Happy New Year! I hope you had a good festive break and are recharged for 2024 :-)
Today I am going to talk about the principle of focus and how improved focus can drive motivation – an appropriately topical subject in the month of new year’s resolutions.
In June 2023, I signed up to an online platform that enables small business owners to build their own app. The technology is slick as is the marketing, and after a few weeks of deliberation I was convinced to part with approx. USD 1,200. I then found excuses for the remainder of 2023 as to why I was too busy to take the time to learn how to use the platform and by 31st December 2023, I had done absolutely nothing with it.
On 1st January 2024, the free hosting period expired, and I was charged a first monthly payment of USD 297. Reality struck; I either use what I’d paid for and get some value for my money, or I cancel so that I don’t pay further monthly fees and, in the process, accept I’ve wasted around USD 1,500.
I don’t like to wast money, so in an attempt to extract value I started working through the extensive library of courses covering everything from how to build an app to how to identify your clients and build a marketing funnel. And that brings me to focus...
One of the messages I took from a video on identifying your target market was the concept of “inch wide, mile deep”. I really like this phrasing because it’s easy to create a visual and therefore immediately memorable.
What inch wide, mile deep refers to is identifying your niche, drilling into it and extracting the maximum possible value from it. I struggle with this; my clients have ranged from investment bankers to oilrig supervisors, from new recruits to CEO’s. I have taught old and young, across religion and gender and all (I believe and hope) have taken value from my trainings. Why should I therefore focus on only one niche?
The reason is because without this I lack focus. By being a generalist, I am residing in a space with literally tens of thousands of other content creators screaming out for attention and even worse, competing with the big guns who have the resource to win as generalists. By going inch wide, you call out to a very defined niche where there are fewer players and less noise – there is more chance you will be heard. There is nothing to then stop you widening your niche, or creating a new one, however first capture one.
The process of going niche is not easy when you have a widely applicable product or service. Most of us do not have the resources to compete in the generalist space (as the video repeated several times, don’t compete against Nike because you’ll lose). In these early days of the new year, take time to reconsider your message; who are you trying to attract and why would they want to work with you? Are you targeting to a niche, or does your message apply to anyone? If the latter, define your niche and then revise your messaging.
I am zoning in on ’30-50-year old’s who feel they have not fulfilled their business potential’ as my niche. Many people, no matter how apparently successful, feel that they have not fulfilled their financial potential. I know that my training content helps improve business effectiveness, so this is a niche I plan to focus on in 2024.
The social media group I am part of tell me this is too general still, and have suggested refining it to be industry and geography specific (eg 30-50 year old’s who work for a Fortune 500 company in the US and have not fulfilled their business potential). Once I get to the end of the course I’ll make a decision, in the meanwhile if you have any thoughts please share them with me!
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