Author: abiodunjoseph

Most business owners don’t have their messaging down and if you’ve been struggling with your messaging I want you to take a long deep breath and let it out. Hmmmmmm eheheheheheheh…. Because you are not alone

Have you ever been in a situation where you have this amazing work of yours you want to upload online, and you find it hard to nail down on a message that will really compel the client…. Most of us are…lol

The messaging of your business is like you are raising the banner! right ? You are getting out there into the market and if you are really clear on who you are communicating to and you are able to communicate to them in a way that really speaks to the journey that they are on in their life, then you develop a business relationship with them.

So in developing your messaging there are five things to consider ;

• What are the fears of your ideal client: what are they afraid of (are they afraid of giving their cloth to a tailor that will deliver a bad job?)
• What are their frustrations: and I want you to realize that fear is different from frustration, these are two completely different things (are they frustrated about the last shoe designer they gave their wedding shoe to, who collected full payment and still did not deliver on time). What frustration do they have 
• What are their challenges ? what challenges do they have (do they want to buy that beautiful wig from you, but they have constraint with the distance you are from them).

If you can get clear on the fear, frustration and challenges on your ideal client and you can effectively message it to them, you will have their hair amongst all the noise. The beauty of this is that when you realize that your ideal client is actually you, all you need to do is to really get present to your fears, frustration and the challenges that you had in your journey.

FEARS >FRUSTRATION > CHALLENGES (Three different things)

• The fourth thing you really need to get clear on is what I call the perfect day of your ideal Client. What is it that they want, what is it that is on the other side of the fears, frustration and challenges, infact what is it that they really want that they are afraid and frustrated and challenged about ? The only reason why they are afraid is because there’s something they really want that they don’t have access to and your own job is to get clear on what I call their perfect day, what does their clothes looks like on their perfect day, what does their business looks like on their perfect day, what does their relationship looks like on their perfect day, what does their life looks like on their perfect day.

What you are doing in your messaging is th\

at you are basically saying I know what your fears, frustration and challenges are and I know what you want.

It is this idea that if you have a headache and you visit your pharmacist and the pharmacist says is it a sharp stabbing pain in your forehead ? It starts like your eyes sought of moves back to your ear? And you be like yeah that’s correct! And after a while the thing starts to draw a little bit and you have a little bit of a stiff neck? And you go yeah yeah. When the pharmacist gives you your prescription, you are going to follow the prescription because he knows what your symptoms are.

Your ability to clearly identify the fears, frustration and challenges of your ideal client and know where your tribe wants to go, what their perfect day looks like is the way you are going to separate yourself in the marketplace.

You might be thinking if I narrow my ideal client down like this, won’t I lose the market ?

If you narrow it down and you are patient you will take the whole market. If I am to look you in your face right now and ask you, who do you really resonate with ? ( You can drop your  answer in the comment section and I can help you get clarity on your ideal client and how to curate your messaging)

Curate content that resonates with your ideal client, serve those people, they are your target audience, they are the people that are going through a journey that  most resonate with you. You speak to their fears, frustration, challenges and the perfect day they want to get into.

This is the way you expand your business. This is the way that you create a model that allows for life time clients and this is the way you can take an entire market, is by going really really niche into the starting point of your journey which you are clear on and you message it appropriately.

That is your messaging .

In our next article we will be diving deep into your CLIENT JOURNEY. What are the series of processes you take your client through to make them a raving fan of your brand?

See you at the Top

Abiodun Joseph.

Welcome to Expand Your Reach!

It’s my weekly update where I share advice and responses to important questions about how to use Leverage to grow your business.

Today’s lesson is about how you can zoom in into your business so closely and see all the various processes involved in the operation and zoom out to improve the processes.

Here’s an excerpt of the question I was asked by a friend that inspired today’s lesson.

Its Joshua, A Fashionpreneur, who deals in selling quality fashion accessories 

I own a fashion accessories business in one of the Top Universities in Nigeria.

I started the Business in the institution two years ago and started off selling directly to the student without owning a store front.

I’m now at a point where I want a high percentage of the students on campus to know about my Brand which in turn will increase my revenue. 

How can I use Leverage to achieve this?

Thank you for this interesting question, Joshua. I’m sure a lot of people will learn from the advice.

When it comes to Leverage as applied to your type of business, there are six important areas i will like you to open your possibility mentality to.

I’ll discuss each of these six areas so you can make the best decision for your business.

The first factor is Relational capital.

How many other businesses that are not a direct competitor to your product that you could form a relationship with so that they can introduce your product to their own client base. You can meet with some other business who already have access to students that you don’t have, it might be the Dry cleaners, the Barbers, hair stylist, the buttery attendant and tell them to introduce your brand whenever a student comes to patronize them. It can be saying something trivial like “i have a friend who sells quality wrist watches and fashion accessories at a very good price, in fact i bought this my wrist watch from him (sell wrist watch to them to pay up on installment so they will have tangible evidence to market your quality stuff) should you be interested, here’s is his contact, so he can show you his product catalogue”. And anytime a student they refer buys from you, you will give them a 10% commision on every first sale. The beauty of this is be true to your word and don’t make a promise you can’t fulfill. If your integrity is in check, you just employed tens of ambassador to market your brand without breaking the bank

The second area I want you to look at is this, could you package your product in a different way, size or combination and strike a relationship to put your product as a complimentary gift to what they are already selling. For example: meet with a fashion designer that you will sell brooch, conflinks, lapel rose on an wholesale price (since most people who wears outfits nowadays use one of the three accessories) all they need to do is to enhance the value of what they deliver and make the delivery inclusive of the accessories. Striking a deal like this with five fashion designers will open another revenue streams for the business

The third thing is, could you package other people’s products with your product or how many new products could you come up with that are your natural extension. Ask yourself, what other product does the people who buy from me need to complete how they want to appear to the world. Answering this question can open vast ideas of opportunities for the business.

Another thing is to look at your existing client base, maybe there’s a type of people that are attracted to your product and you may have never even realized it. That you may have a natural appeal to some people, age or sex, professional type. Realizing this alone could spotlight an incredible market to go after.

And the last thing to look into is your Process improvement: every Business can be broken down into its driving process. If you can get 1% improvement in the process involved in the running of your business and consistently maintain the improved process for 2 month, your business would have 6X itself in size and revenue in just two month. Process occurs whenever you do anything, this occurs the way you upload your accessories on your media, your sale approach, delivery of your product, inventory, how and where you buy your accessories, how you deal with client on the phone, handle complain, take an order, client reward system and there is a massive room for improvement  in your process.

“The whole notion came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into running your business, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

Make sense?

Don’t forget to forward this content to your smart friends so they can learn.

And until my next content,

Always remember: Leverage is a potent force you can use to Expand your Reach.

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Are you making these mistakes in your business :Do you have step by step route to get your product to those who are ready to pay.

I bet you don’t have one. Don’t worry, I don’t have one either.

Ask ten people you respect, people who are making huge success in their business, people who are having tonnes of client trooping to order for their product or service- and i bet they don’t have either.

What do they have;

• They have the requisite level of knowledge of the product/service they are offering
• They have the tools to deliver excellent product/service (perception is relative)
• They have a raving fan of satisfied clients who refer them to their cycle of influence.

But, I bet they haven’t written any long term strategic plan of how they want their business to look like in few years to come. The truth is, most of them have the fantasy dancing in their head but haven’t create time to plan it out. They see their business generating millions, having hundreds of clients and all of this is in their heads alone. There’s a concise correlation between strategically having a written plan for your business and seeing the fulfillment.  Despite it’s obvious benefits, many business owners have failed to establish Clarity in the areas of their business where they feel stuck. A colleague of mine was recently sharing with me that he felt stuck and wasn’t making much progress on a new project that he had started. When I asked him what the problem was, he mentioned that he didn’t have the money necessary to get the project off the ground. I responded, “Well, how much money do you need exactly?” His response: “Well, I’m not sure, I haven’t really laid that out yet.” So, he knows he wants to start his business, he’s made a decision, but he’s not clear on how much money he needs to get it off the ground. Wanting something and lacking clarity around the details is like wanting to set sail without a destination

First comes thought; then organization of that thought into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality – Napoleon Hill

when you have a written plan for your business and follow through it, you naturally activate your brain to perform its major work as a goal achieving machine.

The world is moving far too fast, your ability to execute, measure, adjust- for example you have it in your head to at least have 20 people to order for the perfume you sell the first month. What strategic plan do you have in place to achieve that goal (how many times will you upload in a week, how many people will you private chat in a day, how many people will you contact to promote what you do, how many retail shops will you contact to display your product).

If you set a goal to sell 10 wigs this week, you have no control over who buys whatever it is you are selling. So you may fail at the goal because of things outside of your control.

But, if you set a goal to upload on your social media everyday, private chat at least two people everyday, call one person you know can afford the wig everyday, request someone on your contact list who probably sell bags or wears to help promote your wig to their contact list and meet with a boutique owner if you can have your wigs display in their outlet ,you are in control of that. If you make the calls, upload, private chat influencers you are achieving the goal. If you don’t do it, you are not achieving your goals. And hopefully those calls made will result in increased sales.

Have a strategic plan that you can control so that you are the owner of your success.

You see people stacking pictures on Whatsapp, IG, Twitter and not having a single conversion, you see some people run sponsored ad for a week and not one person convert to a buying client. You need a strategic plan to know the exact next thing to do when you do something and the next thing to do after that because it is when your product/service get to the hand of a buyer and they pay that you can afford yourself the luxurious life you desire.

We live in a world where there are tonnes of people trying to sell the exact thing to the exact people you want to sell to, the only thing that will separate you is the strategic plans you have to support your business. If you have one tactics in place to show your product/service to the world and it fails or it doesn’t convert the number of order you desire, do you have another tactics ?

Imagine you have strategies sitting in your arsenal and if one does not convert enough, you drag out the second one; ready for launch! And if that doesn’t pull enough, how much more of it can you replicate to enlarge your reach and how quickly can you do that ?

Honestly, how accurately can you really plan how you will be executing across the board six months from now. Statistics shows that 90% of business startups fail in their first year, do you wonder why? Most of them work in their business instead of working on their business.

You can’t afford yourself the luxury of life if all you do is to work on your business, you want to sources for clients/leads, you go and buy the materials, sew it, iron it, deliver it and repeat that cycle again you have to plan on how to build a system around your business so your time can be spent working on your business and see it grow.

One final thought, don’t waste your time drafting a plan that’s only going to gather dust in a wooden shelf somewhere when you could have spent that time working in your business, but if you are serious about being strategic with the way you handle your business and build a strong shield around fear, rejection and failure to know the next thing to do when you finish executing one plan.

The series of content that will be coming after this will specifically involve the 7 Pillars of a sustainable business and we will dive into all these pillars and how it can be applicable in your Business. If you are truly serious about scaling your business to the next level, you don’t want to miss out on any of these pillars.

Next week, we will be talking about your ideal client. How do you curate message that resonate with your ideal audience, how do you narrow down on who you should be selling to first, the idea that your product is for everybody can be false (at least for a startup) you have to get clear on who you are dealing with. If you are ever caught in a spot where you want to upload your work(cloth shoes, bags etc or service) and find it hard to nail down your message in a way that will attract clients then you don’t want to miss the next article, cause have been in that shoe

 before and I am ready to work with you to erect that first pillar. 

GETTING CLEAR ON WHO YOU SHOULD BE SELLING TO

See you at the top

Abiodun Joseph

I help mission driven business owners harness the potential opportunities resident in their business by tilting their views on various channnels their business can use leverage, relational capital, Mergers and joint venture to Expand their reach.

I publish content every Monday titled “Compounding knowledge” to give you insight on key areas to focus on to move your business forward and on Thursday I publish “Expand your Reach” it’s my weekly masterpiece where I pick a business and highlight several leverage point to create diverse streams of incomes

You thinking why am doing this?

• I derived fufilment when I see businesses getting optimum reward from their business
• Because the ideas and strategies I will be proposing will cost you little or no cost and risk

The Blog will center around Business development. My mission is to mentor 100 startup entrepreneur how use leverage to earn additional 7 figures from their business by the year 2023

The systems in place to achieve this mission

• Blogging twice every week and signing up one business owner to my mentorship program
• My blogs will involve Mainly Leverage strategies and sales but on some ra occasions, i will dive deep to building strong business systems, hiring/motivating staffs
• my ideal client: Astute business owners who is on the hunt for tools and techniques to mine his/her business potential.