The Difference Between Favorite Market and a True Niche

Hello.

Hello. Welcome back to marketing for accounting Firms. My name is Matt Benker. I run an agency that helps accounting firms with their marketing. And today we are going to talk about niches. I'm a believer in niches. I have a niche because I do marketing for accounting firms. It's a pretty narrow niche itself, but it was a long struggle, I would say, for me to find my place in the industry and figure out what my niche really was. And so my guest is Todd Howard, and he helps people do that better. I'm going to say better, and quicker to figure out what their niche is supposed to be. This is a big question that is coming up in the accounting firm or the accounting world. Everybody. All these coaches, all these podcasts, you're always hearing you should have a niche. And at the same time, I've found that a lot of accounting firms really struggle with making the choice of what niche they should be in, and they feel like it's really hard to do that, and they feel like there's all kinds of risks or going to dig into that. Today with Todd and, yeah, Todd, thank you for being on the show.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Matt. This is going to be fun.

Why don't start off. Why should people care what you have to say? What do you know?

Yeah, that's a good. That's a good question. Finding your niche is really, I think, one of the superpowers that most people forget about when people are building a business. They think about, how do I make the most money? And so they're looking for ways to maximize revenue. They think, how do I lower my cost? And they've got a couple of these, what I'm going to call, you know, basic ideas or litmus test ideas in mind. When they build new products, when they go after new markets, they're thinking, will this make me money? Will it? You know, is this something I can afford to do? But the question that they forget to ask themselves is, is this unique? Is this consistently, is it unique in the same way that my other products and services are unique? In other words, am I doing something that really focuses on my niche? And if you have that at the front of your mind in every decision that you make, you end up building a much more successful business than if you were to sort of forget about that or think about it, you know, every once in a while? So I think thinking about being unique and thinking about your niche should be top of mind for anyone who runs a business.

Well, let's. And let's take a step back here even, and Say, when you say niche, I have a feeling that different people have kind of different ideas in mind. I know in the marketing world, people talk about vertical niches, like, this is one industry that I work in. And then sometimes people talk about horizontal niches, which is. I just do, let's say copyrighting. But I do it for a lot of people. How do you define a niche in the context of business? And what should businesses should be thinking about if they're trying to figure out what if they have a niche or if they have a good niche?

I think most people have a definition of the word niche that fits their needs in the moment. And so everyone has a different definition of a niche. Some people think a niche is a favorite market. So if they go into a market and they're successful, they say, hey, look at me, I've got a niche. This is great. And they double down there. Some people think a niche really comes down to a niche product. They look at what they offer and they say, is this something that's different from my competitors? If so, therefore, I have a niche in reality, a niche. To really get a good definition, we have to go back to the root word that niche comes from. So niche comes from a French word. Sorry, I don't speak French. Niche, which means to nest. And so when you find a niche for your business, it's the equivalent of building a nest for your business. And the reason that birds build nests is because they want to create a protected place somewhere that they can put their eggs. And so it's interesting that this is the word that was chosen when they were trying to describe this idea of niching your business. So what people can do, instead of saying the word niche business, say protected business. Do you have a protected business? Are you safe from competitors? People bumping into your business, whether they mean to or not? Will your business be here five years down the road, 10 years down the road? Because you have taken steps to protect your business? And when you think about it from that standpoint, in light of that definition, there's a lot of things that simultaneously have to be true in order to have a niche. You do have to like the market that you're in. That's true. But it's also true that the market you're in has to like you. The market you're in has to have some reason to choose you over all of your competitors. Your product has to be uniquely situated to help your niche market. There has to be a subset of the market that you are uniquely suited to serve. And so the point in saying all of this is people have a over simplistic definition of the word niche and it makes it hard for them to find it. Or when they find it in a. In a small way, they sort of rest and say, great, I found a niche, I'm done figuring this out. But they really need to look at, is my. Is my business protected by working with this subset of the market or by taking this approach, have I protected my business? And to the extent you can say yes, you have a strong niche, to the extent you say no, then I would say you have a weak niche. And it's less of a binary. You have one or you don't. It's. You have a strong. You've protected your business well or you have not.

It is different than, I think how most people think about a niche. So, you know, we work with accounting firms a lot of the. Now I love when they come in and they have a really clearly defined target market. And that's not the same as having a niche. But I think conventionally we often use the. We think about it as a similar thing. So I'll have. Some clients will come in and they'll have two or three strong verticals. Like, we're great with restaurants and auto shops or something like that. Some of my clients come in and they're like, we do accounting for lawyers or we do accounting for roofers. If someone came in and said, yep, we do accounting for roofers, what are the questions you're gonna start to ask to determine if they actually have a niche versus if that's just a good market?

I'd first ask, what is your area of specialization? What's your specialty? And can you associate your area, your specialty, to the market that you just named? If they can't, then that tells me they've chosen a favorite market. I would ask them, what is your unique approach that leads you to work with that market as opposed to another market? Yeah, I mean, if you can work with roofers, could you equally work with everyone in construction? Could you work with. And I would start naming different industries. And if they kept saying, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, we could work with all those people.

Yeah.

Then I would realize your product and service is not unique at all. It's not that you've catered something to roofers. You've got a generic product. You just like roofers. And that exposes them. Because obviously if someone else started marketing to roofers, they've got a problem on their hands.

Right. It just happens that they maybe have a book of business in that Industry already they're getting referrals like all of those are good things that's on the pathway towards developing a niche and like you said, building a business that is somewhat protected but it's not, it's not the full like we have a niche that is really defensible and long term beneficial for our business. It can potentially be still at risk. So okay, as an example, let's say every industry has specialized software for it. Right. I know this happens a lot with accounting firms. So let's say you're working with restaurants and you know that TOAST is the POS system that a lot of restaurants use as an accounting firm. If you say we integrate your QuickBooks directly with toast or we, we have a deep understanding of, you know, the, the reports and the, the outputs of your system for like how that affects then your, your books and accounting and all that. Is that more in the direction of what it means to have an actual like specialty in that space?

Yes. Now you've taken some steps to differentiate yourself from everyone else. You start answering the question that I had. What do you offer that's uniquely suited to your market? In this case restaurants, you would say, because I know Toast point of sale software, I know the reports, I've got integrations that are pre built. Yes. Now you start to lend some credibility to that position and you've now created more of a defensible niche position.

Yeah. So I'm in marketing. Right. We, there, there was a, an accounting firm that came and spoke at a conference that I was at that was. They, they, I don't know if they would, I guess they would probably call it a niche but they specialize in doing accounting for marketing firms. And one of the things that they had developed was you know, this 45 minute presentation on here's the benchmarks for the financial performance of a marketing firm. You know, we're very focused on like utilization rate. Our biggest costs are going to be labor. Right. I'm hiring copywriters and designers and Google Ad specialists. We don't have inventory and we don't have overhead from like a rent. But, but what they did is they said these are the things that matter most to marketing firms and these are the numbers you really need to be speaking to. And I sat there and I listened to them and the thought that went through my hand, my mind was oh, I don't, I don't have to educate them about my business. They actually know more about my business than I do. And I've been in other situations where I've Talked to folks and they have to ask me a lot of questions about my business before they understand enough to give good advice. Eventually we get there. But I felt like it was a good example of developing knowledge presentations content that is really deeply knowledgeable about my industry. And it really helped me trust them a lot better. I would imagine those are, those are the other sorts of things that you're developing to really create that specialization within one particular niche or industry.

I've put together a framework that helps people find their niche. I found that there was really no framework or formula out there that would allow someone to go through and discover their ideal niche. People just sort of had to try what they thought, you know, was the best bet and then over time adjust to make it as profitable as they could. And they called that their niche. And I thought there's got to be a way that we can walk through a certain series of questions and, and discover this. So I built a framework around that. And the, the first two steps that I take someone through, there's five steps total. The first two, we look at their unique abilities. You should never try and pick a market where you can't be an expert in that market. So we start with your unique abilities. And so if someone brings all that to the table, then yeah, they're obviously going to fit the restaurant industry or whatever it is that their unique abilities point to. The second thing we look at is what I call the customer's journey. You need to really understand what your customer is going through. In the big scheme of things, the journey refers to the larger arc that describes what your customer is trying to accomplish. Somewhere along that customer journey there will be a transaction. And most people think about just the transaction and they think, how do we get people to, how do we get people to this point on their journey and then buy more from us? And that's a short sighted view. When you're trying to find a niche, it's better to back up and look at your customer's journey and look at what are all the different ways that we can provide value. Along the customer's journey, we might find some areas where no one's providing value and we are in a unique position to provide value. And so those are two things that correspond with the example that you just set up. If you have unique abilities that you can bring to the table and a deep understanding of your customer's journey, we're going to find niche opportunities. But of course, if you just go after a market because it looks like a growing market and you think you can make a lot of money. But you wade into those waters and you don't have any expertise to bring to the table, and you don't really understand their journey. You are not going to develop a protected niche. Competitors are going to take that over. You're just in the wrong place.

So I posted on LinkedIn the other day, I said, you know, for, for accounting firms, there's really two tracks for marketing that are, that are generally available for them. So one is if you're a generalist firm, basically a local focus is your best bet because, you know, people like to work, you know, with folks that are near them. They could go into the office. You can focus on local SEO, you can focus on Google Ads, because people are looking for accountant near me. So that is one option. The problem with that is you're competing on more competitive channels. Everybody's on Google Ads. Everybody is trying to show up in Google search. And what I hear you saying is when you have a niche, one of the advantages is you can find opportunities in the customer journey where nobody else is showing up and competing. And so you might be the only voice in that space instead of in a list of a bunch of other competitors that are going to be in that same spot. So the other track being a niche, it just opens up more, I guess, unique places where you can do your marketing or do your outreach or interact with your ideal customers that aren't necessarily, we'll say, like purely competitive marketing channels.

Your examples all start with firms trying to go after a specific market. And this idea that a niche basically is a market. So a lot of people, they think, what I'm really trying to do in finding a niche, I'm really trying to find a market. That's really what I'm after. And I think that that actually trips people up. Most people are trying to choose a market, and you should not try and choose a market for first. When you're trying to choose a niche, you should look at yourself and find a unique approach that you can bring to some customer's journey. Then you ask yourself, what market is best served by my unique approach?

Interesting.

And so that kind of turns it around. Instead of sort of flipping through all the different possible markets in your mind and saying, is there opportunity here? Is there opportunity here? You're looking at competitors. Can I beat them? It's very difficult to land in the, in your ideal niche by going that route.

Yeah.

Because what you do is you find a market that you like, and then you try and reverse engineer a product for that market. But you may reverse engineer yourself into a place where you do not have any expertise. And so now you're back to square one. You are not the best option in that market.

Do you believe you have to have experience in, like, direct experience in an industry in order for it to be a good niche for you? My background, I have a fine arts degree, which is about as far away from accounting as you could. Accountants don't typically think of themselves as very creative people. And so there's a, there's a need for a different skill set than what they've got, you know, in the accounting niche. So I do think that we can bring particular skill set to it, but we don't have any. I don't have any background, I don't have any experience. In fact, sometimes I even try to stay intentionally ignorant of some of the more detailed things about accounting because that's where most of their customers are coming from. And so if I can't understand it, your customers can't understand it. At least that's my, that's sort of my approach. But when people are thinking about like, I want to find something uniquely suited to my abilities, are you just looking at, you know, oh, I used to work in restaurants or, you know, my, my dad had an auto shop and that's why I do this now. Or what, what's your, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, experience helps, but unique abilities can take on all kinds of different forms. I'll give you one example that comes to mind. It's a business coach that I worked with, and the business coach was trying to find a unique approach that would connect us a certain market. And I found out that he used to be a pilot. And I said, tell me about being a pilot. And he told an interesting story. I didn't know. He said, a pilot is completely concerned with risk. And it makes sense because if you mess up, then everybody, you know, crashes. So you're very risk aware.

Including you. Yeah.

He said, when you start out as a pilot, you can only fly a certain altitude. You cannot fly into the clouds, and there's all these other rules, but once you learn how to read instruments, then you can fly into clouds. You can take greater risks. We applied this to business coaching. And long story short, after going through this process, we found out that he was very well suited to work with people who wanted to start businesses but were scared to death of losing their money, losing their nest egg. It was risk that prevented them from starting a business. And so he went to them and said, I'm a business Coach, and I'm going to help you grow your business by helping you identify and manage risk. That's it. Success is defined as surviving the first year. And after we get that under our belt, you're going to learn some new things. We're going to take the next step. And he was able to take his experience as a pilot and transfer it into business coaching. So he had experience in something that applied to a specific market and allowed him to bring a unique approach to the table.

And that attracts a particular type of person. So it doesn't attract every business owner, because some entrepreneurs are very, like, they're. They're very tolerable of risk. Like, we take a lot of risks.

That's right. They're gonna, like the people who say, oh, you know, try my idea and you're gonna make a gazillion dollars. Those people who are all gas pedal and no break, they're gonna call that guy. But the other people who are thinking, okay, I'm. And I'm using this analogy because I know some people in this situation. I'm in my 50s. I got laid off from corporate. I have to start a business, and I'm scared to death of losing what I've built up so far. This business coach is a perfect fit for that person.

Yeah.

Because that person is most concerned about risk.

So if you're thinking about accounting firms and they're. They're thinking about niches, do you. Do you still generally. Do you often still end up focusing on particular markets, or is that not necessarily as relevant as maybe we think it is?

We do focus on markets, and it is not as important as we think it is. So I'll go back to the framework that I use. So I was saying there's five pieces. The first is unique abilities. The second is the customer journey. The third is competition. Obviously, we have to make sure you're not doing something that someone else is. The fourth is choosing the market that is best that gets the most benefit out of your unique approach. So, yes, we absolutely do pick a market you want to do that. Otherwise you're kind of aimless. I mean, you have to market to someone. You have to develop some kind of voice for some kind of audience. So that's very important. However, what you find when you go through this process this way is, is that the strength of your market comes down to your unique approach. You have chosen a market to start with, but you might find that your unique approach gets you into five different markets. You're putting your eggs into the basket of your Unique approach. That's really the thing you want to find. The market is kind of the secondary.

I've heard numbers like, if you're choosing. If you're trying to choose a good niche market to focus on, there needs to be enough potential customers in it. If you addressed like 3 to 5% of the market, you would make tons of money. But it has to be like, there's got to be enough people in there. They'll also say, and you can tell me how you. How you respond to this, that it's good. You want a market or a niche where there is some competition because it's proves that there's already money to be made there. Whereas if no one is making any money in a particular area, maybe that says something, that someone's already tried it and it's not worthwhile.

You're absolutely right. There's got to be a market. I think there's two things that have happened relatively recently in history. The first is we've crossed 8 billion people. And the second is we're all online. So the chance it would. It would be very difficult to come up with any idea for which there is no market. Now, that doesn't mean you need to go crazy and try and get, you know, down to the nth degree of detail. You don't need to go too far out on a limb, but people don't need to worry that they're going to niche their way past a market that is very difficult to do. A lot of people ask me, how, when do you know you've gone too far with niching? And I say it's very similar to tightening a bolt. Everyone has tightened a bolt, and everyone instinctively knows when it's tight enough. When you push too far and you strip the bolt, you say, I knew it. I knew I shouldn't have done that. When you're sort of going after niche and you're narrowing down, there's a point where you realize, I'm far enough. I don't need to go any further. And for those who like a more technical answer than that, you need to be different enough that your customers can distinguish you from your nearest competitor. If you've accomplished that, you've gone far enough. To go any further would be a waste of time.

Yeah, yeah. So you're hitting thresholds. Not there's not some platonic ideal of like, perfect niching or differentiation.

Correct, Correct. You're trying to just go far enough. It's not that you're trying to beat your competitor. You're trying to get your Customer to see you, to see that you stand apart from the competition. That's the goal.

If you are a generalist accounting firm, you serve all kinds of different businesses and you focus on a local area, you still have the potential to develop a real niche market by making it clear that. That what you offer is different than every other accounting firm that's in the city. And you work to attract a specific type of client, clientele through the way you offer your services and the way you've articulated and talk about the value that you bring.

I'm going to say something that may make some people think, okay, he's gone too far now. I think everyone should have a niche. I think everyone should develop a kind of niche thinking where they're constantly asking themselves, am I doing something that is uniquely focused on a subset of the market? If they don't feel comfortable with the word niche, okay, throw that out. Let's go back to the idea of a unique approach. Why have a unique approach? Who am I best suited to serve? Am I positioning myself so that those people know it? Am I providing the evidence that I have a unique approach that I built just for them? Yeah, this is something everyone should be thinking about. Whether or not you ever get to the point where you say, oh, I have a niche, a larger business would call this positioning. It is important across the board on every level that you look at your business through your customer's eyes. And we got to remember, our customers have lots of options and they're looking for differences. And so you need to be able to stand out in some way. And if you don't know ahead of time, this is the identity that I am after that, I'm trying to prove to my customer base, this is how I'm going to be different. You're just going to bounce into a lot of competition for really no reason. So I think everybody should be aiming for a unique identity in any market.

Yeah. Let me play devil's advocate here a little bit and say for accounting firms, I love firms that have a niche because it does make marketing so much easier. It's more clear who we're going after. The clarity of what, of the differentiation, all of that is great. But a lot of firms, they've heard it from all kinds of different places that they should have a niche, but it just doesn't seem like it's really realistic for them. And so big objections that I hear. Our current client base is very diverse. Like, we like, yeah, it would be great to have restaurants as our niche, but we've Got all kinds of different businesses. And what if they go to our website and it looks like we're changing everything and our focus is on how we integrate with TOAST now. And they're like, what does that have to do with me as a veterinary veterinarian or, you know, whatever it is. So they're worried about their current client base. How do you answer that question?

Yeah, so the fear at a fundamental level when I talk, I hear the same objection all the time. And what I've, I've sort of rephrased their objection to say we're worried if we discover our ideal niche and we go there too fast, we're going to alienate our existing customers. The answer is don't go there too fast. You are in complete control as the business owner to sit back and say, you know what, we're right now focused on market A, but we're better suited to market B. So let's slowly port our business into market B over time and this becomes a project. And so you could say, for example, let's make these strategic changes over the next year. Every time we develop a new product, we're going to really focus on market B. Every time we hire a new employee, we're going to hire employees that help us in market B. And you, you realize it's really a project that has a timeline associated with it where you slowly move things over. You don't need to feel like, okay, I found my niche and then in the next 24 hours I need to, you know, do things that will shock my current client base. Yeah, unless you're kind of a one man shop, you can't change from market A to market B all that quickly. But I would also tell these people, don't let this fear prevent you from finding your ideal niche. It's always better to know you might be closer to your niche than you think, but go ahead and find out what it is and then make it a separate decision. How am I going to strategically move from where I'm at now to where I'm going?

Here's the other objection that I hear. Risk. Right. And again, maybe we're conflating. Maybe I'm conflating market with niche. If I say we've got unique abilities that serves restaurants well, we're going to develop that as a niche. And then, you know, Covid happens again and the city shuts down all the restaurants and all of a sudden we lose all of that business because of macroeconomic factors. And there's lots of different industries that can be affected by different things. And so they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket. That's the main objection. How do you answer that?

I'd go back to the explanation about a niche is not a market. And so if you've chosen a market and. And said, well, I'm just serving this market, that's it. I would say, nope, let's go look for your unique approach. Because your unique approach, actually it will bring you to a market, but I bet you're going to come to a different conclusion about what that market is. I'm going to go back to business coaches as an example, just because the example I gave is fresh in my mind. What's interesting to me is when I talk to most business coaches and I asked them who's their niche market? They give me a demographic. They say women owned businesses that make over $3 million. It's always something like that. But think about the example that I gave of the person who helps people who are worried about starting a business, people who are risk averse. That's not a demographic, that's a psychographic. That's a mindset. And so when I hear someone say, I have something just for roofers, I think to myself, no, you probably don't. You probably have something that is suited to several different markets that all share some commonality that you've not yet put your finger on. So let's go through the conversation to find out what is your unique ability and who does that? Who is that unique ability best suited for and find out what's that other.

Identifier of roofers in, in America, if we just take one country. So if you say we do we're accounting for roofers, we're really accounting for a type of roofer. And that type of roofer or that type of business owner who happens to be a roofer is probably similar to that type of business owner who happens to be a general contractor or, you know, landscape, you know, company. So you're saying like, push past just the market that there seems to be, you know, opportunity into. What are the similarities?

Right.

In my case, we were definitely more of the, like stumble along, find some opportunity. And then we started, started to, I would say niche down. And, and at first we kind of half niched into, so my last name is banker. And so we, we found ourselves serving a lot of accountants and financial planners and other people. And we, we kind of said, well, we should just have a company that, that works with businesses that have to do with money. And.

Right.

And so we did that. And so we had, we had accounting firms over here and then we had financial planners over there. And we quickly realized that the skill set and the tactics required for those two markets, even though they both worked, you know, with money in some way, were entirely different. You know, one was, you know, they were looking for individuals who needed financial planning. And so it was a B2C marketing approach. And on the accounting firm side, it was generally accounting firms that were serving businesses. And so what it takes to serve these two companies, we weren't gaining the benefits of stacking our skills and being able to build something better and better for an ideal client. Instead, we were splitting and trying to do different things for different clients all over the place. And so eventually, when we said, actually the skills that we have and the processes that we've developed are better suited for this business to business scenario, that helped us move in that direction. And I imagine that's probably similar for a lot of accounting firms where they're finding that the way that they deliver their services is really a great fit for certain markets or types of clients or psychographics. I know some firms, they love to help businesses save as much money as possible on taxes. And so they're going to attract the type of clients who just don't like the IRS and really want to figure out how to minimize taxes across the board. Others, like you said, are really just really risk averse people. And so they want to know, I just want to make sure that the IRS never sends me a notice. Right. And that's their goal. And so the type of business owner or client that you're after might be different in the way that you design and deliver your services, I suppose.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So what you just described is the customer journey that I was talking about before. As you were working with these clients and you learned more about the customer journey and the details of it, you realized, oh, there's a difference in the journey between these guys and those guys, and I can help these people this way. And you sort of, you made adjustments to make your approach more unique and fit a particular customer journey.

All right, Todd, so you think, you think everybody should have a niche. You also think that firms who see themselves as generalists could also have a niche serving a variety of types of clients doesn't mean that niche is off the table as an option for you. So that's great news probably for a lot of these firms, because everybody's been telling them that they should have a niche, but they've got these objections and feel like it's not an option. What are the first steps in the direction of figuring out what my niche is? Well, let me give you two options. So tell us, what's the baby steps for the diy? Er, you know, I want to start moving in this direction, but I got to do my own kind of thinking and research about it. And then what's the fast track version, which is, you know, working with someone like you or working kind of more aggressively to. To actually figure this out? What would you recommend in those two cases?

I think that almost any business will find their niche if they're in business long enough, because what they're doing is they constantly get feedback, do more of this, less of that. They find out what their unique abilities are. They learn more about the customer journey. Every business is trying to make their customer happy. And so you can get to your niche sort of inch by inch over the years. And so what you really need to think about is how do I shorten that time? Because if you knew your ideal niche 24 months sooner, you can put a dollar figure to that. I mean, that's huge.

Whether it's anyone who has a niche will say that. I think that, oh, yeah, the people who have really done that will. Will recognize, wow, I'm so glad I did this. I wish I would have done it sooner or would have figured this out sooner. We could have made a lot more money.

Yep. So what I would say is, if you are a business, start paying attention to what is my approach, how is my approach unique, and am I making that apparent in my products, in my marketing and how I train my employees? So I continually come back to the market I'm serving with. You know, here's how I'm unique. Here's how I'm unique. Here's how I'm unique. If you do that and you stay on the path of trying to serve your market, you will find yourself adjusting automatically to fill a defensible niche over time. So I would, you know, to kind of go back and put all that in a nutshell. Be aware of it. Don't go into a situation and say, how do I make money? How do I limit cost? When you're thinking of a new product, or maybe you're talking to, you know, you have an account team that's working with customers and you're talking about processes. Bring to the forefront of your mind, what is our identity to our market? How are we unique and what are we doing to emphasize that and re. Emphasize that over and over. If you do that, you will slowly move into a defensible niche position. The fast track obviously is, you know, if you had an opportunity to work with me and go through this process, then, you know, we go through and we look at all the right variables together and we just come to a conclusion, you know, in a matter of a couple weeks and figure that out. And then, you know, that shortens the time quite a bit. But it's really just being aware. I think people who say I'm a general business, I'm not going to say no to business. And so I'm going to throw out this idea of niching. They are probably associating a niche with a specific market. And so they say, I'm not interested. But once they say a niche is a unique approach, a niche is an identity that allows people to see me differently than my nearest competitor, then I think they're going to come around and say, okay, I don't feel like I'm saying no to business. I feel like I'm focusing my efforts on a particular unique approach. So it resonates with the subset of the market that is more likely to say yes.

Yeah, unpack for us just a little or give people a taste. What does it look like to work with you? What kind of resources and things do you provide to business owners?

Yep. So there are some free resources on my website now. Grow a niche business dot com. People can go get whatever they need. I've got a course, it's a five part course that walks through these five parts. Unique abilities, customer journey, competition, market and then product. I actually help people build a product because your unique approach needs to make its way through to your product. You can't have a niche marketing plan and then a generic product. It just lets everybody down. So we go through those five things. There are five sessions. Each session is 75 minutes long. I ask that people generally take one to two days between sessions because I'm going to give you a lot to think about. And then we're going to take the outputs from one session into the next session and we are going to identify your ideal niche.

Do you do this with groups of people or just with a business owner?

I do this just with the business owner. If a company said, you know, we want to bring in two or three people, then we'll just contact me, we'll talk about how we do that. I wouldn't take you through five 75 minute sessions. I'd probably do something a little differently. But we can do that. It all depends on how many people people you want in the room. Are we starting from scratch? Are we refining your niche? But there's all kinds of different things we can do with this same framework.

Yeah, interesting. Okay, tell us again your website. Grow a niche.

Grow a niche business. Grow a niche business.

And you mentioned that there were some free resources. Are you active on social media accounts? Where can people find you? You?

Yeah, they can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, and as of next week, well, before this comes out, it'll be on LinkedIn as well. So LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, they can follow me there.

Yeah, that's great, Todd. This is a great conversation. I love this idea. I think that. I think accounting firm owners hear over and over again, you should have a niche. You should have a niche. Like you said, no one really tells them how to do that, how to figure it out. They know they should. A few of them have stumbled into it. But, you know, there's probably some opportunity for refinement there. So I would just, I'd encourage everybody, you know, check out Todd's website, find him on. Find him and follow him on whichever social media platform you're on.

And.

And if you are looking to refine or find your own niche, you know, it might make sense for you to get in touch with him and see if there's. If there's something. I know there's ways that Todd can work with you. Any last thoughts or nuggets of wisdom that we didn't totally cover in this conversation that you think people really need to know about niching?

I want to encourage people that they do have a niche. I'm always surprised. Most times when I start with someone, they say, I hope we find a niche, and then we very quickly find a really great opportunity. And it really does. It changes the way that you run your business, but it also changes the way that you see yourself, and that's really important. Everybody goes into business, they want to have some kind of identity. Some, you know, it may sound corny, but feeling of, you know, being helpful and feeling a purpose. And when you find something that's uniquely suited to you and realize you have a lot to bring to the table, that's really going to resonate with people. It's incredibly encouraging. And so I would say, believe it's there. Go for it. I believe the world will get more niched over time. I think over the next several decades, we're going to see the craziest businesses work because everyone is able to connect with people online and people are looking for more customized solutions. And so the whole idea of Niching is just going to work for your business no matter what it is.

Yeah. Okay. Last. Last question. I mean, we've. We keep saying niche rather than niche. And I've heard that it's always, you know, the, the riches are in the niches. That's why we, that's why we say it that way. You can't say the riches are in the niches. It just doesn't. Doesn't flow off the tongue. Do you have any good arguments for why people should say niche instead?

I. So I do. Well, sorry not to say one over the other. Both are correct. So back to the word origin.

Yep.

Niche is a French word. So the French would say niche. In the Brits, the English would say. I'm sorry, the French would say niche.

Yep.

The English would say niche. In America, we get our English from the English, so we say niche. Both are accurate. So sometimes if I'm feeling a little sophisticated, I say niche. Most often I say niche because I just learned that word first. They are both acceptable.

Okay. Well, I mean, I don't know if I agree with that. They're both acceptable. But we'll take your. Just take your word for it. Because like I said, the riches are in the niches. So this has been a great conversation. Again, this is the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. You can find us at marketingforaccountingfirms.com you can find me, Matt Banker on LinkedIn and I would love to connect with you. If you are an accounting firm owner and you're wondering about your own marketing, reach out to me. If you need to figure out your niche, reach out to Todd and we will see you next time. Thanks for tuning in. This podcast, Marketing for Accounting Firms, is brought to you by Benchmark Growth Marketing, a marketing agency that helps accounting firms get more calls booked through their website. You can find us@benchmarkgrowthmarketing.com Connect with me, Matt Benker on LinkedIn.