What Narrow Niche Already Loves What You Do?

October 10, 2011 by Liz

Recently at SOBCon NW, I had a familiar conversation with someone trying to start a business of her own. We talked about her skills, her past successes, and the people she liked working with with. I asked her what she was thinking about building about business around. She told me her concept.

It was huge.

The territory she was trying to cover was way too wide for a first step. Because the content base was so huge the audience would include almost every person from 21 to 65 near the idea of business, social media, or tech in any place in the world.

Itâs no wonder she didnât feel qualified to be an expert. Who would?
No one can be an expert of everything for everyone in the world.

I asked her one question … Who already loves what you do?

What Narrow Niche Already Loves What You Do?

Ever tried to read all of Wikipedia? It’s hard to keep all of that knowledge connected and meaningful without a reality to hang it on. Ever tried to learn a new vocabulary word a day? If the words don’t relate to each other, they fade away as fast as they came. Put a narrow context around a vocabulary you want to learn or an idea you want to explore and suddenly you’re making traction.

It’s the narrow context that allows us to see relationships and apply what we know to the next new thing we learn.
Here’s a few ways that narrowing your niche can build your expertise:

When we choose a narrow niche, we can go deeply vertical. We get to know one certain group of people very well. We know who we’re talking to. We know which words are their vocabulary, which metaphors are theirs, which ideas get them to move.
When we choose a narrow niche, we “get” the world of that customer group. We can predict the ways they make decisions. We can imagine what they worry about. We decide what features and benefits serve them well and what will be just so much more noise to what theyâre trying to do without.
When we choose a narrow niche, we can closely study the specific problems of that singular customer group. We get to know what frustrates them, what they yearn for, wish for, and which they never saw again. We have special insight into their view.

And as a result of narrowing our niche, they quickly recognize that we âgetâ them, that weâve built a product or service that was made for them, and they become our fans. Then convince their friends to become our fans too.

And narrowing your niche can build your business as well because …

When we choose a narrow niche, it’s easy for others to see who we serve. People look who we work with and the commonalities show. All of Mike’s clients are families with small children. All of Britta’s clients are tech CEOs. Marti specializes in launch stage startups.
When we choose a narrow niche, people within that niche tell each other about us. Soon enough folks outside the niche ask if we can do it for them too.
When we choose a narrow niche, it’s easy for people to share what we do with their friends. When we we’re one thing, they think of us when they meet anyone who has that need. We’re shareable.

It’s true that you can’t be expert at everything for everyone. But who’d want to?
Make a decision to be irresistible to one specific group. Then we can move out slowly to the group that stands right next to them.

Who already loves what you do? Be an expert to them first.

Who is that group for you?

Be irresistible

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Thanks to Week 312 SOBs

October 8, 2011 by Liz

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How to Choose the Easiest, Fastest, Most Meaningful Next Move

October 4, 2011 by Liz

THEN We Will …

During the Q&A of his interview at SOBCon NW, I asked Rick Turoczy (@Toruczy) of the Portland Incubator Experiment, “What seems to be the single problem that most startups encounter?”

Rick’s response was telling. He said that the young companies he worked with were clear on their vision and their mission. They knew were they were going … Where they got stuck was figuring out the first small step to get there.

Are you surprised by that? I’m not.

The act of paying attention to what relates to our mission and vision gets us attuned to the wide range of options that could relate to our end goal.

We think of our goal as THEN.
THEN we’ll be there.
THEN we’ll have what we’ve earned.
THEN we’ll know.

We can’t know what things will be THEN, but we know all we need to know about now.

But strategy is a function of NOW.
What is our position NOW?
What are the conditions NOW?
What is the opportunity NOW?

How to Choose the Easiest, Fastest, Most Meaningful Next Move

Choosing that next step often seems a problem. We listen. We follow links through our networks and systems. If our minds and hearts are open, we find a world filled with possibilities. We pay attention to learn as much as we might. We gather up information, ideas, and options. Then comes the moment to move. We get stuck in too many possibilities. Big ones, little ones — which to do?

To head in our best direction, we have to do the opposite of listening and paying attention. NOW that we’ve gathered the immediate information, it’s time to pull it in. It’s time to narrow and focus. It’s time to choose the best possible easy move to advance now. The small opportunity that fits us most naturally is the one that easiest, fastest, and most meaningful to reaching our biggest, most important goal.

Here’s how to choose the easiest, fastest, and most meaningful next move:

Use your vision and mission to set your direction. Have a clear sense of where you want to be and why you want to be there.
Use the information you’ve gathered by listening and paying attention to know your position — where you are now. Tell yourself the truth. Every position has advantages. Yours has advantages unique to you.
Study the information you’ve gathered to understand the conditions under which you’re working. Look for openings that lead in the direction you want to go. You, your team, and your mission fit perfectly into openings right next to you. Look to do more for the people who love what you’re doing. Invite them to help you figure out what would be the easiest next small thing for you to do.
Identify the easiest small opportunities and openings that move you forward by using these criteria. They will be those that
- Align with your long-term goals.
- Match with your values and culture.
- Leverage what you and your team have already accomplished — skills, talents, and successes.
- Make changes work for you.
- Disperse the work to many best sources. (Do that thing you can get started and pass on so that another person is working while you work on the next one.)

Look for the position adjacent to the one where you’re standing. The best new positions look only slightly different than the position where we are right now. By moving into that slightly new position — serving the closest friends of our customers or adding a new flavor to the same offer — we built strength on what we already own. By keeping an eye on our vision at the same time as we make these tiny moves, we not only keep focus, but also bring our community of customers with us in a logical, predictable fashion that is easy to invest in, because it’s easy to trust.

Each small decision creates new opportunities that are unique to our position and the skills we bring. In that way, we create a path that is ours and impossible to replicate with authenticity.

We do what we are rather than are what we do.

How do you filter and narrow your options when you choose your next move?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Find the Genius in YOU — Stop Believing in the Box

October 3, 2011 by Liz

There Is No Box

That box that everyone talks about — the one that we’re encouraged to think outside — came to be without a thought. No one decided or built a process called “Thinking Inside the Box.”

It was an accident, a management issue.

It’s easier and more efficient to run a school or a corporation of people when we teach, talk, and manage to the group.

Can you imagine how chaotic a school or a corporation would be if every student or every employee got to decide on his or her own creative version of “what works”?

So how can we bring leadership to every level and not ignite a mess that makes things worse? In the name of management, we build a bias toward one way of thinking in a sea of creativity.

Find the Genius in YOU — Stop Believing in the Box

When many of us weren’t looking, we learned about looking:

how to look at things the way other folks do particularly at the things our teachers revealed.
how to solve problems and show our work — or how to work them out the way we were shown.

We learned useful and appropriate skills for working in top-down managed groups:

to finish the calculation to the deadliest detail even though we already knew the answer wouldn’t solve the problem we were trying to solve.
to paint by numbers,
to color inside the lines,
to keep our curiosity inside the comfort of the teacher, the goals of the curriculum, and the norms of the group.

Within those boundaries our thoughts were caught much like a mime stays inside an invisible box.
And like the invisible box that the mime pushes and touches. The box that we think inside isn’t real.

The way to start thinking outside the box is easy enough — stop believing in the box.

Life Without the Box

The biggest problem with thinking inside the box is that for the mostpart, we’re relying on a model we learned, and so when we “show our work,” we’re really showing how someone else figured it out it.

Life without the box opens us.

New mind channels become available — creativity, flexibility, fluency, elaboration, and original thought. We break the habit of always doing “someone else’s work.”. The resources of your brain are freed up. Even better, it’s more fun, once you get used to it, because thinking outside of the proverbial box involves playing with ideas not just thinking.

DaVinci knew it.
Einstein knew it..
Lots of folks with divergent hair do it.

Most inventors only find the inside of the box to test things after they’re through seeing what they can do. Nothing new is achieved or gathered by staying where everyone else is thinking. And when we do get out of our usual ways of thinking, we land smack dab inside our own genius.

So let’s get on with getting out of it so that we can get into it.

Here’s one way to find the genius in you …

Even new creative, flexible, fluent, elaborative, original thinking needs structure. Let’s use a problem-solution format.

Pick a problem.
Move outside it. You can’t really see a situation when you’re part of it.
Identify your greatest weaknesses.
Look for how those weaknesses provides openings … Ask yourself “how can this weakness be a strength?” If your back is against the wall, no one can sneak up behind you. If you’re smaller, you’re more agile. If you’re unconventional, you’ve got surprise on your side.
Leverage all of those new found strength into a single unexpected opportunity.

So, if you’re ready, I am. Enough with this introduction, let’s let the games begin. Everyone can think like a genius. It only takes a little practice, and a firm commitment. Throw away the darn box.

Put together your best out of the box thinking to find the strongest opening. Then check it against what a traditional in the box thinking would do to shore up any inconsistencies. That’s how to use your genius thinking to reveal opportunity.

Is inside or outside the box more comfortable for you?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss