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This is Johnny. He sells fishing gear and he makes 750 million bucks a month. I'm talking about Johnny Morris, the founder and CEO of Bass Pro Shops. This is a $10 billion a year private business. And not only is it an incredible startup story, but it's just a perfect example of doing business on easy mode, building a great brand, making something people love, and bringing in a lot of money. I'm going to tell you all about it right now. Foreign. You're listening to Making it with John Davids. So rewind to 1971. Johnny's working at his dad's liquor store in Missouri selling beer, snacks, and fishing rods. And he notices something kind of weird. See, there are lots of guys in town who actually love fishing. They come into the store all the time, they're buying lots of stuff. But they aren't into these fishing rods rods because these rods actually kind of suck. They're cheap, they're flimsy, they're built to break. They're not built for fishermen. And fishermen take pride in their gear. They don't want a crummy rod sitting next to their case of Budweiser on the boat. That gives Johnny a big idea. See, he sees an opportunity here. Johnny starts talking to some of these regulars and realizes that if he had the right product, they would love to buy it. So our boy sets up shop in the backspace of his his dad's liquor store. And he starts bringing in real gear. The good stuff. Then he drafts up a catalog with everything a fisherman could possibly need. He calls that catalog Bass Pro Shops. Next, he mails out a bunch of copies. And the fishermen love it. Orders start rolling in right away from all over the USA. Pretty soon, this little catalog is blowing up. By 1980, Bass Pro Shops is doing $8 million a year. But there's a problem. Johnny's customers want to touch and feel this stuff. These pages just aren't doing justice. So it's time to go a little bigger. Fast Forward now to 1981. Johnny opens his first store. And it's packed wall to wall with serious fishing gear. Again, it's a hit. There are lines out the door. So Johnny keeps going. He starts adding boats, then hunting gear, then camping equipment. And then things start to get nuts. Johnny installs this huge a at his one location of Bass Pro Shops. This thing is 300 gallons of water. It's enormous. But he's not done. Next comes the fireplace. This thing is 40ft tall. Takes up the entire height of the store. Then he starts putting in these Full size animals, grizzly bears, wolves, mountain lions. Because why the hell not? He spends 14 years building up that single Missouri location, getting the concept just Perfect. He hits 150 million in annual annual sales before opening his second location. Guys, 150 million in revenue from a single store and he just keeps on going. Today, Bass Pro Shops has 200 stores across the country modeled after that first store in Missouri, all together bringing in $10 billion a year. And Johnny owns them all. Bass Pro Shops is a story all about understanding your customer, obsessing over who they are and what they and then making every decision based on that. Johnny sells to people who love the outdoors and no one else. You see it in the insane attractions, the wacky stores, the huge selection. This whole vibe is for a single person. It keeps them coming back, staying longer and buying more. And guys, when you understand the customer at this level, you can sell them pretty much anything. This episode is brought to you by Influicity's new tool, the AI Ads Generator, available now at johndavids.com ads Great ads aren't about luck. They're about leverage. The brands that win are the ones who can launch faster, test smarter, and outspend everyone else without wasting a dollar. That's exactly what the AI Ads Generator gives you. Instant ad copy that speaks to every customer and feeds the algorithm. High performing variations your competitors can't keep up with. It's like strapping a jet engine onto your marketing. And right now it's free. Yes, it's free. Go to john davids.com ads that's john davids.com ads so I want you all to understand how powerful this concept really is and how game changing it can be in your business. I want to give you a real world example. So let's say you own a medical clinic, you're a dentist, and just to keep this really simple, you have one single location. You're a general dentist. So you don't have any specialties. You don't specialize in kids or adults or seniors. You're not a periodontist or anything like that, you'll take anyone. And let's say you're running ads on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Google. If you start with the premise that I'm a dentist for everyone, which is technically true, but if you start there, you're gonna fail. In the best case scenario, you'll pay a whole bunch of money for some really lukewarm leads. And it's actually kind of simple. Why? It's because you'll have to talk to everyone. You'll have to water down your message, which means you'll really be talking to no one. And more importantly, the ad platforms, whatever marketing platform you're using won't know who to serve your ad to because you don't know who you want to speak to. So the first thing you got to think about is demographics, number one. So maybe I'm going to target moms with young kids, or I'm going to target males over the age of 40 who have white collar jobs, or I'll target retired seniors. You got to pick something, and it honestly doesn't matter what it is. People tend to get analysis paralysis at this point. They say, I don't want to rule anybody out. Don't worry, every market is huge. You're gonna be fine. So that's your demographic. And right away, even if you stopped there, and we're not gonna stop there, but if you did, you're already like 50% done. Because just doing that now, at least you can put a face to the customer. You can put somebody in the ad that looks like the person you're trying to sell to, which is perfect. But let's go one level deeper. After demographics, we look at psychographics. What do these people think about what's going on in their head? What are they feeling? So if it's the white collar male over the age of 40, maybe he cares about looking polished and professional in meetings or on zoom calls. Maybe he responds well to certain status symbols or messaging. If we're talking about the mom with young kids, what do her psychographics look like? Well, maybe she's thinking that she's constantly putting everyone else's needs ahead of her own. Maybe she really values convenience because life already feels super chaotic and overloaded. If we're talking about seniors, they might feel rushed and they don't like that. They want to move a little slower. They want to enjoy their day because they've earned the right to do so. And maybe they care deeply about remaining independent and staying self sufficient, staying healthy, staying strong. You see how different these psychographics are between each other, between the white collar male, the mom with kids, and the seniors. So we got demographics, psychographics. Not only do they look different, but we're going to hit them with different messaging. We're going to say different things. But wait, guys, we're not done because we still got to hit behavior. The dude in his 40s wants things like online booking. He wants text reminders. He wants fast digital communication over phone calls. And maybe he's happy to pay a premium for extra services and shorter wait times. Maybe he does that regularly. The mom with young kids is all about scheduling. She needs to book appointments around school, drop off nap time, kids activities, and maybe she really cares what other moms think. She wants to read the Google reviews. She wants to see how you are on Yelp. She wants to see what your Facebook feed looks like. She wants to see what the other parents in the Facebook group say about you. Someone over the age of 70 tends to book appointments well in advance and they tend to keep them and they value punctuality. And maybe they don't want online bookings or texting. They actually prefer to talk to somebody on the phone and they want follow up reminders on the phone. Now I want to be clear. None of these are mutually exclusive. You might have a guy who also cares about scheduling and Google reviews and you might have a senior who also wants to text. And maybe they also feel like they're putting other people's needs ahead of their own, just like the mom. But you can customize your messaging to reflect what most people in your avatar feel and think and do. And then you can create lots of different angles with different ads and different messages to target these different people within the group. Digging into the demographics, the psychographics, the behavior of your customer will help you get a lot more of those customers for a lot less money, a lot more predictably. And by the way, for all my marketing nerds out there, the fourth variable of course in this segmentation analysis is geographic. And in this example, because we're talking about a single location dental clinic, obviously 10 to 25 mile radius, that's all you gotta worry about. If you're scaling with multiple locations or if you have an E commerce brand or a national brand, then of course you need to think about geographic as well. Speaking to different people, where they live physically. Now I can tell you guys at Influicity we have lots of dental clinics and as you can tell, we market to a lot of different types of customers at different dental clinics. And these dentists have built mid seven figure businesses at single locations because they've mastered targeting. When you understand your customer, not only can you adapt your product and service to that customer, but you can speak to them like nobody else. And here's a little extra sauce for you. You ready for that million dollar JD secret? You can target more than one customer. There are so many businesses listening right now that are thinking, oh crap. But you know, we have a few segments we want to target. That's okay. You can create lots of different ads that have different avatars and speak to each of them individually one on one. You just can't combine that messaging. I've got Facebook campaigns running with 75 different ad sets, each targeting a different avatar. That's totally. But you gotta understand when you can target the customer and speak to them like nobody else, you will crush the competition. You need to be everything to someone or something to everyone. And for 95% of businesses in the world, you have to be the first one. You have to be everything to someone. Something to everyone is reserved for Google and Coca Cola and Disney and Chad, GPT or Claude. I kind of like Claude a little better right now. But assuming you don't have a 900 million doll annual marketing budget, you've got to be everything to someone. Just like our boy Johnny at Bass Pro Shops. Get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavids.com Talk to you soon. This episode is brought to you by my one minute marketing roadmap, available@johndavids.com roadmap in 60 seconds, you'll get a custom report showing you how people are finding your brand, where you're losing them, and how to fix it. We used a decade of data from Influicity and layered in AI to give you a real action plan. It's fast, it's free, and it might just change your business. Go to johndavids.com roadmap and get yours right now.