Hey there and happy Tuesday!

Today I am coming to you from my local library!

Why?

Well because my HOA decided to tear up my driveway and in the process, the jackhammer went right through my cable wire.

So, I was off the grid for a couple hours, and let me tell you…it’s a scary thing not being connected.

Especially for my business.

Yeah, I know, first world problems….

On top of that, a client and good friend of mine told me that one of the people in their gym is planning on leaving and starting up a competing gym nearby.

Not cool… very not cool.

And this got me thinking.

Life comes at you hard at times, and in business, someone can easily steal your ideas, copy your business model, rip off your training videos, etc.

So how do we protect ourselves and our business?

I truly believe that the lifeblood of any business is customers.

You need customers…

Your business needs customers…

Customers are the key.

If we protect our customers, in theory, we should be able to protect our business.

The question now becomes, how do we protect our customers? How do we protect them from our competitors, from people that rip off our ideas and steal our business models?

Do we build a huge ice wall to keep them out Game of Thrones style?

No, we can’t do that…

But what we can do is ask a question.

Asking your customers a question can be one of the most powerful ways to starting, growing, and protecting your business.

But you can’t just ask any question, you have to ask the right question.

Put it this way:

If you were to ask a person:

“What makes you happiest in your life?” vs. “What makes you the least happiest in your life?”

Which one do you think they will answer?

My money is on the second one.

People do not know what they want, but they know what they don’t want.

It is then our responsibility to flip the script on what they don’t want by creating offers, services, and experiences that stay away from what our customers do not want.

What we also need to do is make sure we leave the question open-ended.

We want to give our customers the ability to talk and express their ideas. If they write a sentence great, if they write a paragraph, even better. The point is that it is up to them to determine how much information they want to share.

We can then use this information to create more offers, more services. To change the language on our website so that it resonates with what they are already thinking inside their heads.

We use the customer’s language to create our ads, to create scripts for promotional material, to describe our business.

It begins to give our business a more “human” feel that allows others to connect and resonate.

That is how you begin to build trust – by listening to your customers and taking what they have to say into account.

That is more powerful than a huge ice wall….

Here are a few questions that will give you some eye-opening data and language:

• Please finish the sentence, “If I could just…”
• When it comes to X, what is the biggest challenge you are facing right now?
• When it comes to X, what do you not like?

These questions are tried and true. They come from huge marketing giants from the likes of Frank Kern and Ryan Levesque so they work.

But feel free to get creative with the questions.

Just remember, don’t focus on what customers want, focus on what they do not want and go from there.

Work on building that connection by speaking in their language and no matter what competitors tries to set up shop, or business partner leaves you, or if you’re left without the internet, your business will be protected because you focused on what matters – your customers.

Alright, that’s it for today, stay awesome!

-Oscar.

P.S. Tomorrow I am releasing a blog that talks about researching your market to really understand them but if you can’t wait till tomorrow, I have this great blog here “5 Way To Build A Profitable Online Business” that is worth the read!