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Foreign hello, everyone, and welcome to the K show. It's episode 281 and today I am talking to those of you who are afraid to niche down your business. So get some sort of specialty. Be very clear on who your ideal client is. And this is important no matter what your reason is for being afraid. So basically, if you're struggling to market your business, if you're struggling to get clients, this is probably the reason why, having worked with so many home industry businesses over the last decade, I often see the same problem at the root of everyone who's struggling. You have no clear niche. Some are resistant, you know, fearing they're going to lose business, even though they barely have any to lose at that point if they narrow down their focus. Focus. And others would love to have a niche, but they don't know where to start. Or would having a niche or niche, if you're on the east coast, even means. So today on the podcast, I'm going to share a couple client stories with you to show you what's possible when you create a specialty around your brand and how to make it happen. Let's dive in. First, let's start with one of those client stories. A case of hidden identity, you might say. So last year, I started working with a professional organizer who felt so stuck in her business. She had clients, but they weren't the right ones and they weren't as numerous as she would like. The projects were kind of small, it was sporadic, and she really just felt. She felt cluttered in her marketing. And for a professional organizer to feel cluttered, it's never a good feeling. And I looked at her marketing holistically, and I could tell that she was working so hard to do the right things and that she was very teachable. This woman was a powerhouse, but she lacked confidence and she really needed direction. So I asked about her specialty, and I was shocked when she told me she specialized in estate clearing. I was shocked because everything about her website and marketing focused on home organizing. She's an organizer, so I thought that's what she did. And while estate clearing does include an element of home organization, it's a completely different animal. So she and I started with the essentials, reworking her website copy. Because your website is the mothership of your entire brand. Everybody ends up there at some point. So you have to make sure that it is a clear and true representation of what you do, who you serve, and how you do it. Therefore, here is what happened next. So we do custom copywriting for people in my agency. We also do semi custom and, and in this case it was more of a semi custom situation because she was one of my vault clients, I believe on our gold plan. And she had a lot of ability to update her website on her own, but she needed help figuring out what to say. And this is where I said you have to tell people point blank what you do. You specialize in estate clearing in this area, this state, this province, whatever. And then you need to explain what that means. And I estate clearing is near and dear to my heart. Not because I enjoy it, but because this is something that we're currently going through with my mother in law. And it's overwhelming. Like even though my mother in law's home is not large, it's just like dealing with people's things. It's just, oh, overwhelming. So I was in a great state of mind to be able to say to her, here is what someone in my situation needs to hear on and read on your website. And also, can you move to Wisconsin and help me? She couldn't move, but you know, that's okay. So when we reworded her website to me that's like, okay, that's step one of many. I wasn't expecting to hear back from her so quickly and to have over an hour long conversation with her in which she told me, and I quote, business is going amazing. She not only is getting estate clearing clients who don't bat an eye at her rates, and she's selling some of the biggest projects she's ever sold in the history of her business, but she was also contacted by a, a company that found out about her, went to her website, realized what she did, and they were like, our clients need you. Can we include you in the stuff that we give them when they come to us? I mean, she got herself the most perfect referral partner simply by being very clear on what her specialty was. Now, I did not help her come up with this specialty. She already had it. She, she was just struggling on how to present it to the world once she presented it, once she became very clear, people understood and they started flocking to her because it was a specialty that other organizers around her simply did not have. Now, if you're a professional organizer, this is not a sign for you to go start specializing in estate clearing unless that's really what you want to do. But it is your sign, everyone in the home industry to figure out what is it that you're offering. And does your website clearly communicate that? Now obviously it doesn't stop with the website. You also then need to talk about that specialty through your email marketing, through your blogging, any ads you run, any press you get, you know, whether you're being interviewed or you're on a panel or whatever it is. Because people need to be told multiple times. And also in the name of having a good referral partner, your referral partners need to understand what type of client to refer to you. It will not do your business any good if someone keeps referring the wrong leads to you. Help your clients out. Help your referral partners out by just being clear on what you do. Now, what would it look like in the case of that client to send out email marketing? Does this mean that she only sends out email marketing that talks about estate clearing? No, actually you don't have to pigeonhole yourself like that. But instead she can talk about really any organizing topic with the perspective of and meaning. Like add a simple line in there of if you need help getting. Let's say the newsletter was about kitchen organization. And if you need help getting your kitchen organized so that it makes estate clearing easier in the future, let me know if you need help getting your mother's kitchen organized because she has collected many dishes over the decades. If you need help getting her space ready to go, I'm your lady. This is what we do. You can talk about any sort of organizing topic, or if you're a designer, you can talk about any sort of design topic as long as you somehow have a thread that you it leads people back to. By the way, this is my specialty. Okay, so I'm gonna give you another client example that I think will further illustrate this. And I like to call this one a case of mistaken identity. So one of my interior design clients was so stressed out about her business and lack of clients that her hair literally started falling out. It was really sad. She wanted to specialize in construction management for models and and new builds, but nobody seemed interested. Or if they did seem interested and they reached out, they thought she was overpriced. But spoiler alert, she wasn't overpriced. Now, technically, she did have a specialty, a niche project management, construction management. However, that niche didn't mean anything to her clients, nor was it standout enough for her referral partners to remember or be motivated to refer her. Because nobody looking for help with their home thinks, oh, I need a project manager. Instead they think, wow, I really need a better space because of X, Y and Z. Once she and I worked through this, she realized her specialty was actually in creating a certain type of kitchen design, one that would be especially Meaningful to people living within her own culture. And to combat the price aversion that tended to follow her culture, she decided that her initial offer would be for a paid on site consultation where she's free to share ideas and suggestions to aid the client in their process. If the client wanted help sourcing actual items, then that would be a separate fee. If they wanted to lead that into full service, hooray. They would already trust her so much at that point, the communication floodgates would be wide open and pricing wouldn't be such an issue anymore. Now, are there still going to be tire kickers and cheapos? Of course, those people are either not her client or they were at least a client for a paid consult. Either way, she made money by charging for her time, or she made money by not wasting her time with them at all. Armed with her newly realized niche, this interior designer was able to become a standout resource for her referral partners. Builders and realtors know that if they have a client who fits her uber clear demographic, they can refer that client to her. That client in turn will feel so well cared for because the designer specializes in exactly what they need and understands it from such a nuanced perspective because it it's just a very culturally defined thing. And I'm careful not to give too many specific details because I do want to protect the identity of my clients unless they give me full permission to share all the things. But I will say this. You know, getting her foot in the door with kitchen renovation will lead to other renovations and other areas of the home, which is ultimately what she wants, allowing her to create a climate in which her business is able to grow off repeat clients, rather than just on one time clients. Guys, we should not have to chase down new client after new client after new client. Your business should be growing based on word of mouth referrals from past clients and from those past clients coming to you for more. Now, is everyone going to need their home remodeled every single year? No, of course not. But as you get into the upper echelons of ideal clients, if your clients have a second home, or a getaway cabin or even a third home, that's a lot of work for you to do. And maybe you get to the point where you only want five projects a year, or maybe you want just a few big projects, but then you want a lot of consulting gigs in between to help fill in the gap, help with cash flow. That's totally a smart way to run your business. Now you don't have to do it that way, but that's what I'm seeing a lot of home professionals doing. So I guess the key takeaway from these stories is make sure that you actually have a specialty and that that specialty is being communicated. And then also, if you have a specialty and you are communicating it, but it's not resonating, which is the case with the second story I told you, figure out if that specialty even means something to your ideal client. Because in this case, it didn't mean anything. Construction management, like, like that's an esoteric concept for a homeowner. Like, what does that mean? You're going to be here looking over the shoulder of the plumber and electrician, make sure they're doing a good job. They don't. They're like, I don't know, it doesn't mean anything to me. So therefore, I don't care. If I don't care, I don't see value in it. If I don't see value in it, I don't pay for it. And I will get major sticker shock if you give me an estimate. And I see your design fee is this many thousands of dollars because there's just no perceived value there. So making sure that your specialty shows people that perceived value is extremely important. I had to go through this quite a bit in my own business because I at first was trying to pitch myself as I'll create your email newsletters, I'll create your blog posts, I'll create your website. But I wanted to be more than just an order taker, you know, I wanted to be more than just someone who writes down a newsletter because that's what the client said. So I realized I had to position myself as an authority. And that meant doing a lot of my own experimentation and research, getting a lot of experience on my own, testing out things in my own business before I could turn around and say to a client, oh, this is going to work. I realized that I had to understand why a home pro would come to the socialite agency and ask for our help. I realized that people weren't really buying a newsletter service or a blog service. They were buying confidence, time savings, and success, like monetary success. And when I started selling that, even though my actual offerings didn't change, made a huge difference. So this is a good time for you to step back and look at your business objectively and say, do I have a niche? If so, is it communicated? If it's communicated, is it valuable to my ideal client? If it's not, then you need to make sure that you reposition it like in the case of my second client, she didn't stop making construction management her specialty. She just changed how she presented it because it needed to be more meaningful and tangible to the ideal client. So she said, all right, I'm specializing in this type of kitchen renovation or this type of kitchen in a new build, and that truly and deeply meant something to a certain person, and there were enough of those people that it can make a difference. That's what you need to do in your own business. Okay? So I know that this can be very difficult to wrap your mind around, but I have to say, it's so cool when I'm in a video call with a client and I see the moment that they get it. It's like a light bulb just turns on above their head. Their eyes light up, and they suddenly look more confident because they're like, oh, this was in front of me the whole time. Why didn't I see this? And this is why, as the Bible says, iron sharpens iron. We need each other. We need each other to talk through this. We need each other because we often can't see the forest through the trees. And I have been in the position several times of. Of being the one who's able to stand outside the forest and say, hey, how about this path over here? And I've had people like that in my life, too. Business coaches, my husband, so many people who are just like, why are you doing it that way? When this way would be so much easier or better or profitable. And I'm like, oh, duh, of course. But that's because nobody was meant to be in business alone. So if you feel like your marketing's not working and you know you're missing something, but you just cannot figure out what it is, chances are you just need an objective third party who's done this before to point things out to you. So maybe you need a business advisor or you need a mentor, or maybe you need a marketing person. I don't know. But I think you know where to go for that help. And I hope that you get it. Because when you have a clearly defined specialty or a type of, like, deal client or type of project that you want to focus on, it makes the rest of your marketing so much easier, because now you don't really have to wonder, what do I say in a blog post? What do I say in a newsletter? What do I say my website? Because it all goes back to, well, I got to talk about this aspect of what I offer. I need to talk about this type of client. I know how to talk to them, because I deal with this person all the time. And everything flows. And people will be attracted to you because of your specialty. Now, will someone be deterred from working with you if you have a specialty? Yes and no. The idea is that you don't want to look like you are the stager, the designer, the organizer, the window treatment person for everyone. Okay? You want to have a minimum project baseline that will deter the cheapos and the tire kickers, or you can lead in with a paid consult. However you want to structure that is up to you. And then you'll want to be very clear on this is my process. This is what every client goes through. It's the same consistent process because it shows that you have standards and boundaries and that does elicit respect. You'll also want to make sure that whatever price structure you're using not only helps you break even, but it helps you turn a profit. Because it's very hard to invest in other areas of your business when your prices are not right. More often than not, I see people with prices that are too low and when they finally get the courage to increase their prices, they don't increase them enough and then they have to increase them again, and that just ends up irritating people, including them. So make sure your pricing is. Is down good as well, because when you have a specialty, you can list higher prices because specialists are more valuable than generalists. Okay? So that's why having an itch is so important. And I hope that each of you listening or watching this takes time to make sure this is what you're actually doing in your business. Marketing is not supposed to feel so hard. It's not supposed to feel confusing. You shouldn't have to wonder whether it's working. But if you are wondering whether it's working because it's. You're trying all the things and it's just not panning out. This is a sign for you to reach out for help to me or to someone else that you trust. All right, everyone, that is what I have for you this week. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to rate the show. Give it a thumbs up, subscribe on YouTube, write a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That really makes a difference. Thank you all so much. And until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear, and I will talk to you soon.