Specialize without fear; increase visibility, momentum, impact, and profit
Learn how to:
• Choose the right beachhead for your business
• Minimize the risk of specializing
• Choose which of the 5 ways of specialization best fits your business
• Earn more visibility and trust for your specialized business
Specialization is challenging because it's mysterious
Everybody says you should specialize, but the decision feels like guessing, or it feels risky. You can see the benefits for others (their value proposition is so clear!), but can’t see how to get your business there.
• If you want to understand how specialization works before diving in
• If you benefit from a systematic approach
• If you don’t know how to choose a specialization
• If you don’t know what to do once you’ve specialized…
…then The Positioning Manual for Indie Consultants is for you.
In guiding hundreds of business owners through this process of specializing, I’ve observed 3 patterns that describe how they make the decision. We tend to do one of the following:
1. Leverage a head start.
2. Pursue an interest in serving a particular kind of business or solving a particular kind of problem.
3. Pursue an entrepreneurial thesis.
A head start is some relative advantage that you possess. Building on an advantage is a specialization accelerant and a risk reducer.
Head starts generally take the form of one or more of these advantages:
• A significant depth or quality of access, or large number of connections, to a target market.
• A significant amount of credibility in a market vertical or within a certain audience.
• A significant depth of expertise in some area.
• A significant depth of insight into a target market’s needs or business realities.
• A significant ability to earn trust from prospects or clients.
You can specialize without any particular head start, but if you ignore a significant head start, you’re making more work for yourself. You might decide to do this for good reasons, but understand what you’re giving up by ignoring that head start.
The Positioning Manual for Indie Consultants can be read in a weekend, or a few hours if you power through it. Illustrated with visualizations of the important concepts and models introduced through the book's readable, friendly text, this book helps you become your own "positioning consultant" and make the critical strategy decision that unlocks a more successful version of your business.
Your best clients lie ahead of you. You don't need to be smarter, more extroverted, or more confident. You need to make one simple-but-challenging decision about how exactly to focus your business. The Positioning Manual for Indie Consultants is the best tool to help you make this decision and find your best clients.
What this book is not:
• A "one weird trick" book. This book will help you make a great specialization decision, but it can't make that decision for you. Your courage and insight into your market's needs are what's required of you; this book amplifies your courage and insight by helping you think about specializing in a strategic way.
• A book that uses a fake formal tone. I wrote this book to sound like a real person speaking, not like a professor or arrogant knowitall. The book also won't waste your time with irrelevant case studies or dumb stories. It's casual but concise.
• A "business card book" I want you to read this book and get everything you need to successfully specialize without outside help. This book is not a thinly-disguised sales pitch for my services.
Author(s): Philip Morgan
Edition: 1
Publisher: Ibex Publishing
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: Publisher's EPUB
Pages: 153
City: Taos, NM
Tags: Business; Marketing; Self-Employment; Consulting; Self-Promotion