Big Plans and Small Steps
Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men’s blood.
Recently I was speaking to an entrepreneur by the name of Zachary Pritchard. He runs a financial coaching company down in the Dallas area. He was struggling with getting clients after Covid hit. Prior to Covid, he was talking to people one at a time in order to start getting clients for his financial coaching.
When Covid shut so much of the country down, he needed to come up with a new way to try getting clients. He started paying for ads on social media but not having much luck.
Zach mad a mistake I see a lot of entrepreneurs making. He was casting his net too wide. He was trying to get any client he could but was not really able to attract because he was trying to attract EVERYONE.
In Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, He used the analogy of trying to build a photography business. When building the business, photographers have a couple of options. They can promote ALL the services they offer or they can promote a single service and try to attract their ideal customer that way.
Think about it this way, let’s say you are looking into hiring a wedding photographer. Would you rather hire a photographer who specializes in weddings or one who promote photography for kids, weddings, corporate events, commercial products, family photos, senior portraits, landscapes, real estate photos, and pet portraits? Odds are you want to work with the person who does ads especially for what you want.
Yes, you want your goals to be a macro as possible to attract new people, but you need to advertise and promote in the micro. You need to niche down and make sure that you are promoting something that you are truly a specialist in.
For Zachary I suggested that he focus purely on his geographic area. Even though his budget coaching can help people of all walks of life, he does not have the budget to reach everyone. Likewise he cannot create referral networks for people who are on the other side of the country. It is better for him to be #2 in the Dallas region than to be Financial coach #486. You can build and expand much easier from the micro position rather than trying to be a macro business on day one.
Make sure that you have big goals, but spend the time drilling down to the little things that will allow you to execute.
There are riches in the niches.