How to choose your niche for your Digital Marketing Agency

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Niche Selection Workbook Brainstorm. We've got a great session lined up. I just want to hear from you guys in the chat. If you've already got your niche right, got niche. If you need help kind of dialing in this niche, put need niche, just so I kind of know what we're dealing with and kind of what the, what the distribution is currently on the session. Alright, so we got need niche across the board. Got niche and need help, says Robert. Need niche. Got niche, need help. Okay, so a lot of you guys need the niche, right? That's what this session is all about. Um, couple things. I, I don't want you to overthink this. I think a lot of us have the tendency to get into analysis paralysis, right? We want to, oh, what's the perfect niche and how many, you know, how many of them do there need to be and how much revenue there's need to be and all of this stuff, really, you know, do the research, follow the path of least resistance, choose one, and don't feel like you're married to it forever. I think that's where some people get stuck, is they feel like, well, once I choose the niche, I'm stuck with it, right? You're never— you're, you're never completely locked into the niche, right? When we started, me and my business partner Dean, we started Click Incorporated, and I knew I wanted to go niche at some point. But we, we thought restaurants was going to be the niche for us because we thought, you know what, restaurants have a big social play, you know, they need cool graphics, and we're going to go after restaurants. And so we chose restaurants, right? We set up our little restaurant marketing niche. We started doing prospecting and dropping in on restaurants, and nowhere— we didn't get one client in the restaurant niche. And if we had tried and tried, maybe at some point we would have broken through. But based on my previous experience, I had sold a plumbing company in the past. And so I had some, some low barrier to entry, kind of some back doors that I was able to access. And so I went into a plumbing company. I said, hey, you know, here's, here's, here's what we can do for you, right? I see this is happening with your website and your rankings. Here's what I think we could do. Do you want to give it a whirl? And he said yes, and he paid. I know some people, when they get their first niche client, they do a discount. In this case, he paid. He paid our full fee. He paid with a check, which was a pain in the neck because I had to chase him down to get the check payment. And that's why I don't do checks anymore. But we got him. We got him as a client via the path of least resistance. And as I walked out of that meeting with my business partner, Dean, I said, hey, I'm really glad we got this client. Don't worry, we're not going to do a lot in plumbing. We're going to focus on the restaurant thing, but this will pay some bills for now. Right. Can anybody relate to that type of potential situation happening? And we kept going after restaurants, but sooner or later, another, another plumbing opportunity fell into our lap, another plumbing company in our local market that was like, hey, I need some help with my, my marketing. And so it was referred by the other guy. And so we landed that guy and we got him good results. And before we knew it, we had like 4 or 5 clients in the plumbing industry while we were still trying really hard on the restaurant space. And eventually we were like, okay, actually, this is a better play for us, right? They have the money to spend. They, you know, they have a need for these services. And we've got a, we've got a channel, right? We've got some success here. We've got some results. And we were able to expand upon that and grow to being the, you know, the dominant internet marketing agency for plumbing companies. Serving 190 or so plumbing companies across the country, almost $5 million per year in revenue. And so I saw— I see that whole story just to say sometimes you choose a niche hypothetically, you go down the path and you find there's other channels, right? There's other niches you might want to tap into. I see Jody Underhill is on with us. Jody, great to see you. Anything you want to say? We're about to dive into some brainstorming and some thought process and some selection of niche. But Anything you want to say about this whole idea, not of why to choose a niche, but, you know, how, you know, how not to get stuck in paralysis of analysis?

Yeah, the main thing is, I've always said, you know, I didn't invent it, it's said, many people said it, that imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. And it's about just taking the step. The other thing is, so some of you might not have been on yesterday afternoon, I talked about a little bit, is that whenever you're looking for a niche, it may not always be just glaringly obvious. It doesn't have to be something that you just absolutely love because I'm sure if you ask Josh, if they ask him, how much do you absolutely love plumbing? It's like, you know, it doesn't have to be that. But what you do have to look at is most everyone has a legacy agency. There's people that you've been working with. You know, who is it that you like to work with? Who is it that you feel like more congruent with? And what gives you a competitive advantage in that niche? What gives you an inalienable right to win? Versus someone else doing that. And an inalienable right to win is, you know, some— you've had clients that have had success in that niche, you've had some experience in it yourself, you've been in that niche, you've, you've run a business in that, in that arena. And to look at those things— now, for some people, like my wife, she ran chiropractic offices for about 10 years, she doesn't ever want to do that, she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to do that. So we do things differently. And you can always shift. I mean, when we started doing recruiting, it wasn't that we went, oh, this is sexy, let's do recruiting and trucking. But we did it and we're successful with it. But then start to pop up and making it where it's not the most fun thing to do. Where working in another niche, the owners being more receptive to what you're doing, it kind of makes it easier for them to— and they understand a little bit more about how things work, and they're nicer people. That kind of makes it so that you can make those shifts as well. So as you're going through this, look for what is that— what is your right to win? And your right to win doesn't have to be that you have experience in the niche. It can be that you can position your offer differently than what everyone else is doing. And you can make it so that that's what gets it. When you cause to be successful, you have to sound different and have something a little bit different or position your offer different than what 99% of the other people that have marketing agencies are doing. And that's one of the things we can help you with at 7 Figure Agency as you're going through that is looking at identifying how can you sound and be a little bit different as you go through that. So keep some of those things in mind. I'll see it all. Like I said, I get on a soapbox sometimes, but I'll get off my soapbox and let Josh get back to the program. I'll be here for to answer any questions as we go.

That was great. No, great introduction. I appreciate you doing that. And I feel like really thinking about finding that, that right to win, I think it's a really powerful concept. So, so let's dive in again. I don't want to spend a lot of time talking technical here or talking like hypothetical. We're going to do some work and actually help you guys narrow this down. But a couple of things to think about, you know, for, for why, why, why even consider going into the niche? And what I found is everybody wants to work with the expert in their type of business, right? When, when we started Click, before we were working with restaurants, we were putting feelers out, right? We were trying to figure out who we could, who we could land clients with. And I would get opportunities from cold calling, from BNI, from sitting in network meetings. And let's say I got an opportunity with a dentist, right? I was like, okay, cool, we can do internet marketing for a dentist. And we got into the dental practice and we went through the consultative sales process. We say, okay, you know, here's what your problems are, here's what you said your goals are, here's what we can do. And at the very end, what obviously happens in almost every scenario is that that dentist, or whoever you're working with, winds up saying like, okay, but who else have you worked with like me? What other dentists have you worked with? Can you show me a dental client that you built? Can you show me results that you got for another dentist? Right? Naturally, they want to work with somebody that already has the experience in a business like theirs. So it makes life so much easier when you're in one niche. It becomes so much easier to close business because that same conversation with the dentist— if I had even one or two other clients that I could say, oh yeah, actually I work with Bob Jones Dental, and here's the website, here's where they rank. If you want to talk to Linda in the office, she'd be glad to kind of talk about how we've helped and how many new patients we've gotten for them, your, your sales resistance drops significantly. And it's very hard to have experience in every type of business. It's very hard to have experience in all of the different possible verticals. So, you know, being niche-focused makes it very easy to kind of stack your results and stack your case studies and stack your social proof so that when you do get opportunities, the clients are like, okay, yes, this is the unquestioned expert in this space. But I think the, the power of niche that most people miss is not just that it's easier to land clients or that it's easier to market, it's that it's easier to fulfill and systematize. And this is where I think a lot of agencies get hung up. They're like, well, but I can get a dentist client and I can get a roofing client and I can get an HVAC client. And then they get stuck having to reinvent the wheel for each one of them, and they have to reset their processes and re-update their systems and re-engineer what it is that they're going to deliver. And when you're constantly reinventing, you as the owner have to be the only creative mind in the business that's engineering it and handing it off. Where if you're in one vertical— plumbing companies— you can map out the program, you can set up the systems and processes, you can set up the timelines, you can set up the deliverables, you can set up that client experience we talked about. And then hand it off and know that, okay, it works like this in this industry. You can go deep on the numbers, you can go deep on the metrics. And I think that's really important because you're going to build yourself a repeatable process as opposed to something you have to reinvent every single time. Give me a 1 if that makes sense, because I think most of us buy intuitively to the sales piece, but we don't think about the fact that It makes our lives so much easier to sell one type of business than, than multiple and different verticals. And at the end of the day, like Jody said earlier, you have to find your right to win. As digital marketing agencies, you have to be able to deliver the goods. You have to be able to get the clients, the leads, the sales, the results, the return on investment. And it's not easy, right? There's lots of competition for your clients. And for the services that they provide in their local market. Being in one niche gives you the ability and the time to focus and become extremely good, right? You don't want to just be average. You don't want to just be all cool. I was able to set up a website and do some SEO. You want to be the best and you want to know, here are the keywords, here are the phrases that really resonate. Here's the selling proposition that makes sense. Here's what their average transaction value is and kind of what the upsell opportunities are. Here are the strategies that we can put in place to generate reviews that work really well. In this industry, you cannot just become good at selling it and marketing to that industry, but you can become really good at delivering results and being much better than the generalist competition that you might be coming against. So just put in the comments, good, right? If you, you know, like, you know that this is important not just to be average but to be very good. And to be good, you have to specialize. You have to be industry-specific. And what I found, it's the fastest and easiest way to accelerate your growth because focus makes a lot of things possible. Focusing on one industry from a marketing perspective, you can go much deeper. You can join that association, you can buy that list, you can become known and omnipresent. We're gonna be talking about all of this stuff throughout the day today. And then you become really good at delivering the results and consistently knocking it out of the park. And it becomes almost like a flywheel where each client becomes a potential other client because they start referring you because you did so good for them to others that are noncompetitive in other areas. So these, these are the reasons, right? These are the reasons to choose niche. Anything you want to add on this, Jody, in terms of like why being niche is so important, why it's so powerful, why it's going to make your life in business easier, better, more profitable?

Like I said, you've covered a lot of it, but it's— and it's the thing that I hear sometimes, right? So, well, I've got these, these income opportunities come to me. I really not really need to get into the niche. You're doing 3 to 4 times more work for those individual one-off opportunities than it will take you to do things for a niche client. Um, like right now, you know, like whenever I get a new client would come in, the process is in place. We already have the snapshot in place that replicates all those things. We have it. So every piece is in there. We have the frameworks for the graphics, for the ads. We have the way that we do the job descriptions for each one of them, and it becomes very replicatable. Goes replicatable and duplicatable. And it also makes it much easier when you go through the hiring process. So when you bring a new person in, they're not having to learn things about 16 different types of businesses. They're having to learn one type of business, one thing that you're doing in that business. And so it really— the economies of scale just start to add up. And where a lot of people struggle with the niche is this kind of— I've got this graph that I use that's called the, um, the, the graph of potential of the latent potential where it takes a long time to get everything going and all of a sudden the hockey sticks and goes up. And that's what happens because with the niche, it takes a little while to be that expert. But there's so many tools in here now with like the omnipresence thing that Jim Malin is doing, that you can start, you can position yourself as that expert to make it very easy to get that momentum. Because that's what makes people, most people decide to switch a niche is they don't ever get to, they don't get a momentum and they do one, then they switch to the next one and they switch to the next one. And it's like, Starting a bridge and stopping and then starting another bridge and stopping. Eventually you got 3 or 4 bridges to nowhere and you want to kind of see that through. But you also have us here to bounce things off of, get on calls, go through what the struggles are so we can help you get past whatever that little— that we're getting. Once you get you to the hook point where it starts to go up.

Yeah, great point. I love that, that hockey stick action that happens once you become the known expert in the space. So these are the reasons why. Give me— just, just put niche in the comments if you're like really sold on this idea that being niche is going to make you better at delivering, make you better at landing, make you better accelerating your, your growth. Excellent. So let's talk about how— like, let's talk about the logistics and kind of the things you want to look for in the selection of your niche. The first thing I always like to say is you want to make sure that they clump together and/or self-identify. So a prime example of this is home services versus plumbing. Someone might think, well, I'm going to choose a niche, I'm going to go after home services, which in home services you've got plumbers, roofing contractors, cleaning companies, lawn care companies, and everything in between. That's, that's home service. You can call them contractors, you can call them home services versus a plumber. Right? Plumbing companies. Home services is not a niche. It's too broad. It's— you can't put out marketing or position yourself as the expert in all of those subcategories. And we made this mistake in our agency. Once we had some success with Plumber SEO, we were like, hey, now let's go broader, right? Why can't we work with everybody? Won't that make life easier? And we published a book called Contractor SEO: The Complete Guide to Internet Marketing for Contractors and Home Service Providers. And we put that book out, we created a podcast, we created content, and it just didn't go anywhere. There was literally no response to it because nobody identified themselves as home service companies. They identified themselves as a plumbing company. And when we had our content for plumbing companies, the keyword list for plumbing companies, webinars on how to get your plumbing company ranked, or how to generate better results with pay-per-click, it was magnetically attractive. And so that's the first thing is make sure that they, they would self-identify in the way that you're going to be targeting them. The second thing I really think is important is thinking about whether they have a propensity to invest in marketing. And this is one of those things that can have a huge impact on the success or failure that you have in any given niche. There are types of businesses that have shown a propensity, which means if you look at the history of their business, if you look at the history of their industry, they spend money on marketing. They spend money on Yellow Pages in the past. They spend money on Google Ads today. They spend money on Facebook Ads today. Um, and there's others that are more location-based, right? If you think about your typical hair salon, right, it's more location and referral-based. If you think about like the local accountant, for the most part it's, it's referral-based and they don't spend a ton of money on advertising and Facebook ads and things like that. What you want to do is tap into already spent money, like they're already spending the money, and show them how to spend it easier, how to spend it better, how to spend better results with it, than to convince an industry that they should be trying this new thing and carve out money they're not already spending. So really look at this with the, with the critical eye. Try and find an industry the money's already flowing and you can tap into that flow of money that's already earmarked for internet marketing, for marketing in general. And you want to make sure that there's enough of them. Um, you know, and this number is a lot smaller than I thought it was in the past. I used to think you want to have at least 10,000 in the niche that you choose. Reality is we're seeing, you know, some of the, the agencies in the program do really well in even smaller niches than that. But I think you want to make sure there's at least a couple thousand businesses that are doing at least $1 million per year in the, in the niche that you're thinking about. And you can verify this through InfoUSA, now Data Axle, that they recently bought that out. But you can go in and type whatever industry you're thinking about, plumbing companies, roofing companies, accountants, and it will show you how many there are in the United States. And you can sort by how many of them are doing half a million or more, how many of them are doing a million or more. And it's really important that we do target the upper half of the market, right? Not the startups, not the just getting started, not the one-man operators, but the ones that have a real business and that are on a growth track. And then I want to find out if there's an association for that vertical. I talked about this a lot yesterday in landing clients, but one of the fastest ways to break into the niche is to find the association, join it, align with it, speak at it, be at their events, and you can become really known in association. You'd be shocked that there are associations in just about every type of business that you can imagine. There's multiple in plumbing. There's multiple in HVAC, um, there's multiple in just about any vertical you can imagine. So make sure that you choose one that there is one where if you go Association of Pool Builders, you can see there's an association, it has gatherings, there's events that you can tap into, there's a list that you can gain access to. So just make sure that there's some type of association or associations that you'll be able to plug into to really expedite your access to the industry. And then on that same vein, are there periodic events, whether it's part of the association or outside, where the industry comes together for continuing education, for networking, for, you know, business practice comparison that you'll be able to potentially plug into at some point in that vertical? So, I mean, these are just some things to consider, to think about. You know, logically within the niche. And then the other that you do want to consider, looking for the path of least resistance, is do you have some type of background or affinity in that niche? So you could have a couple of different niches you like, right? Oh, you know what, I think pool builders, and I think landscaping, and I think roofing would all be great. And all things being equal, and you don't have any experience, any of them would probably do. But background-wise, you were a salesperson for a roofing company at one point, or background-wise, your grandfather ran a roofing company. And so you've got some background or some experience that you can tap into. That's the path you want to take because you're going to get your first handful of introductions, your first handful of results out of the gates. If you have clients already and you've got wins, in any pocket, in any type of industry, you definitely want to try and start there because the hard part is getting the first couple, right? And then building your case studies and building your results. And so you want to go where you have a background, where you have some success. And then it's kind of secondary to that in my mind is the affinity piece. Affinity is, do you like the industry? Do you want to be in that industry? Do you like what they're selling? Could you see yourself dealing with them day in and day out? Some people, this is their biggest consideration, right? Are they passionate about it? Others, it's more, could I work in this space? Do I feel like I can help and have an impact? That's, that's really up to you. Like Jody said, I'm in plumbing. I have no passion for plumbing. I do like the industry. I know that I can help them and I love helping the businesses in that, in that space. So don't just look logically at this. Look at your background, look at your previous wins. That's, you know, the agencies that have the quickest results find the industries they have background in. And a great example of this is Brian Stearman, who works with lawn care companies. When he started in the program, he was a generalist and he was doing social media and things. And when we started talking about niches, he was like, I don't know, I'm thinking about restaurants. And it was some other niche. For some reason, restaurants is one that usually comes to the top and attorneys. And we were thinking like, okay, what's your background? What have you done in the past? Well, I had a really successful lawn care business. That I sold. And I'm like, wait a minute, this isn't even on your shortlist. What are we doing? He goes, well, I mean, they don't have a lot of money. I don't know about that space. I was like, there's no more powerful story you can tell than that you were in that industry, you succeeded, you figured things out from a marketing perspective, and now you're helping other businesses just like that to get results. That's the most powerful positioning you could have. Let's try let's try the lawn care business. And he went in that space. He's since crushed— he runs a multi— high 7-figure agency in, in lawn care. You'll meet him a little bit later today. But, you know, don't forget to think about where you have background. Anything you want to add on this, Jody, to kind of fill in some gaps?

I think you did it. You kind of hit the nail on the head there. And again, it's, it's great to hear all the different, the different things that people have gone through, uh, and then making that niche selection to show you that it's, it's not just a Step 1, step 2, step 3 every time. That there really is some— there needs to be some sort of a little— some— what's the word I'm looking for? You need to kind of have some artistic license there to kind of paint the paint in those areas of the niche as you're going through the selection to make sure that it's there. Because I promise you, I never started off thinking anywhere like I would ever want to have an agency doing recruiting for anything. And now that's all we do. Um, and just, I mean, I said, do you think I love it? No, I tell people, matter of fact, when I do my sales call, look, I'm not a recruiter, don't even want to be a recruiter. We just have to be very good at doing recruiting. I'm a marketer, and that's why we do things differently. And that's kind of how I started off, you know, it doesn't— it doesn't— they usually don't have a great vote of confidence. That's all. I'm not a recruiter to begin with, but then when they see why, they understand what my inalienable right to win in that space is.

Yeah, that's the other thing to think about is, you know, as you get more experience in industries, you're going to find challenges and problems that are unaddressed in the market, challenges that you could be uniquely suited to come in and have something nobody else has. And that's kind of what Jody's done in, in that space. He solved— he's solving a really big challenge, but he was able to do that because he has so much experience in the various industries that, that he's, he's targeting.

I did have one more thing really quickly, and this is anytime you're going through a niche, whenever it's new, there's the phases of the— there's the phases of a decision, right? To begin with, when you look at it, you start off from a position of uninformed optimism. Then you get into the niche and you start to see that, okay, not everything's as rosy as it seems. There's issues here and there. I, you know, and this is like I'm hitting my head against the wall. That's the, that's what they call the phase of informed pessimism, right? And then you've, then unfortunately you roll, you roll into the valley of despair where you're deciding, am I going to continue or am I going to quit? And that, and unfortunately that's where that latent, that latent potential gets built up so that whenever you start to turn, make the turn, You move into informed optimism. And then from there into basically into being a category king in the niche. And those are the phases you're gonna go through. Just, you know, it's kind of like understanding that's gonna happen and it's okay because everybody goes through it. And if you know upfront that that's what it is, it makes it less, makes you less likely to quit because you know what phase you're in.

I love that. I love those 4 phases of niche selection. I hadn't heard that before. That's pretty cool.

It's in the program.

Okay, so let's think about some of the top niches that we've seen success in. This is not a complete list. This is just a list that we've seen members succeed with. So on page 78, we know home services tends to be really, really strong because there's a need for it. There's a high propensity to spend. And I've listed out some of the common ones: kitchen remodeling, AC repair, plumbing, landscaping, roofing, electricians, pot— pest control, locksmiths, painting, flooring. I'm not going to read out all of these. Legal. Again, if you've got a background in legal, you've got access to legal, it can be really good. We recommend going into and focusing on the subcategories within these. So if you're going after legal, like Sean Dennon, who we talked with yesterday, you know, he's not trying to tackle the entire legal industry. He's going after bankruptcy attorneys. Right. So try and find the specialty within that, that vertical that you can become the very best at and develop that right to win. With healthcare, there's dentists, chiropractors, cosmetic surgeons, and we've got agencies in the program that are doing 7 figures in almost all of these. Automotive, business to business can be, can be okay. On automotive, I would say auto shops, auto body shops, bumper, bumper services. Dealers are very complicated unless you've got a really good background in that space. And then, you know, B2B. I give this just for you to get some creative thought, not to say this is the complete list and you should choose one of these, because oftentimes the one that's not on the list but fits all of the other criteria tends to be the bluer ocean where there's not quite as much competition, but there may be some easy opportunities. So don't discard something just because it's not on, on the list. Anything you would add here in terms of like niche possibilities, Jody?

No, I mean, this is a great, this is a great starting point, um, for that. And keeping, keeping in mind, people get very narrow sometimes. You want to be narrow, but they get so narrow that you, they don't have the number of the volume that you need to have in that niche. And again, as you go through this, you know, utilize, utilize resources and Other thing is, no matter what niche you plan to go into, at first it's gonna be— you're gonna look at it as being saturated. It doesn't matter because there's all— there's tons of people in these niches doing these things. But again, it's that, what is your competitive advantage? What is that thing that sets you apart that's gonna make you different? And a lot of it comes down to getting in there and sticking with it and understanding and learning the numbers of the niche, understanding and learning how to speak their language, as Joshua Nelson was saying. And we go into the whole thing about Flip the Script is a book by Oren Klaff on how to have your flash reel so that when you speak to them off— right off the bat, you're an industry insider. And so keep that in mind as you're looking at that. It's a raw— it's a big list, but there's also— there's also things within there that you can look at as well.

Yeah. Um, Kevin says, my head is spinning, hopefully in a good way, with some clarity on niches to focus on. Uh, we— I see some questions here from Rachel about healthcare systems. We'll get into this with you in just a couple of minutes. So what I want you guys to do now is kind of shortlist this and don't overthink it. I think one important thing that Jody said there was saturation in any niche. We feel like, oh, I think I could do good in plumbing, but oh man, Josh is already in plumbing, as an example, right? And you're like, oh man, I don't know, it's, it's already, it's already been taken. No niche has already been taken. There's an exponential amount of opportunity in all of these verticals, right? Within plumbing, there's about, last I checked, about 190,000 plumbing companies in the United States that do north of $500,000 per year in revenue. As an agency, we do $5 million, about $5 million per year, and we work with 80 or so of them. 180 out of 190,000. So yes, there's, there's more than enough opportunity. As a matter of fact, we've got a handful of agencies working in the plumbing and HVAC space as part of the program that are doing 7 figures. So, you know, I, I've done it, right? I'm like, oh, I like this vertical, or I like this opportunity, but it's already taken. I'm not saying going— go after plumbing, right? I'm saying Don't let the fact that somebody's already doing well in that space prevent you from going after it. It's probably more an indication that there's opportunity in that space because others are winning than, oh no, it's already taken, I should not even put it on the list, because every niche has somebody that's claiming it as their specialty. Mike says, can we go back real quick? Um, you talking about the list of niches? This also, just so you know, Mike, is on— well, it's not in the workbook. Oh yeah, it is page 78. Page 78. And if you don't have the digital version of this, just let us know and we'll drop in the— drop in the link. Okay, so like I said, what I want you to do is come up with 3. And this isn't perfect, right? I don't want you guys to do analysis paralysis. You've got this on page 79. In your workbook. You've probably thought about this a little bit, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be on this, this session. We talked about niche extensively yesterday. You've probably been thinking about this for years. So I just want you to come up with your, your top 3. So that's your first pass here. What are like— if you don't want to do 2, like if you have 2 and you want to put 2, that's fine. But what, like, what are 2 or 3 that you can shortlist down to? I'm gonna give you guys a full minute. Come up with 3. And if you can't, if you can't come up with 3, at least like right off the top of your head, then you're overthinking it. 1 minute, get your 3 in. We're going to work through this, guys. Kevin says, I believe I found my niche based on experience. Love it. Look forward to kind of brainstorming that with you here in a minute. Russell says, so it's okay to start wider first and then progress and get narrow in your niche? Yeah, I think until you have 5 clients, really, you know, you got to keep yourself relatively open to any, any vertical. Um, but you want to hypothetically choose Not a wide niche, but hypothetically choose one that you're going to say, okay, I believe based on what I'm doing here, bankruptcy is good, right? There's going to be a spike in bankruptcies, and I know the transaction value is high, and so I'm going to target bankruptcy attorneys. That would be my encouragement, as opposed to I'm going to go after legal in general, because you're prospecting, your outreach, your content that you roll out wouldn't be that interesting or that relevant. Russell, hopefully that helps. Rachel says, I see specialty physician groups, um, is a good niche, but they're being bought up. Any thoughts on that, Jody, on specialty physician groups? And it's happening in veterinary as well, like these veterinary practices are just basically getting swallowed up. Um, that might actually be a good thing because they're willing to dump money for the future buyout. What do you think, Jody?

Well, I would just point to the success that Nick Hort is having in the, uh, in emergency care Mitch and the fact that that's happening there and that's actually giving him a competitive advantage. And he's— because once you show that to one of these groups that's buying up places, every time they buy one— and he's— I think he said that in the, in the interview that you did with us— like, they buy one, they automatically— that, that clinic becomes a client. They buy another one, that clinic becomes a client. And so it's— there's always ways to look at this as an obstacle or an opportunity, right? It's— that's an opportunity. Go in there and figure out if that's what's happening, it's going to continue to happen, and look at how you can position yourself to be that go-to resource for that model that's happening in the industry. Changes are going to happen all the time, and it's not a, oh, they made that change, it's going to ruin everything. Yeah, it's going to disrupt it, but sometimes disruption is where the greatest opportunities are created. Good.

Yeah, good point. Michael is feeling a little jealous seeing my Starbucks that I've been sipping on this whole time. So yes, next time I'll try and make sure we distribute, uh, evenly for everybody. Okay, so ideally at this point you've got your, you've got your niche entered in.

Oops.

Next thing I want you to do is go to the next line and just run it through the affinity test. Like, do you— would you enjoy working in this industry? And, you know, you could say, no, I don't, I don't like attorneys. I think they're 'You know, I think they're annoying,' or 'I don't like blue-collar workers because, you know, I don't resonate with them,' right? It's just, do you like the industry? Just a quick gut check on this, because all things being equal, like, if you can find one that you like, that you've got a background with, that you see a direct path for, that's going to be more congruent for you long term than an industry that, like, you might be able to get results but you don't really like them that much, you don't enjoy the industry. 30 seconds. Give me a 1 if you're tracking along with me as we do this. Michael's tracking.

The rest of you guys are okay. Good.

Excellent. Okay, so the next, the next thing is results. And this is, do you see a direct path, right? Do you see how you could get into that industry and in your mind to be clear on what you could put in place that would generate a tangible result? right? Sometimes it's just hard, right? It's like, I don't, I don't see the path. Other times you're like, boom, I've got this because I see in this industry I could do this unique thing, right? With something on the way you set up the funnel or something on the way that you set up the, the follow-up sequence or something on the way that you set up the website that would give you a unique differentiator. And you've already got the background and you like it. And that would be one that would kind of hop to the top because you can, you've kind of got that right to win, that right to like do something different and unique. That's a spin on the general digital marketing services. So can you see a direct path? Rob says we're writing this. That's why we're not typing the 1 into the chat.

Good.

You're working. 30 seconds here. Can you see the result? Kevin says this workbook saved my life. Awesome, so happy to hear that. That's, that's exciting. I'm excited to hear what, what it is, the niche that you're, that you're moving towards. Okay, and then the final thing is profit. We talked about the propensity to, to invest, right? Do they actually spend money on marketing today, or are you going to be trying to convince them that they should be spending money on marketing? There's a big difference. There's a really big difference. So profit, will they pay? Do they already spend on Facebook ads and Google ads? And, you know, did they used to spend on things, or are they all referral-based? And you're going to try and convince them there's a better way. Judy, how much harder is it to go in and convince an industry that they should be spending money on something they don't already? Because they're saying, oh, this Facebook would be great here.

And I said, if you're— they're not spending money on it, we've never had to do that before. Right, that's what you get. But you get that pushback. And again, there's ways of getting around that. And that is right, you've never had to do it before. There's things that you never had to do before in your plumbing business. You never had a, you never had a snake with a camera on it 10 years ago, but now you do. You're identifying those things that they've had to do in their industry to keep up with the competition, and this is no different. But if you still have to convince them, and you can't— it's not that you can't get around it, but you still have to. So if they're not— they don't— I mean, you'll find companies don't even have a website.

Right.

And they'll be, oh, that's a perfect opportunity. It's not the opportunity that you might think, right? Because we've never had to have one. And then, you know, you have to get to that point. So looking for people that are already doing it, because really, you know, all you have to do is find people that are already spending money and doing marketing that aren't doing it successfully, you know, that post on Facebook once every 3 weeks. You know, they know they should because they do it, or they do it 3 or 4 times and then they stop, and then they do it 3 or 4 times a month later. Those are easier people to convince that they need to have more consistent marketing than it is somebody that doesn't have one. You can get around it, but it's, it's harder.

Yeah, no doubt.

Good, good.

All right, so guys, you should have your shortlist now. You should have, you know, 2 or 3 shortlisted, maybe one that you're just like, slam dunk, I'm doing this. Like maybe Kevin's already decided, boom, I found it. Um, put shortlist in the chat if you've got a shortlist now. You're like, okay, I've got 2 to 3. And/or one. We've got our shortlist, our extremely shortlist. Shortlist. Awesome. Excellent. Does anybody— and we don't have a ton of time, you know, remaining to do this, but does anybody have a burning question? They're like, you know what, I need some help. To just think about something or to get some feedback on something. Um, anybody, if you need, like, type question in the chat or unmute yourself, and we can probably spend like 5 minutes brainstorming this with you if anybody's stuck. Otherwise, we can go to the next step.

Joshua Nelson, can I talk to you? I'm sorry, this is Will here. Can I ask a question?

Yeah, let's do it.

I've included a vehicle repair because actually about 15 years ago I was in the vehicle repair business and But the others that I got is electrician and AC repair, because actually I qualified electrician, and one of the, let's call it, subparts of it is actually to do AC repairs. So that's kind of 2 or 3 of the niches I'm actually looking at. Now it's all fine to say, listen, it's blue collar and you know, it's highly likely that you get a better paying client and a more civilized client, if I can call it that in inverted commas, if you, for instance, deal with dentists. Is there any relevance to this? It's actually aimed at you, Judy, Jody, to have that kind of reasoning.

Jody, thoughts?

Quick, quick thoughts. Can you hear me? The reason doesn't need to be that— who are they, white collar, blue collar? They're all business owners, they're entrepreneurs, right? Doctors, it needs to be an entrepreneurial doctor, somebody whose patients don't necessarily pay all the time with insurance, right? When auto repair though, HVAC, electrical, and looking at that, yes, it's blue collar. Sometimes those owners are easier to reach than a doctor is, right? They're easy to reach, but they also— they are— they know that their space is more competitive They depend on LSA ads, they depend on pay-per-click more so than some of the medical, um, some of the medical industries do. And so in looking at it, really comes down to knowing, having insider information about that. Because do you have insider information about the chiropractic business right now? Probably not at all. But do you— you say you ran an auto repair shop. How would you look at the average ticket of a car rolling into a bay here in the US? It's about $350 anytime a car rolls into a bay. Doesn't matter if it's an oil change, a 4-wheel alignment, or it's making a noise. It's an average of a $350 ticket. You know that when you're talking about driving leads. Whenever you're looking at HVAC, their average ticket on service call is about $500. Their average ticket on an install is $7,000 to $8,000. Understanding those numbers and knowing the difference between which type of leads you're driving gives you that inside information to know how to speak to them and get down to the point of what you're going to do for them. So I would say that having that inside information on those 3 niches that you know a little bit about is going to be much better than having to be much better than trying to go talk to the doctor about something just because it looks like they're bigger and they're white collar. A lot of times those blue collar people are easier to talk to, easier to get in front of and understand that they— the things that they need to do. Because most doctors, because they're doctors, sort of feel like they shouldn't even have to spend money to get leads. Everyone, the other people know that they have to. That's just, that's my quick thoughts. Thank you very much.

Excellent. Okay, I'm sure we could go deeper on this. If you have follow-up questions, we're going to be sticking around during lunch for Q&A. But what I want to do now, we all committed, we're going to be here, we're not going to analyze and overanalyze and go into analysis paralysis. If you've got your niche, I want you to put the niche in chat, right? You're like, okay, I'm good. Either put the niche, or if you don't want to share it with the group, you can just say, got it. That way I know. Aha, boutique fitness. Will's got it. Love it. Michael's going to do kitchen remodeling. Love it. Josh, registered nurse and healthcare background. Home health care is really good, by the way. Eye doctors, cosmetic surgeons. I'm going to stick with landscaping, says Keith. Love it. Got it. Got it. If you're still thinking about it, tree services, says Mark. That's a really good niche. Asbestos removal. If, if you're still thinking about it, put a question mark. Just put a question mark in there just so I know there's some of you that are still kind of analyzing, scrutinizing. Okay, good. So I'm going to give you guys something to help you get off of the blocks here. Right. And again, this isn't going to be perfect, right? But it's going to be the one that you can hypothetically focus on going forward. If you guys are good with reserving judgment for a minute and be like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow this process. I'm gonna choose the one as my hypothetical niche and I'm gonna go with it. Give me a yes. Those of you that just put a question mark or that are still thinking, that are still unsure, give me a yes. All right, let's do this. OK, here's what I want you to do. Everybody go find a coin. Go find a coin somewhere in your house, somewhere in your office. I want you to get a coin or something you can flip. Seriously. Rachel's laughing out loud. You could flip this if you wanted to, right? You could flip this bad boy. Darts are more fun. Stick with me here. There's a method to my madness. Give me a 1 when you feel like you've got the thing you're going to flip. You've got the thing you're going to flip. Michael's got it. Joshua's got it. Ross, I don't know what to— okay, 2. You're messing with me.

Okay.

All right.

Just flip a coin. That comes. It's just— okay, here's what we're going to do. Out of the 3 that you wrote down, I want you to pick 2. Like, what are the 2 that, you know, you're just like, it's going to be one of these 2. I'm thinking about one of these two. Pick the two. I want you to assign in your own mind, number one is going to be this side of the coin, number two is going to be that side of the coin, right? So you'll know if it's this one, I know it's that. If it's this one, I know it's this. Just put clear— I know this, this part's a little confusing, but are you sticking with me? We've got two niches that we're, we're, we're down to, and we're gonna try and choose one of the two, and we're going to flip a coin. We're going to help ourselves decide which one. Just put clear to make sure we're, we're still clear. I haven't lost you guys. Come on, clear. All right, everyone's got your thing? Hold it up towards the screen, whatever it is you're going to flip. All right, Michael, I see your coin. Leon, I see it. You flipping your phone? Gee off, you're gonna break it. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. When you flip the coin, I don't want you to look. I want you to flip the coin. If you're throwing a coin up, you would catch it and you'd put it in your hand, right? Don't look at it just yet. If you're flipping something like this and you're going to throw it up, you know which side is up and which side is down. Don't look, let it fall. And, and, and then we're gonna, we're gonna go from there. So we got our two niches. We've shortlisted. We know green is— red is this, blue is that, or heads is this, tails is that. On the count of 3, we're going to flip. You're not going to look. Okay. 1, 2, 3. Flip. Flip. Don't look. Nobody look. So as it flipped, as that was in the air, What was the one that in your mind you were like, man, I hope it's this. I hope it landed on that one. That's your niche. Does that make sense? The one that— it doesn't matter which one it landed on, which one as it was in the air, you were like, oh man, I hope it lands on plumbing companies, right? Or I hope it lands on boutique fitness centers. Thumbs up at the screen if that's clear. You— and like, you're not going to overanalyze because you could spend months continuing to research this. Or you can choose a hypothetical niche and run with it. Just type good in the chat. If you're good, you're like, okay, I've got it. I'm going to, I'm going to at least focus on this for the next couple of months and see if it works, see if I can get some momentum. I wish all decisions could be solved by the flip of a coin, says Juana. Love it. The trend is good. Lori's good. Tina's good. Excellent. So we've done, we've done our niche selection brainstorm. We kind of looked high level, like, what are the different niches that could potentially be good? What are the criteria we want to make sure we look at? We shortlisted it. We spent some time, but not too much time. We didn't overanalyze. We came up with 3. We narrowed it to 2, and then we did the gut check with the flip of the coin to say, like, which one would I actually like? Which one do I feel is going to be right for me? And we've landed on that. I think this was a really productive start to the day. I think for those of you that were unsure about niche, you should be clear, at least hypothetically, going forward.