Post 12: Target Market Charlie

Excuse me, but have you seen this guy?

His name is Charlie. Charlie is hungry for career advancement but feels outgunned by other people in the business and industry he works in because they have stronger educational credentials. Charlie is a millennial who is dealing with the cost of living pressures and feels like his career is not advancing the way he would like.

Join our pioneers program. Early adopters will shape our leadership community.

In the previous post, I introduced Tez, who is a user persona. But perhaps you didn't connect with Tez—you didn't have much in common. Interestingly, we are looking at three different target market user personas to define Leader Mill. There are three different types of people being explored, with slightly different problems, which we think we can solve.

Charlie is our second user persona, and here are a few details about Charlie:

• Hungry for career advancement but feels outgunned by other people in the company or industry who have stronger education credentials or guidance from mentors.
• Aged between 25 and 35
• A Millennial
• Fluent English communicator
• Challenge/Pain: cost of living, feeling poorly equipped to direct his career in the direction he wants to go. He wants to advance in a company but feels at a disadvantage compared to others who have higher levels of education. He wants more money and more status. The business won't pay to further his education, and he cannot afford it at the moment.
• Goals: increase income, increase power, and increase influence. Be a more valuable and effective professional. Climb the corporate ladder and be promotable.
• Values: increasing wealth and amassing more material items of status. More influence in the business, more control, and more status.
• He sees an MBA as an aspirational pursuit, but at the moment, it is a cost that he really struggles to justify.? His current financial situation, time availability, and overall return on investment concerns are the reasons he does not get an MBA.?
• He feels intimidated when working with colleagues who do have postgraduate education.? They seem to understand concepts in the business he has not learned. You don't know what you don't know, and this holds him back from asserting himself more in the business.
• He would love to feel confident knowing how to apply proven business methods, tools, and concepts to challenging situations in the business and to be seen as more informed, valuable, and higher-performing.
• He is on social media, but more as an observer. He would look for resources via online searches, industry association groups, and referrals.

User personas serve as crucial assets during the development and upkeep of products and services, particularly when they involve novel innovations. Failing to lay the groundwork by comprehensively understanding the problem at hand and its relevant audience poses the risk of wasting significant time and resources on solving a problem that affects no one. In essence, without this foundational understanding, the efforts become worthless to anyone.

Do you connect with Charlie? Do you have some things in common with him? If so, share your experiences and your thoughts around the struggles of advancing your career. The more people like Charlie who share their experiences, the better his user persona will be.

Better still, if you are just like Charlie, then join the early adopter waitlist for our education program that will share the secret sauce of an MBA in a fraction of the time and cost. The first version of the course drops in May 2024. Here is your chance to get in on the ground floor for peanuts and help be instrumental in guiding the direction of the course as I build it out.