Working John Empathy Avatar
Create for a specific past self at a specific moment of struggle.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 96%
The Working John Empathy Avatar turns a broad customer profile into a vivid person experiencing a specific difficult moment. Define the avatar's job, ambitions, fears, and constraints, then connect those attributes to a real memory from your own earlier life. Before creating content, mentally return to that scene and ask what message would have helped that version of you act. Combine practical value with language that creates trust, dignity, and emotional safety. As success increases, deliberately remember the burdens the audience still carries and avoid treating confusion or hesitation as inferiority. The mechanism produces communication grounded in lived tension rather than abstract demographics, improving relevance and the likelihood that useful advice leads to change.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain. Codie Sanchez describes Contrarian Thinking's “Working John” avatar as a version of herself when she felt trapped in a nine-to-five job.
Core principles
- 01Specific emotional moments produce more resonant communication.
- 02Trust and safety influence whether advice creates action.
- 03Past personal experience can make an avatar concrete.
- 04Success should not erase empathy for earlier struggles.
How to run it
- 1
Define the person
Describe one representative audience member's work, ambitions, constraints, fears, and current alternatives.
Pro tip Use a name so the team can discuss the same person consistently.
Watch out Do not treat the avatar as a complete substitute for real audience research.
- 2
Choose the critical moment
Identify a specific scene in which the person's problem becomes emotionally immediate.
Pro tip Favor a moment with sensory, social, or internal details rather than a general life stage.
Watch out An overly broad situation will produce generic content.
- 3
Reconnect with lived experience
Recall when you faced a similar burden and what prevented you from acting.
Pro tip Write down the voices, fears, and trade-offs that were present at the time.
Watch out Do not rewrite the past through the confidence you possess now.
- 4
Create the needed message
Build the content that would have helped that person understand the problem and take a realistic next step.
Pro tip Pair clear instructions with reassurance that acknowledges the emotional cost.
Watch out Information alone may not create action when the audience does not trust the messenger.
- 5
Audit for condescension
Remove dismissive phrasing and check whether the message preserves the audience member's dignity.
Pro tip Read the message as if addressing your earlier self face to face.
Watch out Do not confuse trolls with sincere audience members who are uncertain or mistaken.
- 6
Refresh through feedback
Use comments, conversations, and observed behavior to update the avatar and its critical moments.
Pro tip Look for the audience's own recurring words and situations.
Watch out A static avatar can become outdated as the audience changes.
In the wild
Codie recalls sitting in an office, wanting to quit, feeling afraid, hearing her mother's voice internally, and crying in the bathroom. She uses that specific memory to imagine what her “Working John” audience needs to hear before she records.
→ The content is directed toward a concrete emotional situation rather than a generic aspiring entrepreneur.
Kipp shares Nancy Duarte's practice of imagining loved ones in the audience before delivering a presentation. That mental audience helps her speak with the warmth and connection she would naturally use with people she cares about.
→ The presentation gains empathy and personal connection.
Common mistakes
Using demographics without a moment
Age, occupation, and income do not reveal what the audience feels when the problem becomes urgent.
Projecting present confidence backward
Successful creators can forget how heavy uncertainty felt before they had money, skills, or status.
Talking down to the audience
Condescension damages trust and resembles rejecting the creator's own earlier, less experienced self.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for educators, creators, and founders who have personally experienced the problem their audience faces.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the creator's past experience is materially different from the audience's current reality and is not validated through research.
From the transcript
“we have an avatar that we call Working John”
“I think about the moments, the actual moments.”
“I go film the video that I think that person, that me back then, would wanna hear in that moment.”
From the episode
How to 10x A Boring Business With Marketing
Codie Sanchez