Rabah Rahil (00:14):

All right folks. We are back episode 10. We are, I am Robin you're host joined by my co-host man with the plan max blank. And today we have homeschool teacher, teacher, and now copyrights, copywriter. Savan best buyer persona, just all around knowledge bomb, Adrian Barnes. How are you?

Adrienne Barnes (00:38):

I'm very well. Thanks for having me.

Rabah Rahil (00:40):

Yeah, this has all happened on the bird app as well. So I mean, shout out to Twitter. This has been great to, I've been following your feed, but you know, it's always kind of creepy sometimes to slide in. And then that's one of my favorite parts about podcasting is like this non creepy introduction to talk to really smart people about, um, their jams. So, um, yeah, let's trip in. I am in Austin and marketing the HQ max out in Columbus, Ohio, our HQ proper. Where does this podcast find you today? Adrian?

Adrienne Barnes (01:08):

I'm in Fort worth Texas.

Rabah Rahil (01:10):

Oh, cool. Texas two. Texases look at that. Max. We teaming up on you been, how long have you been in Texas?

Adrienne Barnes (01:20):

My whole life. The all the time.

Rabah Rahil (01:22):

That's right. So you, uh, Stu you went to school up there, right?

Adrienne Barnes (01:25):

Yes. School here. I've um, BA we've basically been here. We currently have a farm that we're working on to

Rabah Rahil (01:33):

Amazing chickens.

Adrienne Barnes (01:34):

Yes. A hundred acres pecan orchard. Like we're,

Maxx Blank (01:39):

It's

Adrienne Barnes (01:39):

A dream and it is the dream. I,

Maxx Blank (01:42):

That is the dream. I want that. I want that, like, that is amazing.

Adrienne Barnes (01:46):

I sound crazy sometimes to some people it's like, you're a homeschooler and you have a farm. And, but then I've got like my foot in the tech world as well. So it's like, yeah, it's got, I've got good balance.

Maxx Blank (01:56):

I like that. Can I, can I tell you something? I have a chicken. I live in the suburbs and I have a chicken coop with 13 chickens,

Adrienne Barnes (02:03):

13. That's a lot for the suburbs. Good job.

Maxx Blank (02:05):

It, it is a lot. It might be too much, but we're having fun.

Adrienne Barnes (02:08):

<laugh> we have a six chicken limit in my city, cuz I'm actually in a suburb of, for worth. They'll let you have six chickens.

Maxx Blank (02:15):

Mm.

Adrienne Barnes (02:17):

A lot of my friends break the rules with that though, too. So

Maxx Blank (02:19):

It's good. It's good for the kids, you know, it's good for the kids to be out there. It

Adrienne Barnes (02:22):

Is.

Maxx Blank (02:22):

Absolutely. It's like on, on the screen or outside with the animals. Which one do you want? You know,

Adrienne Barnes (02:29):

100%. That's my belief too.

Rabah Rahil (02:31):

It's such a symbiotic relationship too, with chickens and humans. It's like, you help me. I help you. There's no, like it's so perfect. My friend has goats as well.

Adrienne Barnes (02:40):

Absolutely. The whole

Maxx Blank (02:41):

Per I'd get I'd get goats.

Adrienne Barnes (02:43):

It's amazing. When you see like how everything's supposed to work together, you're like, oh, this is operational. Like, this is how it should go. It's cool.

Maxx Blank (02:53):

My wife would love to talk to you. Just, just throw that out there.

Adrienne Barnes (02:55):

You know, shoot me an email. I'll talk all day. There are things that marketing buyer personas, homeschooling and homesteading. I can talk about all day long.

Rabah Rahil (03:03):

<laugh> I love it. I love it. Yeah. So, uh, you started as an English teacher mm-hmm <affirmative> and then you pivoted into a copywriter. Tell me kind of how that worked or like just give us some color behind that.

Adrienne Barnes (03:16):

So I, yes, English teacher, English by trade. Um, that was right outta college, really young. I was like nine years older than my students, which, I mean, it worked, but it was kind of silly. Now I look back and I'm like, I was practically their peer. Like now they're having kids and you know, I, I keep in touch with them. Um, but then I started having babies of my own. And um, it was at the 200 10, Texas education system was not being funded very well. And so they were like asking teachers to just do tons and tons and tons of stuff. So essentially they kind of pushed me out of the classroom, which they did to a whole lot of really good teachers. Um, I stayed at home as a mom and then I had two other kids, so I've got three in total.

Adrienne Barnes (04:01):

And when my baby was one year old and like everyone was sleeping through that night and my brain started functioning again. Um, I just realized I, I was ready to do something. I wanted to do something more. Um, and it started with writing. Like I had a friend who, uh, she was a single mom, she had a mortgage, she like had a car. She, they went on vacations and she never left the house to go to a job. So I was like, what do you do? How do you like pay your bills? And she said, I want my copywriter. And I was like, what does that mean? So she kind of gave me the very first introduction and I self-taught, you know, and then once I realized like, oh, okay, what I really enjoyed is content strategy, content marketing, the long form, uh, writing. And I was like, this is essentially what I loved about my English classes, their research reports, I'm able to write and like research and learn new things and share that information with people.

Adrienne Barnes (04:58):

Um, so I started doing that and I wrote explicitly for B2B SAS for quite a while. Loved it. Um, but it came to a point where I'm not a speedy writer. Like it takes me a long time to write. And I realized that really what I was loving doing was the research talking to customers. Um, and then I just started asking my clients at the very beginning, like what, who are, who is our audience, right. When you're an English teacher or you're in English or you're learning how to write. The first question you ask is who is my audience? Who am I writing to? Um, and so they didn't really know very well. They would hand me these like, you know, very dusty buyer personas and say, well, we don't, we don't really use this, but I guess if you're asking here it is, um, or they'd say, well, you know, we're really marketing to, um, mid-level sales account managers and these are two problems they face.

Adrienne Barnes (05:54):

And it was like, okay, or, or they did have a buyer persona, but it was like, Mary marketers is 32 and loves the colored red and is a superwoman. And she goes to trader Joe's on the weekends and had all this like fluff information. And I was like, how am I supposed to write 12 pieces about for Mary <laugh>? If I don't know, like, what are her concerns with this product? What is she using this product to do? What? So I was frustrated with that information as, uh, as a person, like trying to execute a product for a company, right? Like as the content marketer. Um, and then that's where best buyer persona came about. I was started doing research on qualitative research and quantitative research. How do I get information from people, um, and came across jobs to be done. And I was like, that's what I think a buyer persona should be. That looks like it's a full idea. It's much a better way to group people together than age, gender, you know, job title. So then I just kind of started putting it together. And now we're doing bio persona projects for B2B SA and some B2 C even it's pretty, it's pretty cool

Rabah Rahil (07:05):

Bar rocket ship. Yeah. I, I'm a huge fan of jobs. So done. I actually got to go two years ago to, uh, conference hosted by Bob messed up on just a gem of a gem of human. Yeah, man. So that is a lot. How did you ramp up so quickly and keep balance with, uh, like a parent? I'm not a parent, but max is a parent. Um, I'm a fur parent. Like I have a fur baby, you got a puppy and that's like enough for me and I can barely work enough. So how did you balance all of this? Cuz one of the things that I've found is a challenge for people is getting the energy to do it. Right. And so you just, momed all day, you just did a whole lesson in homeschooling now, you know, you might be, uh, working with the dinner or food or stuff like that. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> working on that. And now like how did you keep all that up and going and get the results you did?

Adrienne Barnes (07:56):

Yeah. So a few things that I always like to, or I, I feel like I need to lay out some very clear aspects of privilege that I had. Like number one, my husband, we were a stay at home, single income family. So I could say, no, I'm not taking that job. That doesn't fit my needs. No, I don't like that one. Um, or I could just say, yeah, I'm gonna see what happens if I triple my rates overnight. Like I was able to make really big risks and, um, kind of calculated risks without the concern that am I gonna be able to feed my family cuz the hubs is income was already doing that. Um, and then so the way it just kind of slowly scaled. So I started doing the writing and I was writing during that time. Right? Like the, the youngest was one 18 months.

Adrienne Barnes (08:42):

I would finish the piece. I would do calls during nap time. I'd maybe hire a babysitter for an hour if it was a new client. Um, and we kind of mentioned a little bit before, before the pandemic. Um, I would kind of hide the fact that I homeschooled that my kids were at home because it, there was a, a stigma to it, right. Like, oh, you're not gonna be able to do this job seriously. You're I'm you know, or that was my fear. Nobody necessarily said it. Right. But my fear was is that would be the concern. You're just a stay at home. Mom. Maybe you're not actually the one who could do this job. Um, but they've grown up with it. So now the youngest is six and it is, it's a lot of juggling. We wake up, we make sure we get school done.

Adrienne Barnes (09:23):

I take meetings three days a week. So if you wanna meet with me, we're meeting on, uh, either Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday. And then I execute and actually like make sure that my time and my schedule is blocked for deep work. Um, as the work like shifting from writing to buyer personas, um, it's, it's shifted a lot of what is needed for me. I needed a lot of deep workspace to write. I don't necessarily require a lot. I can be in the middle of analyzing a doc and get interrupted and go take care of something and come back. If I were interrupted in the middle of writing, it could take me 45 minutes to get back into a flow state of like mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. Now I can crank it back out. So it's a lot different now. Um, my kids know if the I'm upstairs, so I have like a separated area.

Adrienne Barnes (10:10):

They know if my door is closed, they do not come in. Like you have to be really injured, like literal fire somewhere. Something has to be going on. Um, you know, and there were times where I've had nannies come in and really they helped me and were doing the, the job since the pandemic. We haven't had nannies. So I mean, I would not say, oh, it's easy. It's no big deal. Like it is a challenge. It does require a lot of effort. It requires a lot of efficiency, like efficiency and time management are definitely my high skills. Like I can sit down, crank stuff out in a couple of hours, get things done. Um, and then, you know, sometimes I'm working on the weekends, but I definitely don't, uh, subscribe to a hustle culture, like mindset. I have plenty hours a week to work and I'm gonna get what I can get done and what needs to get done.

Adrienne Barnes (10:59):

And what's necessary. I've never missed a deadline. I've never been late. I'm always very clear and communicate with my clients. Um, it's just a matter of being able to prioritize and make sure that, um, it gets done sometimes it's like, Hey hubs, like, I don't know, figure out dinner cuz I'm upstairs working. Like, sorry. Um, but yeah, usually we just, we kind of all, we have this mindset as a family that we all need to function together. Really. Like everyone has a job. Beautiful. Everyone has something to do. I'm doing this. So you know, my kids pick up laundry. My kids do chores and stuff like that. So yeah, it works out for us.

Maxx Blank (11:35):

Well your six year old picks up laundry,

Adrienne Barnes (11:38):

Uh, yeah, they like, they do their laundry. I don't let him pour the soap in the laundry. <laugh> that would be a disaster, but I mean he can pull the dryer clothes outta the dryer. He can take, there you go to the, I hear that couch, you know, the 11 year old people

Maxx Blank (11:53):

You're inspiring me.

Adrienne Barnes (11:54):

Yeah. I mean, we've always been really, um, I just, I, I had a mindset of, we are a team. We're always a team, so we need to be able to beautiful. My mom did it to where, like I had one chore almost my whole life. It was to unload the dishwasher and she would have to like pull our, my teeth and like scream and yell just to get us to do that. And even I just thought that was ridiculous. Like my mom was way too relaxed. She just did everything for us. She was a stay at home mom and she just did it all. And I didn't wanna be that kind of stay at home. Mom. I wanted us to all know, like it takes a family to run this household. So we all work together and we get it done.

Maxx Blank (12:36):

So how, how did you develop such discipline?

Adrienne Barnes (12:40):

Oh, I'm just that way, honestly like I'm, if you know anything about the Enneagram, I'm an Enneagram three with the wing two. So that means like I'm driven by goals. I'm driven by like standards. Um, and efficiency is like really a part of something that I, I treasure. So kind of always type a first born girl. It's just always been something that's like intrinsic inside of me.

Rabah Rahil (13:10):

Yeah. And I'm with you on the, uh, hustle corn. I, I just support that. And a lot of times too, the people that are doing it aren't even doing it. It's just a marketing technique. Yeah. It's just like, they're not working 120 hours a week. Like it's nonsensical. And then you, you just get this perverted view of what success is or what you have to do. And not, not to say that you shouldn't, you know, grind, but life is not like a big balance person, but there is definitely something about life and um, having, using time to do the things that make you happy.

Adrienne Barnes (13:43):

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what, I don't understand, like 120 hour, like I've had physical burnout before. Um, and it's not, you can't, you don't recover from it immediately when that's a three, four year recovery process when you've actually have like chemical, physical, hormonal burnout. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative>, I don't wish it on my greatest enemy cuz it impacts almost every aspect of your life. So having been through that path even before and while I was starting my entrepreneurial journey, it's like Uhuh, there's no way I'm gonna put my body and my family through anything like that again.

Rabah Rahil (14:19):

Totally. I actually did. I was an assistant for, um, a CEO of a company and it was like a 24 7 gig. Like never again, like I was the most unhealthy I was, I was pretty messed up like six months after I left the job. Like I like really put my life back together. It was uh, yeah, you can definitely, um, yeah, go down some different paths when <laugh>, when uh, that stuff goes sideways. Um, okay. Let's brighten up the mood a bit. Yeah. What's the nicest thing someone has done for you?

Adrienne Barnes (14:49):

Oh, the nicest thing I, I like being thought of. So really just when people say like, Hey, I was thinking about you today, da da, da, da, those little notes. Um, really do make like an entire week for me just to be like, oh, that was so sweet. They just, my friend, the other day was like, oh, I just, I was thinking about you. So I just dropped you by a little Starbucks or, I mean, it didn't have to be a gift, but just being thought of I absolutely love.

Rabah Rahil (15:17):

Oh, that's awesome. I, I, I think that's so cool. Okay. What's one piece of advice you would give someone thinking about kind of making a pivot or starting their own business.

Adrienne Barnes (15:26):

Yeah, I guess that would also depend on the business. Okay. So one piece of advice, despite what type of business you're gonna start, figure out what it is that you're solving for your customers, like really understand why are they purchasing your product and then talk to your customers? Um, I'm really big on customer conversations, customer discovery, how to actually have real conversations that are gonna extract helpful and valuable buyer insights, not just sales calls or like upgrading demos or anything like that, really, to be able to talk to those first customers. Um, that would be my advice, regardless of whatever type of vendors you're doing, you could be opening like a plumber. You could be starting a farm, you could be having a B2B SAS, uh, you know, D to C talk to those buyers, talk to those very first buyers. And don't stop talking to, 'em just keep making that a part of your culture from day one.

Maxx Blank (16:22):

That's huge. In fact, over here at the chip, well, we just kind of started this process not too long ago. So I kind of jumped in very quickly and just started calling and talking to people all day and then really understanding how to, to solve for the problems and then create a pitch that was not really a pitch. It's more of a conversation, right? Yeah. And then in the office here, we sort of infused it into everybody here, not to be salesy salesy, but to just understand what the customers are going through and what we're actually solving for. It's been pretty cool. Everyone's been on sales calls essentially. So we try to get everybody on support and try to get everybody on sales. So then like that's nice. It's a nice feedback loop and

Adrienne Barnes (17:00):

Absolutely. That's a very

Maxx Blank (17:02):

Point. You put Devin. Yeah. It's been, it's been pretty cool. Rob is in involved in that too. Not just to marketing. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (17:08):

Yeah. It's been great. And it, it's really interesting to see how basically people are allergic to talking to their customers. I know like, so it'd be for triple whale. I would, uh, uh, essentially kind of, uh, a little bit, same, same like best buyer personas, but basically like jobs to be done interviews like, Hey, here's the whole thing. Here's what we do. Here's what be fine. Here's all these things and everybody's in. And then you're like, oh, by the way, I need to talk to your customers. Like, well, I don't, um, uh, you're just like, yeah, you want, you want a pay everything. It's not a financial thing. It's this, this weird thing of, um, I think

Maxx Blank (17:45):

Fear. No,

Rabah Rahil (17:46):

That's what, so there's this Carl Sagan quote where, um, I would rather know the truth than persist in delusion. And like, that's kind of, I think the opposite for these people where it's like, cuz one of the, uh, client segments that I've encountered as well, Adrian is the people that do know what their customer is and exactly know all the answers. And they're like, what you're saying, what the data's saying <laugh> are just so orthogonal. Like they couldn't be farther from the truth. And so, um, having that is, uh, interesting, but

Maxx Blank (18:17):

Okay. It's like, I don't even, I don't even believe in the product I sell until I talk to people and see why they think of it. You know what I mean? Yep. Like, yeah, that's what I've kind of learned.

Adrienne Barnes (18:25):

And the fear is the fear is intense. Like I've had to overcome that and just say like, look, I they're not, cuz in B2B, SAS, it's, they're gonna turn, we're gonna bother them and they're gonna find out something they don't like about us. Yeah. And then they're gonna cancel their subscription and I'm like, I can count on my fingers and I've talked to probably thousands of people at this time, the number of times that's happened and it's almost zero. Like honestly I would really have to go back and I really don't think it's happened hardly at all. Sure. But what it does do and they're like, well, nobody's gonna wanna talk to us. Well, that's actually not true. Right. Customers and buyers when they love your product or hate it, both are true when they love it or hate it. They wanna talk about it. They actually, my calendar will fill up so quickly if they don't wanna talk about it, then it's most likely they don't have a strong feeling for the product. So that's the concern actually. Yeah.

Maxx Blank (19:19):

Yeah. And, and

Maxx Blank (19:20):

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't mean to jump on you there, but um, just so a hundred percent, like my calendar is filled right now cuz we're new things are coming out. So it's very exciting. So it's, it's a great time to learn and to, to build. But I think also in the DDC world where, you know where we're coming from, from my personal experience, we're just behind the ads all day and we don't realize we're actually selling into people. Right. You know? And so there's a lack of like actually reaching out, talking to them and it's huge. And the last time,

Adrienne Barnes (19:53):

Go ahead. Oh no, go ahead.

Maxx Blank (19:55):

The last I, I had somebody help me create these personas. You're talking about with a brand that I used to have and her project, it was just a project to come in. She just got like a hundred customers, sent a, a survey out and then started talking to them, calling them and is actually mind. I learned like how to write my ad copies from that.

Adrienne Barnes (20:14):

Exactly, exactly. And that's the thing with the B2C, especially that if what we're seeing, especially with the Facebook ads and iOS and all of these new barriers, it's like, you're not just gonna be able to throw money at this problem. Right. And attract more customers. And if you wanna truly own your data and you're worried about losing that third party data, the best way to do it is to go to your own buyers and ask them the information. I have a friend who is in B2C and has, um, a chicken box subscription called chicken box. And it's really cute. And I, you know, he was dealing with the issue of yeah, exactly. Go check it out. He was

Maxx Blank (20:54):

Dealing, check it out right now,

Adrienne Barnes (20:55):

Issue of the Facebook. Right. Facebook did all these things and they're like, we're noticing a turn. And I said, have you asked the customers who are leaving, why they're leaving? And it was like, oh no, I didn't think about that. That, yeah. That one little thing, like just getting the idea of what it is then you're able to solve that problem and like, boom,

Maxx Blank (21:15):

Like live chat, you know? Yeah. We just have a live chat right there and so much you learn. It's like,

Adrienne Barnes (21:20):

And I'm a big proponent of like I do both. So at best bar persona, we have four prongs of research. We do surveys, we do the customer conversations. We do what I call digital intelligence analysis and then social listening. So I'm getting, um, what I, so I get 20 conversations that really gives us a really clear idea of like, what's the buyers, uh, what's their, why what's that trigger that causes them to buy, um, all of that, their journey, their pain points. And then the social listening, I kind of get a background information like now, is that accurate? Right. Were they really telling me what they did? I can kind of validate on larger scales with the, the different varies of a research that we do. So it's really interesting to see what people say they do, what then they actually do. But that's what I say. Like I get my, how they behave from the digital tools cuz they could tell me how they behave and sometimes that's wrong. But what the digital tools will never tell me is why they behaved the way they did. And that's what the conversations get to

Maxx Blank (22:24):

Huge.

Rabah Rahil (22:25):

Yeah. Problem. You, you jumped the gun on me. So you jumped into the, the second, uh, the big one, the value add segment. So I wanted read a quote and then we can kind of circle back to essentially what you're talking about. But um, this is, uh, from you, I'm on a mission to change the way marketers and founders create and use buyer personas. I work with B2B, SAS and tech companies to create useful, accurate and jobs to be done, focused personas, answer the internal questions you have about your customers, users and buyers best buy personas, uses a four pronged research method to learn who buyers are, how they behave and why they behave the way they do. Um, and so you, you essentially kind of wrapped that up already, but um, oh a little side note here. When we say B2B, we, we mean business to business. If you don't know what that acronym means and that just means a business is selling to a business and then B to C would be a business selling to a consumer. Yes.

Adrienne Barnes (23:15):

And yes.

Rabah Rahil (23:16):

So gimme a little bit more color behind the four prong. I, I know you kind of just highlighted it, but uh, can you dive in a little more?

Adrienne Barnes (23:23):

Absolutely. So we have customer conversations and I recently came across a survey and it's in this book deploy empathy by Michelle Hanson. She wrote an awesome book. Um, but she, this survey that she came to me said, or that she wrote about, um, like Nielsen and company, these huge large research firms found that by having 20 conversations, you can get a 97% sentiment of your entire audience. So we were doing 20 conversations anyways. And then when I read that quote, I was like, oh sweet. That's. I mean, we can be very confident that we're getting the trends and the attitudes and the, um, feelings of the entire audience of customers. Um, so we do 20 chats, 30 minutes and they're not like I come in and it's very clear. I'm very upfront with the, the, the customers. I'm not a product expert. I'm not gonna be able to solve any problem.

Adrienne Barnes (24:18):

I'm not here to like, I can't really help. What I wanna do is learn about your experience. And so that's what I'm very clear on the email when they, before they schedule, this is what we're doing, this is what we're talking about. This is how much time I need, like can we schedule? Um, and that fills up my calendar usually pretty quickly. And I think it's not because there's no confusion. There's no concern that I'm gonna switch all of a sudden and show a demo or like, I'm gonna try to upsell them on something like, it really needs to be. Tell me about why you use this product. How did you find about it? Like their entire customer journey, their experience, emotions, the whole thing. Um, then this survey we do, we create, um, like we design this survey, do the question development, really understand, okay, this is the kind of the information that we gathered from the interviews.

Adrienne Barnes (25:09):

I wanna verify on a larger scale, but also get that kind of information. That's just better in a survey. Like it's, you know, what's your role check, check, check. That can be something that's easy to get. What, um, how many years have you been working in your company? What, how many employees are at your company? That kind of information that works really well to just gather, um, in more of a, a data centric way than in a, in a qualitative, like conversational way. Um, so, and then we use digital intelligence so that I use tools that sparked Toro for me, that's audience, for me, those tools go in, they look at the larger audience, um, in totality, right? So they're looking at the entire interwebs, wherever these people hang out, they tell me what kind of platforms they're on most often and who are the influencers that influence either, um, them on social media or that can influence their, um, buying decisions, all type of people like that.

Adrienne Barnes (26:10):

Uh, what is their buying mindset? How do they purchase? Are they using credit cards? Are they using, um, you know, like, I don't know, what else do you use besides the credit card, but it's essentially like, can they make decisions quickly? Do they, or do they need a sales team? Do they really wanna take their time with buying? Um, you know, it goes into that kind of information. It uses IBM Watson data. So that kind of has a lot of this socioemotional type stuff like they're risk takers or they're very more conservative or they have a tendency to, um, want to figure things out on their own or they really do want help and support. So it gives me all that type of information that then I compile and, uh, suited surveys digital. Oh, the social listening also as well. So while I'm running these whole reports, I'm using brand 24.

Adrienne Barnes (26:59):

That's what I use. There are plenty of tools that do it. Um, but I'm not using social listening as like your social media manager is I'm not coming in. I don't need to see the brand being talked about. I'm looking for the topics being talked about, what are people saying about these pain points? What are people saying about, you know, these frustrations? Um, and then so all of that kind of comes together, compile all the data. And then I segment the buyer personas according to job to be done. That becomes how I group the people together. Um, and that makes a, a stronger segmentation than if you were to do it by job title or by age or heaven forbid gender or a, you know, like all of those kinds of demographic information, it's a much stronger way to segment your audience.

Rabah Rahil (27:51):

Yeah. I, I absolutely love that. A couple questions there. Do you find, you have to incentivize people for, um, scheduling interviews

Adrienne Barnes (28:01):

Sometimes. Yeah. So how do you do that? So there are a few different options that we do. I've done. Um, one where the, the company had a shop and they were like, Wilson do a t-shirt for signing up for us. Um, one was, we were trying to, uh, launch a new tool and we're like, we'll give you three months beta access to this new tool. Um, sometimes we've done, especially if they're really challenging, it's a really hard audience to get on the phone. I mean, I'm talking like CEOs and like people who heavy, uh, uh, busy founders and stuff like that, um, doing a certain amount of money to a charity in their name works out.

Rabah Rahil (28:41):

Oh, that's cool.

Adrienne Barnes (28:42):

Yeah. It works out really well. Um, that one worked out well. I used that one when I was doing my own research for best fire persona, trying to validate this idea. I was like, Hey, for 30 minutes, I'll donate $30 to the charity of your, your choice. Um, and it's like, it's not a selfish way, but like, it usually has a good way of to attract the right caliber of people.

Rabah Rahil (29:02):

Yeah. I love that too. Especially, it's almost like a meta job to be done because the job to be done for that person, usually they don't need anymore finances, right? Like, like a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars to most of these C sweet people. It's not even a drop in the bucket. It's not worth my time. Um, but having this kind of like, oh, well, I can give you some, uh, good karma if you gimme some of your time. How's that sound? Yeah. And it plays a little bit better. It's almost, uh, kind of when you ask your friend to move and they make a lot of money, like, Hey, I'll give you some money. It's like, that's so weird, but it's like, Hey, I'll buy you some food and beer. It's like, it's this totally different thing, cuz then I don't have to quantify my time. Yeah. In, in where if you're doing, if we're doing a proper business in transaction, like I'm gonna charge you my proper business rates and then things get really weird. I absolutely love that. Um, okay. So what have you seen, I know we talked about kind of talking to people is kind of a challenge, but what have you seen as the biggest kind of hurdles for you in terms of implementing like best buyer personas and jobs to be done?

Adrienne Barnes (30:06):

Yeah. I think it's the coming over or overcoming the, the, the, the idea of what a buyer persona is right now. Um, I called it best buyer persona because I was like, that's kind of most describes what I'm trying to do. I'm providing buyer insights, but a lot of marketers are like, no, this is not a persona. A persona should be like this. Right. A lot of marketers, um, have literally said, you will take my acronymed name over my dead body. Like I will never get rid of that. And it's like, okay. You know, I mean, that's fine. I don't see the point in it. It kind of seems like a waste of time to me, but, and we've talked about how efficiency and, you know, time management is like a strength of mine, but whatever. Um, that's been, that's been a challenge to really say like, this is what a buyer persona could be.

Adrienne Barnes (31:03):

Why not? Why not have it be some cuz here, like here's the thing. Um, I did a survey with audience where we were trying to figure out, um, do people create buyer personas in real life? Do they use them in real life? And we found that, I think the number was around 90 something, percent of marketers create them. They, they do the practice, they do the thing. And then we said, how many of you use it for a campaign launch or a product launch or a piece of marketing copier, whatever thing, maybe 77% said, Nope, never don't ever look at it. Don't use it. And I thought, so what this has become is a check, the box, marketing practice, somebody in the company says CEO CMO, did we do our buyer persona? Oh crap. Yep. We did. And that's it. And so like why, why not?

Adrienne Barnes (31:54):

Why not create something? Even if it takes time, it's really useful. They can actually be used and not just in marketing, but in product. Yep. In scales and customer success. Like for strategy planning, why not have solid buyer insights that can actually be used throughout the company. So that's kind of what I did and I'm calling it a buyer persona and some people don't think that's accurate and that's fine. It's buyer insights. It's, you know, a buyer documentation. It's whatever you wanna call it. It's just like really good information. That's gonna grow your company. So I called it a buyer persona.

Rabah Rahil (32:30):

I love that. That's fantastic, Adrian. I can't believe it. We're already at 31 minutes. It's time for rapid fire. I hope uh, you strap in. I know you're a Texan. So I usually tell, tell max to take it easy on the guest, but I'm gonna tell you take easy on max <laugh> that's okay. All right. I'll jokes aside. Uh, take it away max.

Maxx Blank (32:50):

Alrighty. Let me get my seatbelt on real quick. All okay. Alright. Here we go. The milkshake problem. Overrated or underrated,

Adrienne Barnes (33:00):

Um, for jobs to be done. Yeah. Like rated exceptionally well, love it. It's amazing.

Maxx Blank (33:08):

Wow. Okay. Do you wanna iterate? Do you wanna elaborate on that at all?

Adrienne Barnes (33:11):

I think what a clear, like I'm even thinking about it. I've got a call today and he said, look, I know, I don't know much about jobs to be done, but I know the milkshake thing. How are you gonna apply that to my business? So as an example, as a picture, as a story, oh, it clearly defines. And then I can use that example and say, but here's how I can use it in your company. Like, this is what that means. If you were to say, why are people buying milkshakes your first guess would've been, they have a sweet tooth, but then we find out no it's because they wanted a clean, easy snack on the go. Like who would've thought that that would've been a milkshake. So I love it. I'm a huge fan.

Maxx Blank (33:48):

Okay, great. <laugh> uh, English class overrated or underrated?

Adrienne Barnes (33:54):

Um, underrated. It's so underrated humanities are the core of like society. You need to be able to read and write. If you can read and write and research, you can do almost anything.

Rabah Rahil (34:07):

I would throw arithmetic or basic arithmetic in there and then on board. Yeah.

Adrienne Barnes (34:10):

True. Yeah. Like get your basic math in read, write research. And if you can research though, and you really know how to comprehend, you can teach yourself anything.

Maxx Blank (34:20):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (34:21):

Love that.

Maxx Blank (34:22):

Well said that's

Adrienne Barnes (34:23):

That's the true goal. English class overrated, underrated learning to teach yourself. It is the thing like, you know, there are plenty of overrated English classes, but it's the,

Maxx Blank (34:35):

I wouldn't even throw in like discipline in there for myself. Like just discipline, throw in your unstoppable with all that.

Adrienne Barnes (34:42):

Absolutely.

Maxx Blank (34:43):

Uh, homeschooling underrated or overrated.

Adrienne Barnes (34:47):

It, it is underrated, man. I'm just like 10 for 10. Cause <laugh> I mean

Maxx Blank (34:52):

It's good.

Adrienne Barnes (34:53):

Yeah. It's definitely it's misunderstood. Number one, like we're not wearing Deni jumpers anymore. We don't just never leave the house. We're not hiding in secret. Uh, we do socialize. Holy crap. If I hear that homeschoolers are not socialized one more time. Like it's we do. There's more. I have to say no to more in my kids' schedule than I would if they were in school. So definitely underrated. If you've been thinking about it, give it a try. You can always enroll 'em back again. That's why I tell everybody like once you do it once you're not like committed for life. Yeah. You could unroll them, give it a try and enroll. 'em back in school. The, the, the public school district will welcome you with open arms. Trust me.

Maxx Blank (35:34):

Mm-hmm <affirmative> copywriting, overrated or underrated. Oh,

Adrienne Barnes (35:40):

I,

Maxx Blank (35:40):

You know, I'd probably guess where you're going here.

Adrienne Barnes (35:42):

Oh, so, okay. This one's challenging. It's it's so important. It's so crucial. You need to learn to do it well. Um, but people think they know how to do it well, and they don't. So I don't, I'm not sure what rated that is. <laugh> but that's definitely like, be good with hiring the expert to do the copywriting, like right. It, it needs to be handled with care and it does require like expertise to do it. Right.

Maxx Blank (36:13):

I hear it. I hear it. Um, favorite meal and why?

Adrienne Barnes (36:18):

Oh, favorite meal. Okay. So favorite meal? Well, okay. My birthday is on Sunday and I happy

Maxx Blank (36:24):

Birthday.

Adrienne Barnes (36:25):

Thank you. I requested barbecue. So to typical Texan probably, but we're gonna have brisket and ribs and wow. We're going to the full nine.

Rabah Rahil (36:34):

Do you, uh, have a favorite Austin barbecue place?

Adrienne Barnes (36:39):

Um, you know, I could be like real basic and say Franklin's, but I'm gonna actually say the guy across the street. I can't even remember his name, but there's like that one little small hole in the wall joint across the street from Franklin's

Rabah Rahil (36:51):

Lo barbecue.

Adrienne Barnes (36:52):

Maybe it is. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (36:54):

Yeah. Frank is just super strong then, but yeah. Great.

Maxx Blank (36:56):

How, how far is, is Fort worth from Austin?

Adrienne Barnes (37:00):

About two and a half hours. 2 45

Rabah Rahil (37:02):

Traffic. Traffic dependent.

Adrienne Barnes (37:04):

Yeah. Depending on if I'm going north Austin, south Austin, east Austin. It depends on where in Austin. Yeah. Mm-hmm

Maxx Blank (37:09):

<affirmative> everything in Columbus is like seven minutes. <laugh> there's no traffic.

Adrienne Barnes (37:15):

There's nothing in Texas. That's seven minutes. I can barely get to my local grocery store for seven.

Maxx Blank (37:21):

Texas is massive. Um, favorite newsletter.

Adrienne Barnes (37:25):

Oh gosh. Okay. So recently Amanda, not TV DOD. I probably bridged her her name, but you know, she's park Toro. Yep. Great friend, Amanda. Not at, um, on Twitter and, um, Anne Hanley's is always really good. Um, yeah, those are my top two favorites right now. Like that I'll actually read. I get a lot, I'm doing a lot of web three research right now. So Bella is, how do you say his name

Rabah Rahil (37:52):

Below? Um, I can't or yeah, B, B a L a G I S.

Adrienne Barnes (37:57):

Yes,

Rabah Rahil (37:58):

That guy he's uh, yeah. Big VC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Al I think it is or something. I could be bitching as well. Yeah.

Adrienne Barnes (38:06):

The internet, here we

Maxx Blank (38:07):

Go. Yeah. <laugh> favorite place travel to and why?

Adrienne Barnes (38:11):

Oh gosh. Um, okay. Can I pick a place I haven't been to yet? So, okay, cool. Um, Paris is where I've always wanted to go. I've been to Italy. I've been to England. I've been to Ireland and it's just one of those places that I haven't been yet. And I was planning to go over the pandemic, but now it's like, Ugh. And it, things still feel a little iffy and wishy washy to me, but definitely wanna go to Paris and France because my husband's family's from there. So wanna

Rabah Rahil (38:38):

Go, oh, cool. Yeah. Fun.

Maxx Blank (38:41):

Okay. Favorite way that you spend your time.

Adrienne Barnes (38:45):

Uh, on my farm, if I'm not like reading I'm on my farm, like that's my favorite reset. It's amazing.

Maxx Blank (38:51):

So you have a hundred acres.

Adrienne Barnes (38:52):

We have a hundred acres. Yeah. That's

Maxx Blank (38:55):

What do you, what do, what kind of animals do you have any animals over there?

Adrienne Barnes (38:58):

Not yet. So we're not living there full time and we feel like if we're gonna care for animals, we need to be there full time. Um, so we get a ranch

Rabah Rahil (39:06):

Hand.

Adrienne Barnes (39:06):

Yeah. Or yeah, maybe. Um, it's, uh, I don't know if it's big enough for a ranch. I don't know. A hundred

Maxx Blank (39:13):

Hundred acres.

Adrienne Barnes (39:13):

It's pretty big, but like that's a lot I've noticed on weekends that I don't go out to the farm and spend time. Like I like to walk the orchard and spend time that next week, my, my nerves are a little bit more wound up. Like I'm a little bit more short tempered, a little more scattered. It does. It's a complete reset to be out there. And like, it's like a neurological nerve system reset. It's amazing. It's my favorite thing.

Rabah Rahil (39:40):

Oh, the Japanese actually have, uh, it translates to foresting, but ultimately like a, a verb for going out into nature and healing. Like just by being in nature. Yeah. I totally agree. Highly recommend big nature guy.

Adrienne Barnes (39:53):

Do it. Sure.

Maxx Blank (39:56):

Favorite follow on Twitter.

Adrienne Barnes (39:58):

Favorite follow on Twitter. Oh, these are hard, hard parts. <laugh> um, I feel like I'm gonna list the same, like two people, cuz it's I'm always like, who am I actually following? <laugh> um, gosh, I feel like there was somebody that I just recently, just recently. No. Who is it? Uh, okay. I actually remember he's right here. Oh my gosh. I know I'm taking too much time for this silly question. That's okay. They're rapid fire

Rabah Rahil (40:33):

For those listening. She is looking up on Twitter and totally cheating.

Adrienne Barnes (40:37):

I am. I am cheating. <laugh> I am because names are hard for me to remember if I'm not like reading you, where did I go? Okay. Well then the, um, standards always love, um, Kristen from heads HubSpot, like she's always great love Amanda. She's great. Um, Josh Garo right now is doing really interesting things with some like category story stuff. So he's promoting all sort Alex Burquette who's also coming to, we're gonna see him next week also. Great. So another tonight Texan for you. All right. Um, yeah. I like people who like share good quality information, but then aren't afraid to just be like really real Cody. I can't remember her, but it's at Cody. Um, Adrian sheers. Good people. Good, good people. Yeah. Camille, Camille, Rexton another really good one. I could probably go on. I've got so many I'm on Twitter a lot. Y'all I'm on Twitter a lot

Maxx Blank (41:36):

Here. We're coming into the close here. Okay. Here we go. If you could have dinner with any three people dead or alive, who would it be? Dead or, and why?

Adrienne Barnes (41:45):

Three people. Okay. Um, former president Obama I think would definitely be on the list because president he's so well spoken and articulate and like passionate. And I love like the books he shares that he's read. I've loved those books. So I would like to have that conversation. Um, I think also like, Ooh, uh, an old friend that like I grew up with from the old neighborhood. I think that would be cool. Haven't seen them in like 30, 40 years. That'd be nice. Interesting. Um, and the third person with Jesus or? Yeah. Why not? Jesus. Let's just do let's meet Jesus at dinner.

Rabah Rahil (42:27):

Can you imagine getting that invite the 30 year old friend? Hey, we haven't talked in a while. By the way. Uh, president Obama or performant president Obama and Jesus are coming to, what should I wear? <laugh>

Adrienne Barnes (42:38):

Are we all having one dinner? Cuz if we were all having one, it might be a different, that'd

Maxx Blank (42:43):

Be

Rabah Rahil (42:43):

Interesting. One dinner. Yeah. It's one table. Same table one table.

Maxx Blank (42:46):

Oh I think that was one table Ram. Oh

Rabah Rahil (42:47):

Yeah. Yeah. It's one table everybody's hanging at the same table. You can't have different dinners with all these people. It's one thing. I don't

Maxx Blank (42:54):

Know. I got it. Okay. Fine.

Rabah Rahil (42:56):

Agent. Those answers are so fun. You made it through rapid fire unscathed. Incredible. Um, okay. Tell us how people can get more involved with best buyer persona or yeah. Give us the update there.

Adrienne Barnes (43:07):

Yeah. Cool. So, um, well first of all, if you have any questions about what is the fire persona or how can we do this or like I'm interested? What, what else do we do? Like go to best fire, persona.com. Um, if you're just like, I'm trying to figure out how, how to do this for my company, sign up for my newsletter persona equals people. Um, I give it's only two times a month. I'm not insane. You're not gonna be in your inbox every day, but every, uh, newsletter is about how to ask people questions, how to get people on interviews, how to analyze the data. So we really just go into, um, all of that information about how to build a quality buyer persona. Um, I share other people's stuff. Interesting things I found on Twitter or LinkedIn. So it's not, I don't haven't ever promoted anything yet. Not that I won't, don't be surprised if I do, but I haven't yet. Um, so that's a great way Twitter at Adrian, Nicole just come find me and let's hang out and like interact and that's always just a good place to, to be. I'm trying to be on LinkedIn more. Um, but I'm not amazing at it yet. So I'm definitely on Twitter.

Rabah Rahil (44:10):

Well, awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Uh, Dallas and your farm and thanks again. We'll reach out and then we, if you guys wanna get more involved with triple whale, we're at tri triple whale.com. Uh, you can sign up for the wait list there or follow us on the Twitters we're at tri triple whale and then sign up for a whale mail. It's our, our newsletter that goes out every Tuesday, Thursday. Uh, thanks again for your time, Adrian max. And we'll see you guys on the.

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