This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, what's up everybody? Hey, it's Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. I have been so enjoying this year bringing you lots of different questions and projects that our listeners are starting, just being able to kind of analyze or help people with struggles and challenges and such. And also just hear some really good reports as well. So super fun, very grateful for that.
Today we're gonna talk about marketing jiu-jitsu products. Jiu-jitsu, I got it right, I was worried about that. Specifically a brand started by one of our listeners in Argentina, she and her husband are just getting going. We'll hear more about her specific situation with her question, but also this is a good reminder to think about the values and beliefs of your ideal customer. It's not just what are their demographics, it's what do they believe, what resonates with them, what are their convictions, what is difficult for them and what is easy for them, all that kind of stuff.
So here's an example of that. I recently talked with a woman who is working with other women of color who are entrepreneurs. And in this case, we've got our demographics. It's easy to say, okay, well, we're looking at women of color who are starting a business or who have started a business. So that's your basic demographics.
But the psychographics or the values and beliefs go much deeper than that. So what might some of those be? Some of those might be just reflective of a fact that if you are a woman of color, you have different life experiences than white women or men of any background, right? So, you know, you might have like a tight knit community. You might kind of band together in some ways.
There might be this like scrappiness element, very hardworking, you know, I mean, these are just probably some superficial observations or not superficial, but just kind of top level, let's say. And, you know, if you really understand that community, then you're able to ask yourself, okay, let's go even further than that. And the more you understand, you know, the deep needs and, you know, values and beliefs, as I said, of your ideal customer, then the closer connection that you'll be able to make with them. And that is what's so valuable. That is far, far more valuable.
So when we talk about what we're talking about here today, Jiu Jitsu, anything like that. I mean, any community has shared beliefs and you want to kind of really drill into those as much as possible. Okay, so that's enough introduction for me. We've got a shout out to our sponsor, a little advertising message. I am so grateful for our advertisers as well.
And then we're gonna hear from Celeste. We're gonna talk about marketing these, once again, Jiu Jitsu products. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Celeste from Argentina. I've been listening to the show for a while now and I love it. Our side hustle is Run and Roll, a brand my husband and I developed for people who practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as he does, and people who run, as we both do.
We have our registered name, logo, original illustration, a webpage we both worked in, and Facebook and Instagram accounts. We began by printing T-shirts, magazine hats here at home while we started looking for manufacturers who could produce our designs for Rush Carson's pads for training. It was long and hard due to the economic crisis and the pandemic. But finally, the first items will arrive in a couple of weeks. We tried Facebook and Instagram ads, but they don't seem to reach the people we want to reach.
Goose, my husband, can't travel around to training academies and show our products as we had planned due to the current situation. My question is, how do you think we can make ourselves known? Stay safe, thanks, and greetings from the other end of the world. [Music]
Celeste, thank you so much for listening. From Argentina, thank you for the question.
I'm excited to hear about your project. Listeners, go and check out runnrollok.com. So that is runnrollok.com. It is in Spanish, but a lot of their products use English language. So as I said, check it out, it's pretty cool.
Now let's talk about this. I'm not too surprised that Facebook and Instagram ads aren't working now. So probably good to know that in the front end and not spend any more money. I also don't think it's terrible that Gus, her husband, isn't able to travel to training communities. I mean, that would be nice.
It would be good to do when it's possible again. But ultimately it's not really essential to reaching a lot of people. What I think needs to happen here is something more than just selling T-shirts. Even though the T-shirts are cool, like they have a great design, like I get the whole point of the message of like jiu-jitsu plus running, runnroll, et cetera. I just think it needs to become some kind of identity or message or mission.
And they're already on the right track to doing that. So it's not like they don't know that. I mean, I think that is what they're trying to do. But maybe a good comparison, a good comparison or role model would be to look at impossiblehq.com from a friend of mine, Joel Runyon. Joel's actually been featured on the podcast before.
So if you go to gear.impossiblehq.com, you can see all of the different T-shirts and stuff that he sells, gear.impossiblehq.com. And even there, like one of the taglines for his brand is, it's not just a company, it's a mission. So he understands that really well. And not just understands it, but has kind of implemented it or executed it well. 'Cause it's one thing of course to understand something and then another thing to make it happen.
So I would look at what he has done. Then I would think about the community that you want to serve. Are there forums and online groups for this community? I'm pretty sure that there are, I would assume, probably in Spanish and English and in other languages. So what can you do that goes beyond the T-shirts?
And I know you want to sell T-shirts, that's fine. But what can you do that actually gets people excited about, as I said, a message or a mission? Not necessarily a simple thing. There's not a simple answer or simple fix for it. But I think if you can figure it out, then that becomes much more powerful than just saying, okay, now how can we sell a dozen more T-shirts tomorrow or whatever it is.
So as I said, I love the idea. Please do let us know how it goes. And if you have any updates and we can feature it again in the future. All right, listeners, if you have a question or if you have a project we should know about and perhaps highlight to our global community of people doing all kinds of interesting things, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Give us some information.
We will see what we can do. We will continue to feature them throughout the rest of the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow those projects. I'm so grateful to be able to make this program for you every day. Be sure you're subscribed. Much more is coming up.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
