3 signs your ideal client's changed like Stanley's!

Hey, new listener, thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. In this episode, I'm going to explain what your business can learn from Stanley's Tumblrs. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the weeniecast. Squirrel. If you've ever walked by a construction site, I guarantee you've seen a certain kind of thermos. And it's metal and it's green and it's made by this company called Stanley. And Stanley's been around for forever. My dad was a carpenter and I'm sure like we have them in my parents house kicking around somewhere. They were often sold in hardware stores and like really rough and tumble areas. I'm sure Home Depot has them. They have a very long history of being like the working man's thermos. They keep your coffee hot, they keep your water cold, and I think you can also like put soup in it because you know a liquid is a liquid, right? Stanley has gone through kind of a shift lately because they created a Tumblr that went wild with the Pinterest moms who want like a big thing of water with the straw, they shifted their ideal client. Essentially, they made a ton of money doing it. Stanley, the company used to make $70,000 a year. And in the last four years, after coming out with what they call the quencher, you know, the thermos that has the straw on the top. Kind of like what you see every soccer mom walking around with. They grew their market share to 750 million in four years. In 2019, they brought in 73 million. In 2021, they brought in 194 million. It's insane. And why am I bringing this up? I'm not telling them, I promise. I don't get kickbacks. If you want to go buy one, buy one. If you don't, don't worry. I'm not going to like pressure you either way. But I bring it up to make a point that your ideal client is going to change. It's a natural progression for companies that are paying attention to how their products are being used and how their services are being sought out. Stanley, the company absolutely could have just stuck with their market share, could just stuck with the construction guys and their thermoses and said, you know, that's it. We're not interested in growing into any other markets. And yet they didn't. They noticed when soccer moms, and I say soccer moms, lots of people got these, but it's kind of like the stereotypical Stanley carrier now. They lobbed onto these tumblers and made it part of their identity, and it paid off. In your business, you're gonna have similar choices to make. What I had to do in my business, for instance, I've talked about this many times. When I started my business, I started off as a dating coach for men. Only one guy signed up. The rest of my clients were women. And out of all of those clients, only one of the women actually stuck with the dating topic. Everyone else needed to work on how they were showing up at their job because they had really boundary setting. They weren't great at asserting themselves. So we ended up doing a lot of executive coaching and leadership training, which led me down the road of becoming an executive coach and a leadership development trainer. In the background, a lot of my coaching friends were like, wait a minute, how are you getting clients? Because we're really struggling to get clients. And I realized I had completely taken for granted my whole career in sales and marketing and how I had kind of accidentally turned it into the system that worked for me. And when I started showing it to them, it started working for them and they started referring clients to me for this thing that I wasn't even selling. And I realized I liked it so much better. So I evolved my executive coaching and leadership training business into a business building business because I felt like I was teaching alchemy. Now, after doing that for a couple years, something funny I noticed is that most of my clients had ADHD and they were drawn to me. A, because I'm pretty open about having adhd, and B, because I work in a way that is really friendly to folks. With adhd. There's no hard and fast. Here's what you need to do and how you need to do it and go. And you have to be my way the highway or get the hell out. It's my. My strategies are customizable to your personality, to your work style, to the things that you like to do and spend your time on. With a couple exceptions, obviously. And that's how the Weeniecast was born. That's how I started identifying as a business strategist and money mindset coach for ADHD business owners. There are a few signs that will pop up for. For you that will tell you that your ideal client or your niche is ready to change or evolve. And we're going to talk about that today. But we're also going to talk about what is going to be required of you to actually see it through to the other side. Because it's scary to change who you work with. It's scary to get more defined because you feel like you're scaring people away. And sure, sometimes you are. But like Stanley, our dear friend with the thermoses and the hot beverages and the cold beverages, you can choose to stick with the status quo and hopefully it'll just stay the same. Or when opportunities like the soccer moms come a knockin', you can choose to run with them and hopefully have a similar surge in business. And fingers crossed that you jump from something like 73 million to 194 million in two years. If you do, please let me know. I would like to invest in your business, but maybe like, tell me before you surge so I can like really get in with a good share price. So here are a few of the signs that your ideal client or your niche is wanting to change naturally. The first one is your niche is narrowing down naturally. Now this is what happened for me. I started getting a lot of clients who all had ADHD or they started working with me because they kind of suspected that they did and then they ended up getting diagnosed with it during our time together. If there was anyone out there who had a theory that ADHD is contagious, they'd have a very easy time coming up with like bad evidence by looking at some of my clientele. Because it seems that when people work with me, they get diagnosed with adhd. It's not a causation thing, it's more of a coincidence thing. I don't cause ADHD in other people is what I'm saying. Okay, don't come after me now. I absolutely didn't have to go with the ADHD thing. I could have just stayed a business strategist for heart centered service providers, which I still talk a lot about. However, one of the things that I saw is there were so many ADHD business owners who are looking for support and not finding neurodiverse friendly support like myself. I had so many coaches in the beginning years of my business that were neurotypical who didn't understand that my brain just worked differently and caused a lot of shame for me, really slowed me down because they made how I was working in my own business wrong because it wasn't their way. And when I started noticing this trend in my business that a lot of folks that were maybe ADHD or definitely ADHD were coming to me, that there was this fear they had that they were going to be made wrong. And I realized instead of just having it kind of be an aside of, by the way, I have ADHD and you're safe with me to stick this flag in the ground and say, no. This is an ADHD friendly space. This is a space designed for people whose brains work differently, whose brains have always had to bend like pretzels to fit into the model that has been handed to them. That's created by neurotypicals. We're not standing for that anymore. We're creating that works for you in your business. Now, this could also happen. Like for instance, when I said I was dating coach for men and I got pretty much all female clients, that's another instance of, like, your niche is kind of naturally shifting to something else. I've said it before and I will say it a gazillion times again. Picking a niche and discovering your ideal client is a dance with the universe. You're never going to find the right dance partner if you just sit on the sidelines. You have to get up and you have to get on the dance floor and you have to dance with the first person if they're the right person to dance with. You're going to dance with them all night. Congratulations, there you go. But if they're wrong, you're going to find your next partner, and you're going to find your next partner, and then the next partner is going to find you. It happens on the dance floor, it happens in your business, but it can't happen if you don't get up and start dancing. So that's one sign that your niche or your ideal client is wanting to narrow down further, is you're just naturally attracting a subset within your niche. The next sign is you're getting a lot of clients who are signing up for the thing that you offer and then saying, hey, can you also do this other thing? This is the. I mean, this is the quintessential Stanley example. You know, they had a solid product that everyone knows and loves. And like, once you have a Stanley Thermos and you're in the Stanley Thermos family, like, once your friend drives over your Stanley with their pickup truck and squashes it, you're just going to go and replace your Stanley. But when the soccer moms came, a knock in said, hey, can you make more of these tumblers that you made once? We love them, it's a sign that you're you have a new market available to you. You have a new service offer that has a market that's ready to spend money on it. This is a tricky one because you know how I talk about can do Itis a lot I talk about can do it is a little bit in episode 66. It's also about how you can avoid going to jail with your testimonials. Great episode. I recommend you go check it out. But can do it. This is basically where you have a bunch of clients who are all asking you to like add different random things onto your service offering. Now we want to be very careful around this because when you have canduitis you get spread way too thin doing way too many different things and it's incredibly hard to continue to deliver at the level of excellence that you're used to when you're doing so many different things. But if you find that like 70% of your clients are saying, hey, can you also do this one other thing? And it's all the same, that is a beautiful sign from the universe saying you need to start expanding into this area. And if not expand then maybe create some partnerships so that you have other service providers who can come in and do that thing. For instance, I help people build businesses. A partnership I absolutely could create is bringing in social media managers who can do that for my clients if my clients were asking for it. The third sign that your ideal client is changing is oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. One of the biggest challenges I hear from new business owners is how hard it is to figure out what to post on social media and to stick to consistent schedule with it. Because it's hard. And so in the month of May, I'm actually launching a challenge to help you build that muscle of posting every single day. Each participant will get their own customizable content plan for for the month of May, an extensive list of content prompts so you have an endless bank of ideas of things you can post that work with your content plan. Every Monday through Friday we will have a 45 minute Zoom call at 9am Eastern where you will create your content and one lucky person per day will be able to volunteer for the coaching hot seat where I will help you fine tune your messaging so that your content can help you attract high paying clients. If you can prove that you posted every single day for the 31 days, you will win a 30 minute one on one coaching call with me. Normally I charge $497 for this, but for the whole challenge, for your content plan, for the content prompts for those 23 daily calls that you're going to get throughout the month, it's only $197. This is my birthday gift to you this year and I'm so excited to hold your feet to the fire and make you post every day about your business and get more clients. If you're down for a challenge and you want to join us, then go to weanedcast.comchallenge I can't wait to see you there. The third sign that your ideal client is changing is, quite frankly, you start out growing them. I'll use kind of a fun example. So I want you to imagine through high school and college, you became a swim instructor. You're working with kids and you really enjoyed like showing, you know, five year olds that they didn't necessarily have to drown if they got in the pool, you know, that they could go underwater and hold their breath and jump back up and how they could tread water and do the breaststroke and do the front stroke and do the backstroke. You gave him this confidence and it was something that just lit you up. It was kind of a side job. But as you, you progressed in your own swimming career, maybe you were given an opportunity to coach a swim team, you know, and maybe the swim team was middle schoolers or high schoolers. And again, your swim career is progressing. Perhaps there's an opportunity that opens up the local college. They need someone to coach their swim team and eventually, you know, you've completely outgrown that initial first niche of teaching kids how to swim. And you're now working with semi professional swimmers on how they can improve their form so that they can win races. That's a really natural progression of outgrowing one niche and one ideal client and growing into the next level. Now part of this is it happens naturally because when you're just starting out, you have more accessible memories of what it was like to be a beginner. This is one of the reasons why a lot of the business building programs that are available in digital form. You know, digital courses, PDFs, books that are written by people who have like multi million dollar businesses. Why they don't actually help people who are just starting out to start their business because the person who created it is too far along. They don't understand the beginning steps anymore. They're too far away from it. They forgot a lot of bits and of course like their advice is still going to be Helpful, but it's not necessarily right for the person who's just starting out. Something that you want to pay attention to is where do you feel drawn to work with people? Is it changing over time? And are you losing touch with where your clients are in the here and now? If you're feeling drawn to move forward or if you're losing touch, those are both signs that you're outgrowing your current client. This is one of the areas of your business where being a weenie is going to limit you. Because the only thing that will hold you back is fear. The fear that if you narrow your niche further, that you're going to scare too many people away and you're not going to be able to make money. The fear that you're not qualified enough to do this other thing to expand into a new market, to offer a new service. The fear that if you leave this niche or this ideal client that you're outgrowing behind, you're never gonna get new business. And really, the thing that is going to help you get over this is by just stepping into the audacity to be a leading expert. Now, when I talk about having the audacity to be a leading expert, I'm gonna use one example that is kind of frank. But I say this because I know, I know you're qualified. I know you're good at what you do. I know that you're an expert even if you don't see yourself as an expert. So I want you to imagine like your typical Chad. And Chad just got back from a three week trip in Italy. Chad is talking like he is the ambassador to Italy. He's acting like he knows everything. He's trying to tell you about the local economy, about the language, about how people dress, about the food. He's telling you about the wines. He's completely mispronouncing them, but he's saying them very confidently. Okay. Chad has no problem acting like he's the leading Italian expert in the whole world. You start talking about Michelangelo and he's going to start mansplaining you about the Mona Lisa. If you know anything about art that was not made by Michelangelo. Chad has a lot of confidence. It's misplaced, probably compensating for something. But that's a conversation for another day. What we want to take from Chad is the audacity he has to see himself as a leading expert. Now, if you don't necessarily want to channel your inner Chad, I want you to think about a four year old wearing a Batman shirt. Think about the confidence they walk into the room with. They think they have Batman powers. You know, they may have just gotten Batman shoes that run really, really, really fast. And they want you to watch. The thing about having ADHD is we are constantly crippled by our imposter syndrome, right? Because we're generalists, you know, we jump from hobby to hobby, interest to interest. We know a little about a lot of things. But me, an expert, who am I to say I'm an expert in anything? Ooh, that's probably what you're thinking right now. And to you I say, you gotta suck it up, buttercup. You've been doing this for how long now? One of the reasons we hold ourselves back from declaring that we are a leading expert in our respective fields is because we look around and we see people who've done more than us. If you were to go and look up in any dictionary the meaning of the word expert, nowhere in there does it say someone who has a PhD on a topic. Nowhere in that definition is it going to say someone who's written at least 20 books on a topic. It doesn't say that you have to be the best in the field. It doesn't say that you have to have your own TV show. It doesn't say that you have to have been interviewed by Oprah. The definition of an expert is a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of a skill or a particular area. By that definition, you are an expert on numerous things. You might be an expert cook, you might be an expert gardener. You might be an expert coach. You might be an expert computer programmer. You don't have to have a PhD or even a degree on these things to be an expert. And I know it's intimidating when you look around and you see all these people in these fields who have all the bells and whistles. I'm a leading expert. But do you know where they started? They started where you are right now. They had the fucking audacity to say, you know what? I'm gonna step into my leading expert pants and I'm just gonna own it. I'm gonna lead into it and just start walking around in them like you belong in them. No one's gonna know the difference. I mean, unless you're a fraud like Chad. But, I mean, you're probably not. I don't. I don't tend to draw on as many chads as some people might think. The magical thing, when you embrace the audacity to be the leading expert and you start really engaging with your ideal clients in a way that you can allow it to change, you can allow your niche to evolve. You end up making a lot more money. Leading experts, someone who is an expert in a very specific field, make a lot more money than just generalists. Case in point, neurosurgeons make a lot more money than just general practitioner doctors. Very few people have a steady enough hand to cut into a brain and have it go well. Many, many very talented general practitioner doctors would unalive you if they tried that. Okay? They shake a little bit. You also open the door to more markets. And I don't just mean the like the Stanley example of this where like you're selling to one market and then you get to add to. I mean, you can take over different tiers of the market. As you grow into your expertness, you can roll out programs that help people who are just starting out. You can work one on one with the top tier people in your field. You can launch programs that help everyone in between. You have the ability and the authority to be the person that everyone turns to in this area. And the best result is that you become the de facto expert. You have to work less hard to be known as the person people should go to for help with this thing. I guarantee you there are Tumblr companies out there that are wondering how are we going to convince people that we're as good or better than the Stanley Tumblr. It's a lot of work. But once they figure it out, once they convince people, once they own that market share, they're going to have no problem. They're going to be the de facto go to tumbler for people who really like their cold drinks cold and their hot drinks hot. And whenever we talk about expertiseness, being the leading expert in something, you know, we tend to think you have to know absolutely everything in your field. You do not. You absolutely do not. There are people who work in the bra industry who might need to know a lot about all the different kinds of bras and how you construct them and how you manufacture them and how you market them and all, all that stuff. Right? There are also people who work strictly in the nipple cover industry. Okay? It's a very small area of the bra boob industry. All they focus on is creating little things that just cover your nipples. You can't see them through your shirt. That's what they're the expert on. They don't have to be an expert on the greater bra boob industry. They can just be an expert in nipples. And here is your full permission to be your own version of that Nipple expert. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that makes money, then go ahead and book a generate income strategy call with me by going to weeniecast.com forward/strategy call. On this call, we will talk about your goals, your dreams and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together. There are people whose jobs are literally to create boob tape. Like that is this. This is a job. Like there are engineers and inventors and manufacturers that literally just make boob tape. And then what is this? I haven't actually used these. I bought them and I haven't used them yet. And then, ta da, we have. These are called Nippy's skin. This is someone's job. This is a whole industry. Whole companies are made around this. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Join the Weenacast Hyper Focus community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls. 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