Hey, it's Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, THE place to be to create a business
and life you love.
And this is Q&A Tuesday except it's not a normal Q&A Tuesday because I'm not answering
the question today.
Once again I have a special guest.
He's been on the show before and I'm so pleased to have him again.
It's my friend New York Times Bestselling author Ramit Sethi, who wrote I Will Teach
You to be Rich.
Ramit, thanks for coming back on.
How's it going?
It's going awesome.
And we're gonna have some fun today because one of the things I love about you, you're
a great entrepreneur, you're a great teacher, you sell information products and training
programs and you're quite successful at it.
So congratulations.
And I know your products and your services...
you actually don't have services.
Your products help a lot of people.
I have a lot of folks in my audience who also would like to sell information products and
training and one of the most common questions I get asked is, "Why is my product not selling?
I've put so much work into it, so much heart and soul, no sales."
And I have a feeling that you may have an answer that can really help people out.
There's a lot of reasons and I studied them systematically over the last few years.
I...
my first info product was a $4.95 ebook.
Which I still...
Was it really?
Yeah, it was called Ramit's 2007 Guide to Kicking Ass.
And I still laugh at how naive my marketing was and my pricing and recently my...
I sold a product for $12,000.
So along that entire gamut of understanding what works and what doesn't, I've been sort
of watching and learning and testing different approaches.
One of the biggest things I find is we are not specific enough with who it is we're going
after and what our product does.
So, for example, I have a course that is called Earn 1K on the Side.
And it's helped a lot of people earn 1, 2, 5,000 dollars a month on the side while they
keep their full time job.
it took us 6 months to get that name.
Right?
You'd think we were just sitting around drunk in the back of a like... our office like,
"Oh, Earn 1K on the Side."
No.
Think about it, when you're talking about earning more money there's an infinite number
of possibilities.
Make more money, there's those scammy get rich quick things, there's all... live a better
life through more income.
Why did we call it Earn 1K on the Side?
And then I'm gonna tell everyone how to apply this to their own life.
Earn 1K because many of my successful readers end up earning tens of thousands of dollars.
But if I say Earn 10K, what do you think people think?
No way.
Impossible.
I can't do it, not gonna happen.
I'm not the kind of person that could earn 10K.
But 1K, yes.
And, by the way, 1K for most of us, 1K a month is life changing.
Yes.
Then on the side what we discovered in our research was people believe if you talk about
earning more money, they have to quit their jobs and start the next Google.
Wrong.
You can earn money on the side while you have a full time job.
So this radically changed our positioning and it enabled us to really do well with that
course and help people earn a lot of money.
When I look at some of the products... and I've done a lot of research on your students
and your readers.
And when I gave a talk last year at RHH, I studied them very carefully.
And I noticed that a lot of them use very similar phrases.
Yup.
And a lot of them... the courses and products and services are in the relationship or financial
area.
So help you get your business up, help you find love, etcetera.
And not many of them were as specific as they could be.
Yes.
So I'll challenge your readers right now.
If you are trying to help your clients with their relationships, I would say who are you
targeting?
And when I asked this question at the talk I gave, many people said, "Women."
I was like, "That's not specific."
So I said, "How old are these women?"
And they said, "25 to 54."
Ok, there is virtually nothing identical about a 25 year old woman to a 54 year old woman.
Nothing.
In fact, if you're talking about love, a 24 year old woman thinks of love totally differently
than even a 34 year old woman.
And, by the way, what if the 34 year old woman went to an Ivy League college?
She thinks of love even differently.
So getting really specific... to be able to say, for example, I'm targeting let's say
24 to 29 year old young women who are interested in X, Y, Z, and this is what they're doing.
The second question to ask is, who am I not targeting?
And that brings us to a whole nother question of why we don't get specific.
Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute because every time in many of my programs when I talk
about being specific and drilling down, people freak out because, "I don't wanna leave anyone
behind and my information can help everybody."
And I understand that the intention behind that is very admirable because they believe
in what they do and they really do wanna help as many people as possible.
But from a business and marketing perspective, it's shooting yourself in the foot.
Yeah.
In a world of infinite choices, when you see something that is not directly for you, you
close the window and move on.
So if I'm let's say a young man and I'm looking for some shirts and I go onto this website,
Nordstrom.com or whatever, and I see this shirt and there's a... so I click to zoom
in and there's a guy modeling it.
And it's a guy that kinda looks like me, he's young, you know, he's wearing these kind of
shoes.
I'm like, "Alright."
Then I click to the next photo.
The next photo there's like this 16 year old little punk with a skateboard and now I'm
like, "Wait a minute."
And then I click to the next one and there's this grandpa who's on the beach with, like,
you know, Dockers.
And socks.
And white socks.
And I'm like... what do I do?
Close the window.
Yes.
Because it's not for me.
What this site has tried to do is appeal to everyone, but ironically they've turned us
all off.
16 year old punk doesn't want me and he definitely doesn't want Gramps.
And Grandpa doesn't even know how to use his computer, so he's not even looking at this
website.
So we have a big problem here.
We have a really big problem.
The point of this is, you have to be able to say who you're targeting as well as who
you're not targeting.
And while on the first hand it does seem like why would I want to shut people off?
Right.
You have to understand that you're not trying to appeal to everyone, you're trying to appeal
to the right people.
And when you do that, when you can get deeply into their mind and understand what it is
they want, you can tailor your product and service exactly for them.
You can use the language that they use.
Again, a 24 year old young woman looking for love, her language around relationships totally
different than a 45 year old looking for love.
Totally different.
We all know that.
So put yourself in the mind of your client.
If they're 24 and they're looking for X, what language are they gonna use?
What are they gonna look for?
How much are they gonna be willing to pay?
And if you're looking at helping 44 year old clients, they have a totally different mindset.
They're probably willing to spend a lot more.
Yup.
Alright?
They probably have a very different phrases and words that they use.
And when you can reach directly into what they want, in fact will you find that not
only will your clients become happier, your business will dramatically grow because price
will become a mere triviality.
You're actually solving their problems by getting specific.
Love it.
Ramit, this is genius.
So let me give you a typical example of something that I often hear in the words of some of
my clients and some of my readers.
And I know they need to drill down and be more specific, so I'd love to hear how you'd
handle this.
So many people want to build their business around empowering women and empowering women
to, you know, find their life purpose and live it out and have the life of their dreams.
What would you say to someone who wants to do that, because it feels very general.
How would you get them more specific?
Hold on.
I love that we kind of fried your brain for a second because...
I'm speechless for the first time in 30 years.
Yeah.
So they wanna empower women to live the life of their dreams.
Yes.
Ok, so let me tell you, and I just heard this for the first time just now, let me tell you
5 ways that I believe these clients might be empowered to live a better life.
They might buy a nicer shirt.
They might get a better haircut.
They might get a better car.
They might make more money.
They might find the life partner that they deserve.
Ok, so are you selling cars or are you selling relationships or what...
what is is that you're selling?
Right.
Empowering is a good word, but it's so general that without some kind of additional positioning,
it is meaningless.
Yeah.
And what happens is a lot of us will look at really large companies and say, "Well wait
a minute.
Coca-Cola, they sell happiness."
Well Coca-Cola's been around for over 100 years and they have a multi billion dollar
market cap.
So they can do that because people know what Coca-Cola represents.
When you're starting off, nobody knows who you are.
So if a client or a potential client, a prospect, goes to your site, put yourself in their mind.
What are their hopes, fears, and dreams?
And when you say empowering women, let's get really specific.
Are you talking about helping them with their relationships?
Or with their job and their career?
Or their finances?
If so, I would suggest starting off with one of those, nailing it.
Because one of the best things you could do when you're getting specific is to show 3
or 4 testimonials of before and after.
You know who does this really well is P90X.
You know the workout regiment?
Absolutely.
Love their site because it is so simple, it's not particularly beautiful.
But if you go there, you see ultimate specificity.
You see the skinny guy who got big, you see the fat guy who got toned, you see the post-pregnancy
woman who got back to her pre-pregnancy weight.
You see every single specific niche and you're like, "That's me."
And you click it and you read it and you say, "That's me again."
Buy.
So what could you do on your site and in your positioning to make somebody come and say,
"That's me.
She described my problem, she described a potential solution, and best of all she showed
me an example of 2 or 3 other people who went through this process and came out on the other
end.
And they're exactly where I wanna be in my life."
So I love what you just said.
So why don't you come up with our MarieTV challenge for today.
And it sounds like it's a little bit of a before and after.
Let's do a classic before and after.
I'll challenge each of your readers to take their current positioning whether or not they
have a business, even if they just have an idea for a business.
What is it right now?
What's your before?
So I wanna help empower women to live their authentic lives and authentic best selves
and... whatever that phrase may be.
Now let's take it to the after.
Let's get really, really specific.
We did instead of make more money, we did Earn 1K on the Side.
Instead of helping you find, you know, true love, maybe it is Helping You Find Your Perfect
Relationship for the Ambitious Career Woman.
Ok?
Niche it down, get ultra specific.
And I think...
it's hard.
It's not easy.
But when you do that, you're gonna see the power of how specific you can get and now
you know exactly who you're targeting.
Love it.
Ramit just laid down an amazing challenge.
And remember, the best action happens after the episode at MarieForleo.com, so make sure
you go take our before and after challenge, leave a comment below, and we will see you
there.
Like this video?
Then subscribe and share it with your friends.
And if you want even more insights from me, resources all kinds of great things to create
a business and life you love, get your butt over to MarieForleo.com and make sure to sign
up for email updates.
Ramit, thank you so much for being here.
It was awesome.
Thanks for having me.
Now you need to stay on your game and keep going for your dreams.
The world needs that special thing that only you have.
Thank you so much for watching and we'll catch you next time
on MarieTV.