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Welcome to Make More Money without Selling Your Soul with me Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert. This podcast is for you if you are an online entrepreneur who is looking to simplify their business to scale.  On this podcast you can expect to hear regular talk about wealth, about selling and about wellbeing. Because I believe these three core fundamental things are pivotal to your growth moving forward.

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Hello and welcome to make more money without selling your soul with myself Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert and cushy business pioneer.

And today we’re talking about to niche or not to niche that is the question. And I think there’ll be things I’ll be sharing in this episode, which may surprise you. Here’s my biggest bugbear with the online business space. And particularly with the marketing that people are regularly consuming the whole seven days to 7k, two weeks to 10k a year to 100 figure business. And there’s two sides to every coin, right. And on the one hand, I like a big juicy financial goal, because it helps me be aware of the possibilities of what’s available. And at the same time, it just gives this impression that everything in my business can be overnight. And while some of that is true, there are certain things like niching. That don’t happen overnight. I bet I surprised you that, because you probably have heard me talk in the past about scaling with power of one how evergreen is amazing for cementing your brand positioning your position within the industry, and how it can elevate you to have incredible opportunities when it comes to being invited to summits to being invited to talk on stages, being invited to publish that book you’ve had brewing in the back of your head all this time. And all of this is true. And another thing I also speak to is, it’s good to be an experienced entrepreneur, an experienced coach or creative before you throw your hat in the Evergreen ring. Because essentially, it’s powerful to have an understanding of what your niche is before you go Evergreen.

And knowing what your niche is isn’t something you’ll learn overnight. And this is something that I quibble with slightly when I see people for example, in the brand space brand strategists indicating that your brand needs to come first, that before you start creating any offers before you start doing anything, you need to have a solid brand strategy. To a certain extent this is true. But at the same time, if we can understand that, essentially, you’re coming into your business without a really solid idea of what you stand for. Because what that is hasn’t been tested yet, without a really solid understanding of who your ideal client is because you haven’t worked with enough of them yet. And let’s be honest, while you may have a very good understanding of what your tools are, you haven’t yet necessarily recognised what your true zone of genius is where you really shine, where you get incredible results, you haven’t yet had people reflect to you, you just have a really unique way of doing X. You know what I mean? And to have a powerful brand, you need to be able to wrap all those things up. That’s what a powerful brand is a powerful brand reflects all of those things. But how can you build that in the first place if you don’t have that prior knowledge? And this is an interesting thing for me, right? Because I’m three years into my business. And I’ve been attempting to niche probably for like over a year now. And I was beating myself up somewhat thinking like why why is this not easier? Why didn’t I do this sooner? How can I be a marketer who didn’t speak more clearly on what it is to niche sooner. And then recently, it landed for me, as I reflected on the progress of my various clients and where they’re at and how established their niche is or was I recognised that actually there is a real clear process a real clear journey that everyone I believe, should follow when it comes to business and just own it stop with this whole feeling of like you need to be the fully packaged thing the next day. I know I often give analogies like you know your first pancake is never going to be perfect. Your first time you cook a recipe will never be the best version of that recipe will always be through dipping your finger into that source while you’re cooking it that you’re gonna find a way to refine what it is you’re creating and add your own special touches, you know, so that when someone comes over and goes, oh my god, that marinara sauce blew my head off. It was amazing as a marinara sauce ever done that, but anyway, I think it can to be able to turn around and say, Well, yes, that’s because I had that secret dash of cinnamon are that little pinch of sugar, or those particular tomatoes from the store, like you found your way to make it something different that people remember and excited by and it’s so similar with your business, you’re going to come in with the basic ingredients to begin with, you’re going to throw more than a pan and you’re going to hope for the best.

Let’s be honest, you’re going to hope for the best because nobody knows until it’s in the pan until it’s cooking. And it’s only while you’re cooking it, you’re probably going to burn it at some point, you might overcook it, you might not add enough tomatoes, or you might forget to season it. But it’s through all those learnings that eventually you’ll get to the stage where you can do it all pretty much with your eyes shut. And people are already queuing at your door. Very excited to eat at your house because you cook the meanest marinara in town. And at this stage, I’m hoping a marinara is a tomato sauce. Otherwise, I’m totally making this up. Can you tell lavorato isn’t not my birth name. Anyway, so when we understand all of this, I like to break this down into three phases. Okay, so phase number one is the phase where you are the generalist and that it is totally not just okay to be a generalist, I recommend that you are a generalist. And this is because it will allow you to get a feel for all the things like I say you thrown all the ingredients into the pan, and you’re going to see what it’s like when they start cooking. What I will say, will super speed your results is a having a real awareness of what your toolkit is, and being able to speak about that with confidence. You know, so if you are a subconscious transformation coach, you need to be able to explain why it matters. Now you’re going to be able to do that with more ease, if you know who you’re speaking to. Because if you’re talking about subconscious transformation to a five year old, it’s gonna sound very different to how you explain it to an eight year old, or to a 40 year old, or to a 40 year old, harassed and busy mum, or to a 50 year old male academic, like they’re all going to have different priorities.

Therefore the attention they give what you’re sharing will vary based on what those priorities are. But the truth is, it’s going to vary, people will have different problems that are pertinent to them that they are looking to solve. And so how you express it will have more ease. So this is where when people talk about Nisha, yes, having this kind of level of niche. But what I would say is as well as if we get too stuck to our niche, like a dog on a bone, you can miss opportunities, I’ve occasionally got on calls with people where they’re like, Oh, I really want to work with marketers, because my copywriting is amazing. And I really understand what it is to be a marketer. And I’ve had one marketing client that I worked with who totally transformed their business. But what I find is time and time again, I just keep on attracting wellbeing experts, they all understand how to help somebody, like fix the gut, but they have absolutely no idea how to market or package up their services. And what’s really interesting here is I’m Mike so you are without meaning to attracting and all these kinds of people. But you’re still fixated on wanting to attract this one type of client has been a flash in the pan so far, are we missing an opportunity here. And you know, in some cases, you’ve got to follow your gut, if you know that it’s marketers, for example, in this case that you are destined to work with, you’re gonna have the best results within Yeah, you can be that dog on a bone and keep on creating with that laser sharp focus on who they are and what they need. And you will get there in the end for sure. Having said that, if you’re someone who needs to be making consistent revenue, and actually maybe there’s a part of you that you haven’t recognised, is really perfect for people in the welding industry. For example, I never intentionally went out of my way to work with people in the wellbeing and holistic space, yet the majority of my clients are in that space. And of course, I speak more predominately to them these days because they’re who I’ve been attracting, and that was never intentional in the beginning. But what I’ve recognised since is because I’m not flashy, it’s because I don’t bang on about I don’t know, I guess I talk more about saunas, and cold water immersion and nutrition and exercise than I do handbags and Lutens. Is that even the right way to say it?

And so therefore, I tried women with similar priorities. And by the way, as I always say, I have nothing against designer handbags or someone’s to give me one, I’m very open to receiving them, but it’s not my priority in life and I attract other women who feel the same. And they also often tend to like well being and therefore be in the well being industry themselves. This is a little Wofully but Anyway, So phase one be a generalist allows you to see the opportunities that may be coming your way allows you to be looking at the kind of Horizon with a full view of what’s available to you. And not just a laser sharp focus that actually at this stage could be more damaging than good. What’s going to help you as a generalist, learn what your brand specifically stands for on who you love to help is to have some clear idea of who you like to help and what it is that you have, that’s specifically going to help them that will help your message cut through the noise. For example, I knew when I started my business, that being a single mom on benefits were becoming self employed became not really a luxury, but a necessity. And something that actually has given me so much freedom, since I feel very passionate about supporting women to similarly be able to create those flexible careers that allow Parenthood to not be something that’s another pressure on their shoulders, and instead something that they can balance beautifully alongside running a business that was meaningful to me. And I guess without consciously meaning to do so I’ve always loved and supported and been on a journey myself with various holistic and wellbeing coaches. So it’s no surprise that a lot of my clients ended up being in that industry too. And I love it. I absolutely love them. And I love the particular specific challenges they have, when it comes to communicating why their offer their service is a necessity and not a nice to have, which unfortunately, very often well being services can easily fall into that space of, yeah, that’d be nice one day, and I love helping them remove that as an objection in their business. That’s beautiful.

So that was where I started out, most of you will know, or maybe some of you will know that I started my journey running Facebook ads. And then it turned into a situation where I had a micro agency. And so someone else was running the ads, and I was doing the overarching strategy. And then it turned into a situation where I was a mentor, alongside running the agency. And that’s pretty much where I’m at today. And so the journey has evolved. And as you’ll hear my toolkit and how I serve my clients has evolved to, to match my zone of genius, because for example, this is a great example of how generalist became more specific, what I recognised with Facebook ads was that actually, I had a team member who was really good at the implementation and all the numbers and looking at everything through a magnifying glass to really understand what was and wasn’t working. And that wasn’t the bit that got me as excited. What got me really excited was messaging, the actual messaging behind advertising, the positioning of the brand, the funnel, the client journey, the user experience, and also the business goals. Like I always wanted to know, where does this funnel fit in with your overarching business goals, I had a much larger zoomed out holistic view of my clients businesses. And so I’d find myself without meaning to giving people business mentorship advice, alongside running their ads. And that is where I started to recognise I could be charging for this advice. I know a lot of my clients who stay with me long term aren’t just staying with me because I run their ads, they’re staying with me because they’re also getting ad hoc business mentorship from me for absolutely nothing and seeing incredible results because of it. And that was when I recognise how about, I just package up the mentorship by itself. And that’s what I’ve been doing for like over a year now. And I frickin love it.

So that was phase one being the generalist. And hey, I didn’t know I’d be sharing this in the context of my journey. But here we are phase two, getting great results, double down on them. So that’s phase two of niching. That’s phase two of running an online business to get to the stage where you have a strong niche. And obviously people listening to this, you may already be at phase two, you may already be at phase three, or you may be at phase one, but I always really liked to make this podcast like record it with a view to knowing that there are various people who’ve reached out to me, I love you guys to tell me that you are early on in your business and that you’re gaining so much from listening to this podcast. And so I always like to cover all bases and make sure that everyone is on board with what it is I’m sharing. So phase two actually alludes to what I was just sharing about the fact that I recognise that my zone of genius was actually the business mentorship that I was serving up alongside the Facebook ads management. And that while Facebook ads management was probably my zone and still is my zone of excellence. The zone of genius came from the fact that I’m good at zooming out and seeing how it fits into a larger strategy and good at zooming out and recognising where their funnel needs additional work where their sales psychology could be working with and in some cases, their mindset, you know, if they’re wobbling around investing in ads and not trusting in the process, sometimes that was a bit of mindset work. I mean, it literally is so many things. And what I really quickly recognised was not only was my zone of genius mentoring my clients is also what I enjoyed the most and it What I could see myself doing indefinitely, forever. And so that’s why I recognise where do I get the best results? How do I double down on it, I double down on it by being a mentor specifically around evergreen funnels. And at that point, I had a choice because I’d also supported multi six figure launches on several occasions. And so I knew those inside out, I knew exactly what you needed. I had all the templates, absolutely everything. I had all the project management systems. I mean, I had everything that was required to become someone who mentored on live launching, I could have done it with my eyes shut if I’m being entirely honest. But I don’t like live launching. And so yes, there were results, or was it within my zone of excellence? Yeah, probably. But it wasn’t within my zone of genius. And it certainly wasn’t something that I could see myself doing years later.

So I let that bit slide. And I decided to go all in on supporting evergreen clients, which also meant for my ad agency, that we started only working with Evergreen clients as well, which has just been incredible. It just means that the to feed one another in terms of the incredible experience, I get supporting clients with multi six figure results, and seven figure results with their evergreen funnels spills into how I’m able to mentor my clients inside scale with the power one and elevate for evergreen. So that’s phase number two. And then phase number three is then and once you’ve tied it all those pieces together, it’s about owning it. And that is the stage where we I guess traditionally would refer to it as a niche. And actually, this really beautifully ties together with essentially my journey still, because essentially, I was talking about evergreen for the first year that I launched scale with the power of one. And that’s all I would do. And it was working really nicely. But I found myself getting bored talking about Evergreen.

And I also recognised if I was ever to be invited on a stage, can I go on there and the big wider world could I with PR just be like the Evergreen expert. Nobody outside of the online business coaching space would have any clue what I was talking about. And if I ever wanted to write that book or record that podcast, what would be the theme that ran throughout how I showed up and shared and created. And it was through working with incredible Hillary Weiss, where we reflected on all of these pieces together. It was like literally pulling a car apart and putting all the pieces on the floor and being like, how do we reassemble these. And through a gorgeous conversation with Hillary where I mentioned, the one thing a lot of business mentors reflected me is that I don’t really highlight what a cushy business setup I have. And there it was, you know, like Hillary pointed out, she was like, there was a word you used at the very beginning of this conversation that I think just sums up everything we just talked about for the last 90 minutes Koshi. And honestly, it was like the angels came down from the heavens. And everything became so clear to me because up until that point, I’d had things like a podcast called the embodied Business Revolution. And I just felt like that was too serious and to kind of Zen like to really be a true reflection of who I am as a brand and business. And so Khushi just really beautifully encapsulates that slightly tongue in cheek slightly cheeky, slightly silly, very simplified way of talking about business. And also ultimately what my number one goal is when it comes to running a business, which is I want not only for my business to be cushy, but for all my clients to have a cushy experience, too, whether that’s as an add client, or whether that’s as somebody who’s building their own business, who I’m mentoring, I want them to have a cushy existence because I do not believe in working for where we want to be in five years time or 10 years time I believe every day gets to be a great experience.

So yeah, I’ve kind of interwoven my own brand journey there alongside helping you understand what it is to niche. So essentially, what it boils down to is do I believe niching is a good idea. 100% Do you need to have a niche right now, it depends on where you’re at in your business. And my recommendation is,

if you have already been through the generalist phase, if you have already been through the phase of doubling down on what you’re good at, and you’re really clear on who you love to help, and you’re really clear on what tools get the best results for your clients, then 100%. Now is the time to think about and how do I position all of this? How do I help myself stand out as somebody who is different to everybody else in this industry? If you want to attract those book deals, if you want to attract those summit invitations, then yes, now would be the time to be looking at that because that’s how people find you and don’t leave you for another competitor because there’s nobody else out there like you and you found a beautiful crystal clear way of expressing that.

But like I say, if you’re early on in your journey, then please do not be ashamed of being the generalist. Do not worry if you’re still figuring out where your best results come from and who you’re best off supporting. allow for that to be a process. It’s taken me three years to get to where I’m at now. Now, where I’d say I have a much stronger and clearer brand, which I’m still like fine tuning and tweaking, but I am so much clearer than I was. And what I recognise now is I needed those three years to get to the stage where I could find that level of clarity. So there we have it. Summary as yes, you should niche, but do think about when. Okay, cool. Amazing. I’m so happy I recorded this episode. It just feels like it just flowed and I have it flow for you to next week, I’m going to be talking about why does everyone suddenly have a private podcast and should you have one too, because I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore, I mean, pretty much any big marketer out there right now has a funnel using a private podcast. Should you be running one to why are they doing it? Is it something you need to have? We’ll talk about all of this next week, and I’m so excited for it. And there may be a very exciting little announcement coming alongside to keep your eyes peeled.