#553: How I Started My Coaching Business: Learning the Strategies For Business Growth

So Ken is asking me, David, how can I grow my service based business? I've been doing it for a while, but I just feel a bit stuck and I don't seem to have enough customers and clients. I don't really have people coming in. I'm worried about my business, whether it will last, you know, one more economic crisis and my business is gone. Welcome to the Self Belief Chief podcast. You're here with David Holmer. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already for the latest information, research, conversations on self belief and let's begin. Ken's worrying about his business. He's anxious and stressed as many people listening will be able to relate to this. How difficult it is to run a service based business to be able to help and provide value for other people, which is what we ultimately want to do. But we've got to bring in the money, we've got to make the money, we've got to have a business growing, don't we? So he's struggling with his business and I really want to go back to basics with him. I really want him to understand what it is he's ultimately trying to do. So I asked Ken, ken, who is your ideal customer? Ken thinks about it and he goes, I, it's was anyone who's got an interest in, in this area, in this thing that I do, and anyone who has an interest in, you know, anything to do with health. I said, ken, who was your ideal customer? He tries to answer again with the same level of hesitation and spluttering. So I ask him again. What becomes clear is Ken doesn't know who his ideal customer is. And if you don't know who your ideal customer is, then what are you aiming all your services at? The biggest issue I see with a lot of service based businesses is they fall in love with their business, they fall in love with their products and services instead of falling in love with their ideal customer. That's who you've got to fall in love with. You've got to fall in love with who they are, what they value and what they need. But two people, too many people kind of design a product that looks cool to them and they get really excited about it, passionate, and then they go and do that. But it's not necessarily what the ideal customer wants. Now I made this mistake in my business for years, so I'm not trying to say this from a point of I know everything, I'm saying this from point of extreme pain and failure where for years people just didn't know about my business because I didn't know how to position myself well enough, because I didn't really know who my ideal clients were. The first program I designed was about dealing with heartbreak. I knew it, I understood it. But I then spent six months researching, really deep dive research. I would go on. You know, I do everything. Like for example, going on Amazon, finding any books about heartbreak, then reading all the comments that people put about those books. What's the language they're using? What are they talking about? What do they need? What do they want? What do they value? And finding the common denominators. Right? What's the worst thing they're going through? Right. What's the thing they ultimately want? And what I started to find was people go through heartbreak, their biggest fear is ending up alone. It just kept coming up. And the thing they ultimately wanted was to experience more love in their life. Whether it was to meet someone new or maybe it's to have a bigger social circle or to have more love with themselves. They wanted to overcome the fear of being alone and they just wanted more love in their life. So then I designed a whole program around that because I knew that's what people wanted. Guess what? Lots of people wanted it. Lots of people wanted to work with me because I was using the language that my ideal clients were using, coupled with my own personal experience. I knew the language very well, very intimately. So we cannot have to get an understanding of who his ideal customer is to get him to do the research, to do the work, to actually understand what is it that they value, what do they need, what do they want, what do they want that no one else is providing. So he does this research. It takes a lot of time to do the research. There's no shortcut. There really isn't. But he just never done it. We'd never been taught how to do the research before. There are lots of things. I get people to fill out a 10 page document with questions so that it helps them understand how to research it. But as painful as that sounds, once you do it, you don't have to keep working it out. Every product, service, bit of marketing material, everything, you can just go back to that document and assess is it matching what my ideal customer or client wants? Because ultimately, if you're in a service based business, you should be providing people exactly what they want and need. Otherwise you shouldn't really be in business. You should be giving people what it is they need and asking for desperately give them that with tremendous added value. If you do that, you'll be Fine. So having these conversations with Ken, he does the research, comes back, and he gets an understanding. And then we look at his existing products and services. We find about 60% of them are irrelevant. They're just not what his customers want. His clients want. So we start to reshape them, right? We start to change the products and services. We create ones that people actually want or asking for. We start getting understanding of what is existing. Customers have been constantly asking for as well, see what is working and what isn't. You know, success leaves clues and we gather up all that information and then we can create a product and service where his ideal customers want it and are desperate for it and absolutely need it and sort of banging down the door hoping that they can get his service. Now, why do people avoid all of this? Well, the trap we all get into, and I've been in this trap before, is we think if I narrow down my niche to something really clear and really specific, just one particular ideal customer, then am I not just going to lose out on loads of people? Ironically, it's the opposite. If you are broad in general in who you serve, people won't have the level of passion and commitment to know whether it's really for them. And so they'll kind of hesitate and they'll be unsure. Maybe some people do it, maybe some people won't, but it's all very casual. If you're casual about who your ideal customer is, your customers will be very casual with you. If you're really specific in niche, yes, it'll push other people away, right, who don't want that service. But for the people, it is the right people. For more of them will come through the door, and a lot more of them will come through than. If you be broad in general, actually, the numbers of clients or customers you'll have will be significantly higher. So do the research. If you get the bullseye right, it's then very easy to know what services and products to then create. If you do that, there's an infinite amount of growth that's then possible for you and that gives you the best chance of succeeding. And then once you nail it with one niche and you're getting that right in the future, in the future, you can then move to another niche, right? You can keep that one niche going that's working, leave that alone. And then you can move to another sub niche or another niche and start working on that so you can open up your product line. But don't, don't go too broad too quickly. Be nice and specific at the start. Or if you're struggling, be nice and specific. Really expertly serve one, you know, group of people and position yourself as an expert at that thing. Right? If you fall in love with your ideal customer, work out the language that they use and what they value and need. Provide a product and service that meets that exact need, you can start positioning yourself as an expert at that thing. And people want to work with experts, not generalists. My name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life. So enjoy the rest of your day. Enjoy the rest of your life. If you want more information, visit the Self Believe Chief website. There's hundreds and hundreds of free hours of free content on that. Otherwise, I'll speak to you again soon.