Text to appear to left of ordered list

For specific sections of my document, I need to text to appear to the left of an external list for certain list items. I have created a variablelist, but it doesn’t appear to be working.  I have used Arbortext for many years, but this is my first attempt without a pre-existing styler / dita structure.  A styler was applied to the document, but I am just learning how it works.