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Camera Study

Lesson 3 from: The Art of Selling What You Make

Tara McMullin

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Lesson Info

3. Camera Study

Lesson Info

Camera Study

All right, let's, move on. Speaking of individual people, I'm going to invite you to take a trip today with the camera. A virtual camera. This is a virtual trip, a virtual safari with one person from your virtual focus groups. So take a look at that list that you just picked and grab one person out of there that you're to follow around for the day. We're gonna follow them around with a camera and you're going to take five snapshots, all right? And there just so happens that there are five people in this room, and so I'm going to ask each one of them to describe a snapshot out of their customers day as you guys at home are filling out your own five snapshots. So what do I mean by a snapshot? Basically it's two to three sentences or, you know, we've got artists in the audience you khun dried out as well of five different things that are happening in the day in the life of your customer that easy? Just imagine you were taking a picture of what your customers doing at five different times ...

during the day. The idea here is that we want to again get outside of our businesses perspective, because let me tell you one thing, your customers are not sitting at home with their credit cards, waiting to buy your product right, we all know this, but it could be very easy to forget our customers have busy lives doing all sorts of different things and so when we can get the whole picture of what that day looks like, what our customers are doing when they're not when they don't have their credit cards out ready to buy our work we can understand ways where we can kind of insert ourselves in their daily life a little bit better whether that's through a new product or whether that's threw us a different marketing message but that's why we do the camera study so we may not get through all five but maybe one or two lana, can I ask you for a snapshot in your customers like what did she say? What does your customers lifelike in look like in the morning? Perhaps? Uh, I think probably just getting ready for work is general okay that's usually my customer it's business people okay? Remember we're thinking of a specific person, the woman that I'm thinking of she actually had my jewelry and her wedding and her husband had a thai bar and she was wearing one of my necklaces fanta butt and she's a great great customer and fan, but she works in a hospital so that's assuming she gets up early in the morning and yeah really early probably I just she have kids okay, so it she's only responsible for getting herself ready? Yes, very good. Alright, um hardly up what? Um yeah, I can picture her getting really overwhelmed um by all the text messages that are happening of people wanting to hang out with her because she's such like a positive like giggling all the time, huh? Very silly. I don't think she understands a lot very blond, but she's amazing, though, is the most amazing soul you can feel in in a room she's just like lightens up the whole room, but I can see her like like trying to text everybody and dropping her in front of breaking it. Especially great signature. All the times of great pictured awesome. Okay, how about one more one more hubble, one from the internet. Do we have any camera studies coming in from the internet and he snapshot yet? Roger cole's wakes up, grabs phone checks. Instagram. Yeah, that is not unlike what I do in the way on dh excuse me and emily. Abby, early morning coffee work kids. Yeah. Marines prepared coffee entering in the car opening the house. Mrs tiffany, a mom racing to get kids dressed and ready at school. Cool on another thing I like tio kind of encourage people to do in this exercise is like the coffee example what kind of mug? What does that mutt look like? What color is it, what's the shape of it? Andi, trust yourself. You know, a lot of people say, well, I think I'm just projecting or I'm just guessing, no, you're not you're actually honing in on information that you have locked away in there. That's really helpful when it comes to creating, you know, merchandising for your business or marketing messages for your business have a very specific one if you want to hear, please. Celtic wizard says getting ready for work dealing with her teen on a fall break while driving to her job as a massage therapist. Perfect, really perfect that's what I want to see in a snapshot so hopefully by now, everybody's got five snapshots written down. I'm gonna ask you some questions about them. We're going to probably go through these fast, but a little quickly so what's on your customers to do list today and sasha would be the, I think, the ideal person to answer this one, but you know, our customers make these massive to do left, or maybe they don't, but we all have that mental list that we're trying to get accomplished during the day, but lots of our customers, I'm sure have notes scrawled everywhere as well my notes for the day end up everywhere summer on ever notes summer on post it notes lots of them are up in my head but our to do lists are a major window into the way our customers think what's important to them what we can help them with what desires they have and so think about what specifically is on your customers to do list today don't think about it necessarily in terms of your product in fact don't think about it in terms of your product think about it in terms of your customer from your customer's perspective what what are all those little peace is that they're trying to get accomplished today? Similarly, the next question is what is my customer celebrating today? What is my customer celebrating and way celebrate things all the time whether it's a small victory at work, whether it's you know that phone call made that we've been putting off whether it's something big and we go out to dinner to celebrate but there are all sorts of things that our customers are celebrating on a daily basis I want to know what those things are what do your customers celebrating today? Yeah alright, next question what relationships is your customer engaged in today? What relationships is your customer engaged in today? Each of our customers is trying to show up in different ways in different relationships maybe it's a spouse maybe it's with their children maybe it's with their boss maybe it's with their subordinates but all of our customers have relationships that there figuring out on a daily basis trying teo you know, trying to keep things together trying to portray the image that they want to portray write down what relationships on any given day this customer is dealing with and also how she's trying to show up in those relationships or how he's trying to show up in those relationships how does he want to be perceived what's the image that he's trying to put out there what's the feeling that uh she's trying to create with another person that's what relationships is he or she engaged in today let's get some sharing on those first three questions to do lists, celebrations and relationships let's start with anna okay scribbling sure. S oh my customer to do it I put down like farmers market like like local based aaron. So like she's going to the farmer's market she's where intercoms got a canvas bag she going then she's going to go to like the first store she's going to go to like an indie craft fair where she'll meet me and hopefully by tonight thing that kind of ties into the victories she's celebrating a new niece or nephew, I find that I cater to a lot of like aunties or new moms and then, or like scoring a unique vintage piece like something like that victory for her so and in relationships that she's engaged in auntie again or new mom also, I find that a lot of my people I give a lot of gifts to their coworkers so that's kind of a relationship. Gotcha! All right, let's, move on! Teo, the last question for today which is how is your customer trying to feel today? How does he or she want to feel let's move beyond words like happy I think we can all say we want to be happy what else do we want to feel? We feel rich. Do we want to feel successful? Do we want to feel flexible? Do we want to feel loved? How is your customer trying to feel today? What is she actively working towards cultivating and herself on the inside? What is she doing? That's helping her feel that way? Yes she's trying to feel come at and an okay where she is calm and okay where she is but that's a popular one as well. But yeah, that's great. But what she's doing is the opposite of trying to get there she's, just trying to do you like her only thing on the list is defined more things to put on the list gotcha. Yeah. That's a great insight that really tells you something about what's going on in her head and how you might be able to help out. Or it could be the starting point for figuring out how you want to help out. Sasha, how do your customers want to feel today? Um, I think independent and free and adventurous, independent, free and adventurous. I love it. And I just want to say that I think your to do list idea is really, really good. I collected, like, five thousand to do lists from people and it's, incredibly revealing what people are actually doing. So I was just thinking like, well, send out a fresh email to get people's real to do list because you learn so much, and you could also ask people for their lifeless there's the daily lesson on the life list. And you could really learn a lot about people's aspirations like, do they want to travel? Are get married or what is it that's their dream? Yeah, yeah, so I think we'll take some questions here for a couple minutes, but I just want to wrap up this first segment this morning by reminding you that the idea here is to unlock your social information about specific customers who are creating value really for your business as your creating value. For them and that by really honing in on all these crazy questions that I just asked you hope, believe you've discovered something already that's new that's, different, that's unexpected about your customer and that instead of thinking in terms of generalisations, instead of thinking about ah market that you're trying to target, you're really thinking about individual people who you can serve, who you can create for who you can create uist, and when you do that, it can really change the whole way. You approach your business the way you talk about it, products that you develop. So do we have any questions, ladies? Absolutely. I'm I'm kind of shocked how quickly the section has flown by so fabulous, but I did want teo read off one of the comments about this, the last question from shamir, a mark who says, I'm a musician and it seems that most of my audience wants to feel intoxicated. That was great, what a feeling you were around, yeah, yeah, it was so much imagery with that word, but just that single. Feeling and working to create a new image of that feeling, whether you're writing a description for a performance or for a new album or just the email that you're writing to send out as you know, just in the normal course of business keeping that feeling first and foremost in your mind that that's what your customer associates with you and the work that you're creating khun b really huge thumbs up yeah, good job for question, please okay? Lisa lavoy wants to know if you arm or in the start up phase with no customer history, how can you best approach the customer perspective or the most valued customer exercise? Great, really great question. So the first thing that you really want to think about is, you know, where could I find people? I think are you going to be interested in my product, who I think are going to be excited about what I create where the hanging out online almost everyone hangs out on facebook? Not everyone but almost everyone on facebook generally is a great place to start. Another thing that I recommend is and I had mentioned earlier emailing for introductions to friends of friends, but if you're really just starting off and you don't know, come up with an idea of who you think your customer might be and then send out essentially a math, a match making email to your friends family and say, I'm looking to meet people who meet this particular description could you send an introduction? I'd love to have coffee with her, I'd love teo, you know, meet up with him at the library and just have a discussion about, you know, a lot of the things that we talked about today, what's on his to do list, how is she trying to feel today that could be kind of awkward first conversation, but at the same time, hey, why not think of it as market research goes, well, that's exactly what it is on dh find out more about those people who take a second, make sure that this is the kind of person that you want to be targeting, at least to start on also understand that you know who these people are in your knowledge of them is going to evolve over time and so don't put a lot of pressure on yourself to get it right the first time in the start up phase, so much of the startup phase is actually figuring out who these people are and how you're going to serve them. I think, more than anything, that's the most important part of the start up face, you know, and in silicon valley, not too far from here, we call it customer development on dh, so it is a divvy developing process and so you got to be comfortable with that, but the third thing that I want to mention is that you know, we use social media and you'll hear social media talked a lot about in terms of outreach strategy going out and telling people about what you're doing about what you have for sale about why you do it, but one of the most underrated things I think that there is about social media is that social media can also be a listening device but instead of always always broadcasting instead spend some time every single day on facebook on twitter, on pinterest on instagram actually consuming the content that others air creating and thinking about it what does it mean about this particular person who might be your most valued customer that you know that she posted this status update or that she posted that picture? What does that mean? What does it say about what she trying to do today that day? What victories she's celebrating how she's trying to feel on dh so yeah it's going to take you a little bit longer because you might not have that information right at your fingertips, but there are really easy ways for you to figure this stuff out pretty quickly as well that's amazing e think I think that that's actually we're seeing a lot of people in the chat rooms who are in that new business they are still trying to figure out who this person is so that's really, really helpful so it's similar in the if you don't connect with the person who is yours your target audience perhaps so this is from skeeto who says I'm a fine jeweler who works with gold, platinum and diamonds I got this job as an apprentice when I was sixteen I'm from a very working class background and could never afford to buy the things that I make myself. How can I relate and get to know of my client who can? Yeah, so I've got fun homework for this person. What what's her name again? He toughs kita okay, skeets, I have super fun homework for you. What you need to do is go to a high end shopping mall and do some people watching go check out you know, whatever the high end super a supermarket shopping mall is where your wherever you're at make a trip, make a day trip another way you could do this is, you know, if you're near a kind of resort town or a boutique town, you know places that have boutique galleries that cater to this particular clientele take a day trip and go there for some serious people watching now don't just watch from the street or from, you know, the kind of middle aisles in the a shopping mall you need to actually go in and pay attention to the conversations that your potential customer is having with the people who work in the gallery or the booty, teak or the store. Listen for the things that they're talking about. What are they interested in in terms of the piece that they're looking at? What questions did they ask about the materials? Where did they say they're going to wear it? Why are they looking to shop that day? S o pay attention to that, but actually go out and do something serious people watching, but keep your ears open as well as your eyes on. Listen for a lot of the answers to these questions, it is difficult to try and market to a group that you I don't really feel like you have much connection, much alignment with but it's more than possible, and people have been doing it for well thousands of years, and I know that you can to just make an effort to watch the people that you believe are your ideal customer that you believe or your most valued customer and listen for what there, what what's important to them, so terror, we're going to take that first fifteen minute break, what are we going to talk about and learn when we come back? When we come back, my favorite part of the customer perspective process, we're going to go on talk about markets as conversations. We're gonna learn how people are already talking about what it is that you do, even if they're not talking specifically about what it is that you do. And we're going to learn howto, gather that imp information and use it to our advantage. So, that's, what segment to its today? Sounds great?

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

The Art of Earning.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

The Art of Selling What You Make.pdf
Indie Craft Show Guide_v12.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Ramona W
 

I came in on the rebroadcast. Tara is so AMAZING!!! She made me realize that I could take my product out of the box on how we think about selling our products into awesome creative ways to get my product out into the world. I purchased this course to refer back to in the uplifting style of selling that Tara brings to life. Tara is uplifting, energetic, optimistic giving you confidence in yourself and your product. Well worth the purchase!

a Creativelive Student
 

I loved this workshop. It gave me so many good actionable things to do to move my business forward. This is the 2nd course I've taken from Tara Gentile, and I highly recommend anything from her. She knows her stuff, and pushes you to build a community around your business to make it a sustainable and meaningful business. I also met a lot of wonderful ladies who are on similar journeys. I highly, HIGHLY recommend this course!

a Creativelive Student
 

Amazing workshop! Such a mass of useful information and ideas. I will be implementing them for the next year probably. It was wonderful that it was specifically geared towards selling what you make, not a lot else like this out there. I loved the format with the five entrepreneurs who asked specific questions and then were helped individually by Tara. She helped them to tailor an approach that fit exactly their business needs. Now I just have to get organized and start making it happen!

Student Work

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