Customer Persona Journey

When most marketers hear the word persona, they picture someone frozen in time... A profile card. A demographic. A pain point list.

Then they ask a marketing question... How do I sell to this person.

But missional business requires a different mindset.

Transformational brands do not see people as fixed. They see people on a continuum.

So the aim is not to market to a persona... The aim is to help someone take their next step closer to God.

That is why we do not stop at a single persona. We build a persona journey.

A simplified example...

Let's explore this with an over simplified example, a Bible sitting on a shelf.

Through a traditional marketer's lens, the question is simple... do they have a Bible in the house?

But through a missional mindset, the question goes deeper... Not just, is there a Bible present, but what is their relationship to that Bible?

• For one person it is mostly ornamental.
• Another opens it occasionally.
• Another reads it daily, but only for comfort.
• Another studies it to understand.
• Another begins incorporating what they learn into their life.
• Another starts helping others walk the same road.

Same object... Different stage. Different invitation.

If you treat all of them as the same persona, what you say will either insult them or overwhelm them.

This is the shift... We stop treating people as a snapshot, and start seeing them on a journey.

And in a journey, movement happens along axes.

Defining Persona Axes

Axes are the polar extremes that draw boundaries around the ecosystem of people you intend to reach and serve. They help you describe your audience in broad strokes, without pretending everyone is the same.

And we do not just grab the first axis that comes to mind. We test options until the axis actually creates clarity.

"Our efforts in missionary lines must become far more extensive. A more decided work than has been done must be done prior to the second appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." 6T 23.4

So we ask... What other axes might be more contextually relevant.

Maybe their view of their Creator:

I go deep on this inside the Missional Entrepreneurship course, but for the sake of this post, I just want to open our minds to what a missional-minded venture studio looks like.

When I think about the shaking, the issue will not be how much light we claim to have... It will be how much light we are applying.

So the two most important axes to understand people on the journey in our ecosystem are:

• Light (Truth) Received
• Light (Truth) Applied

Next, I add opposites for each:

• Light Received: Partial vs Full
• Light Applied: Asleep vs Awake

"God will be with everyone who seeks to understand the truth that he may set it before others in clear lines." 6T 314.3

Intersecting the Persona Matrix

With the axis intersecting, this forms a matrix that can hold real people… Each quadrant in the matrix represents a group of people who share a similar stage.

We can give them names and icons:

• Partial Light and Asleep: Unconvicted Flock
• Partial Light and Awake: Uncalled Flock
• Full Light but Asleep: Laodicea
• Full Light and Awake: Remnant

But putting people in boxes is only the first step. Now we want to help them journey from quadrant to quadrant.

We can imagine this as Jacob's Ladder... Ascending from partial light to full light, walking the narrow path, applying more and more of the light given through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.

Because matrix is not the mission. Movement is.

The Persona Journey

The persona journey is simply the story of people moving through the matrix. And it immediately gives us better questions than, how do we market...

Who am I trying to move. Where are they stuck. What is the next step that is realistic.

Unconvicted flock...

How do we reach them and wake them up.

Often it takes illness or disaster to begin waking them. God allows fear to wake them up, then removes the fear to see whether they continue in love...

This group is often reached through gospel medical missionary work when they are sick, and through literature evangelism in connection with global events

Uncalled flock...

In many cases, this is our Protestant brothers and sisters. They love Jesus and are often faithful to the light they have.

While they need to better understand the Sabbath and other clear Bible truths, first they need a reason to listen to us.

That reason is not just doctrinal sharpness. It is a demonstrated life... A deeper walk with Christ. A more other centered spirit. A people who serve, sacrifice, and speak with humility.

Inspiration tells us (PK 140.2) we must give the trumpet a special sound. We read again:

"As a people we are not half awake to a sense of our necessities and to the times in which we live. Wake up the watchmen. Our first work should be to search our hearts and to become reconverted. We have no time to lose upon unimportant issues. Wake up, brethren and sisters, and give the trumpet a certain sound." 24LtMs, Lt 47, 1909, par. 14

Remnant...

How do we support one another? Not compete. Not fragment. Collaborate.

I will have more to say on this in later posts… but the last quadrant I want to speak to will take some context:

Laodicea...

How do we wake them up. The short answer, a sense of urgency.

How I got to this conclusion. I detail this in my book "Mindset of a True Educator" but in short, first, I visualized a Hierarchy of Competence, illustrated with a two-dimensional graph:

• Y-Axis: Conscious / Unconscious
• X-Axis: Incompetent / Competent

This gives us a the movement pattern from novice to apprentice to journeyman to master. Next, I overlayed the light received/applied matrix… this exposed the problem.

Laodicea is settling into unconscious competence. Through a spiritual application, this level of mastery leads to complacency or a sense of self-sufficiency that hinders further growth.

In spiritual matters, becoming a "master" might tempt us to believe we've arrived at the pinnacle of understanding, echoing the warning:

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing..." Revelation 3:17

To prevent this, we should strive to remain in a state of conscious competence, continuously aware of our need for growth and dependence on God.

True education encourages us to be constant learners, embracing humility and recognizing that there's always more to understand and apply. Instead of becoming complacent at the mastery level, we should:

• Maintain Humility: Acknowledge that our knowledge and abilities are gifts from God, and there's always more to learn.
• Seek Continuous Growth: Pursue deeper insights and practical applications of truth.
• Stay Spiritually Awake: Remain vigilant against complacency, keeping our relationship with God vibrant and active.

By doing so, we avoid the pitfalls of complacency and continue to grow in our walk with God.

So far what we have ideated is a flat matrix... Two axes. Four quadrants.

That is generally sufficient for a brand.

But we have greater aspirations in the Advent Venture Studio, so we go further.

One step deeper... the Z-Axis

The third dimension we care about is not mainly internal posture. It is activation.

Think of it as the path from hearing, to obeying, to participating. In other words, how a person relates to the work of the Three Angels...

• Do they merely hear it.
• Do they begin to live it.
• Do they join the work of giving it.

This is where the matrix becomes three dimensional. Each quadrant becomes a stack, not a square.

The Z axis helps us see the difference between information and mobilization.

If you visualize the matrix as a cube...

X axis is light received. Y axis is light applied. Z axis is practical activation toward the work.

This moves the focus from simply giving truth... To activating demonstrations of what God's way of living looks like.

The Venture Studio Pillars

Once you see the cube, you realize something...

A persona journey is not just a teaching plan. It is a pathway that needs infrastructure.

People do not move through this journey because we said the right things. They move because there is a real environment that supports growth, obedience, and action.

That is where the pillar model comes in. It is the venture studio build order. It is how we make the persona journey possible at scale.

Each pillar of the ecosystem has a specific role in a transformational journey:

• Aware: A foundational journey of profound self-discovery.
• Awake: Actionable self-development to step out of false systems and demonstrate a life thats simpler, truer, and sustainable.
• Anchor: Stronger foundation what you believe, what you value with the goal of a settling into truth.
• Audience: Identify who youre called to serve and learn to see through their eyes.
• Authority: Establish the credibility and build trust needed to reach them.
• Action: Ideating a missional business that will support your audience while sustaining financial needs.
• Alliance: Build an intentional community with people who share the mission, values, and rhythm.

We will cover this in detail in the next post, but in summary:

The matrix tells you who they are. The journey tells you how they move. The pillars tell you what must exist so movement can actually happen.

Hopefully this is starting to bring the breadth and depth of the venture studio into view.