MBA1585 Q&A Wednesday: How do I pivot my business without upsetting current customers?

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Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Powerful Bite sized business nuggets every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes. I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omarr mba net and today's question is from Kerry and Kerry asks. Hey Omar, great podcast. I listen to it on the Daily Recently I decided to pivot my business from business coaching to specifically e commerce business coaching. How do I pivot my business without upsetting my current clients and customers? Would love your thoughts. Thank you so much for the podcast Keri. Thanks for the question Kerry, because this is a really good one. Many businesses will change, evolve, pivot and niche down as the business grows as the business continues. Why? Because you're changing and the needs of the market can change and you can realize that you can add more value if you pivot. But how do you convey this and make this change without upsetting your current clients and customers that may not actually like this change or may not benefit? That's what we get into today's episode. What I want to point out before we get started is you can change your business without losing money, without losing clients. In fact, it may cause you to gain more clients or more revenue from your current clients. We'll talk you through that in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to start today's episode in answering today's Q and A Wednesday about pivoting your business without upsetting your customers or with a personal story. I pivoted a service based business in the past. About 10 years ago, I used to make a living creating websites for clients. I focused on people that are building business websites, any kind of website that they're actually trying to build for their portfolio, whether they're a freelancer, whether they're an e commerce store, a public speaker. I basically did any kind of website if you are an entrepreneur. And I thought that that was a good idea because I was opening myself up to many possibilities, many different kinds of clients. But the truth is is that I became vanilla. No one really knew what I was great at because I wasn't an expert at anything. It looked like I kind of was a jack of all trades. But what I realized is that I was attracting some customers, some specific kinds of customers. I looked at my client list and about 80% of my clients were bloggers, were people that were looking for a website so that they can have a great looking blog specifically using the WordPress platform. So I really niched down. I pivoted my business and I was the web development firm for bloggers that love WordPress. And almost instantly my business doubled. Instantly I got more clients, bigger clients. And the great thing was that I was able to complete the work and get through many websites faster because I wasn't dealing with different technologies or different types of formats or blogs or I would say websites. I was honed in on a niche. So I'm going to walk you through what I did when I pivoted my business. How did I deal with the current clients that I had that were not bloggers? The first thing I did was communicate. Communication is very important with your customers. If you're making any kind of change, whether you're changing prices or rates, or even if it's something subtle like you're changing your website and you want to just kind of give them a heads up. Hey, my website is getting redesigned. Don't be alarmed if it looks different. I know that sounds strange, but some customers, depending on how used to they are to technology, might kind of find it weird. Is this the website I'm supposed to go to to contact Omar? Anyway, so I communicated to my customers that I was going to really focus on WordPress websites for bloggers. And I made it easy for them to understand because I changed the homepage of my own personal website to communicate this so they can really learn a little bit more. I shot a little video, it was like a two minute video explaining why I'm really focusing on that and how I can help new clients that want to build a great blog. I then explained what it meant for them as my current clients. I said, listen, you have two options. And I gave them two options. And these were the two options. I said, option number one, I can continue to serve you, maintain your website, give your updates, and our working relationship will remain the same for as long as you like. Or I can hand you over to somebody that I recommend that really focuses on your type of website or your type of business. In this case it was E commerce stores and I knew people that developed different kinds of websites because that was my marketplace. And I basically made an arrangement with some really great web developers and designers and said, hey, if I hand over a customer to you that I have that is paying me X amount of dollars every month, would you be cool with a finder's fee? And we agreed on 50% of a year's fee. So if we charged the customer, let's say $6,000 a year, they would pay me $3,000 for that customer and then from there on in it was their customer and I would not get a fee, but it would allow me to give them. And when I say them, I mean my customer, somebody that would take good care of them. And at the same time, you know, I cultivated that customer. They're a great customer and I can hand them over to somebody for a reasonable fee. But the point here is that I gave the customer the choice. Hey, I am not going to abandon you, okay? I'm going to continue to help you if you want. It's not going to be my focus, that type of website, but if you want an expert, somebody who's focusing on E commerce only, I know this great company that can help you out and will take care of your website. Now, one of the tricky things that I did before even communicating to the customers was I agreed with the firm that I was going to hand over to that their rate would not change for at least the next coming year. And I communicate to the customer, say, hey, your rate wouldn't change for the next year at least. I've already negotiated this with them and I would give a link to the company itself and say, hey, this is the person or the firm that I'm recommending. You could see their portfolio, they're really good. And what's really cool about doing this is that you're giving your customer choices and you're communicating, you're being honest, you're being transparent, and. And you're basically saying, I need to change my business to benefit my customers and benefit myself. But I don't want to leave you high and dry. I want to make sure you're taken care of. You're also communicating that, hey, this is not my area of expertise anymore. It's not something I'm going to be focusing on. I can continue to maintain your website, but I'm not really innovating in this area anymore. You're looking for somebody who's cutting edge, that really specializes in your type of website, then go with option B. So that's just a little bit of history, a little bit of a story to kind of explain how I would recommend handling it. Communication is the mother of all skill in business, and it's especially important with your customers. There's nothing wrong with changing your business. There's nothing wrong with pivoting, niching down. It's actually a good thing. It's a good thing for your customers, actually. Even the ones that aren't going to continue to work with you. You're letting them know, hey, I'm not for everybody, but what you can do for them, because they were your loyal customer, is to give them options. I would even recommend this to anybody who's closing their business. They're not going to continue their practice or their business anymore, and they would hand them over to another business. I also like to mention that a lot of us as entrepreneurs, we live in our head. We think that our customers are going to be affected more than they actually will be. We think that they're really going to take this hard and this is upsetting news. And we only think that because we live and breathe our business every day, and we think maybe this is a big change. But for other people, for people on the outside, for your customers, for example, it's not that big of a deal. It's kind of okay. And the fact that you communicate it so professionally, they'll just think about it for a few minutes and they'll move on and do something else in their business. Okay? It's not life and death for most people, especially if they have options to just continue to get their work done. This happens every day in business with acquisitions companies buying other companies. They're gonna be speaking to other people, they're gonna be working with other people. That's normal. And their clients will also experience that change. So I just wanna give you a little bit of credit, a little bit of slack and say, hey, it's okay. It's not gonna be a disastrous for customers. Now, I'm not gonna say that every customer's gonna take it perfectly well. There might be a customer or two that just gets really upset. Some people, they just, you know, don't need a lot to get upset. And they might reply to you and say, this is ridiculous. I can't believe you. I can't believe you're doing this to me. All that kind of stuff. My reaction to anything like that is communication over communication. You come back and you kill them with kindness. You kill them with communication is what I say. Get on a phone call, get on a video call and explain, hey, maybe something got lost in communication. I'm not leaving you high and dry. This is what's going on. This is what it means for you. I want to make sure you have all your questions answered. And in fact, what I recommend is what you can do is when you're communicating, this is to invite them to a live webinar where they can ask questions and understand what it means for their business specifically. And you can walk them through it in an hour. Everybody's going to be happy. Some people are going to need a little more handholding than others. But understand, this is not going to stop you from doing the right thing for your business.

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Carrie's question on how to pivot her business without upsetting her customers is a good one because it means she cares about her customers. She cares about making sure she keeps her relationships on the up and up. There are many people out there that don't care that won't even communicate will just change their website and say whatever. This is a sign that chances are you'll do good in business because you put the customer first. You think about them. But beware of extremes. Beware of worrying so much. It immobilizes you from doing the right thing for your business, immobilizes you from taking action and moving in the right direction and taking the steps required to flourish. Your customers are great and they pay you and all that's wonderful. But the truth is customers are replaceable. But your business and you and your happiness and your future is not. It's only one thing. And you got to get it right. So fantastic question from today's Q and A Wednesday. Thank you Kerry for asking. If you have a question you want to ask, email me over@omar00mba.net I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. If you love this show, hit subscribe right now on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Spotify or Stitcher Radio Himalaya, we're on them all. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. In my years of business, one thing I learned is that sometimes you don't have a choice. You have to pivot your business. You have to change. It could be a competitor that came in that gobbled up the market in some way, a huge behemoth, well funded business and you need to niche down so you can serve a specific market instead of trying to compete with a giant company. You can't be stubborn as an entrepreneur. You have to keep your finger on the pulse, understand the market, understand where things are going in your business, and change when needed. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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