“How Do I Market and Position My Work So That People Actually Want It? Help!”

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Do I Market and Position My Work So That People Actually Want It? Help!"

Episode Details:

• Podcast Title: Help Wanted
• Host: Jason Feifer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and Nicole Lapin, Money Expert
• Guest: Rochelle Devoe, Marketing and Positioning Expert
• Release Date: January 21, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Help Wanted, hosts Jason Feifer and Nicole Lapin tackle a common yet challenging issue faced by entrepreneurs: effectively marketing and positioning their work to attract genuine interest and clients. The episode features Lisa Petcher Reid, an information scientist struggling to articulate her services in a marketable way, and Rochelle Devoe, a seasoned marketing expert, who provides actionable strategies to overcome these hurdles.

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Presenting the Challenge

Lisa Petcher Reid's Struggle: Lisa Petcher Reid, an information scientist, reached out to the show with a problem many entrepreneurs face: despite offering valuable services, she couldn't effectively communicate her offerings to potential clients. Her expertise lies in retraining the human brain and nervous system, encompassing areas like AI training, psychology, neuroscience, and conscious parenting. However, translating this complex expertise into clear, marketable language proved difficult.

• Notable Quote:

  [03:40] Lisa Petcher Reid: "My language... doesn't connect with anyone. I started helping people for free, but I couldn't figure out how to be succinct and marketable."

Key Issues Identified:

1. Complex Language: Terms like "reparenting" and "rewiring the brain" sounded too abstract and inaccessible to her target audience.
2. Broad Scope: Lisa's solutions were broad, making it hard to define a specific niche without limiting her potential client base.
3. Marketing Disconnect: Successful ads were too specific, while her landing pages remained too general, causing a disconnect that hindered conversions.

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Expert Insights on Marketing and Positioning

Introducing Rochelle Devoe: Rochelle Devoe joins the conversation as a marketing and positioning expert. She introduces the "Jobs to Be Done" (JTBD) theory, originally developed by Clayton Christensen, which centers on understanding the fundamental "job" a customer hires a product or service to perform.

• Notable Quote:

  [08:20] Rochelle Devoe: "The thing that people are actually trying to buy is a hole or something to be able to screw something with. That's the job that people are hiring the drill to do."

Applying JTBD to Lisa's Situation: Rochelle explains that while Lisa's ads might highlight specific problems (e.g., a drinking problem linked to childhood trauma), her landing pages delve into broader solutions (e.g., inner child healing). This inconsistency can confuse potential clients who don't immediately see the connection between their specific issue and Lisa's broad solution.

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Identifying Your Audience and Ideal Clients

Defining the Ideal Client: Through deeper conversations, Lisa identifies her ideal clients as "cycle breakers"—parents or individuals aspiring to become parents who are determined to prevent passing down trauma to their children. This precise targeting clarifies her market segment and aligns her services with a specific, motivated audience.

• Notable Quote:

  [27:46] Lisa Petcher Reid: "It's either parents or people who want to be parents. They want to have kids, but they're afraid of passing down their trauma to kids. So it's essentially cycle breakers..."

Characteristics of Ideal Clients:

1. Willingness to Pay: These clients recognize the value of breaking harmful cycles and are ready to invest in the necessary work.
2. Clear Outcomes: They seek specific transformations, such as not passing trauma to their children, which provides a tangible goal for Lisa's services.

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Refining Your Marketing Message

Functional, Social, and Emotional Outcomes: Rochelle emphasizes the importance of addressing three types of outcomes in marketing:

1. Functional Outcomes: Tangible, measurable results (e.g., better control over reactions, improved relationships).
2. Social Outcomes: How clients perceive themselves or are perceived by others (e.g., enjoying more quality time with a partner).
3. Emotional Outcomes: Internal feelings and states (e.g., inner peace, reduced stress).

• Notable Quote:

  [25:35] Rochelle Devoe: "Functional outcomes are the outcomes that you can see on paper... The social outcomes might be some of the things you're mentioning... And then the emotional one, I'm hearing a lot of that already supported in what you're offering."

Transitioning from Abstract to Concrete: By focusing on specific client transformations—like "breaking a cycle of trauma"—Lisa can create more compelling and relatable marketing messages. This clarity helps potential clients immediately understand the value and relevance of her services.

• Notable Quote:

  [28:35] Rochelle Devoe: "That’s very clear before and after. If you’re able to live up to that promise, I’m sure that’s a very, very marketable business."

---

Testing and Validating Your Marketing Approach

Exploratory Conversations: Rochelle advises conducting in-depth, open-ended conversations with existing or potential clients to uncover the true triggers and decision-making processes behind their need for services like Lisa's. This approach helps in understanding the precise language and motivations that resonate with the target audience.

• Notable Quote:

  [30:59] Rochelle Devoe: "What was the very first thought you had when you started thinking about this problem?... That will give you all of the problems, all of the triggers."

Fit Calls: Once a promising marketing message is crafted, "fit calls" help validate whether the new messaging effectively communicates the value proposition. These calls gauge the emotional temperature of potential clients and assess the likelihood of conversion.

• Notable Quote:

  [37:00] Rochelle Devoe: "A fit call is the one where you’re trying to understand is the thing that I have to offer, something people are willing and able to pay for."

Iterative Refinement: Through continuous dialogue and feedback, Lisa can refine her sales process and marketing content to ensure consistency and high conversion rates. Rochelle recommends creating valuable content that addresses the questions and concerns uncovered during customer research, thereby attracting the right audience into the sales funnel.

• Notable Quote:

  [40:53] Rochelle Devoe: "Create valuable content that is going to bring people into that system... when you have a repeatable equation, you can start looking at how do I build content..."

---

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive roadmap for entrepreneurs struggling with marketing and positioning their services. By applying the "Jobs to Be Done" theory, identifying clear and specific ideal clients, and conducting targeted conversations to refine marketing messages, Lisa Petcher Reid gains clarity on how to effectively market her unique offerings. Rochelle Devoe's expert insights offer invaluable strategies that can be replicated by other entrepreneurs facing similar challenges.

Final Takeaway: Effective marketing hinges on understanding your audience's specific needs and articulating how your services fulfill those needs in a clear, relatable manner. By focusing on precise client transformations and continuously refining your approach based on real customer feedback, you can position your work in a way that genuinely attracts and resonates with your target audience.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• [03:40] Lisa Petcher Reid: "My language... doesn't connect with anyone. I started helping people for free, but I couldn't figure out how to be succinct and marketable."
• [08:20] Rochelle Devoe: "The thing that people are actually trying to buy is a hole or something to be able to screw something with. That's the job that people are hiring the drill to do."
• [25:35] Rochelle Devoe: "Functional outcomes are the outcomes that you can see on paper... The social outcomes might be some of the things you're mentioning... And then the emotional one, I'm hearing a lot of that already supported in what you're offering."
• [27:46] Lisa Petcher Reid: "It's either parents or people who want to be parents. They want to have kids, but they're afraid of passing down their trauma to kids. So it's essentially cycle breakers..."
• [28:35] Rochelle Devoe: "That’s very clear before and after. If you’re able to live up to that promise, I’m sure that’s a very, very marketable business."
• [30:59] Rochelle Devoe: "What was the very first thought you had when you started thinking about this problem?... That will give you all of the problems, all of the triggers."
• [37:00] Rochelle Devoe: "A fit call is the one where you’re trying to understand is the thing that I have to offer, something people are willing and able to pay for."
• [40:53] Rochelle Devoe: "Create valuable content that is going to bring people into that system... when you have a repeatable equation, you can start looking at how do I build content..."

---

This episode serves as a vital resource for entrepreneurs seeking to enhance their marketing strategies, offering clear, actionable advice backed by expert knowledge and real-world application.

Transcript

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

This is help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor in chief of.

[Nicole Lapin]

Entrepreneur Magaz, and I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.

[Nicole Lapin]

And it starts now.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

When you get into entrepreneurship, it seems like it's going to be a straight line. You know that you do something great or you have some service or product that people are going to want and you are sure that people are going to want it. And all you have to do is tell them and they will want it and you will make money. And then you discover that's not exactly how it works at all. And the reason for that is because so many entrepreneurs struggle to explain in one way or another how they can be helpful. It sounds weird if you aren't in business, but it turns out to be the case. I hear this from so many entrepreneurs. It's like, I know how to do something and I can be really helpful at and I cannot Figure out exactly how to explain this to people such that they say, aha, I need you. And I got an email just the other day from a woman who is struggling with exactly that. And I thought, you know what? It is time to solve this problem, because I know what you need. And what you need is to talk to a friend of mine who's an expert, who we're going to talk to later. But first, let us bring in Lisa. Lisa, you represent this thing that I just described, right? You are an entrepreneur. You know how to do things. You can't figure out exactly how to explain it. Can you introduce yourself and tell me what the problem is that you reached out about?

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

I can. And your description there was painfully accurate. My name is Lisa Petcher Reid, and I'm an information scientist. And through all of my research across how to train AI, working across psychology and neuroscience and conscious parenting, I now understand how to retrain the human brain and the nervous system. And I thought exactly as you said, that I could just help people, because who wouldn't want to rewire their brain and who wouldn't want to redefine themselves with knowing exactly how to change your own programming? But my language.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Who isn't like, oh, Lisa, you know how to do that? I need that. Let's sit down. I want to spend a lot of money on you.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's what I wanted. But when I use my language, you didn't connect with anyone. So I started helping people for free and, you know, the entrepreneurial path. And when I started coaching people, some people called me a coach, some people called me a therapist. But the people I really wanted to work with and that really wanted to keep working with me, I asked them what they got, and they said, inner child healing and reparenting. So I was like, okay, cool. I now know my angle. That's the angle that I'm going to market. But when it came down to it, every time I got on the phone with someone, although the core underlying tools and frameworks that they needed were roughly the same, the way that the problems presented in their life was different. So I. I couldn't figure out how do I actually talk to them in their language based on their current pain point and where they want to go, because anything that I said that was like, you know, have your best life, is really generic. And so people don't want to sign up for that. But I couldn't figure out how to be succinct and marketable on what's that one problem that I solve that they know that they suffer from, and that when they see my offer, however I present it, that they go, oh, yes, that's what I need. Instead of me trying to explain to them what reparenting is or what inner child healing is or what rewiring their brain means. So my real question is around how do I figure out my niche without defining myself or boxing myself in, where I can be authentic to myself and my broad range of how I help people, but in a way that's succinct and marketable, that they can help them and that I. They come in with clear expectations of what. What I can help them with.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

And so this is exactly why I loved your question and why I wanted to get you on the show. Because what you're describing there is so common. I mean, it. The details are different. Not everyone is rewiring people's brains. But this. This thing of, you know, what you do and you found some way to describe it, but then you take it out into the real world, and the real world is complicated and messy, and everyone's got different problems, and you cannot find the thing to say that turns the lights on for people, right? Where they're just like, aha, I get it. I need you. Yes. Okay. I'm so excited to tackle this on Help Wanted today. Lisa, when I read your email, the very first thing that I thought of. Well, actually, let me.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

Let me.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Let me note. Let me go back to your email, because what you said to me was that, I don't know, I'm just going to quote from you. You said, I don't know how to figure out how to do this without investing money into testing marketing. But then you hit the catch 22 of needing income to pay for the testing and needing to test to build the income. And so I saw you struggling with this, and you figured that the way to solve this problem was to do some kind of marketing blitz of some kind. And I thought, no, no, what you need to do is you need to talk to your customer in a really strategic way. And that strategic way. The only reason I thought that is because I have a friend named Rochelle Devaux. And Rochelle Devoe is an expert in understanding consumer psychology and in being able to talk to consumers in a way in which you get those answers. And so I thought, well, why don't we just pull you all together and have this conversation and everyone can benefit and, you know, while Nicole is out on maternity leave, Nicole, my co host for this show, I get to do whatever I want. So that's what I'M doing. Rachelle Devoe, you are here on the podcast. Welcome.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Hi. I am so excited to be here. Lisa, it's great to meet you. And the first and I think most important thing to say is you are so not alone. Most of the people that I work with, most of the people who reach out to me who have, you know, a business they're trying to run on their own with a very lean team, are in a very similar position. This is a very common experience of a lot of entrepreneurs who are trying to find their very first product market fit. So I'm a marketing and positioning expert and I leverage customer insights to help people find products to sell and to scale the products that they're already selling. And you are in a really unique period that a lot of people I work with find themselves in, which is how do I actually find what people want that matches up with the thing that I am best at actually being able to help them with? Is that. Does that sound right?

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

Yep, I'm nodding along.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Great.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

Exactly right.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Great.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So, Rachelle, as you were listening to Lisa describe her problem, what were the first questions that came to your mind?

[Rochelle Devoe]

So I would love to just understand the context of your business first. Can you tell us a little bit about what is it that you sell currently and where are you at in finding some footing around your business? How many clients have you worked with or customers have you had so far?

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

So I have coached probably around 50 people. Some paid, some free, majority free. I have a paid community where I do group coaching every two weeks. I've just switched that to weekly. And I have four paying members, so they pay monthly to basically come and group coach with me. I've also started working on digital products where I can basically teach how to reparent yourself and rewire your brain for somebody who wants a low ticket access to it and who wants to be able to pick it up and go. Because as a parent of young kids and as an entrepreneur myself, I know that you want things fast. So I've got a like, step by step roadmap to healing your inner child. This piece is the one that I'm currently putting at the front end of my ads and then I have this community in the back end. And the. I've just gotten to a point where it's profitable, it's not yet scalable because I'm like, I'm on the edge of just breaking even versus profitability. And yeah, I'm at this pain point of I can, I can find angles that work as ads, but then it doesn't seem to convert into sales. And I don't think it's because I. I think it's because if I go specific on an ad, then I go general on the sales page, because I start on an ad with, what does your drinking problem have to do with your childhood? And people go, yeah, and they click it. But then when they get to a landing page that's focused on inner child healing, there's a disconnect in. It's not speaking to the exact problem. So I can keep finding these problem spaces, but then I don't know how to either put the general stuff at the beginning or be more specific along the way without narrowing myself down and then ending up with people who only have one problem. And then my solution is actually much broader.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I mean, I have to tell you. And maybe it's just because I'm not your target audience, or maybe it's because I'm identifying a problem that Rachelle can help you solve. But the phrases that you are using as the core description of what you do, healing your inner child and rewiring your brain, I have no idea what those mean. I don't know what the service is, and I don't know what the benefit is. And I've heard versions of that problem a million times, too, where people will be like, I am a transformational coach. And you're like, okay, but what does that mean? You're going to transfer. Transform me into a frog? Like, what does it mean that you're going to transform? So. So I wonder if that's maybe a place to start. But I don't know, Rachelle, what. What? You know, this is what you do for a living. What is jumping out to you?

[Rochelle Devoe]

The first place that I would start is actually talking about a theory that I use a lot. Jason has heard me talk about this a million times. It's a very common theory. This is not my work. It originates with somebody named Clayton Christensen, who created the jobs to be done theory. And in this theory, the thing that we talk about is the job that people are essentially hiring you to do. And a way to think about this is if you go to a hardware store looking to buy a drill, you might see a drill labeled, for having the most horsepower or having 15,000 interchangeable bits, or the battery is going to last for forever. Those are all different features of the drill. But the thing that people are actually trying to buy is a hole or something to be able to screw something with. And that is the job that people are actually hiring the drill to Do. So part of what I am hearing is that you have ads that are performing well because they're speaking about specific jobs and outcomes potentially. And then people are going to a sales page that is maybe talking about a process or a feature of how to arrive there, and it's not resonating.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

With people slightly different than that. So one that's excellent around the drill that that analogy helps me. So the piece in my ads is I can speak to one specific pain point. So let's say the pain point is you replay arguments in your head. Or the pain point is that you have a drinking problem and you don't know what to do with it. Like I can pick a specific problem, but then my landing page, I speak about the broader implications of how not having healed your inner child shows up. So not feeling good enough, not feeling secure in your relationships, not being present in your life, reacting. So having your emotions dictate your behaviors, all of those sorts of things. So for me, when you talk about the drill, the thing, the hole in the wall that they're trying to fix is like a hole in themselves. So it's like they want to be present and they don't want their emotions to control them. They actually want to know what their triggers are and be able to respond instead of react. And they want to have a conversation with their partner, for example, where they can actually tell them how they're feeling without regretting or thinking that they're going to hurt the other person, that they know how to speak in a way that expresses their needs and their boundaries without hurting the other person or, you know, being passive aggressive or aggressive or any of these things. So. But the way it shows up is so different. At the end of the day, what they really need is to feel whole enough so that they can be present and confident and authentic without all these fears of abandonment and judgment and all the things that they're carrying around with them.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Yeah, that's. I think that's helpful. And I'm already noticing your language is switching from maybe problem into some solution or what they would see as evidence. Right. If they do this work, I would go a step further. One of the other components of finding a jobs to be done is you understand what are the outcomes that they're looking for in three different areas. What are the functional outcomes, what are the social outcomes, and what are the emotional outcomes? The functional outcomes are the outcomes that you can see on paper. You can see in a tangible way. Things like, I make more money, I have more free time. There's Sort of that quantitative view of an outcome or a result. And the functional outcomes are typically the ones that convert the best. In my experience. I've worked with lots of entrepreneurs, lots of businesses, lots of different products, and if you have a clear functional outcome, then that's a really good indicator of product market fit. What you find in marketing, when you're really trying to leverage marketing to speak to a customer and hook them, is you want those social and emotional outcomes as well. The social outcomes might be some of the things that you're mentioning. Like, you know, I get home from work and I'm actually able to enjoy my time with my partner. That's a, that's a social outcome. That is a really strong one. And you can imagine tons of different products that could help actually serve that social outcome. And then the emotional one, I'm hearing a lot of that already supported in what you're offering. So how do I feel better in my life? How do I reduce the amount of grief or pain and increase the joy and presence and pleasure? And you see that also in a lot of marketing. So thinking about those sort of three different potential outcomes that people could experience, I'd love to pull back for a second and go back to when you were talking about your business overall.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Stick around. Help wanted. We'll be right back.

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Learn more at chime.com helpwanted and once you go to chime.com helpwanted you'll learn.

More about the fee. Free overdraft up to $200. And let me tell you, that is such a game changer. Make progress towards a better financial future with Chime.

Open your account in two [e-mail] helpwanted that's chime.com helpwanted Chime feels like progress.

Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA members. FDIC SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits Apply Boosts are available to eligible CHIME members enrolled in SPOTME and are subject to monthly limits. Timing depends on submission of payment file fees. Apply at out of network ATMs this.

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[Jason Pfeiffer]

Let's get to it.

[Rochelle Devoe]

So thinking about those sort of three different potential outcomes that people could experience, I'd love to pull back for a second and go back to when you were talking about your business. Overall, you have a paid community of people. The people who are experiencing the best results in that community. Can you think about what some of those functional outcomes are that they've experienced by being a part of your community?

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

I think I might step into the emotional, but I'll try. So the functional outcomes that they get more control over their own reactions in stressful situations, better understanding of their relationships, be that romantic or professional or friendship, better skills to navigate difficult conversations and an ability to find inner peace. Are they functional?

[Rochelle Devoe]

I'm hearing many emotional jobs, some social jobs. This is a very tricky thing. So you are absolutely not alone in this. Some examples of a functional job that I can imagine working in a lot of related spaces to what you're offering are things like getting a promotion at work, because that equates to more resources, potentially more efficacy in somebody's life goals. A functional goal might be more dates. If somebody feels more confident, maybe it's more sleep because they feel less stressed. Maybe it's more time to pursue passions and actually writing that novel that they've put off on the side. Jason, do those sound like functional jobs to you that resonate more?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah, this is, I mean, this is a funny exercise to do with Lisa's work because it, it like the, the, the service and the problems are also emotional to begin with. Right? Like, you know, if, if Lisa was selling house painting services, this would be an easier thing to break apart. But you're not. But yes, that makes sense to me because what I was hearing when you were listing out those functional goals is things that in some way or another could be quantified. Like, I could, I could, I could make a list of them. I could count them on my hands. And that made them feel like, like dry, stackable objects versus the emotional things which are, which are kind of more squishy and inward.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

So can I follow on from the squishy and inward part? Because it's one of my core problems in the way I describe. So I spoke to, I've got two ideal clients. So I, I bounce ideas off of them and I was like, what is it that I help you with? Like, how would you describe it in your language? And the way they describe it is fluffy to me. So they describe it as. I help them shine a light on the parts of themselves that they couldn't see for themselves. I'm like, I don't think that's marketable because if I saw that, I'd be like, what does that mean? I'm not interested. So the piece, the way that some of them, one of them described it was like I was a mental and emotional surgeon because I helped them catch their own beliefs that they didn't realize they held. And again, everything seems so wishy washy.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

I mean, those things sound to me like great testimonials. Like, I would, like, I wouldn't want that as marketing language, but I would want to see somebody say that on a website. That would be amazing. But I like what you're teeing up here because what you're going to. Is the first thing that my mind went to, which is these, these very intentional, structured conversations with consumers to get those kinds of insights out of them, which, Rishal, I would love to hear you talk about because, yeah, if you just ask people, how do I help you? They're. They'll tell you all sorts of nonsense, but it may not. It may not translate into marketable language. So how can Lisa do that better?

[Rochelle Devoe]

Yes. So one of the things that I always recommend people start with is looking at people's willingness and ability to pay. When we talk about ideal clients, often we first start with the people who we ideally want to help because they feel the best or they're just naturally the people that we're drawn to. But those people aren't always the people who are both willing and able to pay. So the first place that we want to look at for who to actually have conversations with are the people who know are both willing and able to pay for a service like this. That will automatically narrow down who you're taking advice and feedback from into the people who you can potentially convert. Now, this is an area where I see most people go wrong is straight off at the beginning. They talk to everybody and anybody who will talk to them. And you can get a lot of noise in your feedback. So when I hear that people do a lot of conversations, especially with people who are in a free membership, people who are often in a free membership, if that's what you're using for your feedback, they're people who aren't willing or aren't able to pay for a service. So you're getting a lot of feedback from people who won't ever become customers or aren't likely in the headspace of the kind of customer that you're looking to attract to grow your business.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

So, point of clarification, I think, because, Lisa, I'm not sure who you were talking about when you were repeating the things that you heard from people you coached. Maybe those were all people who were already paying or maybe some of them were free people. But just to note, I mean, Rachelle, I know that one of the just phrases you use here for identifying the people worth talking to is your best customers. Right. So who are the people who are most likely to buy and to buy again or to tell other people? So, like, you want to identify those people who are your best customers. In the case of Lisa, who has served a bunch of people in a bunch of different capacities, some free, some paid, and has four people who are paying to be part of an ongoing group. Like, are the people who are paying, even if it's a small number of them, like Are they definitely the best customers or is there some way in which, even if they are paying, there's ways to identify which ones are the ones who are worth zeroing in on more.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Such a great question. So typically, what we're looking for to find those absolute bright spot best customers is willingness and ability to pay. That's the baseline. But then the people who are getting the best outcome, if you have an existing set of customers. So the way that we can typically do that, if you have a large base of people to work from, let's say you have 500, 1000 customers, you can run a survey and ask them about their experience with a product or service to understand who's getting the best result. If you have a much smaller subset, if you have under 25 people, under 50 people, you can just have phone conversations. It sounds like you're already doing that. And you can just talk to people. And that's completely free. Right. So instead of having to do paid marketing to understand some of the stuff, it's a totally free way to get some of this information. And you also, if you're coaching these people, you probably have some very clear experience about who is really benefiting from this experience. Is that true?

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

Yes. And I, I have something that I don't know how to say in a marketable way, which is it's either parents or people who want to be parents. They want to have kids, but they're afraid of passing down their trauma to kids. So it's essentially cycle breakers that I want to work with and that are willing to do the work and are most willing to pay as well because they don't want to hand down their crap to their kids or future kids.

[Rochelle Devoe]

What you just said to me is so clear, it is so specific, and the outcome is very clear and specific. Healing and, and I know what, I know exactly what you mean when you say healing your inner child. That's a, That's a phrase I've said before, and I think it tends to maybe attract a slightly more female demographic at least.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That's really funny. As, as, as a, as two data points on this call that are not named Lisa, that would have checked out because I didn't know what their phrase was at all, and Rochelle understood it. So. Okay, good. Good to know.

[Rochelle Devoe]

But I do think that your language of this is very specifically the reason people are buying is a really clear point of, of marketing, of a sales pitch, of this is the trigger of when people buy.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Can I, can I just say, Rochelle, before you go on, like, Lisa when you said that about cycle breakers and parents, like, my understanding of your business radically shifted right there. Suddenly everything that you do snapped into place. Like, aha, I understand exactly who you're serving now. Now I can see how all of those jobs to be done that we were listing off fit inside of a very clear and understandable set of concerns for a very clear audience. So that was like chef's kiss. That was fantastic to have that. Okay, sorry. Sorry, Rachelle. Keep going.

[Rochelle Devoe]

No, totally agree. I think that that is. That resonates a lot more, is a lot clearer. It's a much clearer job, and it's a much clearer outcome. If you do this work, you are going to break a cycle of trauma and not hand your baggage onto your kids. That's very clear before and after. And if, you know, if you're able to live up to that promise, I'm. I'm sure that's a very, very marketable business that's going to help a lot of people. One of the questions that you asked in your emails, though, is, how do you know? Let me paraphrase this and make sure I'm understanding correctly. How do you test this marketing and make sure that this message is resonating without spending a bunch of money on ads? Is that maybe like the second half of this? So let's. We've got this idea now, right? We have this idea of maybe this could be some marketing messaging that resonates. How do you actually go about testing that?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Yes. And I also just want to throw in. I also really want to hear you talk about how Lisa can talk to her customer and get these insights, because what she's doing right now is just being like, how am I helping you? And then getting very abstract answers, which are great for testimonials but not for. Great for marketing. So. So I want to know, like, how she can be talking. So maybe, maybe this is exactly where you're going, Michelle, But I just want to put that flag in.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Yeah. So there's two different types of conversations to have with customers. Once you find people who are willing and able to buy, whether it's your product or competitor's product, and you want to understand these people, there's two different conversations. The first conversation is an exploratory conversation to try and understand exactly what their problem is and how they went about being switched to that solution. What I mean by that is what was the trigger that got them into purchasing that solution? Whether that's your customer or you're actually interviewing somebody who has purchased a competitive product or service. Those exploratory conversations are entirely about reconstructing a timeline of how they went about making that decision. The reason that you want to do that in an exploratory conversation is that, and you know this probably very well as a psychology expert, what we think we will do and what we will actually do are two entirely different things. So you can ask somebody, you can ask almost anybody, you know, do you want to retire at the age of 40? If they're under 40 and every single one of them will say yes, every single person will say yes, of course I want to retire early. And if you ask how many of those people are investing consistently on a monthly basis, you might get 20% of people, maybe less, are actually doing the behavior. So we can't ask people what they want because what they want isn't an indicator of what they are willing and able to do. Instead, what you want to do is find the people who are doing the thing you want them to do. So buying a course, buying a service, buying a competitor's product, or investing in your own, and then reverse engineer what compelled them to actually buy that product or service. And when you know that, when you know the sequence of events, you can intentionally reconstruct it. So what that looks like very, you know, to get really specific is what was the very first thought you had when you started thinking about this problem? You know, what, what, what happened? What was the first thought? And ask them to go back into what was happening in your life when you first started thinking about this problem, get them to really explain it. That's going to give you all of the problems, all of the triggers. Some of those might be positive triggers, some of those might be negative triggers. And then you want to ask them, what decision process did you go through? Did you talk to anybody about it? What did you search for? What were all of the different options that you considered? One of the coolest things I think about this particular theory of customer research is it's completely product and service agnostic. What that means is people are searching for that hole in the wall. It doesn't matter whether or not they buy a drill or if somebody invented a magical unicorn that could punch a hole through your wall, they would buy the magical unicorn if that was the cheapest, easiest, fastest thing, right? So you actually get to see their entire competitive set. It's not just, are they going to buy my course or are they going to buy somebody else's course? It might be, oh, they were also considering going on a 10 day meditation retreat or they will also. They consider doing massages monthly. Right. So it completely opens up the competitive field to help you understand all of the different potential other options that they're considering. So that's the exploratory conversation.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Before you go on to the next one, I just wanted to point out because people can't see it, but Lisa is furiously scribbling notes as if this is not being recorded and made for a podcast. So I just. This is. That. That's just. It's a wonderful testament of value here that someone is taking notes on a podcast that they can listen to later. Rachelle, keep going.

[Rochelle Devoe]

I love that, and I love that you're taking notes. Okay, so exploratory conversation. And. And there's. There's scripts for this that are very easy to follow. There's. There's ways to do this. And the best thing is, is when I tell people to talk to people, every single human goes, well, what do I say? And, oh, am I going to be salesy? And, ugh, I don't want to sell things to people, and I don't want to push people. And I always say that exploratory conversations are very open. You're not selling anything. And every single time I've had one of these calls, and I do this for my clients. I've probably interviewed, I don't know, thousands and thousands of people at this point in my career. And I would say that all but maybe two of those thousands and thousands of calls have thanked me profusely for listening to their story, for helping them understand their own experience, for helping them reflect back on how they made these decisions that are important to them. People love having these conversations. These are the kind of things that are. People just absolutely love being listened to. You can't mess these conversations up. You just really can't. Everyone's afraid of doing them. I've never had a bad experience. I've maybe had two people who were introverted and, you know, weren't profusely thanking me at the end of it, but no one's ever been upset by being listened to, so you can't mess these calls up. The second type of call are fit calls.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Stick around, Help Wanted. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it.

[Rochelle Devoe]

The second type of call are fit calls, where you're trying to understand, okay, you've done some of this research, and you've already done some of this, Lisa. So I'm explaining this for folks who haven't ever done any type of customer research. Call. Once you have an idea of, okay, this is the thing that I think people want. You have a fit call. And a fit call is the one where you're trying to understand is the thing that I have to offer, something people are willing and able to pay for. And what you're measuring here is, I would say, emotional temperature. You want to have phone calls where people get to the end of the call and they're like, take my money, at least some of the time. And if you don't have some people saying, sign me up, this is amazing. Tell me more. If you don't have that really high emotional temperature, there's still some work that needs to be done on finding what the actual product and offer is. And it's a really simple question to ask. And it can be done when you're at, like, a barbecue with friends. It can be done in informal ways when you just run across people who are kind of in your target audience on the street. And the question is, I'm thinking about creating X. It's going to do X, Y, and Z. If I do that, what would have to be true for you to be willing and excited about joining that or buying that? And it is a magical question. And you can also preface that with, I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm just trying to gain feedback. So no pressure here, but I want to gauge responses, and I want to get some understanding here. And you'll learn more In 10 phone calls or 10 conversations that ask that question than in thousands of dollars of paid ads.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

I did that without realizing I did it. So for some context, the two clients that are my ideal clients, I had free coaching calls with them. And then I sat back and I couldn't figure out what I wanted. And then I realized they were these two people I wanted to keep working with. So I asked them politely, would they get on a group call with me, to which they thought, okay. I thought they would say no, because I was asking them to meet up with two strangers, essentially. And they said yes. And I asked them, I was trying to figure out, what is it that you got from the call with me? And, like, what do you have in common? Because I want to serve more people like you. And they defined my offer on that call. That wasn't my intention. I just wanted to understand what they had in common so I could try and find more like them. And they define my offer, and they told me what to charge for, and they told me to create it. And I was like, you're telling me that if I go and create this community. You're going to pay me monthly to just have this kind of call. And they're like, yes, okay. So I went and created the thing because I was trying to figure out my product and they told me what they wanted. But then I ended up in this position where I now have this thing that they told me to create, but I don't know the front end, how to bring new people in without going through the old process of like this cold dming and trying to get people because, like, I want to build a business that works around my young kids. So my question there is if I've done that piece to the extent that I know what product, I have some level of market validation. It's small, but I have some. How do I then take the piece that Jason said, hey, that. That gave me understanding. How do I then take the. This is what you want earlier on to make sure that I'm actually bringing the right people in. How do you turn this huge complex of like, you want to break all these cycles, etc into something that at the front end somebody can see it and be like, ah, yes, I want that. Given that like storytelling is so important and you can't storytelling like a single ad, that's the piece.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

How do you bring it all together? How do you bring it all together? Yeah. Yes. Well, Rochelle, how do you do it?

[Rochelle Devoe]

The answer, in my experience is a combination of continuing to connect with the people until you have the marketing perfect. So continuing to do those one on one calls until you know that your sales system, the thing that you say on the call, the thing that is on your sales page, all of your content is resonating and converting at a high percentage rate. That's the first step is solidifying what I would say is your sales process. The second step is then creating valuable content that is going to bring people into that system. That's where I think Jason is an incredible expert as well. But you can also build that content based on the research. So what are the questions people are asking that are leading them to want to buy a product like this? And you would find that out in your exploration calls. So then you're creating content to bring people into your ecosystem. But again, it's solidifying the sales process so that you know you have a repeatable equation. When I talk to 10 people, three people convert. Or when a hundred people go to my sales page, 20 people convert. When you have a repeatable equation, you can start looking at how do I build content to bring people in and how do I potentially go to paid ads or other scalable ways to actually get people in at the top of the funnel.

[Lisa Petcher Reid]

That was an excellent summary. Thank you.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

That was. That was. You know, Lisa, having been listening to all this from Rachelle to me, it just kind of boils down to this. And Rachelle, maybe tell me if I'm right. I think that everybody asks this question whenever they encounter something, and that question is, is this for me or is this not for me? It's like, that's the first thing that anyone wants to know about anything, right? Like, at the very beginning of this podcast, you were making this decision, is this for me or is this not for me? And so, look, marketing and this whole process really just comes down to figuring out, how do you anticipate and answer that question as quickly and efficiently as possible for the maximum number of people so that they can see it and say, like, oh, yes, this is for me. So that's why, Lisa, when you got into, like, the cycle breakers, I was like, aha. If you talked about that, then the people for whom this is for would instantly say, yes, that's for me. And then as soon as you start getting into, like, the jobs to be done, you're like, oh, this is for you. Is this for you, too? And then you start to get into all the stuff that that is going to be exactly speaking to the problems that they have, so that you just keep getting people to say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then what Rochelle was saying at the very end is just a matter of going through the rigorous testing, of refining exactly what that language is so that you've locked it down as much as possible, and you just get people to, yes, Rachelle, am I right? Say yes.

[Rochelle Devoe]

Yes, yes.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Okay, we've done some good work here. Lisa, your business is rewiring your brain. I hope that we have rewired your brain and other people's brains and all the brains I'm going to put links to contact both of you, Lisa and Rachelle, in the show notes. Rochelle's got to get out of here. That's the backstory. So we're just going to rush and we're going to keep this in here so that we understand what we landed the plane so fast. Rochelle, Lisa, thank you so much. This was so helpful. This is going to help a lot of people. Goodbye. Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason.

[Nicole Lapin]

Pfeiffer, and me, Nicole Lapin. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Do you want some help? Email our helpline at Help Wanted at bunny news network.com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTokoneyNewsNetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance?

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Oh, I didn't sign up for that.

[Nicole Lapin]

All right, well, talk to you soon.

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Sa.