Momentum Podcast: 684

Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick)

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

One of the most powerful tools our company teaches entrepreneurs is how to own their avatar.

We talk about it all the time.

When you own your avatar, you become the defacto leader of the movement you are creating with your business.

In fact, one of the key steps in ascending the Billionaire Code very early on in your business is to get clear on who you are serving. Understanding your avatar, and owning it, can be one of the biggest shortcuts to growing and scaling your business.

In this episode, Tristan Swanwick, CEO of Swanwick Glasses, presents the most influential thing that has helped him grow his business, make a bigger impact, and unify his team around the mission of his company.

At a recent Charfen Summit, Tristan shares his experience in getting clear on his avatar using the systems and tools we teach businesses around the world.

https://billionairecode.com

Full Audio Transcript

This is the Momentum Podcast.

One of the most powerful tools our company teaches entrepreneurs is how to own their avatar. We talk about it all the time. When you own your avatar, you become the defacto leader of the movement you're creating with your business. In fact, one of the key steps to ascending the billionaire code very early on in your businesses to get clear on who you're serving, you do that by understanding your avatar and owning it. This can be one of the biggest shortcuts to growing and scaling your business.

In this episode of the Momentum Podcast, we're joined by Tristan Swanwick, CEO of Swanwick Glasses. At a recent Charfen Summit, Tristan shared his experience about getting clear on his avatar, using the systems and tools that we teach businesses around the world. He shared that this is one of the most impactful things that's helped him grow his business, make a bigger impact, and unify his team around the mission of his company. I hope you enjoy.

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast. Made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off, and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum, so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know. How while the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution. And we always will be. Tristan S.: So my name is Tristan Swanwick. I am the co-founder and CEO of Swanwick. Swanwick is the creator of Swannies Blue Light Blocking glasses, which I am wearing now. You may have seen a few people in the Charfen membership wearing Swannies, and you'll pretty much find it very difficult to see Alex not wearing Swannies. If you know that the funky orange glasses that Alex is always wearing, that is Swannies Blue Light Blocking glasses. Now Swannies filters out artificial blue light that causes pressure and noise such as eye strain, overstimulation, and sleep disturbance. I think Alex talks a bit about light and blue light and how it can affect cause pressure and noise in the self-care modules. So there's definitely some good content in there to check out. My company was founded in November 2015. Currently have a team of around 15, which sounds like a lot, but I would say that of them, six are full-timers, and then we have a lot 684 - Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick) Page 1 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jan 05, 2021 - view latest version here. of other part-timers and VA's and contractors who do various hours. And I'm pretty sure, Deanna, that late 2019 or so was when I first started. And I've certainly been following Alex for a long time before that as well. I wanted To go over my client-centric mission. So Swanwick helps health conscious entrepreneurs reduce pressure and noise and improve their sleep performance and productivity. Using our Swannies Blue Light Blocking glasses, entrepreneurs will show up more rested, present and focused in their personal and professional lives. We will know we're successful when the name Swannies is synonymous with Blue Light Blocking glasses. So The presentation I wanted to give is to talk a little bit about just how much of a game changer it's been for me to get clear on my avatar, and the importance of knowing and owning our avatar. It's the reason why I included the client-centric mission in the presentation, because using the Charfen tools to get clear on my avatar has been really valuable in helping me to nail down a really solid client-centric mission. And it's something that I use all of the time that the client-centric mission internal meetings, as well as when I'm dealing with other outside people as well. So the problem that I've had in the past is that the market targeting and avatar clarity content has helped me solve is that my business has been around since 2015, but it's only been very recently that we've actually begun to really understand our avatar and just how crucial it is to know and own your avatar. So the reason why I think that this is the case is because when we first launched in 2015, we had a great product, and we were really meeting a specific demand for a stylish pair of Blue Light Blocking glasses that actually work. And I can now see that that actually caused a long running problem is because we were relatively successful as a business, right from the beginning without actually having to know who our avatar was. I think the other reason that that happened is because we launched on Amazon and that is a very impersonal platform, and it comes with its own traffic. And you can really get away with not knowing who your avatar is and still be relatively successful. And I'm new to the business. This is the first time I've actually been involved in business. And I don't even really recall hearing the word avatar used in a marketing context until relatively recently. And even then I just thought it just sounded like some navel gazing marketing agency type of thing. So the problems that this has caused have been quite fundamental. One challenge we have as a company is that our product can be valuable to so many different types of people that we were constantly coming up with and being told new ones, and then testing marketing to those people. We appeal to so many different types of avatar, entrepreneurs, biohackers, IT workers, medical professionals, students, adults, kids, gamers, there's this so many different people who can benefit from it. But the problem is that we were killing ourselves trying to actually appeal to and to speak to all of those avatars. We wasted a lot of time, money and effort in trying to actually reach all of those different audiences. And while all of those types of people are potentially our 684 - Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick) Page 2 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jan 05, 2021 - view latest version here. customers, we weren't really focusing on our core advocates. So For years, I'd begun to realize that we had a problem, but only really had a vague idea of how to solve it. This is actually the first time, as I said, this is the first time I've been involved in business and marketing. So there was a gnawing feeling that something was missing, but I didn't really know how to actually fill that gap. At some point, someone suggested that it would be a good idea if we knew who our customers were, which seemed like a pretty logical thing at the time, that we should probably get an idea of who our core audience was. So we tried to actually do that by sending out Google Form surveys. The responses we got back suggested that our core customer base was middle-aged women, which seemed a bit strange to me. It seemed a bit counterintuitive, but we hadn't really done any proper avatar work, so we didn't know any better. So we just went with it. That led to a lot of wasted time and effort and money as well. And when I think back at it now, I, I just, I can't, it's quite embarrassing to think of how sort of like foolish we were to actually think that, you know, like just putting out Google surveys was actually going to help us really nail down our, our avatar. So I think that aha moment, the aha moment came for me relatively recently when Alex was doing some avatar training on one of the webinars. And he mentioned how that one of the reasons why people always keep coming up to him and talking about his podcast and saying, "Oh, when I first started listening to your podcast, it's like you were reading my mind." And that really resonated with me because that's how I first actually started following Alex. I'd met him in person a while beforehand, and then I started listening to his podcast, but it was the podcast that really hooked me. I'm not someone who listens to a lot of podcasts and I've never really been very excited about following other business and marketing experts, but something about Alex's podcast really hooked me, and Alex made the point that it was knowing his avatar so well and having done so much research into his avatar, that's the reason why people feel like that he's actually talking about their life because he knows how to speak to people so clearly. So once I had that aha moment, I then decided I was going to go in and really start digging into the market targeting and avatar training modules on the content. So once I'd consumed all that content, I then went about creating my draft avatar and summary. I'd already begun to realize that our background and early exposure meant that all of their initial support came from the entrepreneur and the biohacking world, which tend to be quite intertwined. My brother and co-founder James is very well connected in that world. So we were lucky to have some really high profile early supporters when we first launched. People like Ty Lopez, Ryan Moran, Dave Asprey, Ben Greenfield. And of course, Alex. So I was pretty confident that our avatar was an entrepreneurs, health conscious entrepreneurs who were interested in biohacking and personal performance. 684 - Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick) Page 3 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jan 05, 2021 - view latest version here. So yeah, I went and did that. The next thing that I did was there's just an example of I think some of the worksheets that came with the content. Don't worry about actually reading all of it, but for someone who hasn't gone through it yet, that's just an example of how I started doing up my draft avatar. So now that I had that draft avatar, I had to actually figure out a way to find a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and health conscious entrepreneurs to interview. Fortunately, I had a pretty good source of high performing entrepreneurs, and of course it was the Charfen community. So I was very lucky and grateful to have a bunch of members who were willing to jump on a call with me and do an avatar interview. Also very lucky and grateful that Alex and Deanna and the rest of the team have put up with me constantly pestering people to get on to do avatar interviews with me. I've done about 20 so far, and I can't speak highly enough about how valuable and enjoyable it's been. So there's a few things that I've been using it for. So I've done about 20 so far, and there's just been so much value to them. One, I'm using it as an opportunity to get testimonials. I'm come up with a whole bunch of new marketing hooks and ideas of benefits and use cases for the glasses. For example, we'd always focused predominantly on sleep as the main benefit of the glasses. But every time I spoke to someone on an avatar interview, the first thing they mentioned was the feeling that they got when they put the glasses on, someone said, "It was like my eyes saying thank you." Or like getting protection against this bombardment of light. So that gave me the idea that you probably needed to actually start testing out to start focusing on eyestrain and that particular benefit a little bit more than we had done in the past. So once I'd actually started doing work, going from within the Charfen community to get my avatar interviews, I've now started actually going out to my customer base. So what we've done is that we have essentially set up like an auto responder email so that whenever anyone actually spends anything more than say $300 on our website, automatically an email goes out to them just saying, "Hey, I'm Tristan, CEO, love to get a chance to know more about you." So on and so forth. And so far I've done about three or four of those. And again, it's just been really valuable because I've been able to actually confirm that I'm on the right track with my draft avatar, because the first three people I spoke to, all entrepreneurs. I'm getting excellent customer feedback on the product. And there's a big element of surprise and delight in there as well, in that these people are genuinely thrilled to hear from me and to feel like they're speaking to someone, the founder of the company or the CEO of the company. And I've realized that I think we need to do a better job of personalizing the people behind the brand, because as an e-commerce business, it's quite impersonal. People come to a site, they see a product they buy, there hasn't been a huge amount of personal interaction. So that's something that I want to try to actually get some more of. Other thing is I started actually starting to hear some very clear themes and common language that was being used in all of my avatars. There was certain lines that people had said, really good marketing 684 - Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick) Page 4 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jan 05, 2021 - view latest version here. book things like, "It felt like my eyes said thank you." "They're like noise canceling headphones for your eyes." And essentially what I've done now is I've grabbed all of those great common themes and languages and phrases, and I've compiled them all together. And I've taken all of the other avatar documents from Charfen. And now whenever we go and we work with external agencies, I automatically give them all of those documents. And when they say, "Oh, we just want to jump into a call to find out what your brand is all about." I say to them, "Read these documents first, and then we can talk." And it's a really good way to actually get a fast track on them actually understanding our brand. This is an example of a whole bunch of direct quotes from the transcripts of my avatar interviews. And I've gone in and I've highlighted the best lines. And again, when we work with copywriters, with Facebook Ads people, I just give them those highlighted sections there. And I say, just actually use those direct lines in the copy. So that the idea being that we can actually try to replicate that feeling that Alex has with the podcast, where people feel like we're actually talking about their own personal lives. Other things that I've done is I've started to incorporate it into our style guide, which I think has been really valuable as well. So other benefits, I can't show you data that conclusively proves that since I've been doing this process, that my business has grown, but what I can definitely say is that we've saved a lot of time, effort and money by not chasing too many rabbits. For example, we've known for a long time that gamers is actually a really big potential audience for us, but it's really clear that if you look at our avatar, and you look at the gamer avatar, it's very clear that they are completely different avatars. And every time I'm tempted to go chasing that market, I remind myself that I need to focus on the core avatar first. So it's helped me to avoid temptation to go off and start chasing more rabbits. So yeah, [inaudible 00:17:40] I've found there to be absolutely no downside to actually doing avatar interviews. I've found it really valuable to go through all of the avatar content and to do this process. I've made some amazing connections networking with the membership, and yeah, it's just been incredibly valuable. And of course, Deanna, you knew this was coming. If anyone else wants to do an avatar interview with me, I would absolutely love to be able to talk to you. And I also wanted to offer up myself as well if anyone needs me, feels that I could be a good avatar interview for them, very happy to do so. (silence) Speaker 2: Tristan's message is so incredible for entrepreneurs. Own your avatar, and you'll see your business grow. If you're ready to take some of those same steps that Tristan has taken in his business, understand your avatar, get hyper clear, and become the defacto leader of the movement you're trying to leave with your business. We're ready to help you. If you go to billionairecode.com right now, you'll be able to jump on a call with a member of our coaching team, and find out which of our memberships best fit the needs of your business right now. Let 684 - Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick) Page 5 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jan 05, 2021 - view latest version here. us show you the systems, processes, tools that we teach entrepreneurs to clarify who they're serving, understand their avatar, and own it like crazy. Go to billionairecode.com right now to get started. 684 - Avatar Clarity (With Tristan Swanwick) Page 6 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com

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