MBA2392 How to Find Your Niche in 3 Steps

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And in today's lesson, you will learn how to find your niche in three steps. Some people call it niche, some people call it niche, but they say the riches are in the niches. And it's true, because if you don't know who you're targeting, if you don't know who your product or service is for, when we say who it's for, we mean this is a product that people are dying for.

0:43This category, this target market goes crazy for this product or service. The beauty of having a niche is you have your own little tribe. You have your own little group of people that is obsessed with what you offer. Most people in the world will not understand. Most people will think, what's the big deal? And this is where people kind of get messed up. They think they have to cater to the world. But in fact, by not catering to everybody and only catering to a group of people, a certain niche, They're able to stand out, be highly competitive, and have an easy business to run because they're not having to convince every single person to buy their product or service.

1:22So how do we do it? How do we choose our niche? Well, I'm going to break it down in today's lesson in three easy steps that you can implement right away, like today. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. My goal for today's lesson is to show you the value of choosing a niche and clarifying what this all means and showing you how to do it. There's a lot of confusion and a lot of buzzwords around this topic. I'm going to cut right through that and just give it to you in plain English. And then I'm going to show you how to choose your own niche so that you can get started and start having more success.

1:56First of all, a niche is basically a target market. Who are you selling your products to? A lot of new entrepreneurs think the answer to this question is everybody. And this is the worst, worst, worst answer. Because when you try to sell to everybody, you sell to nobody. Then you might hear people say, well, what about Amazon? They sell to everybody. Well, that's not how they got started, okay? They actually had a lot of success just niching down in the beginning. All they did is sell books online. Once they had massive success with that, and bookstores started to get worried, and they started closing down, they also started selling just CDs and music.

2:34And slowly, they started to expand their niche once they had so much dominance. And even if you find a company like McDonald's, for example, who also just started with a very simple menu, they're in arbitration. And even if you look closely, they don't cater to everybody. People that care about their health, people that care about fine dining and good food and don't want to waste a meal on something that's subpar, they're not stepping into a McDonald's anytime soon. So what does this mean for you and your small business. Well, it means you don't have to exert so much effort trying to convince people that you are for them.

3:04They will identify with you. They'll say, yes, this is exactly what I'm looking for. And I'm going to give you some examples, some real life business examples and real businesses. As I go through the three steps by niching, you become a specialty item. You can demand more in terms of price. You can charge more because your target customer can't be catered to by other companies or products or services because they're not niche enough. They're not actually addressing their niche issues or concerns. It also simplifies your business because you know exactly what you are and what you're not. And you can focus on just doubling down on your target audience and what you do for that target audience.

3:42All right, let's jump into some examples and the steps involved in creating your niche. Now, some people say create, some people say discover. At the end of the day, you need to outline what your niche is. What are the people that you are going to serve? So step one is actually interesting and it makes your life a whole lot easier. And that's defining who you do not serve, right? You are not for who. This makes it a whole lot easier to create a niche because a lot of people struggle with who do I serve? Well, they say I serve this kind of person, that kind of person, this type of need or this kind of want.

4:16And that can go on forever. It's actually easier to write down who you do not serve. Who do you not want to serve? Who are you unable to provide maximum value to? Let me give you an example. With my podcast, The$100 MBA Show and my brand, The$100 MBA, I'm very good at helping people start, grow, and scale their business. I'm not for people that are trying to go from$10 million a year to$100 million. That's not my niche. I don't help businesses like that. I help businesses that are trying to get from$0 to$1 million to$10 million. That's where I play with, right? I also only really work with people that have online businesses.

4:57And for the most part, I really only help people that are self-funded, bootstrap businesses. I don't have a lot of experience in raising capital, so I can't really serve somebody who's trying to raise capital, get investment, get investors to back their idea, and then build a company off that. So as you can see, I'm already defining who I'm not serving. I'm not serving people that are looking for investment. I am not serving people trying to get to$100 million from$10 million. I'm not serving people that have offline businesses. So your first step is to write down who you do not serve. Let me give you another example, not my business, but Virgin.

5:30So Virgin recently in the last few years entered the cruise market and they started their cruise line Virgin Voyages. It's very, very different from other cruises. And they're actually defined by who they do not serve instead of who they serve. So if you're looking for a cruise line that has water slides and a kid's club and games throughout the day, we are not for you. Why? Because Virgin Voyages does not cater to kids. In fact, if you're below 18 years old, you're not allowed to cruise Virgin Voyages. If you're into eating until you burst and open buffets, Virgin Voyages is not for you. Why?

6:08Because Virgin Voyages does not offer open buffets. They don't have an open buffet. which is kind of like the staple of every other cruise line where people actually go on cruises because they love buffets. Virgin Voyages are not for smokers. There's no smoking allowed on board. No smoke-filled casinos. I'm pretty sure they have a designated smoking section like a little room but if you're a smoker you're not going to enjoy it because you can't smoke freely in an open area. So they're really defined by who they do not serve and they're very open about this because they want to make sure that people that do like these things don't cruise with them and give them bad reviews or complain or want refunds.

6:44On the flip side, if you are in agreement with Virgin and you're like, wow, that sounds like an amazing cruise. I don't want any of those stuff either. That resonates with you. You're like, yes, I love the fact that they don't have all that stuff. So step one of discovering your niche is defining what you are not and who you do not serve. Okay, what you don't do and who you do not serve. A good buddy of mine, an online fitness coach from ripbody.com, Andy Morgan, he clearly does this on a sales page on his website. He says, I do not coach women because I don't have experience with that. I don't coach vegans or people that don't eat meat.

7:20His training and his nutrition education incorporates meat. So I'm not the trainer for you. If you've never formally exercised before, you don't know where you're around the gym. Also, I'm not the coach for you. And this is very, very strong messaging. This makes his services, his product special. It makes it unique. It makes it sound like, okay, this is not for everybody. That way, if I resonate with it, it means that I'm special. It means that I'm unique and that I'm getting a special type of service, a valuable, high-level service. All right. Step two, you probably guessed it. Define what you are and who you serve.

7:58Who are the people that actually would love your product? Write it down. Describe this person. I actually think it's a great exercise to create three different avatars or profiles of customers. These are people that you'd like to target. For example, with$100 MBA, one of my profiles are people that have a side hustle. They're building a business on the side. They're earning some money. They have a proof of concept and they want to transition into full-time entrepreneurship. They want to quit their job. And I want to help them do that by helping them grow their business. With Virgin Voyages, if you look at their avatar or you would want to guess who their avatar is, it's people that value health and wellness.

8:34Most cruise programs are filled with bingo and trivia night and all these zany little activities throughout the day. Most activities on a Virgin Voyage cruise is around fitness, yoga classes, boxing classes, hit classes. They have a running track up top. They have basketball courts. They have all kinds of things for those who love health and wellness. They have an amazing spa with treatments and steam rooms and hot tubs and infrared saunas and all kinds of stuff. So if you really value health and wellness, you're going to enjoy your time here because it might indulge on your vacation when it comes to the food, but you are going to stick to your fitness routine, your wellness routine.

9:15Another avatar is somebody who really values great food. If you like high quality food and you want to sacrifice that when you go on a cruise, then you're going to like Virgin Voyages. Most of the food there is very high quality. It's sit down restaurant. It's not humongous portions, but the quality is amazing. So if you value quality food, that is an avatar. So define what you do that's special and for who. People that love this, love that. So define who you are serving. People that love what. Notice, I'm not saying like. They love it. It's part of their value system. They love good food. It's part of how they live and why they live.

9:54They love fitness and wellness. And here's the thing. You don't need to cover everything under the sun. It could just be two or three things. But do them very well. I get back to Virgin because this is a really good example because they're really niche product in a very vanilla kind of industry. And their three kind of value propositions that's unique in who they serve is people that want to cruise without kids. people who value health and wellness, and people who love high-quality food. And that's really it. Really, if those are three things you like or one of those three things, you're going to love this cruise.

10:25So look at your business. What are the three areas that you can really deliver on on serving that ideal customer? Who are the type of people you want to serve? Remember, you're going to live with this business day in and day out. You want to be able to not only tolerate these customers, but enjoy speaking to them, serving them, working with them. They've got to be your people. all right so let's recap real quick step one is define who you are not serving who are these people that you're not serving step two who are you serving what are their values what are the three top values do they have when it comes to your product or service step three it's time to implement you now know who you're not serving and who you are serving is this clear on your website in your product literature in your marketing on your social media you need to rewrite things you You need to represent things now that you have a niche.

11:15Now you know who you're serving, who you're not serving. Make this clear from the headlines, from the product descriptions, from the section on your website says, who is this for? In the FAQs, just like I mentioned with Andrew Morgan at rippedbody.com, he defines on his website. We are not for these people. We are for these types of people. Why is this important? Why do you have to revamp your site and reword things and reword your marketing and your taglines and your socials? Why? because if you don't put it out there, you're not going to track these people. You're not going to track these people and make sure that they know who you're for and who you're not.

11:48Otherwise, if you just keep it to yourself and try to incorporate somehow in your product without really advertising it, without even displaying it anywhere, people will not know who you're for and who you're not for. This is an exercise, step three, that might take a couple of weeks going through your pages, going through your blog posts, going through your social media, your signature on your email, maybe even your catchphrase or tagline for your product or service. This might be a big change for you, but it's a good change because it's going to make your life easier. Now, you need to also communicate this to your team.

12:22Hey, this is who we serve, this is who we don't serve, right? This is our niche now, okay? Why? Because now we need to sing from the same song sheet. Everybody's going to create a product or service with these new guidelines. That means we might have to change the current product or service. We might have to change what we do and how we serve them. A lot of companies do this. Sometimes they make an announcement. They email their customers and say, hey, we're moving in this direction. We're going to really focus on serving this type of customer with these types of solutions. If this is for you, awesome.

12:54Hang around. If this is not for you, we would love to serve you, but we wanted to give you a heads up. And that's really taking it to the maximum kind of iteration of this or interpretation of this. But this is important, especially if through this exercise, your business niche has changed. Well, there you have it. Three steps. Step one, define who you are not for. Step two, who are you for? And then step three, make sure your business is saying this on all of its properties, as well as you're actually doing this with your products and services with your team. You're actually now doing the things that are for your niche audience, that cater to their needs and their values.

13:35Thanks so much for listening to The$100 VA Show. What did you think of this episode? Did you like it? Did you find it interesting? Did you learn something? Let me know in a rating and review. Just pop it, whether it's on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I read every single review, and it's a great way for me to learn what you love about the show so I can continue to do that. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Part of having a niche is being disciplined. You're going to get customers sometimes that say, I want to work with you and they're not your niche. You don't really serve them.

14:03And you're going to have to say no, refuse their business and refuse their money because otherwise you're just really not sticking to your guns. You're not really serving the right customers and you're watering down your messaging. I know this could be hard, especially in the beginning, but it will serve you tenfold in the future because you're going to get more reps, more practice at serving your niche customer and you're going to get better at serving them. And therefore your product and service will be better and you'll be able to charge more and demand more business. You got to get the reps in at serving your niche and not just giving into anybody who's willing to throw money at you.

14:39I totally get it. We all need to feed our families. We all need to survive. These are the challenges in business we're going to face. And my job is to just be upfront about it. So, you know, what's up ahead, what might be a challenge in the future, serve your people. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Wednesday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.