Chapter one
Meet the Transformational Consumer

You see, technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change: Electrons change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements combine and change into compounds. But that’s all of life, right? It’s the constant, it’s the cycle. It’s solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation. It’s fascinating really. It’s a shame so many of us never take time to consider its implications.

—WALTER WHITE, BREAKING BAD, SEASON 1, EPISODE 1

A friend of mine goes by the name of Coach Stevo. Stevo is a sports psychologist and an expert in habit formation. But he got his start as a regular old personal trainer. In fact, in the very earliest days of his career, he was a trainer with a serious niche: people preparing to take the Marine Corps physical exam. He himself had gone from fat to fit in preparation for the Marine physical, and he wanted to pass on what he’d learned. The way he tells it, he would give these cadet hopefuls a program to follow and tell them what to do, and they’d do it.

Done and done.

And then one day, into Stevo’s gym walked a woman we’ll call Sister Mary Catherine, a retired Irish Catholic nun. It would be foolhardy to let Sister Mary Catherine’s soft middle distract you from what would turn out to be her razor-sharp tongue. But Stevo was up for the challenge—he started telling her what to do, giving her exercises and a workout plan to follow, but things didn’t quite go as predictably as they had with hisuber-motivated clients in the past. She struggled to make progress.

At one point, Sister Mary Catherine called out a big problem she’d seen, something she felt posed the danger of setting her relationship with Stevo up for failure.

She decided to clear things up for her intrepid trainer. “I know what to do,” she declared. “I need you to help me make myself do it.”

Sister Mary Catherine was what you might call a character. And like all characters, she presented at least one of the elemental characteristics that make up the archetype (that archetype being “Transformational Consumer”). Once we understand an archetype, engaging with the individual characters that spring out of the archetype is a much more vivid, much richer, more real experience. Understand “gangster,” and “Don Corleone” is a different, more nuanced being.

Sister Mary Catherine’s comment—“I can’t make myself do the things I want or need to do”—is the essence of what I call the Personal Disruption Conundrum. The Personal Disruption Conundrum is the number-one limiting factor of people who invest a great deal of their time and money into projects to get healthier, wealthier, or wiser: Transformational Consumers.

Let’s explore the core characteristics of the archetype: Transformational Consumers’ minds, beliefs, and consumer patterns. This is the first step to engaging with the real Transformational Consumers, the real people, the real characters in your customer base or audience. It’s also the fi rst step to helping them take this limit off themselves— and unlimiting your business in the process.