Today on the Book More Show, I'm talking with Grant Gooding of Proof Positioning about the secrets of market research for small businesses.
Starting his career in mergers and acquisitions, Grant was a customer of market research provided by some large organizations. Realizing they were great at providing data but not insights into what the data practically meant, Grant started Proof to bridge that gap and provide actionable market-driven intelligence.
We focused our conversation on how market research can help small and medium-sized companies determine what questions matter when growing their business.
Having personally had preconceived ideas that market research was only an option for big companies with significant budgets, it was revealing to see just how accessible it is and how Proof's methodology marries with our approach to creating books.
Both aim to answer potential clients' most pressing questions and start a conversation.
There are a lot of valuable ideas here as you look to use a book to build your business.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
- Stuart and discuss the accessibility and utility of market research for small to medium-sized businesses.
- Grant shares his transition from consuming market research for mergers and acquisitions to founding Proof Positioning to demystify complex data for entrepreneurs.
- We highlight the importance of asking 'burning questions' to help businesses overcome barriers and propel growth.
- The conversation addresses the misconceptions surrounding market research and the value of an abductive approach over traditional inductive methods.
- Grant emphasizes the significance of emotionally charged messaging in influencing consumer choices and driving customer behavior.
- We explore the concept that emotional influence often outweighs logical reasoning in decision-making processes.
- The episode discusses how simplifying communication and resonating with customers on an emotional level can transform business strategies.
- Stuart talks about the counterintuitive discovery that clients using multiple solution providers can indicate the value of a business's niche expertise.
- We reflect on a real-life lesson from a business that failed after ignoring expert advice, stressing the importance of informed analysis and listening to research.
- The episode concludes with an invitation for audience engagement and a look at the resources provided for businesses to maximize their market research efforts.
LINKS
Grant Gooding - LinkedIn
Proof Positioning
Insights from Proof
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/160
How does your book idea score against the 8 book building blocks we use here all the time: Book Blueprint Scorecard
Titles & Outline Workshops: 90MinuteBooks.com/Workshops
Ready to get started: 90MinuteBooks.com
Questions/Feedback: Send us an email
Extra Credit Listening: MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com
EPISODE CHAPTERS
(0:00:01) - Market Research for Small Businesses
(0:07:23) - Simplifying Market Research Strategies
(0:16:58) - Understanding Emotional Decision Making in Business
(0:29:02) - Leveraging Market Research for Business Success
(0:34:40) - Understanding Customer Behavior and Decision-Making
(0:43:00) - Podcast Follow-Up and Future Plans
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Book More show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Grant Gooding. Grant, how you doing, buddy?
Grant: Very good how you doing bud.
Stuart: Good, good, okay, this one's going to be an interesting one. So we are usually talking with authors about their book and kind of frame and get around that. Grant and I were introduced through someone else on LinkedIn I think it was originally. I'll get Grant to do a proper introduction in a second, but I went into the conversation with the expectation that this would be an interesting connection. But really their business is too separated from what we do day to day. But in the conversation that really turned out not to be the case and I really wanted to get Grant on to share what they can do or their industry with our audience here, because I think it'll be an eye opener for the potential. So, saying that to the side for a second Grant, why don't you give an intro to you and then proof positioning and what the organization is?
Grant: Sure thanks. I just appreciate that you associate the word interesting with market research. In any capacity, I'll take that as a win, no matter what. No, I appreciate it. Yes, we're a market research company, which is just the sexiest business of all time, I think. Didn't do this on purpose came from the mergers and acquisitions world, so I was a business analyst and was a consumer of market research.
I had to consume market research in order to do my job and was always, to put it lightly a little disappointed in what was done, what I had to work with and how it would actually translate into helping me understand the businesses that I was charged with analyzing. So sort of you know. You ask the never intending to be an entrepreneur, really just asking stupid questions like why don't?
people do it and kind of ended up where we are, which is something I never would have expected, and we have a very unique capability and we it's kind of a fun gig. So we work with all kinds of different sizes of organizations and we've worked with the federal government and agencies and we worked with tiny little startups that are trying to make their way, and it's a fun gig, for sure.
Stuart: I think that's what was interesting, again, being a consumer of market research in a much smaller context than as a business analyst. But you see pieces around and about and have some perceived notion or preconceived notion on what that means, and most of the I guess it's the access to that information. Most of it is coming from big organizations who are trying to nudge people in one direction or another and there's a, I think the book is called. It's either the tiger that isn't or one of the undercover economists books in the UK. They were talking about the nudge unit in the UK which was a government body test with trying to nudge.
Right, yeah, yeah, I've got that kind of social change to nudge people in the direction that the policy wanted, and a lot of that was based off market research of what the current preconceptions were in the area that they were trying to nudge and then what message can they can send out. So this idea is we were talking that market research is something that's accessible to smaller organizations, not just ones with six, seven figure market research budgets. The audience here, as I mentioned, is mainly small, medium sized business owners or people who are responsible for kind of filling their own book I think that realtors fall into that camp financial advisors. What access do they have to either existing market research that's out there that maybe they can utilize and maybe think about it from the business analyst perspective. And then, moving into, okay, I'm a business owner, I'm launching a product or tweaking a service, and maybe I haven't even considered market research. But what's the easy entry into this world for those people?
Grant: Yeah, that's a good question. When we first started, we worked with bigger companies, because that's who had budget and that's who knew what market research was and sort of knew how to use it. And then we sort of realized like well, the only reason that market research is used by big organizations is because it's so unbelievably challenging to translate. That's the reason why. So what if we just made it simple to understand?
Stuart: and really anybody could use it.
Grant: And then we also had to come up with this like sort of good enough type of mentality there's no such thing as perfect research anyway, so why does that have to be so expensive? We utilized software and process a lot to be able to have really affordable prices that allow us to work with just about anybody really, which is part of the challenge of building any business really. But then applying it in a way that made sense to any type of business owner was challenge number two, and the way that we solved for that is we created something. Well, we didn't create that. It's not very creative, but we call it burning questions. We just say what do you want to know? I mean, most of the time no one knows what to do with market research because they get an industry report and it tells them macroeconomic or even microeconomic data and they're like, okay, what am I supposed to?
Stuart: do with. How do I turn this into?
Grant: money, yeah, and it's really hard for that into money, and so therefore it's probably not a good investment for a lot of companies to invest in that type of thing.
But if you have a company like ours that says, well, what's standing in your way from getting to the next stage of your business, there's something, there's a barrier that's keeping you from growing, and typically those barriers are mental things that we need to get past customers or customers and prospects. So why are they not buying this product? We made it for them, they told us they wanted it, we built it and now they're not buying it. So why are they not buying it? Or we thought we would take this existing product and move it into this market. That was really similar and we thought it would totally translate and it's not working. Like, should we abandon this or are we just missing a nuance? And the reality is most people are missing a nuance. They don't understand the competitive landscape. Like they don't understand.
Well, yes, your solution might work, but, like, say, your software business, your solution might work, but your biggest competitor might be Excel right, which is a free solution, so it's an available alternative and that might be good enough for them. So, even though your solution might make sense in your market, you may have very low probability of being able to sell it in the way that you thought you could. So we can analyze, well, what are the elements of Excel that they like and what are the weaknesses that exist there, and maybe we can translate the weaknesses into an emotional value proposition that will entice someone to buy your product. So we approach research in a way that's highly targeted towards whatever the business wants to get accomplished, and when we do it that way, it's substantially more valuable and people can take action. So when we combine like that sort of ethos with an affordable pricing model, it works.
It's like 10 years, so it's not like that we got there.
Stuart: Yeah, it looks like a quick journey when you look back, but in the depth of it it takes a long time to get that refined. Refined and approach and actually that's a great point because that probably goes further into the biases that, as an outsider, or preconceived notions that, as an outside, you think OK, market research it's almost just an execution of. I have these questions to ask and responsible for coming up with these questions and delivering the package of questions to someone who then just executes on it. They're interpreting the data at the back end and they're really refining that. What the problem is at the front end Is that perception of a lot of that lands with the business. Is that just the wrong perception or is that how it used to be, or is that what a lot of other big companies do? And then the difference that you're really making is that intelligence around it.
Grant: So it's true to some extent, but we do a lot of hand holding through the process, because you only know what you know, I mean there are a lot of companies that we work with. They're doing research for the first time ever. So, you know, they're just trying to figure out who are we thinking of, who our customers are. We think they like this Are we missing the boat or should we go? You know, and so what we'll hold on to is that we're going to be able to help guide them through.
Stuart: Well, you don't really want to know that. You really want to know this.
Grant: So this is the question that we should be asking and then we do all the translation into, like, the types of questions that need to ask. So here's a, here's something we figured out. Most research is done as far as, like, survey work and any type of interview or interpersonal type of research fall is typically done in correct and it's not. It's our natural instinct to engage in interpersonal communication, so it's inductive analysis. I ask you a question, you give me the answer.
Right, and then I'll take that answer and I'll process that answer with other answers and then I'll find the truth. Well, the reality is that's not a good way to do research at all, and the reason is because people lie, and not necessarily to be deceitful, right, they're not mean or trying to, you know, mess with you. They're giving you a socially acceptable answer, or something that they think you might want to hear, or just the saying the first thing that pops into their head. The nuance is what people buy. People don't buy big stuff, they buy small stuff, they buy the little nuances. That and the way that those little nuances make them feel, and those things can be really lost if you engage in interpersonal methodology for research.
So we use a methodology called abduction, which is sort of the exact opposite and well, not the exact opposite, but very different and it's more like crime scene investigation. We don't really want to ask any questions, we want to analyze every variable and then we'll reverse engineer the solution. So, as a, for instance, let's say, I want to know why someone is not buying a product. I don't, I may not even ask them that question, I may not which would be like why wouldn't you ask them why they're not buying it? They're like well, because they're going to, they're going to give me an answer that's not, oh, it's too expensive. Well, that's not true. Right Like that means you've not been able to provide strong emotional value and that value is not translated into a sale. So instead I want to analyze what's important to this person.
Who are they? What's their role? What's their what? Where are they in a buying matrix? Who are they? A decision maker, are they an influencer? And then I'm going to analyze all this stuff around them and then I can very accurately infer why they're not buying. And it's a little bit weird and uncomfortable for people and there's and it's very challenging for someone to be able to do that if they're not familiar with the methodology or how to do that analysis. So we kind of walk them through really, what do you want to know? We kind of handle all the nerdy back and stuff. We don't even tell them as much as I just told you.
Stuart: Right.
Grant: Right, they don't they don't they tonight yeah.
Yeah, and you know most people really don't care, and that's something we test, by the way. No one cares how the sausage is made. If you talk about what your business does and how it works, I assure you you are losing money If you do that because no one cares. We had an article we wrote called your customers don't care about you, where we analyze that mathematically and have very accurate results. And it's sadly true, no one cares. And so and then on the back end, all we have kind of this rule. There's like this rule of three.
I don't know where this came from, but I don't know who said this, but it's sort of true and brilliant in its simplicity and that's if you give someone three things to do, they'll do all three, and if you give them four, they'll do zero. So so we analyze all their burning questions. So why aren't they buying this product? Who are the? What's a competitive matrix look like? What should we be saying to them? Right, can we upsell them this product?
We analyze whatever they want and then we look at the biggest areas of opportunity that exists and then we make those recommendations at the end. So it's not just handing somebody a bunch of data, it's saying, hey, this is a, this is one of your questions. Here's the answer, and these are the three things that you should do in order to activate on that and and make and to change behavior. If you want to get someone to buy, do these three things and they will start buying. You know, and so you. If you put output like that, the average person will knows how to consume it. They can even hand it to someone else on their team that wasn't involved in the process and they know what to do.
Stuart: Yeah, it's actionable and useful. It's not just giving someone homework to go and interpret and add in another layer of, of, of perception or whatever position they're in. It's actually just giving them some steps that they can follow through and then test the results of those. Yeah.
Grant: It was getting simple stuff like that right that made a really big difference in, because I remember years ago we would give someone stuff that was right, we like here's the output, and they wouldn't do anything and we thought it was their fault. They're like I think it's our fault. I think we're not giving this to them in a way where they can understand it simply and easily take action. And you know the old rule of thumb where, like the most, the things with the most value are the most simple Right. And I was like we were too complicated so we just constantly try to.
Stuart: There's a need, and we've all found this as well. There is a need to over complicate things and try and give perceived value through complexity, whereas the reality is, if you can get their outputs as simple as possible and then, if they actually execute an action, take action on it. We have it with. So the book set up in most of our models is pick the single target market, decide what the quarter action is, what the next step is that you want them to do, and the book is then the mechanism for getting to this output, whether or not people read it or not, and the way that they get from A to B, from cover to cover, is just, almost.
Just think about the table of contents and if someone just saw that as signposts, is that communicating the right language? Is it giving them the friendly feeling? Is it moving them in that direction or taking that small next step? But it's so easy to get caught up in the production side of things, and when we look back at some of the completed jobs and if far too much of their effort has been on the from the point that they record the content on the production side, if that takes way longer than the getting to the content side, then it's a sign that I went a bit awry. And if there's, as an emails to, or not a thousand, but 10 emails just to do the production steps, which really should be one email, it's the effort is in the wrong place.
Grant: That's Anybody. How we trick ourselves into thinking that complexity equals greater value.
Stuart: Right, right yeah.
Grant: It's just opposite.
Stuart: Yeah, particularly now. I mean I think maybe 20, 30 years ago there might have been. When you think about, I mean, I can remember working in I think we're a similar age I'll use this if I'm aging but I can remember being in a job pre email. Someone had email addresses. There were no websites, it was all phone based stuff, and there was an element of that kind of technological transition where more really was more, as new things came up in new capabilities, landing pages, email sequences, chatbots, all of these things where more could be more.
I think there was an element of okay, we need to do new stuff, but now, at a stage where the noise is so great, there's so much stuff that could be done, you really need to simplify and then dial in on the stuff that moves the needle, which I think then ties back to what you're doing. A company, I imagine, would come to you with a problem and the answer could be 50 things Maybe they could have a good shot and narrowing it down to 25. But through the research, really finding the three that move the needle, I guess that's what makes the real difference. It's not just an academic exercise.
Grant: Yeah that's if you really nerd out about what research is. It's not if people say, well, they think we find the correct solution, but the reality is we try to give options that are all correct so the company can take the path that is most aligned with who they are. There are values and how they wanna grow their company. There's just one solution. We are actually a variable eliminator. So you're right. At any like, the most challenging business problems are the ones that have 50 correct solutions, and we just have a really interesting mechanism that allows us to say that's true, but these 46 aren't gonna yield you as much money, or they're just not. You know, the messaging stays like a word. So here's four options. All four of these are going to work to some extent. This one's gonna work better than all of them, but that doesn't mean you have to do that, and it's much more. This is something that was we took us a while to figure out as well, but we would always say well, let's really show the highest mathematically performing strategy intact.
Stuart: Right.
Grant: And again people wouldn't do them and we were like, well, why not? You're like, well, it's because people are people and they're gonna. You know it's like it's their company. They can burn it to the ground if they want. Give them options and let them make that. You know, make that justification on their own, because they may not wanna do that thing right.
Stuart: Maybe like that.
Grant: I don't like the way that feels no.
Stuart: That's the interesting piece, which almost ties into the whole market research. Element of it's the answers that people give if you're doing the direct asking unnecessarily, the answers that are the right answers or the answers that there are the truth. I guess giving people the three or four options that make sense. You don't know why someone doesn't picks one over another. It might be some completely unrelated business reason that they just don't wanna do it. But at least given them the options of the mathematically best answers, it means that they're more likely to be successful than anything else.
Grant: Well, the reason is the same reason that we do research in the first place, and that's people are different, right, you know? And in many ways we are barely different from our 13 year old selves. A lot of the social biases and beliefs that exist are concreted in our brain around the age of 13. So what kind of the product of our parents in many ways. And those beliefs are changed only through immersion or trauma. So immersion would be like college, for instance. You are in an immersive environment where you're there all the time and you're surrounded by different viewpoints and those viewpoints can change your belief system. Trauma, either emotional trauma or actual head trauma, can change your beliefs as well, but that's really it.
So we make irrational decisions. This is sort of the basis of our research is around emotional resonance testing, which I don't know if that's ever nerdy enough to go into. People care about that, but we didn't figure this out. But the fact of the matter is we make almost every decision, and I say almost because there are some detractor neuroscientists that believe approximately 3% of our decisions are made with our smart brain and those are the detractors.
Stuart: So those are the ones that are like we're not emotive creatures.
Grant: We don't make emotional. We don't make 100%. I personally believe approximately 100% of our decisions are made with our emotive brain, and part of the reason of that is I see irrational things all the time in our data that make absolutely no sense at all. But then also look at the world. You think we're a rational species. I mean, come on. I mean, basically, what happens is information comes into the amygdala of the brain, it's sent back to the limbic system, which is where our social belief system is, it's where a lot of our instincts are, and then we go.
If we don't understand something, it's too complicated. It's a very good rule of thumb for any business owner. If the information is too complicated, it will go from the decision making part of the brain up into here. So Antonio DeMascio, who's the most cited neuroscientist in history, now basically concluded that the brain, the frontal below here, which is what we do like engineering and mathematics with His estimation is that 0% of our decisions come out of that part of our brain. What happens is the limbic system talks to it when there's something complicated that doesn't understand it. It gives output back to the dumb emotional brain and then the emotional brain is like okay and it does whatever that's on the way.
If you're looking at a salad in a cheeseburger, I mean, look at human beings. We, you know it's just, and even you would say, oh well, the, if we chose the salad, that's a rational decision. But like, no, it's not. That's still emotional, Right, You're doing it because you want to improve yourself image, or you're doing it because you know what I mean. There's some emotive reason. You're doing that as well, or anyway. So we have a metric that allows us to identify if someone's making an emotional decision or if they're making a logical decision. And if they're making a logical decision, our advice is don't do that thing, Because you're literally talking to a part of the brain that is not going to output a decision. So use the emotionally resonant messages and you're going to be more successful is a mathematical certainty.
Stuart: So that's an interesting point Because when we say again, turn it back to the book audience, it's easy to think about the book as an academic project because all of our experiences around books being academic I mean particularly I mean maybe fiction at one end, but even fiction you go back to, like English lessons and having to write things in and get marked, so it's naturally sits in that camp.
And then when we're talking about how do people resonate and get that conversation going with people in order to they want to make the next step. We then layer on the point that we said before about everyone thinks they're more complicated is better and want to demonstrate how clever we are and how are things unique and different. But really the emotional connection to the problem and the emotional resolution triggers in the chapter titles that move people towards that next step, which is the call to action and the reach out and call me or fill out this form, whatever the next step is having that connected with emotional outcomes way more than technical solutions or superior solutions. That seems like it would be far more effective tool.
Grant: People are very frustrated when we show them that they're incredibly sophisticated fancy pants thing is irrelevant, but the fact that someone will answer their phone call, they're like that's the thing. The idea how long this took us to make that, yeah, like what are you doing for them that allows them to improve their life? And if you're not focused on that, you're focused on the wrong thing. I do think, speaking of that sort of targeted message, your books do that. Well, we always try to do what we call probably not all that appropriately punch somebody in the face. If you punch somebody in the face, you got their attention and there's no better way to do that than to have a highly specific, highly niche conversation.
The problem with how our dumb brain works is that anytime we're especially going to put a book out, I like that you talk about how it's like sort of an academic, like we throw note as an academic thing when textbooks are big and they cover lots of subjects.
But that's a four way like your brain wants to do that, because you're like well, if I'm going to write this book, but it's only right if I'm going to write a book and it's only going to talk about how to transition my business to my children, like, oh my God. But there's so much more like, let's just look at our client base, like that's just a part of our business model. Those are great clients, those legacy clients are great to have, but my God, look how much we're leaving on the table. So we should have chapters that are about other stuff too. And they start increasing the scope and increasing the scope and increasing the scope and the next thing you know, you got a textbook that no one cares about. So having a highly niche product that speaks to a very specific audience and punches them in the face will be substantially more effective than just poking a whole bunch of people.
Stuart: If I can get your phone number so we can send them, all our clients, through to you to reinforce that message first, that will go along.
Grant: It's not me, it's a physiological certainty, Like that's the way we work.
Stuart: It's so interesting I mean, tying back to that point of simplicity is the solution that everyone's looking for and almost the product, particularly, I think, with the majority of people that we're working with the books on a fiction product to a no one's buying a book to be entertained.
The job of work of the book isn't the words in the page. The job of work is to move people to the next step and help them get one step closer to the solution, whether they're doing that themselves or whether they need you to do that. So, with that in mind, making those steps as simple as possible and the fact that this piece of the puzzle is one in a multi-step stage, how do you find the clients that come to you and the work that they engage? Is the scope relatively constrained and they're trying to get you to fix one problem but maybe not the rest of the business? Or do a lot of people think about the emotional triggers that you're uncovering? They then look at that as information that can flow through to the rest of the business. Are they trying to fix just a marketing problem or just a product problem, when really the triggers are applicable across the board?
Grant: Most of the time, we're going to force them even if they don't want to look at a moralistic environment around the business.
Because like I said, it may not be the product, it may be how the market is looking at an available alternative and that could be devastating to the business. So we may look at, like the Excel example I gave, we may go all right. So the biggest issue people have with Excel when they're trying to solve this problem that your comprehensive software solves is X. So we know that we will have a higher mathematical probability to create interest if we talk about X. So that is not only a marketing solution but it's also a product of development solution, like when you're talking about your product. That needs to be the first thing. And, by the way, if you talk about a second thing and a third thing and a fourth thing, every time you do that you're actually decreasing the value in their head because they may not need that, like I just needed to do this and so to only talk about that one thing. And then you need to make sure that the product is engineered in a way that allows them to take advantage of that particular characteristic as soon as possible.
So it may be that we'll come out of this with a very comprehensive, very accurate messaging or marketing strategy, but it might touch several other instances of the business because we might go well everybody's. You know, we also see that everybody gets stuck at a certain point. You need to make sure that you have people that are there to answer phone calls, even if that has absolutely nothing to do with the business model. But we know people want that, so just give it to them. And we have to have customer service. People, like we don't even have customer service, to be like it's a sales tool, right, like so we never know what the heck is going to go on. But we, but you're definitely better off assessing the holistic environment, and if you're doing a study anyway, you can do it.
You just got to make sure that who you're working with knows that can analyze your entire unit to some extent and help you figure some of that stuff out.
Stuart: That piece you mentioned about the competitive analysis often being a kind of a reveal for people, in that they think they've engineered a perfect solution, but there's other products out there that they maybe haven't considered or they consider in a different way that the research then reveals that this is the real competitive and the pinch points. How often is it that people get that results as opposed to? I guess a lot of people go into it with pre-desived expectations of what the results are going to be before they actually come out. Typically are people surprised by the results or do they reinforce what they were thinking?
Grant: We'll do a few things. One of them we call a true share wallet, and what that does is it shows them who else their clients that are competitors or indirect competitors, who else they've hired.
It could be in management, consulting, it could be in software, it could be in accounting, it could be, in almost any business service in this type of example, and they're typically shocked to find out how high the number of their customers it's typically a very high. We delivered one this week and their actual share of what was 83%. So that means 83% of their customers were also using a direct competitor and it gives them a lot of like.
Their initial reaction is oh crap, and I got to stop them and go not. Oh crap, oh good. And they're like what do you mean? We're like well, look, what that means is what you do is important to that person, so that's a good thing. Just because they're using another solution provider does not mean they don't like you. It means they really like the thing and that's great.
You need more of those people and you shouldn't look at it as, oh, we're losing money and a share of wallets is other organization. You should be counting your lucky stars that you are able to identify customer that loves what you do so much that they're willing to hire multiple providers to do it. So that's typically a shock when we show people that analysis, because they don't. You know, it's the same thing is true for us. You know. Many of our especially larger customers have several market research providers that do various things. We have one very specific thing that we do really well, and so we do that thing. But they also like industry researchers and other types of things that they do, and I don't care, I love if they like research. I want to be friendly.
Stuart: Thank you. So, understanding that the industry, the solution is important to them, and then niching down to the real service that you can provide much better than the competitors, that's such a huge advantage and simplifies even when the business owners point of view, simplifies the whole model and way of thinking, because it does constrain the scope to being an expert in this area. And now you've evidence that the area is big enough, that there's a market there that you can serve. It's trying to be too many things to too many people. It just is very, it's very thin. The book business, I mean there's. We've been doing this for over 10 years now and in that time there's many competitors have come up, but our unique approach to the way that we do it is pretty distinct from the others and the others. If someone wants a New York Times bestseller, then our solution isn't best for them. It's a different offering.
Grant: Yeah, that was one of my favorite things about your brand is that you very much know who you are and you communicate it overtly. And one of my first takeaways is everybody, if we're being really honest with ourselves, a book is a solution to a mental barrier. It's. This person has credibility and they know what you're talking about. And you said it earlier about how it's a step to get someone to the next thing. It's exactly right. And if we're being honest with ourselves as potential authors, that is what we want. What else do we want? We want to make millions of dollars selling a book. It's not going to happen, but if it can get us in the door or provide some differentiation from other service providers, that's an insanely valuable tool.
And most people that would be a competitor of yours. I don't think they'd have the balls to say that, even though it's exactly true and it's precisely what the author is thinking in their head. They're just not saying it out loud. You know why? Because we lie right, and I said earlier, we lie Because we don't want to say hey, look, man, I don't really care if this is a New York Times, I don't care. I don't even care if people read it. I want them to read the title, see my name and I want them to go. This person has credibility. Therefore I'm going to take a meeting or therefore I'm going to have them come speak at my event. That's all I want. We don't say that to the book people Because it sounds like it's so socially acceptable. It is a white lie that hides the real nuance of the value of the product.
Stuart: Of what they're trying to do, that ability, I think, the discipline that you bring to the conversation around cutting to the chase of what's the actual outcome that we're interested in and understanding that everyone's what actually comes out of their mouth isn't necessarily the truth, even if it's not quite a lie, but that really is the ability to cut through to what's important and what moves the needle, and I think that was what really stood out in our early conversation and bridging the gap in my head at least, between market research which I'd always previously thought of as a big surveying people on the phone or on the street, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, through to a smaller project that's trying to answer one particular question or one particular set of questions that really moves the needle. On the business front, we started off by saying that market research or you were saying market research isn't the most interesting of subjects. But four minutes in and I can think of another 40 minutes worth of questions we should do a follow-up show, maybe a little bit further down the track, maybe actually maybe we'll get some feedback from the audience and pick up on some of their questions and follow up there. But one of the things I definitely wanted to touch on before we run out of time was this idea of the audience listening to this are going to be business owners in real locations dealing with 100 to 1000 real customers.
Their ability to use market research or to kick off a market research project where they may be trying to I don't even know that it's so much rolling out a brand new project, because we don't tend to deal with that many startup type organizations. It tends to be more organization to maybe try to pivot or get a better market message, kind of tie their message in with what they're doing. Are there any clients you've worked with before who are maybe at the end of the spectrum, who are real, not real businesses, but not big organizations with big budgets, but they're small organizations that are trying to fix one particular problem. I'm trying to put the scope of it in to really get the penny to drop for people as they listen to this and how it could resonate and work for them.
Grant: Yeah, even when we do work for big companies, we're typically only tackling one situation, so a lot of times we think of things in situational terms. By the way, a lot of people buy in situations as well, so it's an important distinction to make. When you're thinking about your customers, that's going to die a tribe, but people think like demographics and psychographics.
These are important things, but no, they're not. We think of them as coincidences. If it were that easy, we wouldn't need to come up with value propositions. We would just say dear female between the ages of 25 to 35, that's not. They happen to be like there's something about their life stage and how they view the world, or what they believe or what they're trying to accomplish that is driving them towards. Your product has nothing to do. The demographic characteristics are only a reasonable targeting mechanism that allows us to like easily wrap our head around. You know, we should go talk to this group of people and we're going to be more successful.
Stuart: Right.
Grant: But we're typically only tackling one kind of idea and that's how people work. It's not like when we meet someone they're like well, we're trying to grow and scale. You know, we're at we're $5 million right now and we're trying to get to 10. So here are the eight things that are keeping us from getting there. Most people don't even know that there's one thing that's really driving them nuts. They're like if we could just figure out why people aren't doing this, or if we could figure out how to get people to do this, we can get there.
So that's a type of that's the type of thing we typically work on is all right, well, we'll go tackle that for you. We'll get some stuff around the periphery, but that, if we tell you that answer, you'll know what to do. You either can't do anything right, it's uncontrollable variables and we can figure that out or we could say do this, do that, and you're the needle's going to start moving. So it is. It's not comprehensive. I would say that. But I think being comprehensive is a weakness because, again, if I gave you eight things to do, you're not going to do them all.
But, if I give you a solution to one thing that you think is really keeping you from growing, you're going to execute on it. That's start moving the needle.
Stuart: What about in terms of organizations or industries? So there are any. When you think about your ideal clients or the people you can help the best, are there any types of businesses or types of questions that they're trying to resolve that you can best help them with?
Grant: Yeah. So I would say somebody like me should know that answer. But the reality is no. If you have something that is keeping you from growing, moving your business to the next level, pivoting, launching a new product and you believe that the answer lies in understanding people and if you understand people you can be more successful then you're probably our target market and some which sounds weird you'd be like well, why wouldn't you think that's important? Some people don't. Some people we found we'll tell them exactly what to do. Here's a funny story.
We had a guy that had a business that had. It was a retail type of business. They had like 10 locations and the math was starting to not look so great. So we figured it out. We said this is what's going on, this is what you need to do. Here are the three things you need to do to course correct. And if you do those things, this will work. And I said but I do have bad news. I don't see another solution. So if you don't do this, you're probably it's probably going to be bad news.
He chose not to do it. He chose to do what he wanted, what he was thinking of doing before engaging in research, and it didn't work. I'm not going to tell you what business it was in, but he called me because he was in bankruptcy. And he called me and he said you know what? You told me what to do. I should my ego was big, I should have listened. I'd like to send you this. It was a very expensive product, which is what the company sold. I'll send you this as a way to say I'm sorry and I'm like you're not going to do that and but I was going to take it. And then he called me like a couple of weeks later and he goes. My lawyer just told me that I'm not allowed to give away any product. All of our assets are in bankruptcy, so I can't even do that. But it was so. People choose to ignore the research because we're human beings.
You can burn it down, do what you want.
Stuart: Right and with that, people are human beings and us as business owners fall into that category and our customers fall into that category and the partners that we work with fall into that category. So having a way of slicing through, which is, to a certain degree, what we try and do with the books, but it's nowhere near as it's a record and a kind of a direction that we try and push people, but it's still a record to have access to your tools and insights and the ability for you guys to go out there and actually test and get some data that supports that which, of the reckons we should pick it really downs in. So, hopefully, as people are listening to this they're already listening and on our list because they've got a predilection for being a little bit more targeted, going for that single target audience, understanding that there's stepping stones in the campaign. So to be able to now layer on a framework for the. It's the emotional decisions that people make that drive all of their decisions, on 97% of their decisions, depending which camp you're in, but all of the decisions in see taking those next steps.
I'm just really excited to be able to share this with people and give them the opportunity to learn more about what you guys do and hopefully it reinforces the message that we're giving in that the single target market is the way to go and specific single job of work is the best approach. But then, as I say, people now have a resource to reach out to you guys and engage you with when they've got that really pressing problem that they want to solve. So, with that being said, want to make sure that people do have access to you and the team over there. Where's a good place for people to check out more if they, as they resonate with this, and want to find out more?
Grant: Our company is called www.proofpositioning.com or you can Google my name, Grant Gooding. I have a weird name, which is good. There is another, Grant Gooding, that apparently is a very talented swimmer, I think in Virginia, maybe close to here. Anyway, I'm not a swimmer.
Stuart: On the other one, If they're Googling and see the picture of the guy in the trunks, it's not you.
Grant: I'll be the one, probably in the dress shirt, not in the, that would be.
Stuart: Good way of telling. Well, we'll put links to. I'll put links to your LinkedIn profile and the company site in the show notes, so that's definitely going to be the easiest way of people getting straight through. So make sure that people can find out. You mentioned before there was an article you wrote that was talking about the psychological element. So I'm guessing that's a lot of the articles, but one particularly Is that on the blog on the site. Is that where you put a lot of the content, or is that usually on LinkedIn?
Grant: That? What Are you talking about? The Atonio de Massio word?
Yeah, I think so that should be a book, in my opinion. No one has written that book. It's a very compelling story. Maybe in our follow-up I could talk more about the neuroscience behind our process and because it's kind of the whole thing. Yeah, so people do find it very intriguing. We reference his work, but there's like three books I can give you a link. There's like three books that he has written kind of in this space. He was a consciousness theory guy, but I can kind of give you those links. The one that was maybe the most famous is called this Car's Air, and that is where he basically proves out this idea that we are a motive in our decision-making and not logical.
Stuart: Okay, perfect. I'll put a link to that one as well, because sometimes people just want to read up more on the subject and progress today on actually making a decision as someone that has to read some of this stuff.
Grant: It is really hard to read the work of a neuroscientist. Right and for other neuroscientists, of which I have not one, and so even reading the executive summaries can be very painful.
Stuart: I'll tell you what, then, instead of killing people with that, if I'll jump around on the content that you guys have put out in the past and try and link to something a little bit more useful just talking about the high-level framework as a first step for people to take, so style six and links to the more useful, the less academic stuff in the show notes, we try to simplicity equals value.
Yeah, that definitely sounds like a better way, and then people can do their own. If they want to spend a weekend reading some academic stuff, they can do that elsewhere. Fantastic, as always, these podcasts go fast. It would be really interesting to follow up. This show is going to go out in a couple of weeks from the point that we record, so I'll gather some feedback and, if people got questions but as you're listening to this, really encourage headed over to the proof site, because not only is there the stepping stones for taking next steps, there's also some really interesting information on the approach and there's just some graphical representations that it's difficult to get across in the podcast. So definitely recommend people following through on those links as well. Thank you, buddy, it's really been a pleasure. As always, we'll cycle back for sure in a couple of months and I'll make sure that people can link through to you directly and really interested to hear what conversations come from it.
Grant: Do what I appreciate, you brother.
Stuart: Okay, well, take care, stay warm, and then we'll talk soon.
Grant: Thank you.