This summer I moved my family to Portugal. Three kids, including a one-year-old.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Moving sucks.

A few weeks in, we needed a win. So we booked a trip with some other entrepreneur families. Disneyland for the kids. San Sebastian for food. Biarritz for the beach. What could go wrong?

At one point, we were staying in the French countryside. Rolling hills. Stone houses. And Google Maps was confidently directing us into dead ends.

We’d follow the route. Hit a blocked road. Turn around. Try again.

My wife would look at me like, “You SURE this is right?” And I’d stare at my phone like, “Google says so…”

But the road in front of us disagreed.

It reminded me of an important lesson in life: the map is not the terrain.

Why is your customer avatar a map?

Your marketing follows a map too. It’s your picture of who buys from you, what they’re struggling with, and what they want.

My good friend and former business partner, Eben Pagan, coined the term “customer avatar” to describe this map. Maybe yours lives in a Google Doc. Maybe it just lives in your head.

Either way, it shapes what you say in your emails, on your website, and in your sales conversations.

If you misunderstand their problem, you’ll give them the wrong reason to buy. You could have exactly what they need and never say the thing that makes them notice.

So when did you last check your avatar against the words your best clients actually say?

What happened when we checked our own avatar?

We checked ours, and it humbled the hell out of me.

We built an AI workflow that we give to our community in Prime called the Living Avatar. It reads sales calls, intake forms, and client conversations to find what customers actually say. We compared that with what we thought they wanted.

For example, we thought people needed help getting more done with AI. Then a client said:

“I feel like a jackass asking basic AI questions in front of 100 people.”

That person needed a place to ask questions without feeling stupid. “Get more done with AI” doesn’t tell them they’ll find that here.

Same offer. A very different reason to buy.

Our avatar was missing our best client’s actual words, and it was helping us write every email.

So now we check the map every week using AI. The Living Avatar bot looks for problems, trigger words, phrases, or goals from our clients. It shows us their exact words, and we review them before changing anything.

How can you check your avatar with AI in 5 steps?

Try a small version of this for your business.

1. Write down your best guess

What do your customers need help with? Why do they buy from you?

2. Let AI check the conversations

Upload your last five sales call transcripts and paste this prompt:

“Read these calls and tell me what my buyers actually want, what frustrates them, and what might stop them from buying. Show me recurring themes with exact quotes from the buyers, not the salesperson. Don’t guess or invent anything. Then suggest three marketing messages I could test using what you found.”

3. Compare your answers

Did buyers say what you expected? Check the quotes in the transcripts. Anything you wrote in step 1 that isn’t supported is still an assumption.

4. Write one new message

Pick a problem that comes up repeatedly. Ask AI to draft an email or social post showing how your business helps solve it. Feed your analysis to AI so it uses words your buyers would recognize.

5. Test it with real people

Send the email or publish the post. Do more of the right people reply, ask questions, or want to know more? Use what you learn to update your map.

Start small

You don’t need to rewrite all your marketing today. Start with this simple analysis and test one message.

See if you’re headed in the right direction before you confidently drive into a dead end using the wrong map.

Next: Is your website wearing the enemy’s uniform?

Onwards, Joe Stolte

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