Amidst all the solopreneur emphasis on the need to niche one’s business, Matt mentions that his favorite clients, by far, are the ones who, months later, have evolved to something that has absolutely nothing to do with his niche. He highly recommends that the other solopreneurs out there follow the niching literature and consider niching a vital survival technique, but he urges them to, at the same time, be open to the idea that some of their favorite clients won’t fit into that niche at all.

Episode transcript:

Alper Rozanes
You’re listening to the White Rabbit conversations on the art of presenting in a rather noisy world. Your hosts are Matt Krauss and Alper are scientists. Matt helps leaders of international companies speak, write and present with confidence. Alper is a communications trainer and a startup investor with a diverse portfolio of companies in Barcelona. If you like this podcast, please share it with friends and colleagues. Now on to Matt and Alper for today’s conversation.

Alper Rozanes
Matt, in this podcast, you and I have talked a number of times about the importance of focusing on a niche market and serving it and gaining experience and you know, being able to put a better service with each client that you serve.

Alper Rozanes
And lately, you and I talked about outside the podcast about a counter view that you had brought up.

Alper Rozanes
And it reminded me how I think if my history is correct, Einstein also had counter views against Newton’s right, and he was ridiculed for that. So…

Matt Krause
Wait, I’m flattered. But are you comparing me to Einstein?

Alper Rozanes
Yes.

Matt Krause
I’m flattered, but I don’t know if I aspire to that.

Alper Rozanes
Maybe not to him. Exactly. First of all, but to some of his some of his points of views that he took against took up against the establishment.

Matt Krause
Okay. Okay.

Alper Rozanes
So I want to ask you, what did you mean by that? What I believe the phrase that you had used was…

Matt Krause
All grip on niching.

Alper Rozanes
All grip on niching. Yeah, tell me what you meant by that.

Matt Krause
I’ll tell you what I what I meant by that. I’ve got some favorite clients. And they are far and away by orders of magnitude favorite clients. They are, you know, a couple years later, they are the clients that I will remember that I enjoyed working with the most.

Matt Krause
And the reason that I enjoy working with them the most is that clients who are clearly in my niche, and who stay there are very good for increasing operational efficiency, increasing operational effectiveness, stuff like that, the things that you need to improve your craft in your niche. So that’s great, I have nothing against that.

Matt Krause
But then then there’s this other brand of clients. And for me, personally, they they’ve historically have made up about 20% of my client base. And they are clients who maybe initially come to me because they have an issue that they’re in the niche they’re working on.

Matt Krause
And by the way, my niche is basically presentation skills for people who work in international companies.

Matt Krause
So about 20% of my client base, they’ll come to me, because that’s the initial triggering issue that they are working on. But then our work evolves into something else.

Matt Krause
And it has absolutely nothing to do with what they came to me for. But far and away, those clients will be the ones that I enjoy working with the most.

Matt Krause
And for a while, it’s been a mental problem for me, because almost invariably, I’ll be crystal clear for a very short time about why they are there. Maybe they’ll they’ll say something, and every one of them will have a different reason, a different inner existential reason that’s keeping them around, basically.

Matt Krause
They all have a different reason. But they all have a reason. And at some point, don’t mention that reason to me. And for few moments, for a few days, I’ll be crystal clear in my understanding about why they’re there. But then, within a couple of days, or maybe within a week, I’ve forgotten about that. I can’t remember anymore.

Matt Krause
As crystal clear as I used to be on it, I’m not crystal clear anymore. And I’m back to thinking the same question that I was thinking a year a week ago, which is basically why are they here?

Matt Krause
And so I asked myself, Why does this happen? Why do you have these clients who you like working with so much, and then you have this clarity about why they’re here, why doesn’t it stick around? Why does it go away? What’s going on here?

Matt Krause
And so I walked around with that question for a while. And I came up with this phrase, maybe I’m all grip on niching.

Matt Krause
And what I mean by that all grip on niching you know, the phrase, or you know, the the movie, Free Solo with Alex Honnold. Are you familiar with that movie?

Alper Rozanes
No, I’m not.

Matt Krause
So Alex Honnold. So he’s a rock climber, and he’s climbing some face in Yosemite or something like that. In this movie, he’s gonna free solo, you know, I think it’s El Capitan, some face in Yosemite.

Matt Krause
Anyway. So it’s like a death defying activity. And so these doctors, they’re like, let’s scan this guy’s brain in an MRI and see what’s going on in there. Because apparently, this guy is undertaking activities that even crazy people think are crazy. So he’s so far beyond crazy that we can’t even understand what’s going on. So let’s put them in an MRI and see if there’s anything going on in there. So they so that’s what they do they…

Alper Rozanes
There must be something wrong.

Matt Krause
Yes, they figure there must be something wrong. And so that’s what they do. They put him in an MRI and they scan his brain, and so then he’s having this phone call in the movie he’s having this phone call with with the doctor who’s explaining the the test results and the doctor you know, is looking at the amygdala, which is the part of the of the brain that’s responsible for fear.

Matt Krause
And the doctor says, you know, your your amygdala, it’s working, there is a fear response. It’s just that it takes way more than average to make it work than it does for normal people.

Matt Krause
And, and his Alex Honnold’s response to that is, well, maybe, maybe it’s because my amygdala is all grip.

Matt Krause
And what he means by that all grip is that maybe my amygdala has been working so hard for so many years on suppressing this fear response that it can’t operate normally anymore.

Matt Krause
And so that’s what that’s, that’s what I mean by this phrase, all grip on niching. Maybe we as solopreneurs, you know, so much of the solopreneur literature is telling us that we absolutely need to specialize in what we do.

Matt Krause
And, you know, I’m just just to be clear, I’m a big fan of that, I think it’s a great argument, I don’t think that you’ll last more than two years, if you don’t niche if you don’t create a niche for yourself. So I’m not arguing against that at all.

Matt Krause
But I’m suspecting that maybe the fact that so much of the literature is telling us to niche down, you know, specialize, maybe so much of the literature is telling us to do that, that we lose the message, we can’t hear the message anymore that 20% of our customers are giving us which is that for some whatever reason, we are helping them fulfill a deep existential need that they have.

Matt Krause
And it it has very little to do with the niche that we selected or the work that we do, but for some reason, we help them fulfill that existential need. And if you can fulfill if you have some person in your life, who helps you fulfill some deep existential need that you have, that person is going to be priceless to you.

Matt Krause
I think in terms of of of examples of what I’m talking about, I think of a wall painter, like let’s say that I’ve got a wall and the wall is currently painted blue or something and I want that wall painted white.

Matt Krause
So I call in a wall painter and the wall painter, you know, he’s done this a million times, he comes in here, and he paints the wall white. And so my, the initiating factor was that I needed the wall to be white, and he’s done his job, the wall is now white, that’s great. And he’s very professional. He did a great job on that.

Matt Krause
But for some reason, for some reason that none of us can explain that wall painter maybe in our conversation or the way he paints the wall, or god knows what, for some reason that wall painter is helping me answer this deeper existential need that I have about this other thing that I would never have expected that I would talk to him about.

Matt Krause
But for some reason, he’s helping me with that. That wall painter is going to become the most valuable, one of the most valuable people in my life.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, just to make sure that I understand you clearly. I want to ask you a question. In the case of the wall painter, are you talking about a scenario where you need, you may need his different services.

Alper Rozanes
But if you were so focused on the on the niche that he would be in 2Bob’s terms, or the Win Without Pitching terms, he will be leaving money on the table, if he just stuck with his niche and didn’t work with you in other areas is that the kind of thing that you’re talking about?

Matt Krause
It kind of is, the wall painter needs to be a wall painter, I’m not saying that the wall painter should one day wake up and decide to start marketing is himself as a life coach, the wall painter needs to be a wall painter, the wall painter is going to need to continue painting walls, the wall painter is probably going to continue painting walls for years or decades into the future. So the wall painter needs to be a wall painter.

Matt Krause
But the wall painter needs to also be aware that for whatever reason, and it’s as far as I can tell, so far random and unpredictable. For some reason, some of the people who call in that wall painter, something about that wall painter, the way he paints a wall, the way he moves with his brush, the conversations that they have whatever some of the things that the wall painter does for a certain segment of that wall painter’s customer base, that wall painter is going to help them sort through a deeper existential need that nobody expected a wall painter to help them with. That’s what I mean by that.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, I understand more clearly now and we are coming to the end of the podcast but before wrapping things up, I would like to ask, can you can you give like a more relevant example from our own industry for example?

Matt Krause
Sure. Let’s say for example, you are a British slide designer in Thailand and you think that a customer is coming to because of your awesome slide design skills, but maybe that customer is actually coming to you because she is inspired by the way you moved to Thailand and are working remotely from there and she’s just buying your slide design services because that’s what you sell and you’re doing great work.

Matt Krause
She really likes the slides that you design, but she could there are a lot of people who could do that slide design for and she’s so the need for slide design and your ability to supply slide design is not actually why she’s there.

Matt Krause
So I just wanted to you know, in this in this realm of you need to niche down, again, let me let me stress that I’m totally, totally bought into that I think it’s a great argument, I don’t think that somebody would last more than a couple of years if they didn’t do it.

Matt Krause
But my suggestion is don’t overestimate the specialness of the service that you provide, because some of your favorite clients, and in my case, I noticed that it’s pretty high. It’s, it’s been about 20%, some of your clients might not actually be with you, because of that particular service that you provide.

Matt Krause
Maybe that was why they initially came to you. But after a few months, they kind of they kind of moved on, and they realized I’m getting something much more out of this.

Alper Rozanes
Okay. So it’s not like you’re going too much against the establishment like I, like I mentioned in the beginning, I get that now. And before we finish, I’d like to ask, is there a recommendation or actionable items that you suggest to use this information in a in a way that would increase our business or productivity or something,

Matt Krause
There’s no, there’s no tangible action point that I could give. And if there was, you know, maybe I would be like a business guru, and I’d be flying around on a Learjet or something like that.

Matt Krause
So there’s no tangible action point that I can give. What I can mention is that in this process of becoming all grip on niching, which, again, I think is is quite necessary, in this process of becoming all grip on niching, don’t completely lose your human side and forget that maybe some of your clients, as many as 20% of them, don’t forget that some of your clients might actually be with you for some reason that has absolutely nothing to do with the niche that you are imagining that you are doing.

Alper Rozanes
Okay. So I think it would be safe to classify this episode, one of those as one of those therapeutical sessions, where we just empty ourselves. Okay.

Matt Krause
Yes, that would be that would be a fair way to describe it.

Alper Rozanes
Okay. All right.

Matt Krause
Well, thank you very much, Alper.

Alper Rozanes
Thank you. I’ll talk to you next week.

Matt Krause
All right. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.