The other day, I was reading through an “ask me anything” discussion. For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s basically in the title. Someone, allegedly an expert, will take on a round of questions relating to their expertise from all-comers.
Naturally, this ask-me-anything discussion was filled with stupid questions and questions already answered. Such is the nature of the internet.
However, what occurred to me while reading it was anything but boring and stupid.
In fact, it was awesome. I’m going to share it with you right now in this article.
The Two Best Questions To Ask Of ANY Expert
Putting my silvertongued salesman’s hat on, I thought about what questions I would ask to get to the bottom of any niche quickly.
Now, assuming you’re asking an expert, you can only have a limited amount of questions, and they can’t be stupid. Stupid questions are ones you can get a quick search engine answer for and questions which will give a closed yes/no answer. An expert presumably won’t have unlimited time to answer your questions and will get annoyed, so you have a limited amount of questions to ask.
I picked two questions which form the basis of this exercise, and will cover almost any eventuality.
Here they are:
- “What would you tell a beginner to [your niche or discipline] if they wanted to become an expert and had unlimited time, resources and attention?”
- “What would you tell a beginner to [your niche or discipline] if they wanted to become an expert and had no time, money or life circumstances which got in their way at every possible turn?
With the answers to those two questions, you can build a matrix of every possible angle, niche and issue that would face any given target market. From this, you can build authority – and later a whole empire.
Let’s use an example.
The Two Questions Exercise In Action
Let’s take fitness as a good example for a market. It’s a horrid market; oversaturation, competition for everything and a range of products to promote that’ll make your village snake-oil salesman look as legitimate as the kindly old vicar that christened everyone’s grandkids.
In short, it’s a niche where you’re more likely to drain blood from a stone than create a profitable enterprise. Yet, using this simple two-question formula, we can unlock methods and niches which haven’t been explored yet… and it gets better in the next section.
Let’s assume we’ve got Billy the Billionaire. He wants to hop on the Peter Thiel “live forever” bandwagon, and his team of servants are willing to help him. Nothing is out of bounds here, but like all new billionaires he’s got a hunch from spending too much time at the computer and he’s also addicted to Starbucks coffee.
How do you train him to be the best human he can be?
Now, take Lisa. Life has really not gone her way recently. Her husband turned out to be an adulterous crack addict who blew their life savings on drugs and gambling addictions, before running off with his dealer’s girlfriend. Now, luckily, the police sorted out the murderous ex-con boyfriend, but Lisa is left with debt, three kids to feed and no real support from anyone. She’s working two jobs just to make ends meet and so she has no time, energy or money to spend on the ultimate fitness program.
How would you train her, knowing her limitations?
Let’s Add Some More Thought-Food
Now, most people don’t ever get that far into target market stuff. They’ll just think, “I want to start a fitness-bro company and sell protein powders to people who want to get JACKED.”
So, if you do the above exercise, you’re already further along than they are.
But we’re missing the major thing that goes into any sales material here: the motivation. The goal and the “new self” at the end of the tunnel is the most important part of any targeting.
So, to take the examples above; add some goals.
Billy the Billionaire might want:
- Big muscles
- To live forever
- To be slim
- Or turn into a woman and have a feminine figure (hey… it’s all legal nowadays)
- To fix the posture imbalance that got him bullied at school
- To run ten marathons in ten days
Remember, whatever his goal, the key here is to think he has unlimited resources; how do you address the issues?
Now, it’s incredibly likely you’ve got unique angles already, but the above unlimited resources mean that even if Lisa below has the exact same goals, the route to get there will be different.
For Lisa:
- She’s back on the dating market for the first time in years. She’s lonely and feels unattractive.
- She needs more energy despite having no sleep and no time
- Her physique has gone to hell because she eats McDonalds due to her limited schedule
- She can’t afford a gym membership
- On her off days, she’s still expected to play ball with her sons and carry her tree year old daughter around. This requires strength, endurance and a bunch of other stuff
Again, Lisa has limited resources, no time and bigger issues.
This means no shortcuts in your thinking.
Cutting It Short
I’m out of time, so I’ll cut this article short now. However, just going through the above exercise is enough to give you:
- Untapped target markets
- Research opportunities
- Branding opportunities
- Small niches which you can corner and build authority in
- Easy routes to tap into customers which people ignore
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who think of “the market” as the people they can immediately identify. In our example, it’s assuming that guys in their twenties are the only target for fitness stuff.
In reality, fifty year olds who’ve lost a step are a massive market (with more money) and women are an even bigger market for fitness.
Every single market has weird demographic issues like this… you just have to find them. This article will help you.