Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy. Hey, Jonathan here. I've got a question from Chris Gerber who asks, how to validate a platform niche in all caps? Okay, that's a totally good question. There's a couple of ways to do it. The first, probably the best way, is to just pick one that you're already a part of. So if you're already part of a group, maybe it's outside of work. Chris doesn't say what... It looks like a he doesn't... I don't know if it's a he or a she. Chris doesn't say what it is that they do, but let's just say it's web development. If you are a web developer, then you're part of that group, that tribe, as Seth Godin would say. You're already in that niche, so you could sell something to that group. You totally understand them. You get their language. They trust you. All of the signals are going to be in alignment. The trust signals are going to be very well aligned, and you just need to come up with some solution to a pain that they have. So they have a pain, you come up with a remedy, and you sell it to them. It's not complicated. But if you want to... Well, so before... If you don't want to sell directly to your peers, your colleagues, you could pick something else that you're into. Maybe you're into CrossFit, or martial arts, or skiing, or music performance, or electronics, or whatever. Whatever it is that you're already part of a group, maybe your parents had a family business, they were dentists, and you understand everything about dentists, and you've been around dentists your whole life, and you understand them. Maybe you're not one, but you understand them. You understand their language. You know where they hang out. That's the most important part. So you could go after a niche like that. If they have a pain, and you have a remedy, sell it to them. It's not, again, not rocket science. The problem that most people have when they're trying to pick something to pigeonhole themselves as, or something to niche down on, the problem that most people have is that they look for one... They're ignoring the obvious ones, and they're looking for ones they think are the biggest opportunities. So they'll say something like... They'll think something like, Fortune... I want to niche down on Fortune 500 companies. And it's kind of like, well, that's pretty broad still. And what is the pain that they have? You should probably pick someone inside of the company because they're huge. So you want to help CFOs at Fortune 500 companies navigate regulatory compliance for banking products or something like that. That would be more reasonable. But if you're just kind of looking for a big opportunity, that's just too... It's really hard. I see people try that. It just doesn't work that well. It'd be great if it did. And if you had a lot of swagger, and you were a great marketer, and you're really extroverted, and were great at outreach and sales, then you could probably pull it off. But it's way easier to speak to people whose language you already know, already understand. They're going to much more quickly, much more naturally are going to be inclined to trust you. And you're going to understand what their pains are. You're going to have empathy for that group already, which makes it really easy to identify pains and acceptable remedies for those pains. So I feel like it's probably... Even if you feel like it's not the biggest opportunity in the world, then it's... I honestly think it's just easier in general to go after people who you already understand. Help people... I say go after. Help people who you already understand because you've been in their shoes or you're very close with people who are in their shoes. If you are just... Just have no idea. You're a web developer. You don't want to sell to other web developers. You feel like that space is saturated for whatever it is that you're good at. Then I would... And you're really just like throwing a dart. I would look for a niche audience that has a conference, like an established conference where everybody goes every year, or maybe they've... I mean, that's a great sign. If somebody is making enough money putting on a conference for dentists or people who own CrossFit gyms or yoga studios or something like that, then for sure there's a market there. For sure, as a soloist, you can make a living serving that market. Definitely. And if there's a conference website, you can spider the website, which means just going through, finding out... You can find out everything about the niche from the conference. If there's a successful conference for a particular audience, conference websites are just crawling with priceless information about...

Those people are thinking about, what appeals to them, what trends are over time, who the big players are, who the advertisers are, who you could partner with, who the other thought leaders in this space are, and you can see like, what is everyone talking about? What could I talk about that's not the same thing that I'm an expert at? There's just a wealth of information on conference websites. So that's another place to look. But really, honestly, I would say, most often, people are ignoring the obvious thing because they think, oh, well, I could obviously sell to guitar players. I could definitely do that. But they don't have any money, or that's not a big opportunity, or that market's shrinking. It's like, well, is it really? There's nothing you can sell to them. Guitar players spend a lot of money. Believe me, I am one, I know. So the question isn't whether or not they spend money. The question is, do you have something to sell them that they value enough to give you money for it? I mean, you find a bunch of ex-wannabe rock star 50-somethings who want to find some way to get back into creating music and publishing it to their audience. They don't have time to really do it. I would pay a lot of money for that. So don't rule out, I'm not saying you're interested in speaking with guitar players, but musicians are typically looked at as people who have no money, so I'm not going to sell anything to them. But I think that's a mistake. It's actually, I think it's way easier to pick someone who you understand, find out what their pains are, find a remedy for those pains, or at least find a pain that you can remedy, and just do that. Start small, work your way up. Word will spread very quickly, and I honestly think that's the easiest way to go. All right, I'm Jonathan Stark. If you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and we will find it and add it to the queue. Bye for now. Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? We work through all of this together in the Pricing Seminar. Pre-registration starts soon, and you can sign up to be the first to know when Early Bird pricing is announced at thepricingseminar.com. That URL, again, is thepricingseminar.com. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal? Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to JonathanStark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is JonathanStark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.