The online dating advice space can be fairly sleazy. Self-proclaimed gurus promise the dating-challenged that they’ll quickly become pickup artists if they just follow the system and play the game.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered a female coach in the online dating space. Sarah Jones originally wanted to coach women with their courtship skills, but instead ended up as an apprentice to an ethical dating coach for men.
It was while working in this organization that Sarah discovered the type of men she enjoyed helping. They were men like her father, brothers, and guys she had dated — introverts.
From there, her coaching business Introverted Alpha was born. And Sarah credits her rapid success since launch on her genuine affection for her ideal clients.
Listen in to hear a process you can use to discover your own ideal client. Often the answer is right under your nose; you just have to do a bit of self exploration.
The Show Notes
Transcript
How to Discover Your Ideal Client, with Sarah Jones
Sarah Jones: I’m Sarah Jones. I help smart introverted men attract women naturally and I am unemployable.
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Brian Clark: The online dating advice space can be fairly sleazy. Self-proclaimed gurus promise the dating-challenged that they’ll quickly become pickup artists if they just follow the system and play the game.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered a female coach in the online dating space. Sarah Jones originally wanted to coach women with their courtship skills, but instead ended up as an apprentice to an ethical dating coach for men.
It was while working in this organization that Sarah discovered the type of men she enjoyed helping. They were men like her father, brothers, and guys she had dated — introverts.
From there, her coaching business Introverted Alpha was born. And Sarah credits her rapid success since launch on her genuine affection for her ideal clients.
Listen in to hear a process you can use to discover your own ideal client. Often the answer is right under your nose; you just have to do a bit of self exploration.
Sarah, how are you? Thanks for coming on the show.
Sarah Jones: Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here.
What Did You Do Before Starting Your Business?
Brian Clark: I was mentioning to you before we went on the air that I rarely respond to pitches for guests on the show, because they just don’t tend to interest me all that much. But you interested me right away, because you are a dating coach for men. I was not aware that that was a thing. I’m aware of sleazy pickup artist style stuff, which is really disturbing. But that is not you at all, I would imagine.
Before we get into the specifics of your business, tell us a little bit about your background before you started the business.
Sarah Jones: My background was actually in art and painting. My undergrad was in fine art. Soon after school, I started selling my work and I had a newsletter list and a business coach to help me sell my art. That was my first business.
The people I was hearing from on my list, they were saying that what I was doing felt so inspiring for them and it was actually impacting them. They told me a few stories, like they just saw nature differently and got more joy from nature (I painted abstract nature paintings), and they’d gotten out their art supplies again and started painting.
So I was like, “You know what? That really interests me even more than painting. I had a background before that and during that time, part-time, doing academic tutoring. I really loved one-on-one supporting people to do what they want to do.
Inspired by what my business coach was doing, I didn’t even know what coaching was, but I learned by having a coach. I ended up going to coaching school. And I learned there that I had to have a specific niche and solve a particular problem for a certain group of people. I didn’t know what that was going to be, but as I went through coaching school, my own dating life started really flourishing for the first time in my mid-20’s.
I had either been in a relationship that I just kind of fell into or I was not even dating at all before then. It was kind of those extremes, those things. All of a sudden, I started having so much fun dating and there were so many amazing men that I was meeting and it was like a whole new world. It’s like, “How can I teach other women how to do this? This is so much fun.
Then I was in a sales training call with a man — we ran a class together and I started coaching him, because I think I was coaching everybody back then. He really liked it and he really liked the dynamic and he asked me if I’d thought about coaching men. I think I had already thought about it, because that’s all I needed to hear to start pursuing that.
I had a business coach at the time who recommended that I apprentice as a dating coach for another dating coaching company. I didn’t really know much about online dating coaching. But he introduced me to this one dating coach and I met him and we hit it off and I was his head coach for over a year. I was his only coach. It’s kind of a joke at first, calling me his head coach.
Then we built out a small coaching team together. But I told him from day one, “I want to learn and understand the business, so I can go make my own and make you successful in the process. But that’s my intention, is to make my own. While I was working for him, I was coaching all these different men, and he didn’t have very much of a specific niche aside from just men that want to connect with women. He was not in the pickup artist scene, but he had friends who were, but he was not really.
Anyway, I talked to all kinds of guys and I learned over time through experience that the ones that I really clicked with and the ones that did the best with me were more introverted by nature. And they did not at all resonate with the pickup advice that was out there, which is “notches in a bedpost and very objectifying — not only for the women, but for the men, because it’s just saying, “All men want is getting laid. It’s so crass compared to what honestly the guys that I was talking to wanted, which was a real genuine connection, and to be their best and to self-actualize in the process of learning how to date for the first time.
Brian Clark: Yeah. So maybe as an introverted guy myself, that’s why I find the pickup artist thing so repulsive. That’s interesting.
Obviously from a marketing standpoint, you talked about understanding the importance of picking a discrete and defined group of people to talk to. What I say is you’ve got to find the who — who are you really trying to talk to? — and make that as specific as possible. And it seems like you did that incredibly well. I, again, would have never thought of dating advice specifically for introverted men, although now that I have, it makes a whole lot of sense.
What Is Your Background With Your Niche Customer?
Brian Clark: I was looking over your site copy and you tend to have this real affection for these type of men based on your background and families. Talk a little bit about that.
Sarah Jones: I actually grew up around mostly only introverted men, the engineering analytical mind and actually actual engineers, software engineers. Most of our clients are software engineers. And relationships I’ve been in, they’ve mostly been with software engineers. My dad was an engineer, my brother is an engineer. It’s a lot of engineers in my life and I’ve always loved them and I’ve always understood them and wanted the best for them. I just loved them. And so it really was natural to see that that’s who I was connecting with in the coaching.
Brian Clark: Yeah. So are you located in the Bay area?
Sarah Jones: I was and I am now in Alabama where I grew up en route to New York City where I’m moving in a couple months.
Brian Clark: Oh, right, this is online training. Anyway, I was about to say you were in the Mecca for your software engineering types.
Sarah Jones: Right. There are a lot of engineers in Silicon Valley and I was. And we did have a lot of San Francisco clients. But interestingly, I was just recently doing an analysis of where our best clients are, the ones that were most focused and brought a really good attitude and did really well, and where that was that really natural fit with Introverted Alpha.
It surprised me that they are mostly in even more northern than San Francisco coastal cities and into Canada. Toronto, Seattle, Boston and New York City — half of our best clients are in those cities, which I thought was really interesting.
But yeah, lots of guys in San Francisco and all over the States and also in Australia and Europe and whatnot.
How Did You Decide That These Were the People You Wanted to Help?
Brian Clark: Cool. So you have a background with your family and early dating life with introverted men that kind of created this affection for you, but it still took you a while and some experience and some interaction with people to find out that this was the group of people that you really wanted to help. Explain how you had the “aha moment. Or was it really just kind of a slow accumulation that led you to decide, “These are my people?
Sarah Jones: It was a slow accumulation with some pivotal moments. In 2014 spring, I took Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch course on how to make an online business. And in the summer is when I launched Introverted Alpha, and then I phased out of working with other dating coaches soon after that.
I was going to be a really good student. I was going to be really studious. I was going to go through all the modules in order and do all of the homework with a beginner’s mind. It was really funny, it took me awhile, where I was doing the homework about immersion and researching and all of this stuff, because I knew I wanted to do dating coaching for men, but it hadn’t crystallized to introverted men yet.
I was reading Reddit forums and all this stuff, and it took me several hours of research and a few immersion phone calls to realize, “Oh my God, I’ve been doing this for a year already and I already know. For whatever reason, it took me at least a couple of weeks to realize that I’d already had all this experience. I mean, hello, that’s what I had been doing. So I could reasonably move speedily through that part of the course, because I had already been doing that.
Then I posted in the Zero to Launch Facebook group a few different niches I was considering. And certainly one of them was introverted men. And as I wrote that, it kind of crystallized for me. Like, “Wow, I think I feel much more strongly about this group of guys than, let’s say, post-divorced or whatever other one I had on there.
Brian Clark: Yeah. It’s interesting. Sometimes the best money you can spend on a course is one that tells you you know what you’re doing, because sometimes that’s all we need is validation to go.
I can remember back in 2002, 2003, I was so self-taught, and then I took a course that seemed like it would be an extension of what I knew. And it turned out it was what I knew, just really well-positioned. But that was good money for me, because I’m like, “Yes, thank you. I needed that.
Sarah Jones: Yeah, totally. I had that many times. It’s really nice, it’s really worth it.
How Did You Go About Reaching Your Target Audience?
Brian Clark: Okay. So, now you knew who you wanted to communicate with, who you wanted to help, the problems that you wanted to solve. And I would say when it comes to dating, there could be a unique set of challenges for the introverted male compared to others perhaps. How did you then go about reaching those people?
Sarah Jones: I started by writing an ebook that I just thought was going to be like a little ebook. I thought it was going to be five pages and I just thought it was going to be something to get started. Well, I’m still using that ebook more than three years later on my site. It was initially 61 pages and I whittled it down to 22, it’s crisper and I still use it.
So many guys have said so many times to me that the title just really got them and the subtitle, it’s like all they wanted in life. The name of the ebook is Why The Pickup Artist Approach Doesn’t Work for Introverts and What Works Instead. And then the subtitle is Attracting an Amazing Girlfriend Starts with Finding Your Own Vibe. And they just go nuts over the title. It’s a long title, but they just go nuts over that.
So I had that and then I started writing some blog posts. I started doing a few guests posts and that’s how I started building my early traffic. I also did a few Facebook Ads as well, and I started the business. I put my site up in June, 2014 and by November, I was making a full-time income from my business.
What Is Your Experience in Targeting Your Customers Using Facebook?
Brian Clark: Excellent. I was thinking about Facebook targeting and wondering how easy or difficult it is to kind of laser in on your target customer. What was your experience with that?
Sarah Jones: Well, it’s pretty easy now. In fact, I’ve recently had another “aha moment. It’s like, “I get a 15-20x return on investment for Facebook Ads. Why am I not spending more on that? Because I’ve got it pretty well targeted. So, I do it.
I’ve been just noticing when they apply to speak with me – well, now they apply to speak with my team, but back in the day, they would speak with me. Then they filled out the application and I would notice how old they were, what cities they were in, what they did for a living, and also any other interest that they had as I got to know them, what were they into. So sometimes I would target by interest as well, but I always target by age and sometimes I leave the targeting for location more general.
Now I have it hyper specific to just certain cities, the four that I told you and several more, including San Francisco and Denver and some other ones that we have. Also, I’m very specific with their career, just software engineers. We work with a lot of guys that are not software engineers, obviously, but it’s just such a sure thing. It’s like half of our clients, like 27 in these four cities, are software engineers. And we work with clients in their 40’s and 50’s.
But in terms of Facebook Ads, I feel like if I just really focus on who I know is most likely, that most likely profile, not that we’re saying no to the other guys that are really good fits, but just that exact profile, certainly the engagement and the click through rate is crazy. It’s like 4 or 5% click through rate right now for my current Facebook Ad and a really 9 or 10 relevancy score.
So I’ve learned over the years and I just started with that mentality of like, “Let me learn who my guys are and focus on them.
You mentioned affection a few times and that’s completely true. Whenever I give business advice, I explain it like it’s like a love affair with your people, where you really love them, and you really care about them, and you want to connect with them, and it’s really from the heart. Then of course, part of that is that profile that’s more of the tangible things.
What I really enjoy doing is marrying from my heart with tangibles and having those be cohesive and together compared to it feeling cold or disconnected, which does not suit me. Thank goodness, I don’t have to do that.
Brian Clark: Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of the theme of this episode, which is really caring about your audience, which to me just seems like a no brainer, because I’m just not good at faking. I mean, I’m not good at all. And trust me, when you’re starting a business and you have some rough patches, ups and downs, what have you, if you really just kind of despise the people you’re trying to serve, you’re going to get burned out fast.
I just see this as two sides of the coin. Because as a copywriter, as a content marketer, as an entrepreneur, you have to understand almost better than they understand themselves who you’re trying to serve. And you’re doing that.
But the flip side of that is also that you have to care about them. I mean, I could be chasing big company dollars at the enterprise level, but I can’t stand those companies, number one, but I have a real affection for entrepreneurs and small business people. And that’s why over the last decade, that’s all we serve. You know, we’re not trying to be everything to everyone.
How Do You Go About Finding Your Ideal Client?
Brian Clark: So, I don’t know, maybe share some tips on this, because I think you should start there. I mean, it’s kind of a cliché to say, “Follow your passion, or, “Do what you love, kind of things. Because there are plenty of people who end up discovering what they actually do love and they had no idea until they start doing it. But I think there are lines where you can say, “Okay, not these people.
Do you think you should start by exclusion or do you think you should be trying to figure out what type of person you really enjoy?
Sarah Jones: Great question and great point, I totally agree. The less I can do anything with clichés, the better. Let’s have fresh language, fresh thoughts, because that’s the future and where things are headed. So being on the leading edge of that is nice rather than rehashing. I agree with you there.
What you’re saying reminds me of a line in Mike Michalowicz’s book The Pumpkin Plan, which I love and completely recommend. In fact, that is a really long answer to your question in my opinion, his whole book. It’s just actually a short book but longer than an answer. It’s fantastic. It’s about focusing on your top clients and doing everything for them.
Well, this one line in his book, he said that as he refined this and really understood this and implemented it, and he did serve businesses. It was a B2B business that he had, but he loved them and he said, “It’s basically like a mutual admiration society. We respected each other so much. It was like joy every day. I love that, because that’s how I feel, and that’s how we feel — my team and our clients. We respect and have so much affection for each other. It’s almost like sometimes I forget that other people may not be experiencing that, because it kind of feels really wild and consistently inspiring.
To get there, there are a couple of things that make it that. For one thing is values. I’m positioned very polar to the pickup artist. My whole thing, the ebook is why it doesn’t work for my guys. And a deep value that I have is integrity. Another one is genuineness. Those are very deep values for me.
I knew from my experience and just from having faith in the human race that there were men that also valued those things and they were feeling alone, because no one was speaking to them. These men felt like they were less than real men, because they didn’t just want to be physical with someone without having an emotional connection.
It doesn’t mean they have to be in a relationship for a long time. They can enjoy a beautiful adventure with someone, but at least they feel connected to that person. That was important to them. It’s important to me.
It was kind of scary in some ways to be so firm with my values, because I actually talked with someone who’s sort of on the edge between pickup but not really. And I told him about Introverted Alpha and what my intention was. And I said, “A lot of marketing and dating advice for men speaks to their base, to the base bottom level of what they can be and I just find that very disrespectful to them. I want to call out the best in them and inspire them to rise to the occasion. And now the guys you work with are already rising to the occasion. It’s just a matter of hooking them up with the resources to be able to do that well. They are actually really already awesome guys, because we’ve up-leveled who we work with over the course of these three years.
Anyway, I told him that and he said to me, “Oh, I wish that was possible, but it’s not. I was hoping that, I was trying that — me and my friends, we tried to market that way and it didn’t work. At the end of the day, all they want is easy sex. That’s all men want. It makes me really mad to even say that, because that’s not true. And it just makes me mad.
So I’m like, “Well, that is… I don’t know what I said to him. I don’t know, I think I just listened. But afterwards, that made me even more want to make sure that Introverted Alpha was in front of as many of the right guys as possible so that we could show them that that’s not how I see them. And that’s not how they are. So values — that was a values thing.
Then the second thing is synergy. How does it feel to talk together? How is our chemistry with just having a conversation and collaborating on something together? I think in any business, especially self-development, collaboration is important especially with coaching and self-development, which is what we do. That synergy really has to be there, in there. As far as synergy for me, I’m playful and fun and relaxed. I like to be those things. And our guys like to be around those things and like to be those things too. It doesn’t mean they have the same personality.
In fact, a lot of my team members are introverted, logical people, women and men. And I love it. We get along so well and they help balance me. But there’s that synergy. It doesn’t mean the same, it just means that you enjoy each other.
I do think it’s important to be bold about those things and who you are and what you want and being your best too. Because we all have parts of us that are how we are if we’re not in a great place and then how we are if we’re in an awesome place. So it’s self-actualization also.
It’s like I’m helping them self-actualize, then in the process, I must also self-actualize. It’s like we’re doing it together in our own ways. I’m doing it to communicate with them from a business perspective and they’re doing it to communicate with women. But then at the end of the day, the most satisfying part for all of us is the self-actualization part.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I’m so glad to hear you talk about expressing values, because it’s essential. It kills me when people say, “Oh, we can’t do that, or, “Oh, that would be bad. It’s interesting, because I say that everyone, not just you — you’re the one who chooses your audience. If you don’t choose your audience, you may end up with the wrong one.
What I mean by that is, in your case, you’re actually going after specific personality traits that make it easier I think for you to understand what they’re feeling and thinking and seeing and then speak to that. But even in broader niches like… I don’t know, I talk to entrepreneurs and freelancers, that’s very broad. Even if you’re only marketing to, say, freelance designers, that’s still a broad category.
So how do you differentiate and resonate with people within that field? Well, it’s by expressing your values, your core values.
This is not just something that’s tied to “personal branding or is some new thing in marketing, because the consummate example for me is Apple. Starting in 1984, they positioned themselves very distinctly for a certain type of person. And again, positioned themselves against how they characterized IBM, which was Big Brother at the beginning. You know, “The crazy ones that think different. And then even through the, “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC campaign, which was a brilliant, in my mind, execution of how to attract the right type of people or how to attract people who aspire to be a Mac person.
Sarah Jones: Yes, definitely. Then if you have the people that are that person, and then you have the people that aspire to be that person, that’s amazing.
Brian Clark: Yes, absolutely. That’s what it’s all about. Yet time and again, I tell people, “Don’t worry about the haters. Don’t worry about trolls. Just speak enthusiastically to those who you love and want to attract and ignore everyone else. But then people are like, “No, I can’t do that. And then they end up appealing to no one.
Sarah Jones: Exactly.
Brian Clark: So it’s either some of the right people or no one. That’s an easy choice.
I don’t understand how I’m going to keep preaching it until people just listen, because that’s what you have to do. So, yeah, that’s excellent advice. Thanks for sharing that.
How Did You Build Your Team?
Brian Clark: So it sounds like you started off on your own and now you have a team of people?
Sarah Jones: I do. When I started, I didn’t even think about that being one of the biggest joys of having a business. I guess I thought I would grow out of necessity at some point, but it wasn’t like an exciting thing for me. It was like having a merchant account. Actually, I do love Stripe.
But anyway, it was just a thing I had to do and it is so fulfilling and so necessary at this point. And it’s grown. I mean, this is my first actual business. I was selling my art before, but this is a business for three years. Everything I’ve done has been for the first time, hiring for the first time. My first hire I hired to basically abdicate all of marketing to her and that did not work out well and it didn’t last long. So I learned a lot through that.
My second hire is still with me today. It’s been more than two years now, two years and a quarter. She is fantastic. Really, she’s perfect for her role, for the business. And I just am convinced she’s like a perfect person. She just really is amazing. I know no one’s perfect, but Amy is. I love her.
It was so nice to be able to talk to her every morning when it was just us two — it was only us two for a year. We would talk every morning at nine o’clock and I would just tell her all the things I was thinking, which was a lot, oftentimes an hour. Great thing is she loves to listen and help analyze and pull data points and help me process through decisions.
It was exciting for her, it was exciting for me. And it was so valuable for me to have her be in it with me and really get it. And that we could collaborate together. It’s always been very collaborative just like that. It hasn’t ever felt top-down.
At the same time, I feel so respected and I’m so respected by her and my team. And in their minds, I’m the leader, no question. In my mind, I am the leader, because I’m taking care of them, and I’m supporting them and I’m leading the business. But it doesn’t feel top-down to me. It feels like we’re all around a table together.
I’m so happy that it works that way, but it has to be the right people that are down for that. I guess my very, very first hire wanted to be extremely independent and I did abdicate that whole area. So that didn’t work out well.
Then I sort of hired someone else briefly who was again just very strong-willed in all of this. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just doesn’t work with my leadership style, because I don’t like to have to feel like I’m having to constantly assert myself on purpose. I like it when I’m naturally assertive. That’s the way that I naturally am. They feel really good with that and everybody knows what their roles are.
So Amy was with me for a year. The first year I didn’t have anyone, and then Amy was with me for a year. And then the past year and a half, we’ve grown quite a lot and I’ve also changed the model of what we’re offering. It used to be one-on-one coaching with me, and then it was basically an info product. It was huge and very comprehensive with limited group support from me. Then it was a group program with me and a coach that I hired.
Now, what it is is working so beautifully. It is expensive. From a perspective of like, “Okay, how can we make the maximum amount of profit, blah, blah, blah? This isn’t it. I mean, it’s very viable. It’s a very good business model, but it’s not about… I didn’t sit down and say, “How can I make the most profit per customer? I’m thinking, “How can I make this the best for them?
It’s a really quality experience, like going into a luxury anything — a luxury hotel, a luxury restaurant or any kind of experience and every need is anticipated before you even know that you have it. And that’s what I want my program to be like for my guys. And that’s what we work hard on to help, can always be improving that.
I’ve hired two coaches that actually do the one-on-one coaching. So a guy comes into the program after having a phone call with Amy or Mia, and that’s their role. Amy does that plus a bunch of other stuff with me. And then Mia only does those calls. That’s two people. And then Tiffany and Georgia are my coaches.
Depending on their schedule and availability with the client, then he’ll be on either Georgia or Tiffany. It really comes down to calendar, because they’re both so great and we’ve never been like, “Oh, you should be with this person. It’d be better for you. They’re both great and they’re very similar and we’re all in fact pretty similar, especially the coaches and me.
Then Jason actually used to be a client and then started doing some program development for me as a contractor and some editing. And now mostly he’s just in a strategic role with me. If I have questions or thoughts about what we’re doing, I get on the phone with him. Because of his perspective as a past client, he cares so passionately about our business and loves being a part of it, and we love having him there. So that’s our team.
Brian Clark: Excellent. That’s probably some good intel for some of our solo coaches who are wondering how you get bigger than yourself, which can be a challenge, especially a brand built around a personality.
Anyway, thank you so much for joining us. Really great advice. A really cool business. I think these guys are in good hands with you compared to others and that’s a positive thing. Thank you.
Sarah Jones: Thank you so much, Brian. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Brian Clark: All right, Everyone. Two big takeaways here.
Find who you’re talking to. A very, very ultra-specific who, not general, because you can’t communicate well. But also, are these people who are going to resonate with who you are, what you value? Don’t be afraid of that. Put that out there, because that’s how you attract people that are raving fans, not just a lukewarm audience.
Thanks for listening and keep going.