When you start your own business, you quickly realize that you are in charge of a lot of things. From accounting to production and everything in between, if you are going into business by yourself for yourself, it’s all you. One of the things that can be tempting for solo business owners is the urge to appeal to as many people as possible in the hopes of attracting more customers. It is only natural to want people to believe that you are the one who can provide what they need. Since you are in charge of how you market your business and what kinds of products or services you offer to potential customers, there is something that you should know about that desire to be all things to all people.
Simply put, the desire to be all things to all people is something that you must avoid at all costs if you want your business to grow and thrive. It is true that you want to keep adding new skills to your repertoire and growing as a professional, but trying to offer everything that any potential customer needs is a recipe for disaster. While it may seem counterintuitive for someone who is hoping to attract lots of business to offer very specialized products or services, it is actually a good thing to do.
By learning what things you are best at and really focusing on building your reputation as an expert in your niche, you create feelings of confidence in yourself and more importantly you inspire confidence in those that are thinking about using your services or buying your products. I have learned a lot about this concept through my work as a freelance writer. Initially, I was bidding on many different kinds of work like transcription, business writing, children’s writing, blogging, and others. Sometimes I got the jobs and sometimes I did not. Most of the time I did good work, and occasionally I got myself into a little bit of trouble – not really actual trouble, but just major time crunches or drastically underbidding because I did not really know the effort it would take to do the work. I have narrowed my criteria for jobs that I choose to bid on to include just a handful of types of work, the ones that I have gotten good at over the past year and a half.
I still only get some of the jobs that I bid on, but I feel that the ones that I win are always in some way similar to jobs that I have already done. My proposals mention that I have done those kinds of things before, and I think that this has a lot to do with winning the bids. The same goes for my legal work. My law career is on a very small scale right now, so I am sticking to what I know. I know legal research and writing and I know how to get clients through a couple of specific types of cases. Not only am I confident that I know what I’m getting into when I pick up a project or client, I feel like that confidence translates into doing a good job because I know what I’m doing. If you are a solo home-based professional, do not be afraid to be specific about what you do or what you offer. You will find that in time, you have built a solid reputation that not only boosts your confidence, it keeps clients talking to their friends and coming back for more.
Photo by jdurham on morguefile.com.