really get it and I don't think it really is helpful because you don't really get that information off real facts. So I'm looking forward to answering Aaron's question today and making sure you nail your customer avatar. So important to know who you are serving, who is your ideal customer. I'm gonna demystify this and give you a really easy to use formula. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So if you've been to any business conference or watched any basic business training, they talk about the customer avatar. Knowing your customer avatar, and often they tell you, you should define this person, give them a name. They'll give examples like my company avatar. His name is Carl. Carl does this every day. Carl has X amount of kids. He's a high school or college graduate, whatever. And they tell you, you should do the same for your business. But this always confused me and it's confusing Aaron, the listener who asked this question today. Like, where do you get this information? And Aaron asks, do I just make this up? Well, there are people that say, just make it up. You know, just define this person in your imagination. And I'm completely against this. I'm like, why? Why would you do that? How does that help you for making up information? If that person doesn't really exist in the world, then you're building an avatar that doesn't exist. So we're going to do something different. You're going to have a customer avatar. You're going to know who this person is. They're going to be a real person. So you're going to take a look at your product or service and you need to ask yourself, do you know somebody that would be perfect for this product or service? Who would want this product or service, Whether it's a friend, a family member, whether it's somebody on your email list, whether it's a colleague. So I'm gonna give you an example, a real life example. I'm gonna use our product, our software, Webinar Ninja. So I know my users. I know people that have bought this software, right? Yes, we have thousands of people. But I'm just gonna narrow in on one user. And I know this person. His name is Mike Vardy. He actually runs another podcast called the Product. He's a productivity expert. Now, I didn't make up Mike. He exists in the world. He's really a real guy. Look him up, Google him. Mike Vardy. And he uses webinar Ninja. So why am I going to make him an avatar when I have one already? I know somebody already, and I knew Mike before I actually launched my product. And he showed interest in this product before I even sold it. So now I'm going to write down who Mike Vardy is. He's my avatar. Mike Vardy is an author. He's a speaker. He runs webinars to talk about his different topics and productivity, to give workshops to his community. And then later on, maybe he'll give them an offer to one of his books or programs. Mike Vardy has kids. He's in his late 30s. He lives in North America. He goes to conferences. I know all this stuff because I know Mike. He's a real person. And I write down all these things. His demographic, his business, his likes, his dislikes, all these things. And if I wanted to, I can get on a Skype call with Mike and say, hey, Mike, do you mind taking 10 minutes? I'd like to just learn a little bit because I think you're a good example of a customer avatar, and I want to know a little bit more about you so I can define who you are. Now, obviously, we're defining him for this purpose, for the purpose of defining a customer avatar. I'm pretty sure you can reach out to somebody on your email list, somebody that has tweeted at you once, somebody that is interested in your product, and you just take 10 minutes to interview them. And now you have a real person that you can think of every time you're making decisions in your business about your product or service. Would Mike like this update? Would Mike like this new feature? I'm doing a new webinar on teaching people how to market their webinars. Would Mike like this webinar? Given all the information I have on him, given I have his details as an avatar in front of me, this is so much easier than just making up some random fake person in your head. You have a real person that can give you real information about who they are. Now, obviously, Mike is just one profile. He's my avatar. And we have variant avatars there's different avatars out there and there's other people that use my service that I can use as avatars. But he's a kind, you know, he's a common avatar. Meaning that we have a lot of entrepreneurs or authors or speakers like Mike. But it's really easy to ask these questions about new updates, new features, new things I want to add to my product. When you get very specific about somebody and heck if you are not sure if your avatar would like this new update or new change in your business, you can ask them. They're a real person. So I'm really a proponent of somebody who says make your avatar a real person. Somebody you know. And if you are just getting started and you have nobody to choose from your list or from social or from your existing customers to make them your avatar, then ask yourself the product or service you're creating. Are you scratching your own itch? Are you creating this so you can have a better solution? If that's the case, you are the avatar and treat yourself as somebody who you'd get all these details from. So Aaron, if that's your case, then Aaron is your avatar. I think that's a whole lot better than having some nebulous person in your head that doesn't really exist even if you wrote them down on a piece of paper. I just feel like it's hard to relate to this person and really ask those questions and say, hey, would this new feature, new update, new thing in my business be beneficial to this person? It's still kind of hypothetical. So I highly recommend you choose a real person. Even if that person's you, create a profile on that person, what they do, where they live, their demographics, maybe even their income, how they spend their money. Do they prefer, you know, well designed products? Are they an Apple person, whatever, that type of thing. The more details the better. And guess what? You can actually put their picture right. So you can create a Word document, you know, or a doc on Google Docs, put their picture at the top, write all their traits on the bottom and you can just look at a flash, say, hey, is this going to be good for my avatar? This person, this real person, even if that person's you, it's going to help you make decisions faster. Mike, if you're listening to this, thank you so much for being an awesome guy and supporter of our work and being cool with not knowing that you're our avatar in today's episode. Check out Mike vardy's work@theproductivityist.com. check out his podcast, the Productivityist.

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What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? They don't just change how we work, they transform entire economies. Where the Internet Lives is an award winning podcast from Google about the unseen world of data centers. This season we're going inside the AI revolution. From farmers using AI to analyze soil data to researchers discovering new medicines, a new era of AI innovation is here. Listen to where the Internet lives wherever you get your podcasts.

To wrap up today's lesson. In my opinion, making up a customer avatar from the top of your head doesn't really work. It's best to choose somebody that actually exists, current customer, somebody on your email list, somebody who's actually interested in what you do. And if you're just getting started and you have nobody to reach out to, that person can be you. And of course you can change your avatar later on you can find somebody else. Once you start growing other than yourself, this is a whole lot easier to be very specific about the details of this person you know to create that avatar so it's specific enough for you to know what their needs, their wants, their traits and how you can serve them. Aaron, I hope that answers your question. If you have a question you want to ask, I would love to answer here on Q and A Wednesday. Just email me at omar100mba net and I'll get it on the show. If you love our podcast, take two minutes and leave us an iTunes rating and review right now. When you leave a review you help us get more exposure and reach new audience members and everybody who leaves us an iTunes rating and review enters our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Every Friday somebody wins a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This Friday we're giving away easy course, our 30 day program on how to create an online course in 30 days. Every Friday we do a weekly random draw. You can win. Just leave us an iTunes rating and a review. That's it for me today. But before I go, I want to leave you with this Understanding who your audience is, understanding who you're serving is really important because it allows you to focus on what's important, what to work on. Spend some time, take an hour and flesh out who your avatar is, the details about them, most importantly what they do, how they spend their time, how they spend their money. This will give you an idea how you can serve this person and market to them how to approach them. All right, I hope that helps and I hope to see you in tomorrow's episode, Part one of our two part lesson of creating and selling a Mobile app. If you're thinking about selling a mobile app, this is the two part lesson you need. I'm going to give you all the different options that you can do. If you want to build it yourself, get somebody else to build it. Costs involved, how to get started. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? They don't just change how we work, they transform entire economies. Where the Internet Lives is an award winning podcast from Google about the unseen world of data centers. This season we're going inside the AI revolution. From farmers using AI to analyze soil data to researchers discovering new medicines, a new era of AI innovation is here. Listen to where the Internet lives. Wherever you get your podcasts.