Niche Down Your Target Audience To Be Successful With Scott Carson From Ask Valor Masterminds With Galan Ruelos & Joe Zeman

A good networker is like a great interviewer. I'm huge on authenticity, guys. You know, it's a big part of my message. Claim your local listings and don't get caught paying someone for your local listing. If you want to be successful, you got to do six things a thousand times, not a thousand things six times. And when in doubt, give to other people and don't expect anything in return. But in giving to other people and helping them, it almost always comes back. It's using the power of partnership, creating trusted partner networks to work with you to make your company be an offer more than just you. They've done 90% of the work. It's your job to do the last 10% to meet them in the middle.

Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Ask Fowler Masterminds podcast, brought to you by a Advanced Septic Services and Fuse Networks. My name is Galen.

I'm Joe.

We're coming at you from the Beedy local studios in Tacoma, Washington. So Joe, for our new listeners and viewers out there, can you tell everyone how our podcast came to be, please?

Sure.

So it first started out as a private Facebook group page where the purpose was to bring businesses together to kind of just communicate with one another and share successes, ask questions, questions help each other out. And we thought, what a better way than to start a podcast, bring on different guest speakers, talk about all kinds of topics as it relates to business so our audience can take something away and implement it in their business.

Awesome. And speaking of audience, we're excited to have our guest today, Mr. Scott Carson. Joe, give a formal intro to Scott, please. Sure.

So we actually met on LinkedIn, by the way, people, so it is for connections. But Scott Carson is a highly sought after connection guest and host of the popular podcast the Note Closer Show. An active entrepreneur, he is an expert in real estate, investing, marketing and podcasting. He speaks regularly at different events and industry conventions focused on real estate marketing and podcasting. He also helps thousands of investors and entrepreneurs each year to create wealth through his debt buying classes, podcasting and coaching. So I'm sensing a podcasting theme here. A regular podcast guest, he was recently named the number four entrepreneur to follow in 2022 by the US News Reporter magazine. Congrats. And an avid sports fan, he spends his free time traveling, gardening and making memories. And he calls Austin, Austin, Texas his home. Everyone. Welcome, Scott.

What is going on, fellas? Honored to be here and honored just to deliver to your guys audience Today.

Awesome. And really, audience is going to be our kind of the key buzzword today, guys. It's not a real estate show. We're not going to hustle anything.

Real estate, no running back of the room or anything like that. Yeah, exactly.

But Scott has been able to adapt and pivot really well to what an audience he likes to target best. And for our audience and for us, I think it's a really powerful topic. So before we move forward, our hashtag Valor cares initiative is something we are super proud of. Joe, can you tell everyone a little bit about it, how to apply?

Sure. So they can go to the ask Valor masterminds website. There's a thing that says Valor cares and essentially it's our initiative to give away website builds to business owners who are in need of a website, whether they're just starting out, whether they've been in business for 50 years or they just don't have access to a website. A website is a foundation piece for every single business. Now who wants some sort of visibility online? So if you don't have a website or you maybe want a new one rebuilt, go ahead and submit your information and we pick winners every month.

Awesome. Thank you for that. All right, so let's get into the podcast. Our advanced septic pump you up quote of the day. So, Scott, I found this quote. It's going to resonate well with today's topic. So by Andrew Davis, commit to a niche. Try to stop being everything to everyone. So talk. When I say those words, what's the first thing that comes to mind for you?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that many entrepreneurs have an idea, business thought or they have a product and they make the mistake of coming into the market thinking that everybody is going to be their client. And that's not the case. You've really got to niche down and identify your avatar. And avatar, I don't mean like blue aliens in a Steven Spielberg movie. All right.

Right. The sequel's coming out.

But Avatar is like your, your ideal clients. And you know, knowing what your ideal client is doing will help you niche down. And we're talking like age group sex 8. You know, besides age, wealth, what they make income, their buying habits, like what I like. I know that my client is A basically a 35 to 55 college educated homeowner for the most part who's making at least 75 grand a year or more. So I know that. So that's the audience that I focus on. I also focus on niching down to understand that, especially in What I do, I don't target just any general real estate agent or investor. I'm more focused on those that are tired, landlords, fix and flippers who can't find deals anymore or more so like people are looking for passive income is a great stuff I do. So I niche it down and especially since we met on LinkedIn, there's a lot of people out there that try to be a podcast to everybody in real estate especially and that's not going to work. There's enough. The wider your audience is, the water down your messages and the less value you add to your best clients. So if you can niche it down, you're going to be go deeper versus wide. You'll add a lot of value to their client and build lifelong customers who really value because you're the expert in your niche or field or their demographic. Sweet.

So before we get into the did you know what is can you give a little background real quick, one or two minutes about your background so people understand?

Yeah. So for the last I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years as a real estate investor and over the last 15 I have focused on a niche in real estate, basically buying distressed debt. You know, I got started back in 2007, 2008 when the last recession hit. I used to be a mortgage broker doing loans for mortgage, you know, investors all across the country. But I really focus on this niche within this small niche of real estate and it's helped me become really the industry leader not only in knowledge and classes, but in content. I mean deciding to go very niche focus has helped us have the number one YouTube channel, number one podcast, and really be the number one investor recommended training program for our niche stuff versus me trying to be oh, I'm going to teach you everything about real estate. It's like saying that you're a jack of all trades and a master nut. Be a master of one thing and you'll add a lot more value.

Awesome. So now there's a couple myths that we want to go over. So our did you know section sponsored by Fuse Network. So just something on Fuse. Real quick, how to navigate the modern threat landscape. Cybercrime is a problem that is only getting worse and as you might expect, it's no good for business. It puts your organization in a position where it has to take steps to secure its infrastructure, whether you like it or not. Let Fuse Networks go over some of the problems associated with cybercrime with a free analysis Contact these networks today will have their contact information up. There's a couple Myths that I want you to kind of debunk based on like niching on and audiences. So this first one, you kind of alluded to it, but my target audience is everyone. So you know, common misconception. Help us break that down a little bit.

Well, the reason most people think it's everyone is they haven't. They have. They're at the very front, I guess you could say, of their operational journey. They think everybody needs what I do. Well, that's not the case. Not everybody needs what you do. So one of the better ways to niche it down is look at your, look at your competition, look at your peers and look at what's going on. And we, we kind of do it like an audit, like a social media audit. Some people call will look at people's profiles. And these days it's really easy to kind of take a look at what your, your competition is doing and who they're service serving. And you can make the same decision to either a, okay, I'm gonna go after that same client database or I'm gonna flip over and look at this a client database that's not being served to see how that is. But like we said before, you got, not everybody's gonna be your client like me. We're not gonna target like 20 to 20 fiverrs. That's not saying they can't be investors. They just don't have the, the third the liquid capital do it. So you also have to look at what kind of product you're offering. If it's a higher end product, not everybody can afford it. If it's a lower end product, maybe your best clients may not want it because they consider it not being valuable because it's a lower end product. So you got to really take a look at and identify what the buying habits of your ID client are and where they're at and how you want to fit into that.

Awesome. My audience needs to know everything. So I often see this people when they, when they start a YouTube channel or social media for the very first time, they're just trying to barf up everything in that first post or the first couple posts. Right. And then people get turned off. So you've succeeded with this. Share a thought with our audience on My audience needs to know everything that myth.

Well, I don't, I haven't succeeded in barfing up on everybody. Diarrhea of the mouth like we talked about. But you make a very valid point. Here is so many entrepreneurs are so excited about what they're doing, they just literally give Everything at once. Not everybody wants. If you're going to be doing like a podcast, YouTube channels, something in there, make a. Just do a brain dump on a piece of paper, all the different topics, because those can be great little individual videos, two to five minutes. You know, one of the things I like to use the website, answer the public, and I go in there, type a question will give me all these different variations of questions that people are looking for asking in real world time. So that gives me an idea to filter through what people are looking for versus what I'm thinking. So do a brain dump, making a whole list of 50 to 100 topics. And then make a video or a topic specifically to that one nugget. You know, don't try to give 3, 5, 20 nuggets at once because people will get tired of it and they'll move on. Because you got to realize attention spans. We have an attention span of 8 seconds, which is a second slower than a goldfish.

I would beg to differ with you on the mobile devices, I'd say it's three to four seconds exactly.

I'm just talking a normal. But yeah, desktop.

We're not normal. We're highly distracted individuals.

Well, we know that you're pulling your stuff from your Tinder application. Swipe left, baby, swipe left. You know what I mean? But that's an important thing, is you guys stand out. But you got to hit that nugget with the hot, hot buttons are look. So look what people are searching for. If it falls in line with the category. Look at what, what have what is doing successful and other videos online in your niche? What your competition is doing it, is doing it. And that's really one of the we did is we looked at what our competition was doing and just started answering questions that they were answering. You know, we went to their website, pulled an FAQ list of like 50 questions that nobody was going to. And we looked on YouTube and there wasn't a lot of videos on those things. So we started creating short little videos of less than two minutes long. Really do really well to boost your audience. And then the big mistake a lot of people don't do is they just only share it to one spot. You need to take that and share it basically everywhere that your audience is at. You know, 80% of sales are made up to the fifth contact. And that fifth contact might be the fifth view or the sixth view that they see it. So it's okay to, if your audience is on YouTube, share it there if it's on. If they're podcast listeners. Share it on podcasting in an audio form. If they're on LinkedIn, like How We Met, share to LinkedIn or Twitter, you know, you know, I don't, we don't have a Pinterest following for the most part because I'm not on Pinterest. But honestly, it's not an effective platform because a lot of our audience is on Pinterest or like TikTok right now. So we share other places. But that's the thing. Know where your audience is at, know where they're hanging out, and then share it everywhere because it's like cashing a bigger net for your niche.

So just selfishly speaking, when you do these videos, you. You do competitive research and like, you're looking at FAQ sections when you, how do you spin it or how do you pivot it to help your podcast out? Do. Do those messages align or like, is the pod the Note Closer show one different lane or Note nine America is a different lane? And then you have these videos or do they all work together?

They all kind of work together. So I guess you can say the Mothership is my website. We close notes.com and that's our big, you know, educational entity here. The no Closer show podcast is, you know, 700 plus episodes. And we spun that off about five years ago because we started to do Facebook lives just like a a short videos. And what are we doing today? What are we working on? Note Night in America is probably our most consistent. We've been doing something on Monday nights, either a teleconference or webinar, for over 11 years. And the consistency of that, it's a longer form content of at least usually 30 minutes to an hour every week. You know, unless I'm traveling, it's a holiday of something that I can add value to my client. Now, you know, either it's me teaching or we had like this last week. We had an expert on raising capital. We pick a major topic that usually comes from people asking me questions throughout the week or I see a barrage of questions coming in that I need to answer. And so that's that. We do Note Night in America, of course, we turned that into its own podcast for the last three years. And then the Note Closure show is much more of our day in, day out, three to five episodes per week. That's half of me teaching. But then we also bring on guests, you know, in shorter form. It's more of a conversation like this is if it's going to be very nuts and bolts, then we usually Will pitch it to Note Night in America where it's a, it's a hour long webinar with PowerPoint slides and stuff like that.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you. This next myth, my audience knows how to respond. So I just want to read this to you and get your thoughts. So your target, target audience is intelligent but busy. That's why your marketing should include a measurable call to action. Make sure your audience knows how knows what to do. After engaging with your marketing, do you want them to call for an appointment, Visit your website like your Facebook page, donate money, vote for a candidate, or shop a sale. Be sure you can track these responses to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign. So like he said, attention spans decreasing. People are impatient, but they're hungry at the same time, they're lazy. So what are some of your expected when responses when you put these things out here?

So let's start with a mistake that we see people make. So like, if you're doing like an email blast out, they'll have like 12 links to click on and that's confusing.

Yeah.

Think about what you want your ideal client to do and then realize they're probably a fifth grader. Okay. Treat them like a fifth grader. Give them one thing, one action, maybe two at the most. Yeah, but like if it's click to watch a video, tell them exactly what you want. Click here to rsvp. Click here to book a call. You just can't put a link in there without some guidance because people like you said, they're, they're on their phone for a big chunk of time or they're on their laptop, they're busy. So the less links that you give them, but the more specific call to action. Maybe it is going to your calendly and booking a link, maybe it is going to your YouTube channel to watch a video. One of the things that has helped us a lot is we try to simplify even those links. So like, if anybody wants to book a call with me, it's not going to my profile and going to my link tree trying to figure out where to go. It's hey, if you want to talk with me, just go to TalkWithScottCarson.com TalkWithScottCarson.com that basically just forwards them directly to my calendar. Then they can book a call with me. That works, but it's not, hey, go here and then go here and then go here. The more clicks you have in that customer journey or that client basis, the bigger drop off you're gonna have for people completing actions so that's a big thing. Be specific. One link. If it's book a call, book a call. If it's to watch a video, watch a video here. Just make it simple. Super simple. As I like to say, the kiss method. Keep it simple, stupid for all your engagement. It'll make your clients happier. It is also important too to add, have an idea of what you want your client's journey to be. You know, what's, if you can try to streamline that and plot that out. The first thing you want to do is they go to your website. Whether you watch the video or they're opting into a website. Well, what do you want them to do after they watch that video or after they attend a webinar? After. You have to really walk it through the process and set it up. But that's, you know, that can be daunting for a lot of new entrepreneurs because, like, I don't know what I would need them to do next. Talk with somebody, get a coach, reach out. Hey, what, what's the journey you want Draw it out and then go back in and fill up. Too many times, you know, entrepreneurs are, oh, we're going to do a website. Okay. We're going to do a webinar series, we're going to do a podcast. But they're not connected in any sort of fashion to help people, you know, help people understand the journey and the best way to digest your content or become a client.

Awesome. So this last one, this one goes right into what you were just talking about. So this myth, my target audience will be curious. So there's a difference between creative and confusing. And the human brain has a natural aversion to being confused. The scientists and marketers behind the physics of brand share that the brand. The brain seeks alignment between visuals and written text. When your message and visuals clash, the brain finds it disturbing and untrustworthy. So you're kind of just talking about that People, you know, they are intelligent, but they're busy. They want it served on a silver platter, force fed to them, right? Their nap, their mouths wide of the napkin. So they just don't do anything. So you, I mean, you kind of just said that same thing, right? So.

Well, and it's important just to think about it. You, you mentioned one thing in there. It's got to stand out too. So it's okay to not be just the whole Charlie Brown teachers, boring. Nobody wants boring these days, right? You have to stand out. So one of the things that we find that works really well is we bring in a little pop culture and some of the stuff. So, like, when Marvel was coming out with, like, you know, Civil War, you know, the movie Civil War a few years ago, right. I reached out to one of my competitors and I said, hey, let's do a webinar and call it the Note Civil War. You know, where I'm Iron man and he's Cap. And we created an image with half my face and half his face. And we both promoted it, but we just kind of took a twist on it when we hit that pop culture. 700 people on a webinar live, hearing us talk about each other in good ways. You know, I did another thing like, you know, working out your marketing where I took my head, put it on top of a Chippendale's body, you know.

I mean, you know, right?

So we saw a big influx of women clicking on the link at that point, who joined, showed up to show us talking about how to break down the marketing and work your marketing muscles. So it's okay to be goofy. You have to share a little personality. I think so many business entrepreneurs are afraid to share that personality side what makes them weird and unique. Do that. That will actually help people build rapport and actually, like, I like this guy or gal. Or if they don't like, then that's even better because they can go their merry way, go to somebody else.

Right? So I can make Joe do karaoke right now saying My Heart Will Go on by Celine Dion, and we could get 700 viewers right now. Let's hit it. Cue music, DJ. Oh, just kidding. We're not doing that. Right. But I see the pop culture stuff. You know, you're being relevant, so. Because if people are so bored, it's sometimes the dumbest things, like how tiktoks these videos become so viral of some things you wouldn't think would be. But it catches people off guard. And if you. You're saying if you tie that in to what you specialize in, there could be an angle for you just. Just to kind of register. Do a double take. Right?

Exactly. So I'll give you an example. When I go out to movies or I go out to shows or Vegas is one of my favorite places to go when I. When it's normal, I always go to different shows to figure out there's a show there. They had this lady come out in the audience, and it was hilarious. She's like, I'm looking for more ass. I'm looking to help assist, strategize, and support people. And I was like, oh, My God, that's awesome.

Wow. Baby got back.

Baby got back. So I went and sent an email out. I was teaching in a workshop in St. Louis. I said, get more ass this weekend in St. Louis. And I started getting people like, what the hell? And I said, we'll help you assist, strategize and support this weekend in your note business. And people like, oh, my God, that's hilarious. Of course we had a few haters. I'm like, okay, thank you for unsubscribing. But, you know, we did another thing when the fifty Shades of Gray came out. We did fifty shades of notes. You know, do you feel like you're being spanked by your borrowers? Do you have a ball gag when it comes to talking investors? You know what I mean? Do you feel like, you know, just goofing around, being funny and, you know, you know, 50% open rate. People are just laughing their ass off at me saying, this is great. This is awesome. Yes, I'm interested. I want to find out what you're going to say next. That's valuable, but you make it entertaining, you know?

Then, quick side note, have you done the tortilla challenge one yet?

No, I've not done that. What's that one?

That's where you. Each person has a mouthful of water and you slap each other in the face with a tortilla.

I have not done that. You know, I don't want to commit assault on somebody, but here in Texas, that might just be a normal dinner at the local taqueria. Right.

All right, so let's get into it. So today's topic, if you haven't figured out yet, is niche down your target audience to be successful. So we've talked about different myths, so now we want to pivot and really speak to our audience. There's a lot of different audiences they have, but are there two or three takeaways that they could apply right now to help them engage their target audience and be successful?

Yeah. Look at. Look at your existing client base. Because if you take the time to look at the characteristics of your existing client base, 80% of your sales are probably coming from 20%. Your core 20%. Yep. And it then makes sense at that point, say, okay, here's who we are. Here's who we're talking to. Here's where the majority of our businesses come from, and focus on that 20%, because, so, you know, so many of us are making success or having success from all of our activities. But if you remove a lot of those smaller outlying activities, it Gives you more time and focus to focus on that major 20%. And if you just do that instead of seeing 80%, you'll probably see 4 to 500% growth because you're really honed in and delivering what that 20% is looking for. And that will, that was one of the easiest ways to increase sales. Just focus on your target audience and ask them, who do you know, who do you need referrals? But focus on your existing client base. They'll tell you everything you need to know about your audience, even though you might think otherwise. They'll tell you how to say it or what their biggest needs are. And so it's always a great thing to sit there and say, what are the issues that Laura is dealing with? We actually have labeled our female client our avatar Laura, because she fits. Exactly. And then our guy is Steve. So what does Laura and Steve need? What are their issues they're dealing with? Is it for us, Is it raising capital, is it finding deals? Is it the servicing side? All the auxiliary services that they need? And I will actually pick up the phone, hey, what are you dealing with? What are your issues? How can I help? And sometimes it's going to be me referring them to a vendor of some sort that adds value to their dating day. I may not make anything off, it might give them a feel, it might get a kick, but it adds value to my vendor so that they like, oh, hey, I need you to talk to this client of ours, Scott, because they're ideal clients because we have a lot of crossover. Right. So really look at your core, your client base and then talk to your vendors a lot too to help drive growth, drive sales and drive engagement too, if that helps.

I will say, I think from a marketing standpoint for our company, I think when we niche down, I mean we know it's 60% home service related, 30% professionals, and then 10% is maybe others that the onesies and twosies. So I know that when we changed our focus to I want to help everyone to this is what we're good at helping, then you know, your business tends to grow.

It also saves you from having to do a lot of these weird one outlier things. You can kind of kind of systematize it to what you're doing. Like, oh, hey, we work with clients exactly like this. So here's A, B and C, their biggest needs. Does this fit into what you're doing? Oh, and we'll add D because that's A unique to your position or something like that. So that's awesome. Man, Right.

And even goes down to not only client, but almost like product mix too. So within the specific client vertical, there's products that work even better that you focus on that. Then you know, what we always say is like stay in our lane and do it really well as opposed to trying to do many things well. You know, like we talked on our discovery call, like when you speak to everyone, you speak to no one, right?

So exactly. And that's why I love what you guys are doing. You're really focused and hyper in to your unique client and you're adding your value proposition is really driven for your unique clients and what your base core of entrepreneurs and focus, your focus group. Basically it's your own focus group. And if you can deliver to your focus group, they're going to be raving fans. And so other people, because they're going to be around other people like themselves that need, that want to help their friends and like, hey, deal with these guys. They help me and you're exactly like me. So you know, go from there.

So on the flip side, what are one or two things you see people doing wrong when they try to be specific on their audience, but they just fail.

So one is a lack of patience. You got to realize it's got to be consistent more so than anything else. You know, like we have like one of our, a lot of our students are brand new to marketing because they come from a job and they're not used to sending out an email blast, right? And I'm like, you gotta send an email blast at the same time every week. You gotta be consistent in getting that. You gotta realize people are probably not gonna respond the first time, the first two, three, four times. But the fact that you sent it a fifth and sixth time and you've done it for five, six, seven weeks, understand that consistency basis is that they'll start responding after the fourth or fifth time, but that you've gotta get there. You give up after. Oh, nobody responded. Well, yeah, it didn't work because you didn't understand the law of numbers. You're only going to have like, you're only going to close two sales, 2% of your sales normally with a first email, 3% the second, 5%, the third, maybe 10% of the fourth. But 80% are going to come to that fifth contact or, or beyond. And you never know, somebody may not be in the right time to say yes. So never give up on somebody. Realize that people have issues. I mean, God knows we've gone through issues the last couple of years and Covid and the pandemic. You just gotta realize if you stay consistent, when they are ready to buy or they're ready to pull the trigger, if you stop being consistent, they're gonna look at somebody who's more consistent than you. So just realize that every marketing piece, everything you do besides staying consistent, it's like planting a tree. It takes a little time for that tree or seed to grow. There's a. I use an analogy. In 1978, there was a guy in India who would walk basically five miles to work and then come back and he passed the sandbar. It was just desolate. Well, back in 1978, he started planting every day. On his way back, he would plant one little seedling, a little plant a tree. Well now fast forward 30 plus, 40 plus years later, it's now a beautiful rainforest, you know, with fresh water, diverse life. And that you have to look at your business being a lot like that. You've got to plant seeds every day and stay consistent so that you can harvest those leads, you know, that product that you know those clients. Throughout a lifetime, if you're jumping from one thing to another thing to another thing, you're never giving your client database or whoever you're reaching an opportunity to really understand that you, that you are the expert and sticking to it.

Awesome. Well, that's. We could talk longer, but that was some great stuff because I think a lot of people like we come from, we're marketers. So even that just resonates with us, like your audience of who to go after. But any business out there pivoting off of this pandemic moving forward, you really have to know who your target customer is. Because I think there's some businesses that Joe and I will talk to that don't have a full idea. I don't know who Steve or Laura is. They don't have a defined avatar. And I think it's just good practice, especially when we want to optimize marketing efforts just to make everything work. So. And thanks for coming in on a bind, saving us this week. So we really appreciate your, your time and coming in with us.

So honored to be here, guys. I mean, I could talk marketing all day long. It's the. I think it's one thing if you really want to stand out in an inch, double down on marketing. So many people and companies and businesses, when they start to struggle, they cut back on the marketing budget and they should double down the marketing budget to go from there. So glad to, you know, glad to help out anyone I can with your audience man. Thank and thank you so much for having me. Glad to be on six months earlier awesome.

So before we end hashtag Valor Cares initiative so talking about doubling down on marketing. You can't market on the Internet without a website. Tell everyone people that need a free website what our valcare is all about.

Yep. So if you own a business and you just don't have a website yet or you maybe it's outdated or maybe you want to do marketing for your website and your website is honestly just sucks, go to ask ValorMasterMinds.com click on Valor Care, submit your information and then hopefully we'll be building a website for your company next.

Awesome. So on behalf of our sponsors a Advanced Septic Services and Fuse Networks, my name is Galen. I'm Joe coming at you from the BD Local Studios in Tacoma, Washington. Thanks to our guest Scott Carson for coming on weclosenotes.com we'll have his information on our social channels. Thanks for tuning in guys. Appreciate it.

Thanks man.