Jeffrey Shaw - LINGO: Discover Your Ideal Customers Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible

This book is dedicated to my three children: Connor, Clare and Lillian, who taught me everything I know about the most important communication of all: How to speak to their individuality and listen to their infinite wisdom. Im hoping this book will give them something more than my waffles to remember me by.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey Shaw

http://jeffreyshaw.com

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 13: 978-0-9995187-0-0 (trade)

Published by Creative Warriors Press

All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Cover Design by Naomi Niles of Shiftfwd.com

Book Design by CB Messer

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Contents

Introduction

Standing to one side of the velvet rope, I waited my turn to see the bank teller. I had one goal for the day: to transfer my salary from my business account to my personal account. Shifting my weight from one foot to another, I looked over the account transfer form for the third time. My eyes darted nervously from the form to the velvet rope, then back to the form again. I touched the rope. Wow, it really is velvet.

Ive heard it said that money reveals truths. I suppose thats true, because every time I went to the bank, I felt as though I was about to find out if I was really the person I thought I was. I felt successful. I was told to fake it until I made it and, boy, was I faking it like a pro. But the bank teller had the power to tell me whether I really made it. At twenty-three years old, making it was determined by how much money I earned. That determined how I felt about myself. Heck, it determined if I would make it through the weekend. Would they move the velvet rope and let me inside? Or would I be shut out?

When it was finally my turn to step up to the bank teller, tiny beads of perspiration appeared on my neck and hairline. I handed the teller the transfer form and tried not to look nervous as she checked my account balance.

Im sorry, there arent enough funds available to make this transfer, she said. Ugh. Those dreadful words. The words I feared the most. The words that said to me, youre not who you think you are. Youre a fraud. An imposter. You should just give up.

This was more than thirty years ago, and the amount I wanted to transfer was one hundred and fifty dollars. Yes, I didnt even have one hundred and fifty dollars from my business to pay myself. I had been working for three years as a portrait photographer and I was barely earning a living. That day at the bank, I couldnt even say I was getting by. I didnt have enough customers, and the customers I did have were not the right customers. I was all too aware of that fact, but I had no clue how to change it.

I am not the only entrepreneur with a similar story. Many of us experience this on a regular, if not constant, basis: working every day, rarely getting a break, and yet still not making ends meet, feeling as though we are imposters in our own industries, in our communities, in our own businesses. Were on the hamster wheel, running like mad with a tickertape of self-defeating thoughts running through our minds:

What am I doing wrong that I cant seem to get the right customers? Or any customers?

Im just not any good at sales. Why am I such a hot mess?

Is there just no market for what I do? Im not good at the business side.

We think the problem is usthe creative entrepreneurs, the innovators, the out-of-the-box thinkers. We just dont know enough about business, or we arent good at networking, or theres something wrong with our product or service. And weve tried everything we can think of to build our customer bases and increase revenues, everything the marketing and branding experts tell us to do. Weve tried to personalize our branding and our offerings by creating customer avatars and profiles. Weve followed the cookie-cutter, transactional business practices. We work harder and try to work smarter and yet somehow we still end up behind the velvet rope, waiting to be told we dont have enough funds to pay ourselves.

I spent my first three years in business spinning on the hamster wheel. That day in the bank was a turning point. I had to get off that hamster wheel, stop working so hard and getting nowhere. Id been trying to reach one type of customer, and my efforts just werent clicking. I wasnt sure how to change my business practices, but I knew I had to do it.

After a conversation with a prospective customerwhich Ill share in Chapter 1I finally realized we werent speaking the same language. I began to study the people and communities I wanted to serve. I paid close attention to how they communicated, their values and beliefs, their daily practices, their aesthetics, their way of life. I learned the secret language of my ideal customerstheir lingo. I became so fluent in their lingo that I was able to forge an almost-instant connection with the customers I wanted. Within a year, my business increased fivefold. It wasnt long before I was one of the highest-earning portrait photographers in the country.

The truth is, you dont have to work that hard to find customers. In reality, a world of customers is waiting for you to show up.

Read that again. A world of customers is waiting for you to show up.

Understanding your customers secret language allows you to establish a connection so genuine and authentic that the people you want to work with are simply drawn to you. They will end up at the doorstep of your business, waiting to be served.

Lingo is defined as the language and speech, especially the jargon, of a particular field, group, or individual. Tribes, communities, and people of similar ilk all share a lingo. Speaking a common lingo is a way to bond and differentiate yourself within a community and separate yourself from the masses. Its a way to communicate that makes you feel as though you belong to a particular group. Bands such as The Grateful Dead wearing their tie-dyed shirts and designating their most loyal fans as tapers have been doing this for decades. Pop stars such as Lady Gaga and her Little Monsters share a lingo with the claw hand-gesture. Brands like MINI Cooper and Harley-Davidson have special waves for drivers as they pass one another. Trust me. There are YouTube videos explaining the nuances of perfecting the wave. These are all part of a lingo, all an effort to bond, to show kinship, and to acknowledge that you are one of them, that we are in this together.

Thats the power of a lingo. Thats not to say you have to create a repertoire of words or come up with a secret handshake. I mean, you can if you want to. But this is about understanding the lingo thats already there. A lingo speaks directly to the heart. To speak another persons lingo, you need to understand what makes them ticktheir essence. Speaking someones lingo touches them in unspoken ways, the way friends know you so well they know just what to say or do for you. To speak the lingo of the customers that you would most like to work with, you need to know how they think, what attracts them, and what makes them feel as if they belongthat they belong doing business with you and no one else.

Have you read The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman? The five love languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch, gifts, and quality time. Chapman says that people tend to feel loved in response to one of those five languages, or ways of expressing love. When I read the book, I was married and had three kids. When I applied Chapmans findings, I found that each member of my family of five represented one of the love languages. I needed to speak differently to each of my kids. What felt like love was different for each of them. This got me thinking, even then, about the power of speaking someones language. Its really no different in business. Its not that you are going to speak a different language for each customer, but that every markethigh-end, low-end, luxury, budget, and everything in between, has its own language, a language that customers in that market respond to, that, you could say, makes them feel loved.