The best way to shift your general practice to your niche

If you’ve been in business for a while, you may have an assortment of clients and types of work that you do. You have identified the one particular area that you really want to concentrate on. How do you make this transition to focus on your niche?

I recommend that you build up to it. The last thing you want to do is let go of all your current clients to start fresh and then have no money coming in. That creates the 3am sweats, right? When you are still in the business building phase what you want is more clients and more money.

The idea is that you don’t have to turn away business while building your niche. You can say yes to referrals and clients who come to you for your services to keep the cash flow moving. However, you can start to focus your marketing to attract your niche.

Here’s a great example. I had a client who is a videographer. She shot all kinds of videos from weddings, to business, to Internet marketing. But her true passion was shooting videos about dancing. When she went to networking events, she started to say something like, “I’m a general video producer with a growing specialty in dance video.”

Now this client didn’t turn away other video business while she was growing her dance niche. She took all the jobs that suited her needs to get more clients and more money. Then, as her video business grew, she could afford to become more selective about the jobs she took. With time, she finally got to the place where she could decide to only shoot dance video and has stopped doing all other types of video.

By being clear about your niche and applying the marketing systems, you can grow the part of your business where your true passion lies until you can focus solely on that work. As you get more and more clients in your preferred area, you will shift your marketing materials until they only promote your niche. Step-by-step is just a smart way to go.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Are you struggling to balance the work you want with the work that brings in cash? Think of how you can integrate the two. This way you can talk about what you do and the niche you want to grow. Look at your marketing materials for ways to increase your niche slowly. As you start making this transition, so much more about your niche will become clear. That’s why you want to let it build while you are still bringing in clients to support you through the shift to your ideal clients.