S07 E01 - How Empathy Maps Can Help You Identify and Understand Your Ideal Clients with Jurgen Strauss

Jürgen Strauss 0:00
Dawned on me that a couple of points that every time I focused more narrow, that my business actually grew, and I was happier. So I decided, you know, the way to do this was to really understand who I’m serving.

Jason Resnick 0:24
Hey Feasters, welcome to Episode One of Season Seven of Live in the Feast. Season Seven, we’re talking your ideal client and not figuring that out by doing that customer avatar demographic results driven exercise either we’re going to hear from other experts in the marketplace that talk about how they’ve discovered their ideal client, what they struggled with, how it’s improved their business, and we’ll hear their ideal client as well. I want you to put on earbuds Put on your Bluetooth, whatever it is, and grab a listen to season seven because it’s going to be outstanding. And I’m not a hype man either, but yet, I’ve interviewed all of these people and each and every single time I’ve learned something new. So I’m Jason Resnick aka rezzz, helping you grow your business by having a conversation with someone who’s been there had success and built a business designed around the life. They want to live that live in the feast. If this is your first time listening, hit that subscribe button so that you get notified every time a new episode drops. Live in the feast is in your podcast app of choice. If it’s not let me know I’ll get it there. If you’ve heard the show before. leave us a review on iTunes or drop us a comment in breaker or cast box. Today’s co host is Jürgen Strauss. I’ve known Jürgen in several different online community He’s over the past several years. So it’s an absolute pleasure to finally bring him on and have a chat with him. You’re doing is founder and chief innovator of Innovabiz, who helps coaches and consultants build professional credibility and connection with their ideal clients. So of course, I had to have him on the show. He hosts the Innovabuzz podcast and tales of marketing transformation show. In this episode, we dive into how to use empathy maps not to just discover and understand your ideal client, but also how you can use this exercise on leads you were talking with right now, we also dive into how having a non ideal client in your business can throw the wheels off of everything you are trying to accomplish. Eat up your profits and give you bad referrals. And finally, why it’s so important to pay attention to the external factors and people That your ideal client is paying attention to. This is an absolute great one. So here’s Jurgen and myself.

Hey, Feasters. Welcome to another episode of live in the feast. And this episode I’m really excited for Juergen we’ve known each other in a similar circle for years now. And I feel like you know, we always keep crossing paths, right like even in like outside of the circles it comes back and all that stuff. So I’m really excited for you to come on because the ideal client and that’s what we’re talking about and season seven here is a difficult thing because a lot of football behind it. There’s a lot of how do you do it? How does it fit my business and then there’s the whole like limiting beliefs of that doesn’t work for me. And we all know as far as businesses go, you know, nobody a snowflake, right like we know what makes us a good recipe for a successful business. And so I’m really excited to have you again here and talk about how to define an ideal client and maybe a little bit different than you think. You’re going to welcome.

Jürgen Strauss 4:15
Thanks, Jason. It’s a real privilege to be with you. And yeah, like you said, we’ve crossed paths so many times. So it’s a privilege to be on your podcast on the feast within the face. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Jason Resnick 4:28
And so, before we dive into it, why don’t you share with the listeners here who your ideal client is for your business?

Jürgen Strauss 4:37
Okay, well, my ideal client is a business coach or a consultant that is in the technical space. So my background is from the chemical manufacturing industry. And the you know, that’s that’s where I’ve developed my stripes if you like, and so I think I understand that People, but the business coaches and consultants, for me are the ones that really make a difference in that space. And they’re the ones that I think I can help to market themselves to connect with their ideal clients and and build professional credibility with them so that they can make a difference to more of their ideal clients. So I’ve got a profile that is coach Sam, and I’ve got a photo of a lady. And when I visualize her photo, it brings up in my mind all the attributes of what I’ve put together as my ideal client definition.

Jason Resnick 5:38
So first, what made you I guess, I mean, obviously, you had the experience, but what made you go into that space specifically?

Jürgen Strauss 5:46
Well, it was really a need I had for myself. So like a lot of people that go into business early on, with experience in lots of different areas. I thought, well, I can do this and I can do that and I can do the other thing. So As I was growing my business, I would take anybody on board and you know, people say are can you build a website? Yeah, I can do that. Can you? Can you do Facebook advertising? Yeah, I can do that. And at some point, you come to the realization that you’re just running yourself ragged, you’re not an expert on anything. So that is a real risk of disappointing some customers, because you’re doing things that whilst you know how to do it, you’re not necessarily the expert. So you’re not doing best practice. And if you aspire to do best practice, they’ve got to invest a lot of time in learning that so you end up either disappointing customers or investing huge amounts of time in learning a whole lot of different things. So you lacking focus. And it dawned on me that a couple of points that every time I focused more narrow, that my business actually grew. And I was happier doing that because now I was focused on a smaller pool of expertise that I could then invest time in really becoming good at and also serving those customers. So I decided, you know, the way to do this was to really understand who I’m serving. And so I explored all the stuff around customer avatars. I mean, there’s lots of things there from the digital marketing School of Ryan dice. And I’ve done some really good things. But it seemed to me to be coming from a consumer, you know, the retail space, almost a consumer space. So, who is the ideal client? You know, she’s a woman in her 40s. And she shops in the big department stores and she likes luxury goods and so on. I thought, well, you know, that’s not really helpful to me. I mean, it’s, it’s good to know, but it’s not really that helpful to me. So I started digging into, you know, how can you learn more about them? Because, for me, marketing and then building a business or building, building a relationship with a client is just that it’s a relationship because you know, as we all know, people do business with those We like all we all do business with those we know, like and trust. So how do you get that know, like and trust factor. So really, if you can get some of that know, really up front, so that when you recognize a person that fits that profile and you start to talk to them in their language, you start to talk about their aspirations about their needs, about their frustrations, then you get this aha moment. Yeah, that’s exactly what my problem is, or, yes, that’s, that’s exactly what annoys me about this particular thing. Then you’ve started already you’ve you’ve already got through that no barrier, and then you work on the like, trust.

Jason Resnick 8:40
So you mentioned that and I think that’s what a lot of people struggle with. I know I did for myself was that. You mentioned that when you decided to narrow your focus, you saw positive results in doing that, and each time and then that’s kind of what unpacked all of the rest of it. What was that? First time that Can you recall even like, what was that first time that you said, hey, look, if I just focus on this one thing, let’s just see what happens. I mean it. Was it as simple as that, or did somebody say, hey, you doing great work over in this space and these types of people? Why don’t you just focus in on that habit that first time happened for you?

Jürgen Strauss 9:22
The first time was probably not a big aha moment. And there might have been a series of, of little things. But back about six years ago, we took six weeks off, and I had a team running the business while I was away, and I said, Look, I want to take a holiday. I’ll probably check emails once a week. But here’s how we’re going to run the business in that time. And there are a few things that fell off the rails there. And one of the things that fell off the rails was a guy that we would you know, it was one of my first customers and, and I kind of kept him on, because I felt some obligation. And it was a website build now I’m not a website developer. So, you know, I got into websites, because that’s what people were looking for at the time. I started off as a marketing consultant, I still am a marketing consultant. But at the time, I really struggled to sell that as a service, the marketing part of it. But people wanted to buy websites. So I took this guy and said, Yes, I’ll build a website for you, and then tried to bring the marketing part in the back end of that. But he was the sort of guy that was very demanding, he didn’t really pay me much, because he was one of my early customers. And I didn’t really know how to price my services that well. And during this time I was away. He started getting very demanding and pushing my team around. And of course, they were not in a position to push back. So they essentially, you know, he’d ask, you know, can you change this thing on the website, so they’d change it? And they’d change it in a way that made sense to them. And he didn’t come back and he said, Yes, you’ve changed what I asked you to change. But you’ve also changed these other things, which I had to change to create Make it work. But I didn’t want those other things changed. And so they’d be all this thing. So yeah, and they, he essentially hijacked the team for a period of time, probably went a week until I got to my emails that week, and then kind of gave them some further instruction. So there are a couple of thing, lessons for me out of that, I thought, he’s not a client, I really want anymore, but you know, taking up my time, he’s, in that example, costing my team time and drawing them away from the more high value clients. So that was probably the first time I sort of realized that, you know, there’s, there’s clients that are not a good match for me, when I’m not a good match for them. So how do I figure that out? Who am I a good match for because I really need to be marketing to that. And somebody said something interesting to me the other day, and I’ve never really thought of it in this way. If you have clients like that, that generally don’t want but you do your best because you’re a good person and you know, you want to do good work. You do your best to Serve them. So they go away until similar clients like that, hey, yoga is a great guy, he does all this for me bent over backwards every time I’m really demanding. But every time I sort of demand more of him, he gives more. So go and work with yoga and so you attract more of those clients. Absolutely. So, you know, unconsciously I guess at the time, I thought, you know, I’ve got to get rid of this person, because otherwise I attract more. I knew that. But, you know, recently, somebody explained it to me in that way. And I thought, Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Jason Resnick 12:31
Yeah, I mean, I think for me that I had a similar story where I had a bad client. I mean, there weren’t bad people, it was just not a good fit for us. And very, very much a very similar story. Actually, it was a membership website that I was building from them from scratch and was in a space that I that I had no knowledge of, you know, of their customers, those sort of things and it was like, Hey, we want to change the footer to be this okay. So if you want me to fit that in Then I’m gonna have to move some stuff. Move some stuff around there like but reading one that I’m like, well then how do you get fit this stuff? There was just this, this constant tug of war all the time. And I was just like, you know, I don’t want to be working with this kind of customer And to your point there. Yeah, exactly. And that’s what was happening to me like I thought I was getting good referrals like, hey, people are referring me business all the time, but they’re referring me bad clients bad projects. I don’t want to work with these kind of people. Right. And so yeah, it was first time I started to really narrow my focus on who to work with, it was very much like identifying a bad client. While that one was right in my face over the years. I said, Okay, well there. Here’s a trait of a client that I don’t really like. So let me see if I could try to filter that up so that I don’t work with those kind of clients moving forward. What sort of exercise or what sort of exploration for you in your business? Did you go through To define your ideal client, because you said that the standard like hey 35 to 50 demographic of women and you know, they like to buy these sort of things was consumer base and I, I agree wholeheartedly that for me if I was selling products, they like that I would ship to people. Yes, I would that that makes sense. But as a service based businesses, we could be women owned, it could be men owned, it could be different ages. So how did you work through that exercise of your ideal client?

Jürgen Strauss 14:33
Well, it kind of evolved over a couple of years really. I took the those typical avatar things and I thought, well, it’s good to know those things, because that gives you some conversation topics to talk with the person. But then what else do I really need to know? And I started to think about that and then I built some worksheets around what are their needs? How do I understand Yeah, what they need and Who influences and where they hang out? Those were sort of things I was thinking of, because whether hangouts important because that’s where I’ve got to go to get my message to them, who influences them is important because I can go to the influences and share my message there as well. And also, when I speak with my ideal client, I know that they’re listening to other people as well. So if I know who those other people are, I can look at those messages that they’re getting from their influences. And also, what are their needs is a really important one. So I started building that out. And in while I was doing that, I was also doing a lot of training on mindset and psychology and communicating with people. So I’ve done a lot of NLP training that, you know, focuses very much on how do you communicate with people and one of the core philosophies is that the response you get is dictated by your communication. So you actually own the communication The meaning of the response you get. So for example, if I pitch to somebody and they say, no, it’s on me, you know, yes, it could be that it’s not a good fit. But if it if I’m convinced it’s a good fit, and they’ve said no, then it’s because my communication to them didn’t hit the mark. So looking at that, so how can I really prepare myself well, that my communication is the best it can be. And so then I started looking at what drives the person. And I discovered these empathy maps. Now empathy maps are something that was developed by a company called x plane, I think the guy’s name is David gray. And I took that, and I really liked how that was laid out. And I took that and, and started playing with it. And now we do this exercise where we take the empathy map, and we actually draw things on there and we get clients to be really creative about that. And we go through the exercise based on who’s your favorite client and clone your favorite client because one of the things I found as I was as this was evolving in my mind and I was working with people was, it was still very abstract. If I said to somebody, well, now we’re going to do this ideal client exercise. It was still very abstract and people struggle to verbalize it or struggle to articulate things about their ideal client. And there’s all bunch of questions we go through. But when I said, well, who’s your favorite client? Who do you have on board now that is working with you on you know, some of the core services you provide that you love doing, who you love working with? Who pays you on time? You really look forward to seeing like, the day before you go to bed that night, and you think tomorrow I’m seeing coach Sam, and I’m really excited because we’re going to be working on something who is that person? So then they’ve got a real person. And then we go through that empathy map exercise based on that real person. And the beauty of that, of course, is that there’s a lot of questions we asked where people will answer with war, I don’t really know. And then you have the opportunity to have a conversation with that person because they a client, and explore those things some more. So you build that learning. So that’s where it’s really powerful. And then we kind of take that and make it a little bit more generic. Because often people will say, Well, you know, there’s, there’s Joe is one of my favorite clients. I really love working with her. So we’ll build it on that. But I also love with working with Lisa. She’s another client I get on really well with and I love working with her. So Lisa and Joe are similar in a lot of ways, but there’s also some things that are different about them. So you kind of bring in those things and merge them together to form this new ideal client profile.

Jason Resnick 18:53
What I love hearing you’re going to talk about here is asking questions of your existing clients. And while the That may seem fairly obvious, it’s rarely done well. How do I know this? Well, because I did it myself. I also hear a lot of coaching clients not ask the tough questions. When I define my ideal client today, I’ve practiced this exercise time and time again on myself. So I asked the better questions. But if you’re starting out, there are questions that you may want to ask, but don’t fear that you are narrowing in market too much. You’re getting points out how every time he narrowed the field, his business grew. You’ll hear other stories this season that fall right in line with that as well. And I’ve seen firsthand with my own experience, if you want the questions, the worksheets, the exercises and the ability to create that ideal client, so that then you can be the go to resource and serve them with the best possible solution and create a business that’s referral with amazing client Coming to you over and over again, head on over to feast academy.com today, as a member, you’ll get the processes and templates not only to figure out your ideal client and those services, you’ll also learn how to figure out the price to put on those services. That makes it a complete no brainer for the client. That’s why I want to invite you to check out feast by using the code empathy. You can get your first month for only $20 feast is the community and resource hub for developers and designers ready to get off the project searching hamster wheel and actually run the business that they set out to build your business is not the same as everyone else. When you are a member of feast, you get personalized guidance for myself. It is absolutely essential for me to meet you where you are, to make sure that you’re getting the exact tools so that you don’t get lost in the shuffle. The moment you sign up, we’re going to have a chat, so that I could create a custom syllabus of resources inside of fees to meet you where you are. So if you want to stop chasing down that next project all the time, so that then you can start living your life, go to feast academy.com today, and use the code empathy at checkout for your first month for only $20. I want to dive a little bit more into the empathy map thing. But before we do, as always, I like to ask anyone coming onto the show what, what their defining moment in life so far is so what has been yours?

Jürgen Strauss 21:46
Yeah, well, I’ve probably got a half a dozen or so because I’ve been around for a while. I mean, the first ones for me that, you know, if I think through my life, I mean, when when my two kids were born, that was clearly a defining moment. Personally for both me and my wife, I mean, that was sort of big change in life. But it was also hugely joyous moment. And I remember particularly my daughter, she was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around the neck and was blue in the face. And I remember that because that was very scary for me. My wife didn’t actually know anything about that. But the midwife at the time was so wonderful, you know, I’ve never seen anybody move so fast, they cut the umbilical cord and and held the step upside down and she started breathing and then started screaming and then she cuddled up to mum and started cycling. So that’s fine. So you know that there was some defining moments. I guess on a personal level for me also, I traveled a lot internationally as I mentioned to you before we started recording and on one flight I was on. I was two hours out of Sydney coming home. And they told us that there was a device on board that they suspected was making explosive device. And so I had to have just over two hours of waiting to see whether something was going to happen. Which kind of got your reflecting about things. And I remember because I was only going into Sydney because I live near Melbourne, I was only going into Sydney because I was meeting my family to go on a holiday. And I remember the very first thought I had was I Damn, I’m gonna miss the holiday. So I stopped to think again, and I thought, Oh, that was kind of curious that I think that because I’m gonna miss the rest of everybody else’s life. Right. And of course, I started getting emotional, because you know, you think about the kids were eight and 10 I think at the time and you think I’m not going to see them grow up and know what becomes of them. So yeah, so that was kind of defining because after that, I probably chilled out a lot more and a lot of things that had bothered me beforehand, I decided that they weren’t really that important.

Jason Resnick 23:53
Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, that that’s interesting. I mean, I you know, I was working in New York City on 911 I was only 20 blocks from the Trade Center and there was points at which during that day because they locked down and you couldn’t even get off within that and and you know you would go to point like I went to the subway, they shut that down we are actually on the subway to get out on the last train and then they shut it down. Then it was like okay let’s there was no taxis anywhere and it’s just the early morning I was at work and like you know, it even was to a point where like before everything all happened or in between the two planes. My director was like nobody’s leaving the office of my crazy We’re under attack and I’m gone. I don’t care like there’s more important things in my life. If you want to fire me Go ahead. You know because that’s kind of how I felt I was just like, and I was a kid you know, I was in my early 20s but you know, it was like going from point A to point B and just basically trying to get off of Manhattan and debt in every which way. You getting to like that survival. But then it was like, Okay, my is it going to be? Is this just the beginning? Like, is it going to be much worse? Is there going to be a missile? Is there going to be, you know, legend you started your mind starts going everywhere and like, like I just started my life like, I don’t know what’s going to happen, you know? So yeah, it’s scary moment when you’re faced with like, almost like the mortality moment when it’s not expected I guess and I don’t know if anybody’s really ever expecting it, but it’s just, I could only imagine sitting on a plane and having that come over the loudspeaker I just where’s the parachute?

Unknown Speaker 25:36
Yeah, that’s right.

Jason Resnick 25:37
So these empathy maps because I haven’t heard about these things before. But you said a few things in there that I think are worth mentioning, again, is that, especially if you have clients, I mean, even if you just have two or three clients, and you’re just starting out, and that’s what I did, I talked to them. I basically just picked up the phone and I said, Hey, can I just talk to you for 10 or 15 minutes and I just wanted to find out Little bit more about, you know, who they were, why they bought from me why they stay on because, you know, I was doing retainer work at that time, you know, what is it about me that attracts me to them, you know, those sort of things. And so, you know, just even just having that conversation is like, you have beer. And I added, and I didn’t talk to every client, I just talked to the good ones that I want more of right. So I think that’s a good point there. But the empathy maps Can you can you describe a little bit of what that is and and how you use one?

Jürgen Strauss 26:33
Yeah. Okay. So if you imagine, I mean, I like to do it on a whiteboard, if you imagine a whiteboard in portrait layout. So you draw a line across the bottom so that the top part is a big square, and in the middle of the square you put a face and the way the empathy maps work there, have the side on profile of the face with the eyes to the right and the years to the left, and then you put an X Through so the face is in the middle, you put next through that and divide that top square into four triangles. And the right hand triangle where the is facing is the C part, the left hand triangle where the year is, is the here part. The top part is the sink and feel quarter and August. And the bottom part is the siren do. And so then what we do with what you do with the empathy map is you ask a whole bunch of questions around those titles. So for example, what is what is my ideal client see, so what does she see in her environment? What does that look like? What does she see? So for example, my ideal client, you know, she sees an audience because she presents a lot she sees an audience that’s alert, appreciative, sometimes clapping excited, because she’s a really good presenter, and she sees that audience. She also, you know, she sees her family. She’s very close to a family. She’s surrounded by friends. Family, she has children and grandchildren, she has a mother. And you kind of build up answers to that questions. And as I say, I like to do it to get people drawing because first of all it, it’s creative as well. Secondly, you know, the picture paints 1000 words, metaphor. So once people have drawn that, and I get them to explain what their sketch means, but then they can visualize that sketch and it brings up their whole story that you know, they tell about that. So then you after you’ve done see you move on to the here part. So this is what they’re hearing and so that’s, you know, who are they listening to? So who influences them? What are their friends tell them what are their clients tell them what is their partner tell them and which media channels do they listen to in that so it’s really what a lot of that is, the inputs that they hear and that influence them. And then we look at the sink and feel part and the sink and feel part is really important. When It’s all important, but I think this is where it starts to add some additional information that you probably don’t get with the normal avatar exercises. And this is where you get to what’s really important to you. And that starts to dig in to the lifestyle stuff. So you know, most people are in business because they want the business to serve them and give them the life that they want to live. So that’s where you start to explore, you know, those sort of things in more detail, and what sort of emotions today display what really moves them? And what would keep them awake at night. You know, what kind of dreams and aspirations do they have? And some of this stuff they don’t necessarily Express publicly. And this is where working with your favorite client, somebody that you do really know helps because you can make some judgment here based on what you observe of that person. And then you do the same do so this is you know, how do they actually Behave, what’s their attitude? What are they tell others. And in that one you start to really pay attention to, where’s the conflicts coming up now, and a lot of times, to me, particularly when I’m working with clients through this exercise, at that point, I start to see him on this disconnect here. And I went through this exercise with somebody, I’m coaching yesterday, and he just sent me an email. I just picked up an email just before I came on the call. And he said, Hello. He said, I’ve signed the client. And you know, yay, and thanks for your help. So what happened was, we were working through this exercise, and he was pitching to a new client and a new client and he thought he’d nailed this. And the new client had actually said, I love your product. Yes, I’m going to go ahead, but I hadn’t paid him. They hadn’t kind of gone ahead and booked the first session. And so he he was a bit frustrated. So we kind of went through this exercise with That client. And I walked him through that. Now there are a lot of I don’t know, because it’s a new client, and he doesn’t really have that strong relationship. And I said, Well, that’s all right. You know, we can add to that later as you get to know her. And he was having a conversation with her this morning. And we did this coaching yesterday. And I said, Well ask us some of these things, you know if it’s appropriate. And as we’ve got to the same do, I thought there’s a disconnect here? I said, there’s a disconnect. Because if she likes you, if she likes what you do, she knows that what you have is what she needs. But she’s procrastinating. She’s not hesitating. And yet, all of the other stuff that he told me, I said, She’s not a procrastinator, based on what you’ve told me. So there’s something going on there. And I suggested to him that in the call that they have, that first thing he does is confirm with her that hey, she really likes what he’s offering. It is a fit, and you know, challenge her to say no to that, because if she says no, then you might as well not waste your time or hers. But at the same time, I expect that from all of you told me that she’ll say yes. And if she says yes, then ask him this question. What’s holding you back right now? Why are we moving forward? So I don’t know exactly whether he did that and what the outcome, I know what the outcome is, whether he did that and what the answer to that question is, but that’s an example of what then can come up in terms of disconnect between, you know, what people are being influenced by what they’re thinking and feeling and their behavior. So yeah, so that’s the quadrant. And in the bottom bit that we divided off at in the first part, you divide that into and the left hand part of that is the pain and need section. And the right hand part is the transformation. So the pain and needs you do now because you’ve got this understanding what’s driving it customers, how they behave, what they say in here. So then you look at that so what’s what’s the biggest frustration What’s her biggest frustration? What obstacles stand between her and achieve The things that she wants to achieve or needs to achieve, what risks mochi fear taking right now. And you need to get very specific on that. Because the, you know, there might be a whole lot of things come up there, like she might want to have a product handbag, which is not relevant to this particular exercise. But she also might want to fill her training room for her next event in January. So that’s a real want that’s relevant here. And then you dig deeper into that I like to do a lot of the five why questions there? Well, why does she want to do that and, and kind of get the underlying needs and wants there which are often not articulated by the person. And then you look at the transformation, which is what will the customer gain by working with you? Which of those needs Can you address and help with? And also what does she truly want or need to achieve? So this is where the five wise can help and what’s also important is How does she measure that success? So what success look like specifically? And then you start to think of some of the strategies that she might use to achieve those goals and where you can help with those. That’s kind of the exercise.

Jason Resnick 34:14
Yeah, that that’s, that’s a great exercise. I like the fact that it’s not a one time exercise that you do this in a new lead coming into the business. Right. And so

Jürgen Strauss 34:23
yeah, and you keep adding, yeah, I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got one for Coach Sam, but I keep adding to that, but I’ll revisit that every now and then and just reflect on and then also, I could add something here because I haven’t covered that, you know, and then I know that from working with one of my good clients that there’s something there that’s not being addressed in the ideal client map.

Jason Resnick 34:44
Yeah. Now I like that I’m actually going to run that exercise myself through my business. So for you listening out there, if this this resonates with you or what you’re talking about here, he actually has a free marketing message. Mini class. And he says that it takes less than 30 minutes to work through, it’s free will link that up in the show notes for you. Go check it out. And you know, it’s, for me, I love these sort of exercises because it puts it down in black and white on paper. Like anytime I do these sort of exercises, I like to do pen and paper, like digital is great like that, you know, for a lot of things, but like, I feel like when, when you’re really trying to explore and brainstorm and even if it’s a whiteboard, you know, like, you sort of need that physical freedom to explore these potential rabbit holes that you had, like you said, Okay, well, we’re going to concentrate on this and then we’re going to go five wise and I use those five wise all the time. And sometimes, you know, clients can catch that I’m doing that. And it’s funny, they’ll be like, all right, fine. I get what you’re asking for and here it is, right. Is that something that you advocate for to like, you do it A physical whiteboard or a piece of paper?

Jürgen Strauss 36:02
Yeah, we do. When I’m working with clients, I like to do it on a physical whiteboard, or I’ve got some whiteboards in my office, or we do flip charts. And as I said earlier, I also encourage people to draw an outlet that challenges a lot of people. They say, I’m not an artist or anything. And I say, Well, you know, you should see my ideal client maps that I’ve done, because my stick figures, you probably won’t even recognize that their people but I’m probably the least artistic person in terms of drawing that you can ever meet. But I still force myself to do that. Because even though and I remember saying to somebody the other day, because we were looking at their ideal client map, and I said, Oh, that looks like a car. Remember what I said? It looks like but it was nothing like what it was actually intended. She came back and said, No, it’s this, which is fine, because to her, she knows what it means. Exactly, right. Yeah. And it conjures up all the meaning That is behind it when you draw it. So, yes, doing it as a physical representation either on a whiteboard or flip chart. And then you know, we you can use your mobile phone to take a photograph of what you’ve done. And then you’ve got a record of it.

Jason Resnick 37:14
Yeah, absolutely. Anytime I do anything like that, it’s always I take a photo of it, start my Google Photos, and I’m sure that it’s on Dropbox, make sure that it’s somewhere safe that I could always go to it. Yeah, I think that’s, I don’t know, it’s, for me. I mean, I still use you know, I have a physical notebook, you know, every day you know, and so like, the digital is great, but I just like to be able to do that free form text.

Jürgen Strauss 37:39
And I’ve got a set of colored fountain pens which I are using the physical things to them the good old Safari llama, llama Safari pins are lovely using those.

Jason Resnick 37:49
Yeah. So before I let you go, I want to be mindful of your time. I know it’s early there and probably can get started with work, but what’s up next for you? The next six to 12 months.

Jürgen Strauss 38:02
Well, we’ve, I’m going through a bit of a pivot again now in terms of focus. You know, I mentioned earlier that every time I do this focus, my business grows. And I’m seeing that happening again now, we’ve been doing the another buzz podcast for five years now. So five years this month, we’re at about 230 episodes, nearly Congrats. And we’ve got, you know, a really sound process down just like you have for yours that we’ve built because we really needed that to run it officially. I’ve efficiently. I’ve started a new podcast as well. And so a lot of people have come to me and said, You know, this podcasting thing is really fabulous. I’d like to get into it. How do I do that? So I’ve been running some workshops on podcasting. I’ve been producing podcasts for other people, I actually appear on another podcast to help the host of that podcast, express these thoughts more and dig deeper into his knowledge because he’s been, you know, presenting on his own and he kind of just touches on And then finished as the episode. In the past now we have a longer conversation of it. So I’m focusing a lot more on the podcasting aspect, but then also looking at the marketing of the podcasting. So bringing together again, the marketing background I have in the marketing knowledge I have, because with podcasting, only really 20% is production of the content, and all the technical backend and stuff, which people tend to focus on and see as a barrier. So we’ll help them do that. But the marketing of it is also important. So 80% of it is really marketing at looking at how can you grow your audience? And how can you spread your message wide? And we do we actually start off with this ideal client exercise, and we just rebranded or re label it as Who’s your ideal listener? Right?

Jason Resnick 39:46
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. And for those of you listening, your game has been so grateful if he’s starting to put together this training program for podcasts, I love podcasting. And if you want to support him in any sort of way, he’s got a special offer for us for anyone listening to this, and I’ll put that offer in the show notes for you go ahead and click over in, and you get lifetime membership for it. And for those that are listening this to this point, I thank you very much. I want to help you and I want you to support your gun and his effort as well. So if you write a review on this show, and screenshot it, send it to me and mention your son’s name for the first two people that do that. I’m going to buy you your membership to your guns, podcasting training. So go ahead and do that. I’m a huge, huge fan of podcasting. Obviously, I’ve I can see what it does for my business. I advocate anybody that is willing to pull up a microphone and press record, go ahead and do so especially if you have some knowledge and experience to share. So anybody that’s interested in this sort of training jump But I thank you again for that that offer as well. So,

Jürgen Strauss 41:03
thanks for your support. I’ll definitely put all

Jason Resnick 41:05
those links in the show notes anytime, anytime. So you’re good. Where can folks reach out and say, Thanks?

Unknown Speaker 41:13
Yeah, well, my websites innovabiz.com.au. And if you go to the Innovabuzz page there, you’ll see the Innovabuzz podcast, which features a whole lot of guests and we’ve got you coming on fairly soon. So there’s heaps of really interesting guests there and a lot of things that I learned and then implement in my business I get out of that podcast. So I’m really happy to share that with the world because that’s, that’s what really gives me a buzz to actually share their knowledge with the world. And I probably spend most of my time socially on LinkedIn on the social platforms these days. So just look for Jürgen Strauss or in over biz on LinkedIn and send me a message there.

Jason Resnick 41:54
Awesome and will obviously put all of those social links in the show notes as well. Here in Thanks for your time and experience today. really do appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 42:03
Thanks a lot, Jason,

Jason Resnick 42:04
and everyone listening. Until next time, short time to live in the feast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, I can speak for both you’re going to myself by saying that we’d love to hear the one takeaway that you got from this episode. It’s super simple in the podcast app of your choice, presumably this one, drop in a comment or review. Go ahead and share that takeaway in a tweet tag me at rez. That’s where three Z’s and I’ll be happy to pass that along to Juergen as well. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button as well, so that you’ll be the first to listen in next week when we’ll be back with Nathan Berry. Nathan is the founder of Convert Kit and I had the pleasure to break bread with him last spring NYC I learned how amazingly conscious he is of understanding who his customers are. We go deep into that and so much more. So until then your time to live in the feast.