Why your offerings should reflect what's best for you | GB69

In this episode of Good Business, business and leadership expert Illana Burk challenges the traditional notion of niching and discusses why your offerings should reflect what's best for you before they reflect what's best for your clients. While finding a niche may seem daunting, crafting offers aligned with your strengths, weaknesses, and preferred working style can create a niche audience that resonates with your unique approach.

Burk also explores how this approach enhances your leadership positioning. By prioritizing your well-being and passion, you operate from a place of strength and clarity, setting a powerful example for your clients. This episode emphasizes the importance of promise-keeping and how designing offerings that align with your needs leads to reliable and high-quality service. By establishing trust through well-designed containers and boundaries, you pave the way for high-performing relationships with clients.

Tune in to this episode and gain a fresh perspective on shaping your offerings and leading with integrity. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to support Good Business. 

For more details, visit illanaburk.com.

Good Business is hosted by Illana Burk, CEO of Illana Burk Consulting llc and strategic coach and advisor to entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and industry disruptors the world over.

For more of illana around the web:
Web: illanaburk.com
On TikTok: @illanaburk
On Insta: @illanaburk

Transcript

0:42

Hello fabulous listeners and welcome back to another episode of Good Business. I'm your host Illana Burk and today we are diving into a topic that might just flip the script on how you think about your offers. Our topic today is why your offering should reflect what's best for you before they reflect what's best for your clients. It sounds counterintuitive, I know, but stick around. I'm going to break it down in a way that's both practical and super powerful. So first, I'm going to talk about what all this has to do with niching and marketing, because you might not think of it that way. And then I'm going to explain exactly how to do this, and then finally I'm going to dig into how doing this actually improves your leadership positioning. So first, what does all this have to do with niching? We hear that buzzword, like, all the time. Find your niche, find your niche, right? But let's be real. For many of us, and I'm sure many of the people who listen to me, that's really both easier said than done and sometimes downright impossible and maybe something you just positively reject out of hand. At least the way that most people teach it. Right? So what do I mean by like, by traditional niching? Traditional niching looks more like I make choices based on what the customers want, what the customers need, what they like, who they are, what they eat for breakfast, all that stuff, right? But I think that niching works a lot better when it comes from our side of the fence, where it's what are our values, how do we work best, etc. And then the people who are attracted to those things will find us. So, why bother? If it's only about reaching a tiny group, why would you want to help just a tiny group? Because that's what niching is, right? But actually, the thing that marketers get right about niching is that it makes your work easier to market. That's fundamentally why we do it, right? It seems obvious, but some people just kind of miss that, that that's why you're doing all of that, is that it just makes it easier to connect with people because you're just talking to a narrow group that have similar likes, dislikes, and interests. So It's way easier to say exactly what they need to hear if you're only talking to one group of people. And while I talk a lot about niching based on values, the way you offer your work can also speak volumes about, to a far more specific and easier to market to audience. Is it all starting to connect now? Like, starting to make sense? So essentially, your distinctive approach, your personality, your methodology, your delivery, those can all be just as effective as niching based, as traditional niching, based on what your people ate for breakfast and all that crap, right? Probably more so in the long run, honestly. So what are we really talking about today? Essentially we're talking about creating and framing offers around how you perform best. Both so you can be happier and healthier in your business and so that you can market with more ease. So there's actually like two big advantages to doing things this way. So essentially, rather than offering what everyone else in your industry is doing, you know, if everybody is doing two sessions a month, you do two sessions a month. If everybody charges a 50 percent deposit, you charge a 50 percent deposit, right? We do this thing where we just kind of follow the leader and It's, it's really normal, right? That mimicry, especially early in business, mimicry is how we get our feet under us. So I'm not faulting anybody for doing that. This is more like once you have your feet under you, then you can start changing things up and, and kind of going like, okay, what's actually right for me. But what happens is a lot of people never do that second part. A lot of people just keep on doing what everybody in front of them was doing. You know, I had a conversation just yesterday with a client that, um, was talking about how she just is doing these one off sessions for 50 minutes for X amount of money, because that's what everybody in her industry does. And she's got 25 years of experience and, and hated doing things that way. And it just never occurred to her that she could do it any other way. So we talked through that and in 15 minutes framed out a way that she can be moving around, that she can be. more in motion because she likes to move when she's talking, and she was doing everything on Zoom, so it was really hard. So there's a lot of ways that you can change up the way you do things, that most people just kind of, they just follow the leader. They just keep doing things the way everybody else does them because it seems like it's the industry, you know, quote unquote, industry standard. So now, as you're, when you think about, um, what, how, what that means for you, rather than offering what everyone else is doing, Kraft offers that intrinsically work for you. Like, and I'll use myself as an example. Like, you know, one example for my client, here's me as an example, right? I do two hour calls. once a month with the vast majority of my one on one clients. I have a few people that do multiple two hour calls a month that are big strategy clients and have much bigger, more complex businesses. This allows me to both work with more people than if I had like two sessions a month with everybody, right? This way I can have, you know, uh, let's see, I work three days a week. I do calls with clients three days a week and I have two slots a day, which means, uh, if you do the math on that, I can take roughly 20 to 24 clients at a time. without really burdening me a lot. Now, if I worked with people twice a month, I'd have to do twice as much work and it would tend to settle into more surface level consulting and coaching, you know, dealing with more day to day things. When I only talk to people once a month, I get to do the really deep, fun stuff that I really can sink my teeth into. We can do the deeper strategy because they know that they're only going to get me for two hours a month, so let's do the big stuff. So that supports my need for juicier problems rather than like, okay, so what should I post to social media for the next two weeks, right? Like that's not where I'm at, you know. That's not what I do anymore. So, um, so it fosters both my best work with my clients and also it works for my schedule and my desire to not work any more than I want to work. So it's really great for my capacity. And it means that my clients are getting the very best outcome for me because I'm super engaged and energetic and really excited to be there. And that's how I keep my promises, right? So. When you create offerings that reflect what's best for you, your strengths, your weaknesses, how and when you want to work best, you naturally carve out a niche without the stress of trying to fit into some predetermined market, predefined market segment, right? Basically, you'll attract a very specific group who like the way you work as much as they like what you're offering. It also works because it ties into the ever popular idea of the fact that authenticity rules. People crave it and when you serve it You attract those who resonate with how and what you do. So when you're doing something that's really kind of out of the norm and a little bit unique because it's what really works for you and you can articulate why, you are boosting your authenticity points all over the place because you're putting a bit of vulnerability on display by saying this is what works for me. So let's get into why this not only positions you better as a leader, But it also sets a sterling example for your clients because when you put yourself first, like not in a negatively selfish way, but in a way that ensures that your well being and passion are at the forefront, you operate from a place of strength and clarity. And this isn't about ignoring your clients needs, of course it's not. It's about ensuring that you're at your best when you meet those needs. So when you're thriving, your clients see a leader who's confident, self aware, and energetic. This sets a really powerful example. You're teaching them to value themselves, to find their unique path, to lead with integrity, whatever that means to them in whatever niche you're in. By prioritizing what's best for you, you're showing them that the best way to serve others is by ensuring that you're in the best position to do so. And that brings us to my holy grail of good business, and that is promise keeping. You guys have heard me talk about that in all kinds of different contexts, but the most important thing in any business relationship, is trust. When you design your offerings around what's best for you, You are more likely to keep the big macro outcome based promises that you make to the people you serve. Why? Because you're not stretching yourself too thin or over committing in areas that drain you. So promise keeping isn't about just doing what you say you're gonna do. It's about consistently delivering the quality and value you said you would. When the structure of your offerings aligns with your needs and your preferences, you're naturally just more reliable. Your clients know that they can count on you, not just because you deliver, but because you deliver with excellence and enthusiasm in a really well designed container that works perfectly for both sides of the, for both parties, right? And when clients feel like they can confidently trust the structure of the boundaries that you've set up, then you set the stage for a really high trust, high performing relationship, and that's when things work the best. Okay, that's it for me today, everyone. As always, thank you for tuning in to Good Business. I hope this episode has given you a fresh perspective on how to shape your offerings and lead with integrity. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review. Until next time, always remember that it's just business, and that's always personal. Thanks everyone.