Rachel Brenke is a practicing lawyer and the founder of the Business Bites Podcast, an iTunes top-rated podcast that delivers 10-minute “bites” of business content to busy entrepreneurs. Rachel is also an author, a team USA athlete, a mom-of-five, and a cancer survivor.
What you’ll learn:
- How to launch a successful “niche” business.
- How to achieve work-life balance inside a busy schedule.
- How to tune out the haters—those in your life who don’t support your vision.
Key lessons from Rachel’s episode:
1. The Riches Are in the Niches. If you’re having trouble making the impact you want, it could be because you’ve cast too large of a net. You might be better off serving those who have more specific problems inside of your industry. When you target a niche, you…
- Reduce the amount of competition (and can therefore dominate).
- Have an easier time getting people to identify whether or not your service is for them.
- Can make a more profound impact in the lives of individuals.
Rachel has generated massive success targeting (and pioneering) niches in the legal industry. She’s used her legal know-how to help photographers, bloggers, and fitness professionals protect themselves from potential legal disasters like copyright infringements.
In choosing a niche, be specific and focus on what you have a personal connection to or are genuinely interested in.
2. Know Your Client From the Inside Out. How well do you know your client? Do you have a broad sense of who you’re serving, or do you know your client avatar down to the nitty gritty details? Rachel says it’s much better to know your avatar intimately. When you only have a general understanding of who you’re serving, your sales and marketing will reflect that, and will probably have a hard time reeling in clients. You might get people who are “warm,” and resonate somewhat with your message, product, or service, but chances are, you’ll get few who are “on fire”—those with a burning, hell-yes resonance, who become repeat customers and refer all their friends—you know, the clients you really want, and who are a joy to work with.
So how do you get those kinds of clients? It’s simple. Rachel says you must target a very specific kind of person. Imagine that you’re speaking to just a single person as you write your marketing and sales copy. “Get so specific. Name your avatar, define her likes and dislikes—down to the kind of wine she drinks. By speaking to that person, you’re sticking her in the middle of the bell curve, and you also grab everyone else around her,” Rachel says.
3. Make Work-Life Balance Non-Negotiable. Many of us relate to our self-care as if it’s a nice-to-have kind of thing. When we have extra time available, we might take a bath, or meditate, or make a nourishing, home-cooked meal. But when we’re pressed for time, self-care is often the first thing to go. We go into “survival mode” and sacrifice our self-care.
This might be an effective short-term strategy, but as a chronic habit, it wreaks havoc on our sense of well-being. It actually makes us much less effective. And it comes down to how we define success.
Being cash-rich and time-poor is not success.
So how do you find a greater sense of work-life balance? You make it non-negotiable. You schedule your self-care—activities that fuel and restore you—like you would any other appointment. Anchor your non-negotiable activities as unmovables in your schedule. You will find that with with more activities that replenish you, you actually have more energy, more focus, and more creativity to pour into your work. You will be more productive, accomplishing more work in less time, because you are well-resourced for your work.
