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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 814: Can You Help Me With My Sphere of Influence?
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We are back with your submitted topics. This week we help a member to start defining the professions that make up their sphere of influence.
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God, I was on you. Welcome back to BNI in the Power of one. Appreciate everybody being here again today. We were back with your show Submissions Topics, Questions etc submitted@bnipower of1.com if you ever have any topics go there. Let us know where you're from or if you want we can leave it anonymous as well. Today's question comes from Evie in Orlando, Florida. She says I'm not going to name the chapter but join BNI October 2024. I'm the owner of City Escape Spa located in Castleberry, Florida. I'm also licensed as a full specialist esthetician, nail tech and massage therapist. Where I struggle is the sphere of influence as a personal service provider and industry. My referrals and clients don't just come from one source. I know you say not to say this all the time, but literally everyone can benefit from self care and personal services. My spa offers services for nails, skin care, waxing and massage therapy. I know we're not supposed to target our group of group as potential clients. We are a smaller group of 19 at the moment. Most of the people in my group are in real estate type of services. My focus in 2025 is to expand my spa services. Facials, waxing and massage. My husband is also a nail tech but his focus is only on pedicure services. We are at the point where we are not yet able to hire someone else, but I am busy in my nail services, not so much in my spa services. I do many cross chapter visits and one to ones for visibility. The other challenge is that my SPA is about 30 minutes away from my chapter and while I don't mind driving to go to a business that is good, many people do not want to drive more than five miles outside their house to go somewhere. So inviting people to visit my chapter has also been challenging. I'd love to hear your input on this and hope to gain some insight from you. Okay Evie, there's a lot going on here. Number one, let's just start with your sphere of influence. Okay, sphere of influence again is your context. What people, what types of services are targeting? The same type of people you want to meet with and in a similar situation where they can easily bring you up. So there are areas that complement your business but don't compete with your business. Yes, most people can. I will never say everybody. You know, you say literally everyone can benefit from. Sure. In theory. Unless they don't believe in it and then. So it's not everybody. Right. The benefit has to be the client or potential client needs to be able to believe and see the benefit of those types of things. Now you cover a lot of different areas so that and expands that. But some people don't like to be touched. So massage therapy is never going to be a thing for them. I don't get my nails done, there's no waxing situation going on in skin care products etc, so it's not everyone and not everyone can afford these services. So even though they may benefit from it, even though they may want it, doesn't mean they can benefit from it now. So the question is what other services are finding and working with my ideal client, what you have to do and I'm not going to answer this for you because I don't know, it's not for me to answer, this is for you to be thinking about which is what is my or your ideal client? Yes, anybody could benefit from your services, but who does the most? Who uses your services? Who specifically is going to use those services? You're really trying to expand on the facials, the waxing and the massage. What does that client look like? Once you can really define the client then you can start asking yourself okay, this client, what else are they doing? What else are they, what other services are they utilizing that I should be networking with? Then you're starting to build that context for your out right? And of course it's vague, it's, it's wide but you want to get, you want to narrow it down so it'd be easier and this is why sometimes one to ones with your directors and stuff makes a lot of sense because and I've always said our director and ambassador team, probably the least utilized resource you have to do a one to one and get some like time where you can brainstorm and go back and forth on and ask questions and have conversations on which we can't do on a podcast platform. But let's just say you have an ideal client, most likely female, may or may not work, I don't know, may or may not be making a certain level of income, whether that's household income or they personally are using that income. Let's just say you have a professional woman. So we have a professional woman business owner or, or you know, let's just say high level executive makes good money so they have expendable income for these types of services. Regular use of would regularly use your services you're trying to do and then you got to pick each one and focus on each one. Like what would be regular facials, benefits for them or what would be regular massage when you think of that, now we've got this picture, we've got this definition of an ideal client. Okay, what else is this professional woman spending money on that would fit? Things like gym memberships, things like custom clothing or designer clothing. Maybe, Maybe it is places that offer services you don't do. Big one right now. IVs right? Big booming market in the IV world. So is there an IV service place that maybe they have a membership with that they use regularly? Maybe it's a place like my wife's business dry bar, a blow dry bar with a membership. Maybe they do that on a regular basis or, or a hair salon that doesn't do everything that you do that you can build a relationship with. Maybe it is. And, and with the gym, there's like all kinds of these, you know, niche gym opportunities now. So look at those areas. Obviously not being in that field. There's probably a list of these things. That's where you start thinking about your sphere of influence. Okay. So you first you have to identify and define your target market and then think outside like, okay, besides me, you know, who else defines this person as their target market? Those are the businesses that would fit in your sphere of influence. So that's a big piece of it. And that's how you're going to start expanding into the services that aren't as busy as the nail tech stuff was right now. All right, that's one part when we're able to hire someone. So now we're busy. We're not at the point where we're going to be able to hire somebody, but we're busy. We're just trying to expand. This is where you use bni because some of these are going to take longer term. What you're, you should start doing is using your BNI membership in your BNI chapter to ask for referrals into those spheres of influence. Right? You want to get to know all the gyms in the area and all the gym owners. You want to get to know all the jewelry salespeople in the area. You want to get to know all the, whatever dry bar type level places in the area. You want to get to know all the customers clothing or boutique clothing places in the area. So you should be asking for referrals not just for the actual direct client, the Prof. You know, the professional high level executive woman who's going to use these services, but ask for referrals into all of those other places that'll help you build those relationships. Those are relationship based referrals. Then as you're building those, you can start inviting some of them to your chapter. Now, your spa being 30 minutes away from your chapter, you're going to have to determine whether that makes the most sense, is that, you know, why did you end up in the chapter you're in? You can still. You went. And so I know, yes, there's a lot of people who don't want to drive five miles outside their house, but not everybody. Case in point, you. So keep inviting. Don't let that excuse creep into your head because you're making an excuse for others before you even invite them. So I don't think that it could be challenging. Sure. But I would listen to our inviting podcast and it's 566-566 where we talk about the language used to make it more comfortable. You're probably going to have to start inviting people you don't know, and that's okay because that's going to expand that sphere of influence and help drive that. You're stuck. And we're going to talk about this. We could talk about this in the Business Matters podcast. We've talked about in other ones too, where it's like, I'm super busy, but I'm not, I'm not at a place to hire you. Probably you might be, you might be at a place to hire somebody. It's always that leap of faith that every small business owner goes through, like, all right, like I'm making X amount of money, X amount of revenues coming in if I hire somebody. Right now we look at the cost of that. But what we tend to fail to look at is what's the upside of doing that, that now we're, we're getting somebody's additional, you know, we're adding, sure, it costs the payroll, but we're also adding hours of time to be working on things, hours of somebody else's time. Maybe it's, they start doing some marketing, maybe they're doing these other things to help grow the business. So I would revisit that. Obviously I would talk to somebody. Maybe you really are at that point where hiring somebody makes a little bit more sense so that you can spend, you know, maybe it's so that they are taking off some of the labor part of the services for you to allow you to spend more time being out there networking or to be doing those types of things. Only you know that better than I. Obviously, I, I just got a one line comment on it, but I'd revisit that because a lot of times I, you know, we all face that. We all get to the point where like, ah, should I hire? Well, you know, the cost and you know, this is where we are now, doesn't fit this budget right now. But, and maybe that's the true part, maybe it's not the right time, but at the same time it's a lot of times it is, it's just the fear of like we know the known is the cost, the unknown is the upside. And so you have to have a little bit of faith and strategy to capture the upside that will far make, you know, be worth the cost. So yeah, let's summarize this a little bit. I think the thing you have to do first is clearly identify your target market. And you might have multiple examples. Maybe you identify, you know, five to 10 different target markets, clearly define who they are, what's the benefit they're getting from you, what do they look like, what are they doing, what do they have? And then step out and say, okay, who else would use this definition as their target market? Those are the types of professions I need to start building a network with inside my BNI chapter and outside my B. Those are the relationship referrals I need to be asking for. And so you, in your BNI chapter, you don't want to just talk about, you know, one of your services you do. Like you said, you don't be targeting the people in the room. They have a very clear understanding of what you do. And if they're going to use it, they're going to use it. It's start asking for those relationship based referrals. Those take time. They take time to find and to develop, which is fine because you're super busy right now with the nail tech stuff. So you've got the time to build in. But that's what I would start doing. And those are the types of professions that I would be inviting. Because you're, yes, you want to meet a lot of them and make some relationships with a lot of them, but the deepest relationship is going to be the one you meet with every single week in your BNI chapter. That'll be the most profitable, deepest set one. So you're, you're trying to build the network outside, but also identify what professions you need inside and you need to start inviting them. And you need to be a little bit comfortable with being uncomfortable, meaning inviting people you don't know who are maybe a little bit closer to your salon or to the chapter, what have you. And then you'll start having that conversation again with yourself of when's the right time to hire. So hopefully this was helpful. It's a great question. There's a lot to it, Evie. So I would again highly recommend you get in touch with one of our directors and ambassadors or our managing director. Schedule one to one where you can really dig into this deeper. You know, back and forth questions, conversations and stuff like that that a podcast doesn't allow us to do. And that would be my advice for everybody you have. Maybe it's even just tap into, you know, somebody in your chapter that can help you think these through. Who has the business experience and stuff. This is the intrinsic value of B and I talk about all the time. We've got all this business experience in our chapter that we sometimes fail to tap into because we just got so focused on production, production, production. But these are the types of things we can learn. We can ask our members or directors and our ambassadors for help to really brainstorm through these challenges and make ourselves that much better. Tap into that experience. Definitely tap into that BNI experience. As always, appreciate everybody listening, comments, questions, all that B and I power of one. Let us know what you're thinking with reviews on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Appreciate everybody who continues to do that and I hope you guys have a fantastic day.
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We rise with the sun Ready for the day with hard work and passion we pave the way Every little task it builds and it grows in this world of business it's the heart that shows dedication Shines in everything we do Together we climb it's me and it's you we all work hard to make our dreams align with strength of spirit we leave the average behind the power of giving lifts us high and wide that's why we are proud to be a part of B and I From early mornings to late at night we hustle and strive Keep our vision bright through every challenge we stand tall and strong Together as a family we can't go wrong the bonds we're building they take us far in the game of business we're shining like a star we all work hard to make our dreams come true True with strength of spirit we all pull through the power of giving lifts us high and wide that's why we are proud to stand side by side Being our support place where connections thrive Uniting our hopes Keeping dreams alive Together we network, inspire and share with every referral we show that we.
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Care.
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We all work hard to make our dreams align with strength of spirit we're truly on the grind the power of giving lifts us high and wide that's why we are proud to stand side by side so here we are Lifting each other high with dedication and pride we're ready to fly to together we'll grow through every stormy night in this journey of ours we're shining bright.