RV (00:02): How do you find your niche and how do you find your first customers? That was the topic of conversation primarily with my good friend Chris Ducker. Welcome to this recap edition. I’m gonna be highlighting you know, some of my three top takeaways from that conversation with Chris, sharing some of my own thoughts here. And just hopefully helping you put this into practice because you know, as I shared Christa something very similar to what we do at Brand Builders Group. He focuses on helping experts build their personal brand, does it in a different way. He’s in the uk, we’re in the us He does mostly membership sites and, and group virtual trainings. We do mostly one-on-one coaching with people, but I’ve known him for years and love dialoging and just sort of like sharpening each other’s saw, diving in on personal brand strategy and online marketing and nicheing and all of those things. RV (00:56): So I’m gonna share with you my top, my top three, I’ll, I’ll say take aways. They were things that either Chris shared or things that it, it inspired me to talk to you about. And specifically I wanna, I’m gonna share with you three ways to find your niche, like, to help you actually niche down. But the first, my first takeaway was one of the things that Chris said early on, which is just going, How do you become someone’s favorite? Right? Like, become someone’s favorite. That’s what we’re trying to do. Like that is, that is what I want to do, right? Like, and, and, and I don’t know who needs to, I don’t know if you need to hear this, somebody listening needs to hear this. You don’t need to have millions of followers. You don’t need to have millions of downloads. You don’t have to have hundreds of employees. RV (01:50): You, you don’t have to, like, you don’t need those things. And in, in many cases, the chasing of those things, I think is what holds us back from actually receiving and achieving and accomplishing the things that are meant for us. Because we’re like caught in this distant facade and dream of like, Oh, we have to change the whole world that we’re missing out on. Like, we can change the lives of the people that are right in front of us. We can be someone’s favorite, and that’s what I wanna be, right? Like of course I wanna have, you know, reach more people and have more people buy, buy our books and our listen to this podcast and follow us on social media and join our email list. Yeah. You know, we’re, we’re generally speaking, we’re moving in the direction of, of more of those people, but getting consumed with that is really risky business. It’s really dangerous because it, it pulls you away from, you know, what I think Chris was talking about, or at least what it made me think about when he said, How can you become someone’s favorite, Right? Like, you go, maybe you won’t have millions of podcast listeners, but you’re have hundreds of RV (03:00): People that your show is their Favorite show, RV (03:04): Right? Your book is their favorite book. Like listening to you speak or watching your reels, or you know, your talks or your YouTube shorts or your, your, your YouTube videos or reading your blog, your, their favorite. How do you become their favorite? It, it’s, it’s actually way easier than people think. It’s easier to become somebody’s favorite by RV (03:26): Serving a More narrow group of people. Be because RV (03:32): There’s a couple reasons why, and I asked Chris this question and I liked the answer that he gave and, and I’ve got another answer that I wanted to share with you is I said, Why do you think that is? I said, Why, why is it that that the more you niche down the, the more you know the quicker you have success and like the more financial success you experience quickly? And he said, Well, I think a lot of it is language, right? And and I think that’s a part of it for sure. Like, it’s, it’s, we, we use the term native tongue. Like you’re able to use terminology that your audience relates with, and they go, Oh, you serve me RV (04:06): Like I’m your Person. And when and when your audience can show up and they, and they know, Oh, RV (04:14): Talk to me like I’m your Person, RV (04:16): Then it just creates this really quick intimate bond because you’re, you’re sharing their language that they understand and, and, and that’s super powerful. But, but the other thing, you know, as I was thinking about the question I asked him, which is RV (04:31): Why does it work RV (04:33): So much better to, to niche down rather than to go like, you know, broad market? Like what is it about that? What I realized, RV (04:44): What I realized is that I think the, the real, the real thing RV (04:48): That’s happening there RV (04:49): Is when you serve a smaller market, you have more opportunity and more availability and more specificity in being able to serve them in a deeper way. When you serve a narrow market, you can serve them in a deeper way. Because when you, when you serve a small group of people and you, you just ask, what’s the next thing they need? What’s the next thing they need? Then all of a sudden you can fully like, like own it and step into it and be a part of it and, and go, Oh, this is what they RV (05:26): Need. And, and part RV (05:27): Of what’s making me think RV (05:28): About this is the RV (05:31): Is the, RV (05:33): The, the, the book tool the book launch tool, right? So we are RV (05:39): Doing, RV (05:40): You know, book launches. One of the things we’ve been helping people with, and we’ve been doing it so much that it’s like, Oh, they need a template for this, and they need a template for this, and they need a template for this. And it’s like, RV (05:49): Through the process of RV (05:51): Coaching people on such a RV (05:52): Narrow specific part of their business, we’ve been able to create these incredible RV (05:56): Tools that we never would’ve thought to create if we were just sort of like serving the whole world. But it’s like the more we get specific on going, yeah, you know, like, I mean, if somebody’s launching a book like Brand Builders Group, I mean, we might be the best in the world at this, and we’ve just done it so much. And you know, I mean, just this year, I mean, we’ve had four clients, Ed Mylet, Eric Thomas, Tom and Lisa biu and Lovey Ajai Jones. We had four clients just this year that we’ve helped hit to New York Times, Wall Street Journal and or USA Today bestseller list. So it’s like, we’ve just been living in this, you know, for this season, especially recently, that it’s like, golly, for whatever reason, those have come to us and we’ve been, and, and we’re developing this depth, this real depth of knowledge. RV (06:44): You can’t do that when you’re trying to serve all different types of people and cater to all different types of businesses because you have to sort of stay super high level because, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like there’s this, this plane of there is, there’s principles that you can teach and then there’s practices and, you know, the, the, the principles of success are general. They apply universally. Like my book, Take the Stairs, a great example of that or my TED Talk, How to Multiply time, their principles. They, we, we teach at the principal level, and so they apply universally, which, you know, like people will watch a free TED talk, but I don’t make many money when they watch a free TED Talk. I do from the few of the groups that hire me to speak, which is a very small percentage of the people who watch it and, you know, take the serious book. RV (07:30): A lot of people read it, but it’s a $20 book, and which, you know, my royalty is 15% or whatever the number is, It’s not a huge amount. Versus when, when we’re serving people in, in the practices way, like we’re giving people verbatim scripts of what they can sell, what they can say to generate free calls and how to sell high dollar offers and exactly how to structure their sales pages. And these are the steps to do a book launch. And here’s how you, here’s how you get your first speaking engagements and, and here’s how you train your sales people, how to do free calls. And here’s what you say to ask for referrals, and here’s what you change to add humor into your presentations, and here’s how you better construct your funnels, and here’s how you optimize your offer structures, and here’s how you create more urgency. RV (08:12): And here’s how you, you know, like write your email copy and like, we can do it with such specificity because we’re, we’re, we’re serving experts and, and, and personal brands on really marketing and sales, how to generate more leads. And so who is that for you? Like, who can you be their favorite? Who can you be their favorite? So that’s the, that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is how to niche down. Okay? And this is where I wanna share you three specific questions. There’s three different ways of nicheing down, and I call this the M three model, okay? This is the M three model. This is part of our, this is one of our curriculum elements for our, our paying members at Brand Builders Group. Okay? So when you look at differentiating, how do you differentiate yourself from others in the market? RV (09:05): The first m is the, the market is the who. Okay? So here’s the three M’s. Market model and method, market model and method, Okay? So the, the first one is to say, can I differentiate in the market that I serve? Meaning in who do I serve? So market is the who model is the how. Method is the, what market is the who model is the how, Method is the what. So who do I serve? If I serve a very specific type of person, then that you’re automatically nicheing down and creating differentiation. Now look, you know, even like brand builders group, if you go, Okay, who do we serve at a high level, it’s, it’s probably entrepreneurs. Then you go, there’s a level down from that, and it’s like, okay, it’s anyone who does professional services. You do the level down from that and you go, Okay, it’s really experts. RV (09:56): And you go really down to the core. It’s like coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, professional service advisors, right? Like they’re, they’re experts. But then we narrow down to say we serve mission driven messengers. So they’re not just experts, They’re experts who care more about service than they they do about sales. They’re people who care about money, but the money is subservient to the mission. Our audience are people who wanna make a bigger impact. They wanna make the world a better place. Yes, if they make more money as a byproduct of that, that’s a great thing. And they need money in order to do that, cuz it takes money to, to make impact and, and do big things. But it’s like the mission is first. So that’s a part of how we have quickly differentiated and delineated and defined who we serve. So that’s who you serve. RV (10:47): It can be a demographic, like an age and a geography and, and, but it also can be a psychographic like mission driven messengers, which is their mentality. So who do you serve? Next is model, right? So the business model is, that’s when we say model, that’s like what is your business model? How do you service those people? You know, this came up on the show with Chris, which is like, he serves people through online courses primarily, right? We have a different business model. We are a, a one-on-one coaching model. Now we have courses, we have membership site, but that’s mostly just to help people have an affordable way to step in. Our goal is to work with people at our live events and one-on-one because man, when we get a chance to like talk to you and deep dive with you and, and help you not just teach it to you, but do it with you, it’s life changing. RV (11:43): I mean, we, we have, we can improve. Like there’s certain techniques we teach that can help people make six figures in 60 seconds. Like changing what you say on stage. I was using this example this morning with our internal team where we changed what one speaker said on stage and made a hundred thousand dollars in just adding a, a little 62nd pivot in what they said from stage versus when they hadn’t done it. And, and a hundred thousand dollars difference, like a hundred thousand dollars in this one pivot. We can’t do that though, unless we’re working with you one on one. So that’s our model. So, you know, Uber changed the model. Taxis had a business model, which was you go stand in the taxi line and, and you waited for them. Uber said, We come to you wherever you are, right? And instead of standing in a line, you push a phone a button on your app, and they come to you iTunes and, and Napster. RV (12:40): They, they changed the model. It was the same method in terms of the, what it was still music, but the model was different. It wasn’t by a physical CD or a cassette tape. It, it was, you know, go online and download a file or, or you know, basically plug into this, this platform that, that, that plays files. That is a change in model. Airbnb is, is a model. It’s like instead of staying at hotels, you know, people are renting out their homes. That’s a change in business model and it’s a way to differentiate. And then the third m m three is method. The method is what you actually do. So that’s like what you actually teach. So again, just using Chris as an example, since we kind of do something similar, you know, we both have frameworks and we both have a map. We both have, you know, like a roadmap. RV (13:30): We call ours the brand builder journey. And we both have techniques and, and exercises. We take people to help them clarify their audience you know, grow their audience, manage their, manage the different parts of their business, et cetera. But what we do is actually different. The models that he teaches are, are ones that he’s come up with that have worked for him and his clients. The ones that we teach are different. We have the 15 piece of copywriting. We have your content diamond for managing social media. We have the modular content method for writing your whole book in like two days. We have the something, something that we call pillar point formulas, which is like how to make your TED talk go viral. And we have our, our bestseller launch plan for launching books. And, and we have all of these different frameworks where it’s like the, what we’re teaching is actually different. RV (14:18): You can’t get what we’re doing from anyone else. You could get something similar, right? There’s lots of people who do something similar to what you do, but they can’t do exactly what you do if you’re creating your own unique methodology. And that’s part of what we teach people to do in captivating content is we teach you, we help you, we facilitate the creation of your own thought leadership, of your own original ip, of, of your own unique methodologies and frameworks and diagrams and charts and tables that they can’t, they can’t, no one can get it anywhere else in the world except from you, because that’s different differentiating your method. And that automatically creates differentiation and distinction. So that’s how you, you niche down, I would say focus on those three. You know, the market. Who, who am I serving? Who can I serve specifically the, the model. RV (15:10): How am I serving them? How can that be different? And then the method, what am I, what am I actually teaching or doing for them? That’ll help you niche down. And then the, the last, my last takeaway this was directly from Chris, just, you know, the way he said it was, you know, I said, What’s the best way to get your first customer? And I listed off all these different marketing method methods, and I loved his answer. He said, he said, Choose your weapon. Choose your weapon. And, and here’s, here’s how I internalized that. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing, because you’ll do it really well. Like, but the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing. But the formula for, for the, but the formula for failure, the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. RV (16:04): Meaning if you do all of them, none of them are gonna, you’re not gonna do any of them well. So you can take any of them and, and focus on them and do them really well, and it will work, right? Like you can become a master of cold calling. You can become a master of, of sending direct messages of email marketing, of social, of podcasting, of YouTube, of LinkedIn, of whatever. But if you try to do all of them at the same time, they’re not, it’s not gonna work. Like it’s, it’s just, you’re, you’re, you’re not optimizing for, for your resources. Like, especially if you’re a small business. So the formula for success is to do any type of marketing. The formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. So choose your weapon, choose one form of marketing, choose one platform, one technique, one strategy. RV (16:51): Learn it, do it really, really well. And if you come to Brand Builder’s Group, we’re gonna teach you, we’re gonna teach you how to get referrals and we’re gonna teach you how to go out and do presentations. Cuz we know that that is the fastest path to cash for high dollar offers, is referrals from friends and family. And we’re gonna teach you exactly what to say, when to say it, how to say it, who to say it to verbatim, right? In our Pressure Free Persuasion course. And we’re gonna teach you how to create world class presentations that drive massive trust and leads immediately into your business using our, our world class presentation, craft training which is based on brand dna. So but whatever it is, choose your weapon and, and just do, do one really, really well and you will succeed. The riches are in the niches. RV (17:38): This is, this is counterintuitive that by narrowing down your focus, you will make more impact, more money and, and just more of a difference in the world. So don’t be afraid to just let go and say you have permission to not need or chase millions of followers. Just become the favorite of a few people. And the better job you do at doing that, the more impact, the more income and the more influence you will create. Share this podcast if you wouldn’t mind with somebody who you think will benefit from it. And keep coming back here week after week on the influential Personal Brand podcast.