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Welcome to another exciting episode of Ravel Radio! I'm your host, Cara, and today, we have the pleasure of having Jessica Osborn join us. In this episode, we'll explore unconventional paths to expertise, redefining networking, and finding your niche for both growth and variety.
Jessica's journey is truly inspiring. After two decades in the marketing industry, she took a leap of faith, leaving her executive position to venture into the online business world. Today, she spearheads a thriving global community of professionals who have transformed into successful entrepreneurs.
One of Jessica's core beliefs is adopting a 'less work, more life' approach to business strategy. Throughout the episode, she'll share valuable insights and practical tips on how coaches and consultants can build simple, profitable businesses. These ventures will empower them to lead flexible, family-first lifestyles while unlocking unlimited earning potential—turning their dreams into reality.
Join us as we dive into aligning your business strategy with your life, attracting the right clients, and implementing concrete strategies for sustained success. Let's discover how to thrive and embrace a fulfilling entrepreneurial journey.
Connect with Jessica
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicaaosborn/
https://jessicaosborn.com
https://instagram.com/jessica.osborn
Free Course from Jessica The Magnetic Formula: 5 Keys To Clients On Tap... without wasting your day on social media!
TIME STAMPS
0:01 Discussion About Personalities and Off-Grid Living
7:12 Overcoming limiting beliefs and personal growth
13:46 The importance of finding a niche in business
24:54 Gaining expertise and exploring multiple passions
32:54 Creating your own unique niche
39:55 The power of specialization and standing out
47:14 Finding the right fit for your business
51:48 Lifestyle businesses and targeting ideal clients
58:36 Evaluating and refining your niche
1:07:20 Creating a unique and adaptable business model
Ready to connect and network with your new biz besties? Apply to Join us in the RAVEL Collective where service-driven women entrepreneurs come to find friendship, referrals, and fun.
Want to connect with Cara or learn more about how to build a strategic referral network or community? Connect on Linkedin or visit her website at carasteinmann.com
Hi, hi how are you, I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I wanted to tell you I loved the episode.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 1:I'm going to share it on LinkedIn this week. Thank you, that was really fun.
Speaker 2:Cool. Yeah, it was such a good one and, yeah, I was enjoying seeing the content come out yesterday and, except for looking at all the expressions I was doing on my face when you were talking, I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 1:God, oh, I totally didn't watch it. I didn't watch it, I just listened. I haven't been able to bring myself to do the video part of this whole thing yet, but I was cracking up because I don't know if you've ever done the Colby assessment. It's not a personality test that measures your co-nation, which is how you take action if this is what they say anyway, how you take action if left to your own devices. And I'm a quick start and you get four numbers and mine basically say that I have no desire for structure or doing things the same way. And I'm a quick start. So I'm always bringing in information and changing my mind all the time and adjusting based on what I know. And by the time that aired I had changed the framework. I shared the three C's of relationship marketing, which they still are, but I turned it into a framework, a radical referrals framework. It's got like it makes a little bit more sense now. And I was cracking them up. I'm like, oh, that's already changed, principles still apply.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, and like we can't worry about all that kind of stuff because we could go on and on forever, couldn't?
Speaker 1:we.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to have a look at that. What is it called? A Co-Nil?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's called the Colby KOLB-E Colby A Index and the results are really really kind of startling how well it described me and there are no bad scores, but it just tells you basically what strength there is in the way you operate and how you can optimize your business and your life so that you're not burning yourself out all the time. Awesome, like it actually says that I should not prepare for speeches or like plan anything, because I'll be way more effective if I just wing it.
Speaker 2:Yes, which?
Speaker 1:goes against everything, Like people tell you right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a way Like I have found the exact same thing as soon as I start preparing or you know, I'll do I'll record that again. My first one is generally like yeah, it might not be 100% perfect, but I'm kind of in the zone and I'm talking properly, and otherwise I'm in my head thinking I wanted to say that or I wanted to do this, and yeah, just start to come across as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just off the cuff is better sometimes. I'm really glad you were a few minutes late, by the way, because my husband was trying to clean out the dryer vent, that he's got the vacuum cleaner going into the next room and then my son's calling saying his mountain bike broke down or something and he needs a ride, and I'm like you guys, come on now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a little bit. I was like guys, you need to get ready and leave. Having a family and doing this final moments of breakfast and we've, and then my internet wasn't connecting. I'm like connect and it's like, oh my God, it's dropped out, and like come back on, because I'll just give you the like we're, we're camping off grid and it's been fine for like five days. And then yesterday or the day before, the power like we've got a battery, and then the battery converts like has normal 12 volt power, but it converts to 24 volt to power the power switches, and so there's like anyway, it just started just switching off, but the battery is fine, like it's not, but the power points we like switching off, which I mean the internet dropped off. So we found a way to plug directly into the inverter instead of and we still haven't really figured out what the problem is, but we're in the inverter this morning and then we must have just had too many appliances on, like trying to make coffee, and then it's milk profit going and there's something else and you know like laptops plugged in and and so it's just gone like switch off for a minute and then it switches itself back on again, but of course it reset the styling. Of course, right on eight o'clock it's like we're styling site. Now I'm like recalibrating, it goes off, on, off, on, just for a few minutes.
Speaker 1:It was, it was fine, for it was fine with me. I was like, oh God, I hope she's not waiting in there because my family's being crazy, and that's just kind of par for the course, though.
Speaker 2:It worked out the same.
Speaker 1:Sorry, that's kind of stressful for you though, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you mean for work doing, work stuff.
Speaker 1:And try and yeah, I mean like work stuff and juggling all that and family and everything it's. I admire you doing that whole off grid thing. Even that's a lot of like unknowns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a little bit crazy, and this one we've been at for I think it's eight days. So we leave tomorrow, but we are literally. We've got one carrot, we've got, like, our fresh fruit and vegetable with one banana, I think we have one apple. We're like, because there's nothing like. It's literally two hours drive to the next place where there is a town where we can get petrol, any fresh fruit of edge. They've got a little shop here that we can buy. Like I bought a packet of soup last night so that I could have vegetables and I can give the kids like the. Yeah, we just we maybe didn't quite plan for this one as well as we should have. We thought we'd stocked up, but there's only so much you can bring because there's only that much fridge space. And then we're like well, my kids are fruit bats. They just eat so much fruit and vegetables, which is great, but fruit bats. Anyway, that's been our little challenge of like. Okay, we've got to kind of start paying attention to what we're eating and stop eating. Don't have another, you know, don't have three apples. One you've had your one for today, that's it.
Speaker 1:Great moderation people kids don't care they don't get it. They're just, yeah, like my son will go eat. He'll eat like a whole. The whole bag of grapes is gone and I'm like that was supposed. I guess I'll go get more for everybody else. Or like the watermelon he's a watermelon fiend, so I'll cut up half a watermelon and he'll take the whole thing in his room and just eat the whole thing, a whole Tupperware container of watermelon. And I'm like it's bitten him in the ass a couple of times though, because, like pears and mandarins, if he eats too many will give him diarrhea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's gonna be and I'm like ah that's what you get, piglet. It's so hard because I'm like, well, if they're gonna eat anything, I'm glad they're eating fruit. I'm not, you know like they're snacking on chips or anything bad, so it's kind of in a way good, but it's yeah sometimes.
Speaker 1:I'm like oh, in your limited, you're in a limited capacity right now.
Speaker 2:So yes, like our fridge is like half, is that the size of a normal fridge. So we can only fit so much stuff in it and it's hard, so even some things I wouldn't normally have in the fridge. I'm like they need to be in the fridge because otherwise they go off in like a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, I love your top. It's super cute. Thank you, I love those colors.
Speaker 2:I bought it. I love the colors on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I bought it.
Speaker 1:I love the colors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those things. I was laughing about it. Sorry, I have another little side tension story.
Speaker 1:I'm good with it. I'm good with those, aren't?
Speaker 2:I. But I think you know, in this journey you probably might do it as well, but I've kind of been, like you know, paying attention to things like money stories and money blocks, and you know. I've read some books and I'm trying, you know I'm trying to do the work and you know lift myself out of that into the place of abundance and all of these things. But anyway, it's hard because they're ingrained practices that we have since we were kids and I always be like look at the price tag, oh, I don't know whether I'll pay that much. And anyway, I bought this top without looking at the price tag and I didn't realize till after I bought it and I went oh, I just bought this top because I loved it. I didn't even look at the price tag. Oh, no I was like incredible growth.
Speaker 1:Those self-conscious, self-limiting beliefs and our like permission levels and all that kind of stuff is so powerful. I got really into that a few years ago after I took a meditation and mindfulness instructor course. That had like a mind dynamics component to it and it was all about, like, what holds us back from having what we want, and it's so much of that is just these behaviors and these thoughts that we don't even recognize we're thinking because we're not paying attention and so many are coming through. And it's kind of mind-blowing when I started doing mindfulness meditation just even five minutes a couple times a week, because I'm like, okay, I'm not going to sit still for longer than that, but it's enough to make you start recognizing some of those thoughts that would just flip through very quickly and you can catch them and hang on to them, and I would find myself like at the grocery store and I would think something and I would be like whoa, like something judgmental, maybe about somebody in the next line or something, and I'm like, oh, I didn't know. I thought that, oh, my god, and it kind of messed with me a little bit. So then, yeah, so it's. I was really obsessed with like being stuck, feeling stuck, and I thought it was all my self-limiting beliefs. But I ended up discovering that most of what was holding me back was not having a strong enough foothold in my core values. What drives me, like at my core. So I was compromising those all the time because of the belief systems that I had, like I should be doing this or I shouldn't be doing that or whatever. So getting, I think getting, even if you can't figure out what all of your stuck points are like, stepping more into the core values and that kind of thing so can override them. I think over time, like they're stronger. I think the drivers are stronger than the beliefs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's so amazing, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:I've just had like so many like huge moments of like whoa. I did the hypnosis once I went back to when I was five and realized like it was amazing and I actually spoke to my five year old self. So obviously she's still inside me and this, you know, it was traumatic to me at the time because it was like a pool toy, like a blow-up thing that I'd taken down to the beach and it was a ring with the horse's head on it and I really loved it and I let go of it and it just went, blew out to sea and I stood there and watched it go and I was like I'll never have another one Like I remember it just being totally traumatic, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think it was like, oh my god that that thing got cemented then in my brain like hold on to the stuff that you don't let it go because they don't come back to you, you're not going to get another one. I never did get another one, by the way, but yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 1:You make that distinction in your mind at that moment and there's no debating about whether that's logical or not.
Speaker 2:And it's why I find it hard to spend money on myself. But I find it easy to buy things for my kids, for instance, also like for me. I'm like no, well, if I buy something then I've got to protect it and I can't let go Like there's all of this.
Speaker 1:A lot of that stuff's been on my mind really heavily lately. I'm doing a workshop with the gal named Joelle Han and it's basically like defining your book idea and I've been wanting to write a book for a long time but sort of vacillating between, like, where I wanted to focus on it and I think I'm finally deciding that I'm going to focus on the unraveling. Like I we get all wound up with all these ideas and beliefs and conditioning from patriarchy and capitalism and all this stuff and then when we hit 40 and we don't know ourselves anymore, we have to unravel all that and it is hard and complicated and confusing and like. The last three years of my life have been very, very deep into that part of that journey and I've discovered so many things that were just like not even what I thought I was all about. Like things that I thought were total weaknesses that I was trying to change my whole life were actually like, if you reframed them, really powerful strengths, which I think we talked about a little bit in the podcast, and that's a lot of where that stuff comes from is just my own journey of being lost.
Speaker 2:My team does. I live in Outlander, I'm not sure why.
Speaker 1:It's okay, we're not using the video. It's random.
Speaker 2:My video turns off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think all that makes it hard on women entrepreneurs. We've got all those messages from the patriarchy and capitalism about you know, fear and like ancestral fear from being burned at the stake. All that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what? There's a podcast coming up soon. I'm trying to remember what the lady's name was. I think it's Sarah Roach Lewis. Anyway, it's coming up in the next couple of weeks. She interestingly said all of our business terminology is based on military, like the background of military, like campaigns, targeting, like just think about it, Like just start bringing some stuff up in your head and you're like Holy moly. She kind of went through it. She's like this is why women in particular feel like we're in such a place where it's like it's isn't feeling natural and everything we've taught about business is feels very unnatural to us, because it's like competition, We've got to take this share, the market share, from someone else and we're going in combat against our competitors and all this and we're like whoa, you know, because it's not in our nature to be like that, Whereas it is in, men feel way more aligned to this combat and warfare. And she's like that is where business came from. It actually has been based on military. Yeah, I was like oh my God, there's so many.
Speaker 1:That's so true and it's like I've been feeling I have that online networking community and I have been feeling lately like there's almost a movement happening inside there toward like a more feminine way of doing business, Like we are taking back business for women and redefining it and deciding for ourselves what it means to be collaborative instead of competitive. Like those women are so much more collaborative. Naturally. We tend and befriend instead of fighting and fleeing, and it's just our nature and that's why it feels so uncomfortable so much of the time.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:So true, I loved it. The other day I talked to someone and maybe what. They asked me something about my competitors. I'm like to be honest, I don't even know who they are and I don't know what they're doing because I don't care. Yeah, they're not your competitors anyway, I actually don't really know and I don't think any of my time or energy going down that rabbit hole and looking for it.
Speaker 1:I wrote a blog post. It's not live anymore. But a couple of years ago I wrote a blog post called something like why I don't do competitive analysis and you shouldn't either. And it's just, it's anxiety inducing and you're just, you spend all your time worrying about what everyone else is doing and that just takes all the energy away from what you're doing. Plus, what they're doing might not even be right for you. No, then you get all these ideas in your head about what you should be doing and what works because it's working for them. Right, it must be what we should do. It's like Instagram is terrible for that, I know. I know we should probably get on track here. I'll edit out like the whole first part of this. I think we were going to talk about niching you. That's your specialty, that's kind of your jam, right? Well, it's something.
Speaker 2:I love to talk about and I've had a lot of success with, and I think that, yeah, we need to talk about it more, because most people really retract from it. Yeah, a lot of fear. They rejected, they don't want to do it until they know that they do, and then they still have trouble with it. So I'm like you know what, it doesn't have to be that hard, and I think I come at it from a different perspective than some other people do out there as well.
Speaker 1:Let's start there, then, because I, you know, I'm all about niching. I'm in, I'm in 100% and and yet I don't think about it the same way that I think a lot of people who are fearful of niching are thinking about it. So you and I are probably more aligned on this, but I'd love to hear what do you think is the misconception when people are coming and they're saying niching is bad, we're afraid of niching, we don't want to do it. What is, what is the disconnect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the real primary and I think it's a primal thing and actually it's coming deep within our subconscious it is this thought that niching means less. So it means we're going smaller, it means less opportunity. And, of course, when we're in business for ourselves, you know, you want, you're looking out there thinking I see all of this possibility, all of this opportunity. So many people I could help. I want to help them all, like I'm going to have this amazing business with thousands of clients or whatever it is. Maybe we're not always thinking thousands, but we're thinking well, we don't want to cut off some of these opportunities out there because that's not going to be good for our business, is it? Why would we limit ourselves? Why would you want to do that Exactly? So I think you know that makes sense when you know and saying that you're probably sitting there thinking, well, that makes perfect sense, of course. Well, why would we want to do that? Until we kind of take that thought and then we examine it from the other perspective and it's like well, it's not actually about becoming smaller or having less opportunity. I actually believe niching creates more opportunity, because what you're doing by specializing which is, to me, the definition of niching is actually specializing as opposed to being broad. In general, when you specialize, you rise up above the cloud of all of these other people. You know, with so many people, we're the business, especially if you're in a. You know you're a solopreneur, you're in an online service based space, like we all are. There are thousands and thousands and thousands who knows how many across the world. We're all online. You know the barriers have dropped so much and we're working globally. So there is a huge cloud, a crowd. It's clouded, the marketplace is foggy, no one can see anybody. You know the wood for the trees because there's so many people in there and so when you specialize, you get that ability to rise up above that cloud into that beautiful blue sky space. You know where the aeroplanes fly and there's nothing much up here. It's like what? Here I am, now people can see me, now I can be found, now I can attract those people who are really aligned to me. And you're probably still thinking but no, do I want to do that? Because what about all those other ones? It's like, yes, but how many clients do you really need to have to hit your targets and goals? Is it 10 in a year? Is it 100 in a year, even still like that means that you don't need access to millions of people in the market. You only need access to maybe thousands at most, and if it's only 10 people in a year, probably hundreds. You know you don't need a lot of people in your scope of the market to find the success you want in business, and that's really what we're here for, right. We're not here to serve absolutely everybody who could possibly need us. We're here to run a business that we enjoy, that we love, that fits with us and probably where you're working at your highest value and to me that is through your specialization that is at your highest value. You can't be operating at your highest value if you're just doing a service. That's something that you can do. Yeah, you can do it, but it's not lighting you up, it's not the best skill that you have. It's just something you're doing to get paid. Well, that's just a job. You know you create a job for yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a place I think a lot I've been stuck there where I said, well, I can do that, I learned how to do that, I know how to do that or whatever. But is that really? I heard a lot of people get stuck in their zone of excellence. Like there's those four zones there's zone of genius, zone of excellence, zone of competence and zone of incompetence. And like we definitely want to stay out of our zones of incompetence, right, or competence even we don't want to just be okay, but there's a difference between your zone of excellence and your zone of genius too. So like we can refine even specialties down to something that's really really special and really good, and then you get to charge more.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, that's the thing it's like. Once you look at it that way, it's a total no brainer, because if you leave behind all of the things that, yes, you can do, you can provide that service. Therefore, you could get paid for it. Versus what you're really great at, where you're absolutely lit up, where the results that you get for your clients are at that highest level Guess what. You're a specialist and you're then able to charge at that specialist rate and they expect you to. They actually would not trust your services if you were charging at a low rate, which means there might be other people out there that are doing it, but they've chosen. It's something that they could do and it's not really their thing. You can rise up above them. You can be the specialist in that area and claim that authority, which is maybe something else that people fear a little bit as well. I think you know that's an, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that. Why are we afraid to claim our authority? I have had this problem recently.
Speaker 2:That this is probably a female thing, more more so than nails, and I believe it's. You know, we grow up and so much about society to grow up in, and we are very aware, in our feminine state, of other people's judgment and I think that we tend to be much more sensitive to what we perceive people might judge us as. And so it's this whole fear of well, if I step into my authority, like ain't that authority be the specialist? You know, I'm really putting my hand up and saying I'm something pretty awesome and I'm great at this, which is big, noting myself or boasting or saying that I'm amazing. And what if I'm actually not? And what if they think I'm just some kind of big headed, arrogant person? And I don't want to be that. And so it's going on inside our heads, maybe not even consciously, but just in the background. So I think we retract from that. Like, do I really want to be an authority?
Speaker 1:I'm sure I'm sure I remember my mom and probably my dad saying don't be braggy, don't brag. You know, when you grow up you hear the message that it's not okay to brag, that that's not a good person. Doesn't brag. Braggy people are not people who other people like, and so you know that's floating around in your subconscious, like yeah, it's it totally.
Speaker 2:It starts from childhood. You know, we get told you might say, hey, I'm, I'm the best at this, and your parents might be like, oh well, you know, maybe don't say that because other people are good, or you might they might be thinking, well, what if then you're not the best and you get all upset. They probably come at it from a place of love for you. But then the message we take is we shouldn't tell people that we're good at something because we've been told that as a five year old and we just took that on, that we took that message on board without even knowing what the context was, that our parents did it to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's subconscious. It's our five year old brain making that decision, not our adult brain that knows that it's okay to be an expert and that people who are good at things should, you know, stand up and offer those services, because people need those services.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I think experts, interestingly, is another word that people really struggle with. So if you are feeling that, like you know, I'm not sure if I have authority or if I could be an authority on something, you probably also think I can't call myself an expert. And this is something I find really interesting to look into, because what is it that you perceive an expert to be? Do you think that you need to be the number one person in your whole industry? And who is that anyway? How could you tell who is the number one person? Like, is it because they're written books? Is it because they've been there so many years, like, what is it that they've done? And it's so interesting because when you look up in the dictionary, the definition of an expert or expertise is experience in something, so a lot of knowledge or experience. It is not qualifications. So you don't need to go out and go well, I need to, you know, to get more qualifications so that I can be an expert in this, like. Actually, that is not the definition of an expert.
Speaker 1:I need six more certifications before I can claim expert. I love that you just said the definition of the word. I'm always looking up the definition because I think we add meaning to words that is not actually in there. It's like cultural flavor layered on top of these meanings for whatever time we're living in, and it's like wait, let's go back and look what that actually means. I'm struggling with the word networking right now because of that, because people know what networking means but there's this icky kind of gloss on top of it and it's actually about relationships.
Speaker 2:But in building a network that we kind of get the image, mental image, straight away in my mind. Was, you know, one of those business events where everyone's walking around handing out their business cards?
Speaker 1:Close talking at you, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Just interested in that.
Speaker 1:The expert thing is so. That's so interesting that that's what it means. It means you're good at something like OK, so I'm an expert guacamole maker. That is what people ask me to make guacamole for years.
Speaker 2:You are an expert at guacamole making.
Speaker 1:I may not even have to have had been making it for years, I might have just gotten lucky. And I'm good at making guacamole. But somebody else down the street might also be really good at making guacamole and they're an expert too. We probably do it differently. We may not approach it the same way, it may taste totally different, but we're still can call each other. We can be an expert in our own right. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so it's just that you have a level of knowledge or you've got experience and that gives you expertise in it. Because, as we all know, I mean gosh, if you, you probably went through uni like I did yeah, you learn theory. You don't know anything until you actually start working. It's like it is actually the experience of doing the work that gives you the expertise. It doesn't matter what the textbook said, because you go into real life. You're like oh, it's not kind of really like that. Actually, that's a really great theory, but it doesn't work in real life. So I kind of went well, it's not really that valuable. The value is actually in the doing. That was where you really built that.
Speaker 1:What's ironic about that is that I feel like sometimes I'm afraid to call myself an expert, because what if I say something wrong? Or what if I make a mistake after I have proclaimed my expertise? But I don't think I even you know you're talking about the theory versus the reality. I don't think I started really learning about my craft and what I do until I started making mistakes. I learned more from my mistakes than anything else. So, like maybe we should just maybe we should count up how many times we've made massive mistakes and like the more mistakes you've made, the more bigger an expert you are.
Speaker 2:Which probably just means that you've been doing it for longer, right, because it takes time to make mistakes. It does and you're going to have some wins along the way. But you know, that is really where expertise comes from is because you've made the mistakes, you've learned the lessons, you've had the experience, you've found what works, what doesn't work and, yeah, you can always jump through some of those. You can get to that place faster than other people. It always depends on how quick you learn, how quick you you know how many mistakes you're prepared to make. Are you playing the safe lane, not making any mistakes and they're only taking things that are very risk averse, or are you going well, hey, I'm just going to give this a go, and what if it fails? So what? What if it does fail? And it's a bit like that. You know, that's how you build that expertise, and you don't have to be the number one renowned person in the whole world in this topic to be call yourself the expert in it. You are an expert and there's many experts, and when you look around, like well, any topic that there are experts in, they will all have their own version of what they believe in, what they think, and they're not the same. So, guess what? You can also be an expert with your perception, your perspective and what you share, and it doesn't have to align with what you know. If you're in marketing, we probably all know Philip Kotler, because he wrote the five Ps and we all studied that back in the day. Like it doesn't matter what he said. That's his opinion, by the way, you know he's just. That's based on his experience and what he learned. He learned and you can also be an expert in marketing and have a strategy and have your own framework and ideas around it, and it doesn't need to be anything aligned to what Philip Kotler had. You know that that's not the not like, it's the Bible, because he said it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Then you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think I love that. Because when I kind of learned about that, I went oh my goodness, I can stop fearing this thing of like fearing to put myself out there and say that I am an expert in marketing. I was like well, I got, I went. At the time I started with business, I had 20 years experience behind me. Oh my God, like, of course, I have expertise in marketing. That means that I can be an expert in it. And it was still really uncomfortable to give that label, to use that word, and I'm probably only just getting into that place now where I'm like well, I, I feel a way more comfortable with it and I'm happy to sort of say that I have that expertise. But it's, um, it's a really interesting one.
Speaker 1:So it's relative to. You only have to be an expert compared to the person you're serving. So as long as you're a few steps ahead of the person that you're helping out, you're an expert, more so than they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like you know, no one knows it all either. So it's like there is no, there is no place that we need to get to Like, well, I know this much now. Therefore, I'm an expert. Like well, we're all learning and I will continue. Like every day, I'm still learning more about marketing, about strategy, about messaging, about all of the parts that go into it, and it's been. You know, it's now over 25 years and I'll continue to learn it. I think as long as I keep on doing it, I'll learn and learn and learn. So there's never an end goal that you've got to get to or a milestone you've got to reach before you say, well, now I'm an expert. It's like no, well, once you have a good handle on it and you really know your stuff and you've got the experience behind you, you've got some experience behind you and doing it then you have expertise in it, especially compared to somebody who has none at all. So, yeah, I love that you know. Let's break down what those rules are. There are no rules about this and you will know when you're at that point, I think.
Speaker 1:I hear a lot of people saying that they're multi-passionate or maybe they're. They have a lot of things that they're really good at and they don't know what to do. They don't want to niche because they want to do all these things. How do you manage that sort of mentality when they might even know that they would benefit from niching?
Speaker 2:but they also really want to keep those doors open because they enjoy the variety, yeah, so I love this question because it's really common. You know, a lot of people have a lot of skills and passions, and that's normal. We're humans, we are curious, we are interested in lots of things. We design just to think and be one thing, and so my reframe on that is when you're looking at your niche. It's not about just picking out one thing out of all the stuff that you do. For me, when I work with my clients, I really look at what are those things that you do best, what are those pieces that you really love to help people with, and is there some way that there's a synergy between it? Because often the best niche is actually one that you create. It's not one that already exists, that is out there, that someone else created, by the way, but it's one that you create yourself. And what better way to create it than to come at it from your own person and how your specific mesh of skills and expertise? Maybe it's in a few different areas you have that level of expertise. What if you combine this? What is that value that you can now offer when you combine these things? So, to give an example, because I think this is always. I was just going to ask her one.
Speaker 1:I was like paint this picture for me.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll give you an example of a client of mine in a totally different area, because it might just help us to visualize it. But she's in the health and wellness space. So she is a coach. She does Reiki, she does breath work and meditation, but she's also a nutritional coach, holistic wellness. There's a whole lot of stuff going on, and so she was sort of like well, I'm over here with Reiki sessions and then I'm here trying to sell breath work and I'm here doing some nutrition, functioning nutrition and all of these things. And I said to her well, what if? Is it the same person that would benefit from all of these? And she's like yeah, absolutely. And I'm like well, what if we combine it all into one and you actually offer your clients all of that instead of just one part of it at a time? And, yes, you can talk to the different things, but this actually becomes part of your unique framework. Is to the goal that they're trying to achieve? Is that better help, less stress, being able to fit in health into their busy lifestyles? She works with entrepreneurs and it's like well, the beautiful thing was, even though they were separate, they all did merge together to be able to then provide a really unique offering that was really holistic in terms of wellness for the body and mind for her particular clients.
Speaker 1:So it's about packaging it, the way that you package it and maybe who you're packaging it for. So, like, I've always kind of thought of the niche part as, like, the who and the specialty is the what. But you can kind of combine those two because it's not black and white and it's not two-dimensional. You're saying, you know, make it special. Maybe it's the process of how you get there in a certain way with a certain set of things or a framework that you develop.
Speaker 2:And this brings me to something that I feel very strongly about. Again, this is my opinion. It's not the same as everybody's. You just said you always thought of the niche as the who, and other people have said to me they always think of the niche as the what. I actually believe it is both of those combined. And then I add in the third element, which is you why. You Like it is actually where it comes from you. So when you take the what and the who and then you combine it with you, you actually get what I call your real niche. Like that is actually what it is, because you can't separate the what and who. You can't say well, I'm a specialist in this area, that's my niche. It's like well, for who you know, even if you take something as you know, just think well, I'm a copywriter, okay, that's my specialty. I love writing. You know sales page copies. So here I'm niching down. So you might be a sales page copywriter, but for who? Because there's lots of different companies and types of people who might need a sales page. You're not going to be the best fit for all of them. So that's not your niche. Yet you haven't actually defined your niche until you've integrated the who into it, because it's like why? What is it about the way that you do it? What is it that your specialty is in? Is it about the way that you deliver the copy? Is it about the? You know the. You know when you start thinking about the page, you know this is where you bring you into it the way that you do it, because of who you're working for and because of your skill there, that creates the niche. It's not just the thing that's still one dimensional. You know you really need to add in these three dimensions to get what I would call a niche that people go wow, you are exactly the right person for me. That's exactly what I need. I love what you're saying. Dang, you're the one I'm signing up with. Otherwise you're just like a product on the shelf. If you only go with the expertise, you know I'm a, I'm an accountant or a bookkeeper. You know even I'm a zero bookkeeper or whatever you know, or I'm a copywriter or I'm a website designer. If you go down that level to I work in only on WordPress, I work only you're still a product on the shelf because so many people could say, well, I'm a WordPress website, I'm a WordPress website. So then you're like got all these people who have the same expertise, and now what do people do? How do they choose you? Well, they probably start reverting to looking at your pricing, because you've just created yourself as just a product on the shelf, right, whereas if you say, well, I'm a WordPress web designer for whatever type of business it is that you help, and you really know how to build them the exact type of website that they need. So, whether it's, you know, e-commerce stores, a certain type of e-commerce store, maybe it's health and wellness e-commerce stores, so I'm a WordPress web designer for health and wellness e-commerce stores that are owned by women. And you know, you're starting to feel like, wow, I'm actually now imagining what it is that you do. I've now got a picture in my head because I can see what it might look like, and maybe then even you think about well, what is your special way of doing it? What is your secret source? Because you can add that in to what it is. Maybe it's like you know, you specialize in a certain type of. You know something to do with the website and how you design it that makes it really great. So maybe it's a high converting or really searchable. You know you get really work on the SEO elements or whatever that is for you. That's starting to bring you into it. Can you see how that went from being something that was just generic, even though you think it was specialized, being WordPress web design, not just any old web design? Yeah, it's still so high up, it's still so broad, it's still so one dimensional. You need to bring in these other three other two elements to make free.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense and I'm in total agreement. I think we leave ourselves out of the equation and we are the most important thing about this whole process, like when we deliver something as a service provider, we are the product in a lot of ways, and so much of it's hard too. It brings to mind designers. There's a lot of like web designers. Right now, especially after COVID, it seems like there's a lot a glut of digital providers, right, and I have always had a really hard time referring designers unless I've worked with them before, because when you work with they might have a hard time expressing why their process is special or why they get to the answers better than anybody else and express why their logos are better than anybody else's. Right, they're like it's 20 years of experience. That's why. But that's not it. One of my friends, erica Newbauer. She's a really amazing designer. She does logos exceptionally. She loves working with wineries, so if you're a winery, go talk to Erica Newbauer. But when I I didn't know why she was special until I did a project with her and she did a logo for me and it was her process. It was how she got to the design. She got it out of my head in a way that nobody else had been able to do before, and it was how she approached it and the way that she worked with me and made me feel like understood, and there was something there that was very different from another, maybe another experience I would have had, and so it it's hard to see ourselves. So how do we, how do you kind of talk to clients about seeing yourself clearly, because we're inside the jar and we can't see the label a lot of times.
Speaker 2:Look, it is a process. You know this isn't something that you just get a worksheet and download it. You do it in 10 minutes and bang, you found it. You know I call it peeling back delays and that there's a real series of questions, deep diving thinking that helps you to peel it all back and to really you know. I think that you kind of bounce between the three elements a bit, where you go deeper and deeper and part of it is actually going well, what is it not? What is it not about? What is not there? And then bringing in what you know, what makes you different or special. I think it's such a hard question for people to answer, but you know some of the questions I've asked to my clients in the past. You know something that they might be doing with me in business jammers. They say, well, what is it when you look back on the clients that you've had the best experience with, where you've really provided them with what you feel? Wow, this was my highest value, it was the best, really great for me. I loved it. I felt like I was really fulfilled. I was operating at that high level. They loved it. Now, what was it about that? What do you think, made that particular engagement, that project special. And it's quite interesting because sometimes what comes out is not what you're thinking, because it's not the surface level, it's not the thing that's kind of in front of you that you think is what you're doing. So, for an example, I've got a client who she was a voiceover artist. I say was, is, and she, you know, she came in with those. You know really what would I call it Like her industry was very narrow minded and closed minded, like they've really got the linkers on. There's only one way that you get bored. It's, by the minute, you kind of industry directory of all these other voices and people go in and find one that they like to sound of and they pick you. And so, of course, the pricing, because you like in a catalog it's like pretty much pricing, it's all these other people, it's all very price based. I really was like, wow, what was it about the client that you've worked with that has been the best? And she said, well, it was actually the ones I worked with over the course of years and I worked with them and I became the voice of their brand and I know that while I was the voice of their brand. Their sales were really good and when they stopped using me and changed to someone else, their sales died and I was like aha, so what was it that was different? Because when someone's buying you just for a minute or two to do a voiceover of a video, that's just an output. But when you're working with someone over the course of years and you're actually really working with them, you've actually defined their brand voice and how you sound and how that is part of their business. Now your voice is actually part of their brand. That is what's actually unique, and so working with her helped her kind of realize wow, she could step out of this place of charging by the minute and actually create a space. That was totally unique because no one else is doing it. And they actually laughed at her when she said I'm going to work with clients and be the strategic, help them with their voice strategy and actually then either voice it myself or help them find the right voice for their brand. But to be a brand voice strategist in terms of the audible voice that you hear, yes, yeah, I love that. And she then went from she works with like three clients per year now because she's working with them over the long term, she's working by the minute. She's like, right, here's a strategic path that we're going to work together and she's much more like a consultant that she can also do the delivery. Can you see, like the power in changing from that going from a catalog of thousands to being something quite unique and special and, to you know, knew exactly who she wanted to work with, the type of business, and reached out. She really knows, booked up as in, she doesn't need to any of his three clients, she works one at a time, she's booked up well in advance and I, you know, I just love sharing her story because I'm that's amazing power of meeting and it was really about her Like, what is it that you're bringing to it? Not about how well you your voices or how how many different layers you can make your voice go, or how many different types of output you can do, like anyone in that catalog can say it. All that stuff it's not the technical.
Speaker 1:It's not the technical aspect of what you're doing, it's not your expertise. Your voice isn't more expert than someone else, maybe. But yeah, and I love that because it circles us back to kind of what we were talking about before we started recording and and the the fear that people have, our hesitance as women is it feels very black and white when someone says we have to niche and that that's the way to do it. But you're approaching this, thinking about it in a different way. Before we started officially recording, we were talking about masculine, the masculinity in business, and know how that is. You said you mentioned someone had told you just recently that business, a lot of business terms, were based on military terms and competition and that very masculine, hard, hard line, black and white thinking.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's like that there's a finite amount in the market and you go out there against your competitors and you try to get market share, like I've sat in boardrooms with you know the executive teams having all of these conversations and being in them and it's like, well, we don't even need to be thinking that way. It's so, I think, counterproductive for us, because when you create your own niche, you're actually creating your own space. You're not out there trying to get market share from someone else or trying to steal someone else's clients. They're clients that are right for you. All you need to do is make sure they can identify you, because they're out there looking right now and they're probably like, well, I'm really looking for someone that knows and understands my business right as a client. You want someone who's going to be the right fit for you, no matter what service you're buying. You want someone who gets you, who's easy to work with, who understands your business and you know if it's design wise. I know when I used to be. You know like there's so many different types of designers. It really is about finding that one that's the right fit for you, that you're on that same energetic level and the design that they do for you feels exactly right for your brand. The only way they're going to be able to find you is if you're able to say, and be clear there for them, like, clearly put yourself out there and say this is who I am, this is what I do and who I work with, and that special element that comes through well, it makes you stand out. So you're now able to be seen by those people who are looking and they no longer have to wade through all of these other you know ones that aren't the right fit for them. Searching, searching, searching.
Speaker 1:And that's not about anybody other than you and what you do best, the energy you bring to what you're doing and how you do it and why you do it and, like you said earlier, also the person that you are most ideally suited to serve. Because you just touched on clients, the type of clients that you want to work with, and I think we've all had the experience of working with clients who were just a nightmare for no good reason. We couldn't figure out why. They were just never happy with anything we did. They pushed our boundaries. Some of that is probably just energy different personalities, different. We're not on the same wavelength and that's like okay, but that just means you get to niche it. You don't have to serve them.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, I think one of the beautiful things is when you do have that clarity on who it is that you do want to work with and you start to put yourself out there Like you do attract those clients. So you're going to get into a place where, instead of feeling like you have to say yes to someone who comes to you and says, hey, can you, you know, can you do this for me, can you do that for me? And you were like, okay, well, I better say yes because I'm not sure when the next person's coming along, you're actually going to be able to say, well, I can choose whether I set them or not. Are they the right fit for me? And if they're not, you can refer them on, you can send them to someone else. I'm really specific in my messaging and pretty much I have, I'd say, 99% of people who ever book a call with me or who engage with me on my stuff is an absolute great fit, and that's because I'm specific about who it's for. And yeah, every now and then there's a random that pops up. I'm like okay, how did you book a call with me? This is strange. Were you paying attention? Yeah, clearly didn't read much of what I wrote there. But, anyway that happens Not everybody's detailed focus, but I would love I refer them on to someone else and I'm like hey, you know what, I'm not the best person for you, but I do know someone who is in that space or who would be a better fit, who would actually have more of what you really need. By the way, because it's not a service to me if I take on a client where I'm not going to be the best fit for them and that's either, like you said, personality, wise, energetically, we're going to clash. It's not going to be great. I had a guy once who rang up and now I do say that I work with women, with women. Every now and then I have a male client because there is a really good energetic fit, but predominantly for women. Anyway, this guy got on the call with me and said I really want someone who's going to keep me accountable and like make sure I'm doing all of the tasks and I'm like I am not your mother, you are a grown adult, you are a grown ass man. Yep, you're running a business and I am your secretary. I'm sorry. So if you're expecting me to keep a task list and keep you on to task, we are not a good fit. And I got off that call going well, run a mile. So I, you know, I messaged him and I said you know what, here are some people who might be a better fit for you. I recommend having a chat with them. I don't think that we're going to have the best working relationship if we were to work together. So sorry about that, and you know it was all good. He might have thought that was strange, that I didn't actually want his business because he'd reached out to me, but I'm like you know what. It's just not worth it because it would be absolutely terrible. It's not.
Speaker 1:You are in the business of helping people develop lifestyle businesses that serve their life. You're not in business to be a slave to your clients and your schedule. You're trying to create freedom and wealth and feel good about what you do, and working with clients that aren't a good fit is just going to get flies in the face of everything you're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I'm like if I'm not living and breathing my own values and what I say it's all about, then what am I doing? That's just totally out of integrity, right, it's out of integrity with what I say I can help you with if I'm not living into that myself. So it's like I'm going to be living the thing that I say that I can do. Otherwise it's a lie, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And on the flip side of that, how much joy is there in working with amazing clients? Yeah, there are some clients that I've had that I still call and talk to. We haven't worked together in years. You develop relationships and then of course there's the word of mouth thing and all that potential referrals and stuff. It just feels good to work for somebody who appreciates what you do and sees your value and doesn't question the value.
Speaker 2:No, exactly has that sucked? And I find, like you know, something that I've seen with clients before where they come to me often and they're absolutely full, like their capacity is full, but the business isn't where they want. And they're in this place where they're feeling really stuck because they want to grow the business but they're like I'm also struggling because I've got no time and, of course, they're just doing all the stuff for the clients. So one of the first things I'm like, right, well, who is it that you're actually working with right now? What are you doing? What are these services? Are they profitable? Are these clients the right fit for you? And so often we can see, actually there's a big chunk of time that's happening there where they're working with clients on non-profitable or really low profit services, just because they've been asked to and they've said, yes, I know, because they can do it, and yeah, I mean, it's okay, this is normal. It's only when you kind of get that moment Maybe they came to me and I was an outsider looking in so I could ask the questions I'm like well, what is it that you're doing? How much are you earning for that? So you're spending your time doing something you might earn $10 for when you could be earning $200 and at the same time, that does not make sense and you're not loving this client there. It's difficult. They don't get that to you. So you're chasing them, like, hey, this is not a healthy relationship. Yeah, what if you let them go? And they're like, oh, that would be. Well, they might not like that, they might not like it. But hey, this is your business. Guess what? You're in charge. You don't have to work with anyone you don't want to. And the funny thing is, as soon as they will call, let go of the stuff that's not serving them. They let go of the things that aren't serving them and create space, which sometimes feels a bit scary, like, oh, should I do that? What if nothing else happens? Guess what does happen? That space gets filled People who match their ideal client and it just happens organically Like they don't even go out there. It's like I get this message right A day later going oh, my God, you never guess what happened. I got this email through. Someone booked a call. They are my exact match for my ideal client and they've signed up already. And I'm like, wow, look what happened. You just created space. It got filled, but it got filled with the thing that you actually want. Amazing, like that's what it's all about. Right, but it's only because they got clear on who it was that they did want. They did the important niching process, and then part of that is the service offering that's aligned to who it is that you want to serve. So you've got to have alignment there You're going after, for example I'm sorry I'm going so detailed in this. No, I love it so much Say, you identify your ideal client as someone who, yes, they've got money and they're prepared to invest in things that are important to them and they love quality and they really value these things. Then if you're going and offering a service that's a bargain, basement, what you'd consider to be a Walmart product, if we're in the service, if we've got a department store of services, then it's the Walmart department store and it's not a high street, nice label one. Then you're not providing something that's aligned to that ideal client. So, even though you know who the ideal client is, if you're offering isn't aligned to them, well, guess what they don't buy because there's no alignment there and they're not feeling like this is the right thing for me. So, yes, we need to know exactly who it is, but we also need to make sure that the other parts in our business, what we're offering, is aligned to that niche. That's why I always say in my business, my framework and what I help people with, we always start with the niche, because it is number one thing. Everything else aligns to it. You have to know that to have the clarity on what you're doing, who it's for, that special source, but then you can align your service offering to it. The pricing is so much easier. You align the pricing, you align the messaging, the brand as well. Think about it. How much more does that make sense? Then your marketing and sales systems you align again to attract and bring in that person, because you know who they are. You know what they're about, where they're hanging out, what they're going to need in terms of are they going to want a one-to-one call or is it something that they'll go on the website and just buy? You can figure out what you need to be offering in terms of your process for them to engage with you based on what you know about them. You're only going to know about them when you get clear and specific about who they are.
Speaker 1:It makes every other decision then so much easier in your business is what you're saying. You can always come back to well, who am I, what is my offer, who am I serving? You always come back to that. I think, to circle back to where we started, it's not scary and it doesn't have to limit you and it does not reduce your opportunities for business. If anything, like you said, it exponentially increases I think you and I talked about this a little bit when we did your podcast recently too because your referral sources get a lot more plentiful, because you're not competing on a lot of other areas. I don't want to mean competing, but you are happily saying no to the things that don't serve you in your business. That means somebody else can pick them up.
Speaker 2:Exactly. There's only benefits that come from it. Like you mentioned your referral network. Well, guess what? When they're really clear on what it is that you do this and who you do it for, guess who? They send to you the right people. You're not wasting your time on referrals that you're like, well, they're not really right fit, but they came from someone. Should I take them on? Because I feel like I should, because it came from a friend? I don't want to let them down. Get into that place because they're sending you the right people, because they are clear, because you've got clear, there's only benefit that comes from it. To your point about the opportunity, this is actually what I come back to If I come back and refine, redefine, get more clear, get more specific. Anytime that my business starts to feel like it's slowing down, if I'm plateauing, if growth starts to slow, usually what's happened organically is that it started to get a little bit less specific. I started to broaden out or I've started to do some things in the parts of my strategy that maybe aren't actually specifically aligned to what I want to attract. I might have gone oh hey, someone's doing this thing over here. Well, that looks like a really good idea, I might try doing it. We all get that shiny object syndrome. Sometimes it seems like a really good idea. You go off down some path and you're doing it. You've always got to come back and go. Is this aligned to my ideal customer and who I'm trying to attract, and does it fit for me in my strategy? Because if it doesn't, you're actually just wasting your time. You're fluffing around, you're spending time on something that's not important. I've got to be really conscious of that. Time to me is one of my biggest values. I want to work as little as possible, obviously have the most impact, the most success for my business, but it really provides great value to my clients. But I don't want to be working a full-time job Absolutely not. I design my business to work minimal hours, school hours or less child-friendly hours so I can be around my family. You've got to be really careful with your time. You only give it to the things that are beneficial to you Think about that.
Speaker 1:We're taught that we decide on a niche, that it's supposed to be easy and it's supposed to be instant. It's not. No, we decide on that and then we move on and we do the rest of the things and we never come back to that. That's not how it works, because our lives are not static. We are not static. Ideally, we're learning about ourselves all the time. Our clients are not static. The market is not static. Industries are not static. There's nothing static about what we're doing, so we should continually be like. I hate the word iterate, but it's iterative. It's a cycle that we should revisit, and we should always be looking at where we fit and how so that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's not what we're taught. But it's not what we're taught. We're not doing that automatically, obviously, because it's what I help clients with. I'm obviously always in this zone, so I do reflect on my own business a lot. But the thing is that you start off with. The best is what you can come up with. And then, doing it, you get experience in it and you get things that you can reflect on and say, well, is that what I want or is that now in what I do not want basket. So how am I refining and redefining what that niche is? And it doesn't mean every time you refine or redefine you've got to go out and change all of your messaging or collateral or anything like that. There will be either some subtle shifts that you can make over time to keep aligned with what is right for you or, like I say, maybe you get to a point where you're like, wow, I'm really stagnated, or nothing's just feeling hard, it's not working. Even if you've been in business for 20 years, I get clients into business jam and I'm like, right, we're starting here because this is actually your core strategy for your entire business. So marketing is central to your business. Without marketing, you don't have clients, so we need it. Regardless of what you think you do for marketing, even if it's just referral based, you still need this core strategy. You still need to have a defined niche. You still need an aligned service offering. You still need those things and the messaging that goes with it, because it's irrelevant what you choose to do for your activity. This is central to your business and we need to come back and make sure it is aligned. If it's not working, it's probably because those pieces have got out of alignment or you've started to become less specific and go a bit broader. Things have crept, which is cool. It happens, it will happen. It will happen. We just go. Well, you just know that's something you come back to and that's why my program, business jam it is a lifetime access program. I say to people well, I expect you to continue to be in here, come back here anytime. It's starting to feel hard, come back. Come back and just ask yourself these questions again. Get clear, get to find and specific, and then you'll find all of a sudden, boom, the momentum happens again because you're able to get that priority. And I have clients who have been in there since I started it like three and a bit years ago. They're still active and they're still in the group. They still turn up to trainings or coaching sessions. I do because they know the power of it and they've experienced it. So they're like, yeah, as soon as they start to feel like they're slowing down, they come straight back in and get back into it again.
Speaker 1:There's a tremendous amount of freedom in that, because it doesn't have to be perfect right now. It will never be perfect, it will never be done. Just don't wait too long in between evaluations maybe, but if you think that you have to, it's like a website. I used to work with clients doing copywriting on their website here and there and it would be like it would have to be perfect and everything, every word perfect. But I know we're coming back and we're going to change that and we're going to update it and we're going to add a page and we're going to take a page away and we're going to. This is not something we walk away from and never visit again.
Speaker 2:No, it's not a printed brochure.
Speaker 1:And that makes it so easy to take action. That makes it easy to try this one thing and say how does this feel, instead of having to have all the answers right now. I know that's where I get stuck. Sometimes is like, well, I can't take action until I have all the answers. But you don't have to. We won't ever have all of them, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, that's it. Like your website, just like your business, they are living, breathing things, and they will constantly be evolving. They're not ever finished. The only time your business finishes is when you decide to stop it. Actually, go right, I'm not in business anymore, that's when it's finished. But it is constantly evolving and growing as I argue. And I think that you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't reflect and redefine your niche, because in your time of working and the experience that you're getting with your clients, you're actually growing. You're growing in the value that you can provide. You're probably getting some perspective on where you really shine. And if you don't take that opportunity to then step into that place, to really be that shining light and attract in those white people who you can operate at that level for, you know you're doing yourself and then a real disservice. That evolution is there, where we are meant to evolve. That's what the universe is about. That's the point. That's the point, yeah, yeah. There's never a time where you shouldn't be doing it. It could be done any day, every day, you know. Any time you feel you're not in that place right now, then it is time, it's time to look at it.
Speaker 1:I love it. I think we have effectively busted the myth that niching is hard and bad and like it's not something to be afraid of. So it sounds like you're doing an amazing job with your clients, helping them see themselves and how they operate, and I know you have an offer the five keys to clients on tap.
Speaker 2:So that's a free training. It takes about an hour or so and I kind of step you through in more detail than what we've just done, but really like what are those five core parts of your strategy and how they align together? So you're going to get a taster of that in that training. So definitely worth an hour or so of your time. I know people tell me they take pages of notes in that training. So love to over deliver. But yeah, that's up on my website, so you can go and get it. Yeah, I'll link to that. For sure, amazing, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you also have the Business Jam just wrote. Do you want to just show really quick what the Business Jam is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Business Jam. It's basically my signature program. It's not a course and it's not just coaching. It's a mix of both. So you get a lot of online content that you can work through yourself at your pace, but then you're getting live coaching support as well, so it is for service providers. I work with online experts, so you're going to get used to putting that little word on Calling yourself an expert. And crown yourself as an expert. You know people who are in like-hast. They're professionals offering a service to either businesses or to people, or maybe you're a coach as well, and it's about what we've just been talking about. You know, obviously I'm very passionate about niching. It is about your strategy, so defining your niche, your service offering and pricing, and then your marketing so that you're getting those people to actually be magnetically attracted to you. They turn up in your business and really, for me, at a higher level, it's about you having a business that is 100% suited to your life. So I'm all about. You know, let's make it easier. Let's not make things harder. Let's not have long processes or say you've got to do, you know, post on social media three times a day, like, honestly, whatever works for you will work. We've actually got to work on the strategy. That is what drives it, what underpins it. That is the thing, that's the key.
Speaker 1:And this is why we get along so well. I'm saying yeah, don't do it. If you don't want it, don't do it Just do it, do what works for you.
Speaker 2:Just say no. I love to bust through all those rules and all those myths that really help you find the you know, make the business that you want. Everybody is so unique so the framework in there doesn't tell you how to build my business, because that's what I designed for me. It actually helps you make decisions and understand why you're making that decision. So you know, really help you to get what these pieces are, how they fit together, how to define them for you. So you make it really unique to what you want that outcome to be how many days do you want to work with how many hours? What sort of work do you want to be doing, the types of clients you know. And then we design that strategy to give you that outcome and, obviously, your revenue and profit that you want. You know there's no point having a service if it's not going to give you the outcome that you want, If you're not going to earn what you need to earn, then the wrong service will be it should be easy.
Speaker 1:It should be easier. We should be able to spend time with our kids. We should be able to go skiing on a Wednesday if we want to, or take a nap in the middle of the day or whatever it is. But I think you're right on the money. I love the way your brain works. Thank you, I love this conversation.
Speaker 2:I got so passionate about it when I left corporate because I was like you know they were saying, well, you can't be a mum and be in the executive team. And I was just like what a load of absolute rubbish. Like, of course I can, my brain is as good as it always was. It's not about being in the office doesn't make me a good worker or bad worker. There's so many people in there fluffing around and I can work from home sometimes and get way more done. So I just got really frustrated with this old school way of looking at things and thought you know what I'm going to show you. I'm going to create a business where I work out, I want to work, I can travel as much as I want to travel and I will make more than what I'm earning in your silly executive job. So just watch me. I just stick it to them.
Speaker 1:Just watch me do this my way and be happier than you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, like you know, this year, as I mean you can't see my video when you're listening to this, but I'm recording this from a caravan. We are traveling Australia for eight months. My husband and I are now two kids 24th they're in a tiny house. But you know, it's my business and it's been growing while I've been doing it. So it only goes to show you that I am working less, I'm living more and it's growing. So it is all possible. It's not about the old way that we used to think we had to work more hours to earn more money. Well, that's not true. It's actually about getting the strategy aligned.
Speaker 1:That's not true. Yeah, I feel like your core value of time and my core value of freedom are probably very driven by very similar outcomes, like I just want to be free to do what I want to do when I want to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to do. I want to do. I don't want anyone else to tell me what to do.
Speaker 1:You just mentioned the office thing too. I used to work in an agency when Parker was really little and I was writing all the time and the office was one of those marketing agencies that was really wide open and it was super noisy and I'm highly sensitive. So I'm trying to write and there's everybody's they're playing foosball and drinking beer at noon and I'm trying to write and my words are competing with their words and I like I couldn't, but they wouldn't let me work from home, and so I think I got to work one one like Wednesday from home or something like that, and I would get like basically everything done on Wednesday because I couldn't get anything done in the office. It was like. It was like they're shooting themselves in the foot because I was so much more productive and happier at home. Yeah, so I mean let's rethink how, let's rethink these rules. So that's why we do this for ourselves anyway.
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to send everybody to your website, to the business jam, to that offer, to the magnetic clients offer and LinkedIn. Can everybody connect with you on LinkedIn too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I am on social media. I have a LinkedIn platform. So, yeah, come and connect with me, it'll be great. And if you like to be on any of the other ones, I am on Facebook, instagram. I've even got a really crappy TikTok channel, which I probably shouldn't have done. That's not crappy.
Speaker 1:No, no. I follow you on TikTok and I watched you walk through, walk through the back. What the outback. Oh my God, you took a scary walk in the outback and I watched that. You watched you talk about that. So, yes, go follow. I will link to all of those things.
Speaker 2:I've just been doing it as an experiment and it is really not. I'm like do not follow what I do on TikTok and think of it as the right thing to do.
Speaker 1:I'm just having a bit of fun with it. It's fun. That's why I like it. I was like oh yeah, here's Jessica, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's very random, so I love it.
Speaker 1:That's why I love about it.
Speaker 2:It's very random.
Speaker 1:The personal stuff. Thank you, all right. Well thank you. I love talking with you and we'll do it. I'm sure we'll do it again soon.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we will Love it. Thanks so much for having me have a good day. Bye.
Speaker 1:See you soon. Bye.
