Building Your ‘Guide Character’ Worksheet
There are 8 components to building a character that your clients will fall in love with. Use this worksheet to help you identify the versions of your personality that we can start to emphasize in your trainings to help people want to follow your advice more.
The 8 Character Components:
- Origin Story
- Core Beliefs
- Uniform
- Super Power
- Achilles Heel
- Mortal Enemy
- Miracles
- Unique Phrases
Find your CORE beliefs first. The easiest way to start to build your character is to start by talking about those things that you value most in your life. So in this step write them down so we can then explore whether or not those beliefs can help us start to craft the rest of your character. Some ways that I have found helpful for asking these questions are to ask, what moments in life bring me the most joy? What things that I see make me cry? What things that I see piss me off to no end? What brings the most feelings of regret. Try to write down 10 ideas.
Watching the birth of greatness, or the birth of a talent start to show its head in a child.
I love helping people evolve themselves. I like creating lightbulb moments.
I value get back up and dust yourself off after failure.
I value never giving up.
I value the toppling of ‘perceived thought leaders’. I value proving a new idea is better then a long standing, poorly thought out idea.
I value being sought after for advice.
Origin Story: Origin stories are most powerful, when they are shared as the way your journey ended up bringing you to your CORE belief, helped you find your superpower, which brought you to facing off against your mortal enemy, and started your journey towards creating miracles.
Clarifying your Achilles Heel. We’ve all met people that we wish we could make a deeper connection with, but something never seems right. They’re personable, funny, you have the same interests, but the relationship never goes anywhere. Often times a connection fails to form because that person appears to be hiding something. So when crafting your Achilles heel, remember that people like to share their pain. If you had a rough past, share it. If you’ve had a divorce share that stuff. It makes us appear approachable, and less conceited, and helps us give off more of a likeable persona.
Do you have a skill others want, what weakness do other people have who also want that super power?
What personality weakness do you see most common in the lives of your customers? Do you have that same weakness?
What is the number one life problem that your customers complain about?
If you look at your CORE BELIEF statements, did you come to believe any of those CORE beliefs by having to overcome a past Achilles heel in your life?
What are people’s number one complaint about you?
Choosing your ARCH enemy. If you can do it ethically, you will become a more attractive personality if you constantly step up on that soap box and do battle with your arch enemy. So now’s the time to find out who those enemies are. Ask yourself the questions below and try to come up with a list of your enemies that you’d be happy to do battle with, by asking yourself these questions?
Look down your list of CORE beliefs and ask yourself WHO or WHAT out in the world currently stands against you on your current belief patterns. Who is behind it. And can there be a translation to the dog world. List those below.
Blood type is wrong for the diet I was trying to use to lose weight. Doctors, Vegetarians, fitness professional, Dairy Industry
Dogs need to eat RAW meat. Purina, Veterinarians, Pet BIG BRAND. Maybe because they use, filler big farm waste crops that don’t use food the fda will allow go to humans.
Did anyone ever stand in your way between success and failure from your past? Don’t just think of people, think of how culture, social status, or ways of thinking stood in your way of success, and either slowed you down or maybe blocked you all together. List those below.
Educators=Dog Trainers, Petsmart puppy classes, dog training authors, youtubers.
Not everyone can make it = old dog new tricks
Who or what is standing in the way of your clients success? List those below.
Spouce.
Parenting Style
Military Backround.
Religious beliefs.
Ceasar Millan
Now, look at your list and see if any of those thought patterns or people or organizations on your list all share a common enemy or group of enemies or ways of thinking. If you find a commonality list it below.
Identifying Your Super Power:
Every great character has a super power, and our goal is to find yours. And as we search for what it is, remember that its not always like SUPERMAN’s superpower. Harry Potter’s super power was that he actually was Voldemort’s last horcrux. Harry did not always achieve miracles by using his Super Power. Its nice when a character can, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And maybe Harry’s super power was really how he had friends who would do anything for him. So this exercise is about finding your super power.
What is your customers biggest weakness… can this be your Super Power?
What do people constantly tell you that you do well?
Your Uniform:
Hat, Tennis shoes with a suite and tie,
Your Verbage/Coined Phrases:
The greatest quotes of all time feel DEEP, and often explain a paradigm shift… and the greatest quotes do this in the shortest amount of words possible; summarizing SUPER deep intellectual concept shifts, in the most clear way possible. It is worth trying to find these types of quotes and becoming famous for them, because when done right, they become part of people’s language out in the world, and everytime they use that language it reminds them of you, and keeps you’re BRAND in their mind.
Exercise: List out your CORE beliefs on a piece of paper, then on the other side of the paper list out the belief that is held in the world that is the belief that gets in the way of people believing YOUR CORE belief. The goal is to explain that in a quote as succinctly as possible.
Example: You believe the best behaved dogs have jobs to do. But the view of your client is that the dog needs to ‘learn who’s boss.
Clearly write down the Concept of the customers viewpoint:
Authority is the ultimate way to create obedience.
Brainstorm examples that prove the customer wrong in the most epic way possible (try to think of the most dramatic examples possible. Your goal is to come up with an example where you share how someone, something or some example they admire proves their belief wrong, or at least raises a doubt)
Ie. List all the examples you can think of where the customers concept was proven wrong.
Can you turn that into a quote?
If beating a slave didn’t make slaves love their masters, why do we think it’ll work out differently on our dogs?
Your Miracles/Battles:
People want to see you do battle against your enemies and win. They want someone to follow who has the same belief system as they do, who has flaws like they do, and they want to see them overcome those flaws, and be victorious in spite of them. That is attractive as a character. An AVERAGE trainer would just show someone how to fix a problem when creating a course by shooting a how to video… but your how to videos are going to do much more then that. They are going to call out an enemy, and then vanquish that enemy in battle. Watch the video to see what I mean and then start to sketch out your ideas on a piece of paper.
Identify what the customer wants solved. Do you have dramatic examples where you’ve done this against all odds?
When has the deck been stacked against you?
What BEFORE and AFTER example would seem the MOST dramatic to customers if they never got to see you do the process?
What obstacles got in your way on those journey? Can youTurn those obstacles into enemies (map them to arch enemy if possible):