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Jesse P. Gilmore
Everybody. This is Jesse P. Gilmore, Agency transformation Coach and founder of Niche in Control, author of the Agency Owners Guide to Freedom and the creator of Leverage for Growth. I’m the host of the Leverage for Growth podcast, and I know that in order for you to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within your mindset, skillset and leadership style.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
I am on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case, study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies at.
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Nicheincontrol.com/casestudy
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Nicheincontrol.com/casestudy
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Nicheincontrol.com/casestudy
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Corey, thanks a lot for jumping on. I’ve actually been very excited and spent almost the entire week talking about niches and whatever you call it these days.
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Corey Quinn
Vertical vertical specialization.
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That’s.
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Corey Quinn
That’s what I call it. Who is a man?
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Well, yeah, this is a this is ultimately I mean, my company is called Niche IN Control. And I know that you’re even writing a book about this whole topic. And so it’s a good topic to talk about.
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Corey Quinn
Yeah, it’s my favorite topic. I ever since, you know, leaving an in-house role at the agency that I used to work for. I asked myself, What question do I want to or what problem do I want to be? I want to specialize in solving. Yeah. And the thing that that I love doing is helping founder led agencies to sort of escape that founder led situation that a lot of generalist agencies find themselves in, where they’re running the sales.
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Corey Quinn
And so I I’ve fallen in love with this problem of helping them to escape by becoming a vertical market specialist. That’s certainly not the only way that that that an agency can scale. They’ve seen a lot of great SEO agencies and whatnot, do great and can scale really well. However, what I’m particularly interested in is this this topic of scaling an agency by leveraging an expertise, building and expertise within a vertical industry or within a specific vertical or industry.
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Yeah.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
And it reminds me of where we had done a webinar together about specialization. And you can specialize based around what you do or who you serve. Kind of a combination of those.
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Corey Quinn
That’s exactly right.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, I know a lot of people have a lot of questions, and I know we kind of have listed out some questions and different scenarios that people go through and and so today I would love to talk to you about those different scenarios and kind of get your understanding of, you know, how you would tackle that or what advice you’d give them.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
And we’ll kind of go back and forth more as a dialog than anything.
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Corey Quinn
And yeah.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Brandon, I know that a lot of people get stuck in the complexity of niches and trying to figure out, do I choose the right one and a bunch of things. But one thing that I’ve learned in that process, helping agency is kind of figure out what that that niches and focusing not just based around the the kind of the target company or demographic piece, but also more of that psychographic understanding of their currency desire, future and stuff.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
And what I’ve realized is that it’s not really a destination. It’s more of like a journey. And it has been something that you’ve also kind of experienced yourself.
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Corey Quinn
I think, you know, maybe say more about that. So I want to make sure I’m really clear about how the psychographics come in. Are you saying that you you help guide your clients to focus on and identify and focus on a niche based on the psychographic of the of that specific market, let’s call it.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that we focus on is humanizing the message in the market and really getting clear on what problems are you solving, What’s the current state desired future of your ideal client and how do the services that you’re offering actually transition from where they are to where they want to go? And it’s a different and different way of looking at a niche.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
A lot of times people do based off of like an industry or different things. We start looking at the holistic picture of also the solution. But a lot of times the clients that I’m working with, you know, have smaller agencies, so a lot of them are either solopreneur is all the way up to maybe like ten employees. I have a couple of clients that are around 15 or so.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
So when we’re looking at the journey piece, you know, the founders interests, their passions are a little bit more needed in order for them to kind of figure out what niche or specialization they have. Where it might be a little bit different with agencies are a lot bigger or it is.
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Sure focused around service.
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Corey Quinn
So. So in other words, a a a method for finding a good niche to target is in part due to the founder and what they have an interest in, like an intrinsic interest interest in solving a specific type of problem regardless of whether or not they all fall in an industry or something else. Is that kind of what it is?
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, because there’s some things that are based around industry. Are easier to target, you know, if you’re like, manufacturing, that’s easy, right? But a lot of times if you just focus on you know, manufacturing, you don’t really have that kind of message that will pierce through the noise of a noisy market. And the reason why it’s so important for a founder, especially in the earlier stages of the game and to have a passion or be able to rely on something that they’re very competent in is because they have that it’ll show in their sales calls, you know, if they’re not passionate about it.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
And I find one of the biggest challenges that people face when it comes to niches in and being able to figure out their specialization at the earlier stage is they feel as though and that the value to a client is based around putting more things in a bag. It’s like it’s like you even go to a grocery store and you’re trying to get lasagna ingredients, but you just keep on putting more ingredients that have nothing to do with lasagna.
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You know.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
And then thinking about value as is more things in the grocery bag as opposed to the actual recipe. That makes sense. Yeah.
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Corey Quinn
Yeah, I think so. You know what? I’ve seen a pattern of success in the agency founders that that I interview on my podcast is and these are agencies that have vertical ised or in other words, specialized in serving one specific vertical market, whether it’s roofers or, you know, attorneys or dentists, whatever it is. The ones that do really, really well intrinsically are the ones that have some kind of connection to that vertical market, whether it’s they they have a familial connection through it.
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Corey Quinn
Maybe their parents are, you know, dentists or whatnot, or maybe they came from a career previous to starting the agency in that market. So they had a sort of a head start. They knew they understood the major players and so on, so forth. But but those things are also not required. Like I’m thinking of Alex Member Leo He’s the founder of Cardinal Digital Marketing.
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Corey Quinn
They started off as a generalist and they were they were getting crushed by all the sort of the challenges of serving to many different types of businesses. And he decided to niche into a vertical market and they decided on medical practices because he genuinely wants to help people out. And of all the different choices that they researched, the you know, one of the reasons why he chose medical practices, specifically multi-location medical clinics and whatnot, was that he felt by serving that community, he would help indirectly help a lot of other people.
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Corey Quinn
So if these these health care companies and these clinics are are better off through better marketing and better strategy, then he’d be able to sort of fulfill his his vision for himself and for his agency of of helping more people. And so sometimes it comes down to that just, you know, having a care for not only the people that you’re serving, but also that industry, those those agency owners, you can approach sort of vertical ization or niching down from that sort of give a damn perspective.
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Corey Quinn
We got to give a damn in my, you know, my experience versus just treat a niche or a market based off of the spreadsheet. Well, there’s a lot of businesses and they have a good budgets. And, you know, if we can get 0.5% of the market, then we’re going to be successful. You need you need also you need that, but you also need to layer on the, you know, the care aspect of of of that approach in order to be successful, in my experience.
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Corey Quinn
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Jesse P. Gilmore
And I think that that touches on the reasons and why why I focus on helping agencies with the niches and focusing on the human aspect of things a lot of times because business should be fun, number one, and it should actually make an impact. I truly believe that entrepreneurs in general, whether they’re one of the greatest gifts to the world, when they can just let their vision be brought into the world and provide a great experience for people and, you know, make an impact, you know?
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Jesse P. Gilmore
So, yeah, yeah, the give a damn part. I like.
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That.
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Corey Quinn
Kind of give a damn. And so much so that, you know, I’ve actually called it I’ve kind of coined the term called deep specialization and it goes, that’s, that’s when you specialize beyond just the spreadsheet and you actually you actually have empathy for the individuals and the industry you target. That’s that’s the that’s the method that I teach.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
That’s awesome. I’m starting to realize a lot more about why I set it up the way I never even thought about the empathy piece. I always insight about the human aspect. And there is a a feeling of empathy that comes from understanding a lot more about the human aspects of the person that you’re trying to help.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yes. And being able to do that.
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Corey Quinn
Yeah. The reason why, I’ll tell you what for the longevity is if you want to stick around for the long run, you’re going to go through some market cycles. You’re going to go through, you know, highs and lows. And it’s those agencies, as an example, that leaned in during COVID and are the ones now that are, you know, growing 70%.
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Corey Quinn
There’s a me this woman, Nicole, she has an agency called Break the ICE and they were her focus is in the travel and tourism industry which she’s been around for almost 20 years. And of course, when COVID hit, everything was in lockdown. The entire industry that she was serving, entire revenue source from from from which she she and her employees, you know, source was in a complete lockdown instead of kind of pivoting out.
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Corey Quinn
She actually launched a podcast. She wrote a book and she she she didn’t lose any employees. Revenue was barely impacted despite staying in this very, very difficult vertical. And as a result of doing all this thought leadership and giving back to the her clients in the industry itself, she’s now having coming out of COVID. She is now she’s going to be she’s going to grow 70% in 2020 for 2014.
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Corey Quinn
She actually doubled her revenue last year. And so that comes through having empathy. If you don’t have empathy in that situation during COVID, when you’re your focus is travel and tourism, you’re out of there type of thing, and you’re going to have to start over.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, that’s an awesome story. And yeah, the the the fact that you said right before that story that if you’re in it for the long haul, you’re going to experience a lot of different types of cycles. And I think that it’s really important when you are choosing an edge to come from a foundation of like understanding why you’re in there.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
There’s got to be something that’s pulling you as opposed to pushing you. And there’s more of that intrinsic motivation piece. Yes, that I find that a lot of other agency programs that maybe service similar groups of people that I do, a lot of times they’re just focused around like, what’s the high ticket niche age? FAC okay, let’s go into age fact and it saturates the market and there’s not a lot of that kind of intrinsic motivation piece that that we’re talking about here.
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Corey Quinn
And guess what? Having that intrinsic care and give a damn. That’s marketing. You’re going to stand out because you’re not the one who’s just trying to make a quick buck. You’re the one that’s really interested in the growth of the H back industry.
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Corey Quinn
Right. The different tones and different intention, different energy as you’re as you’re coming into the market in people who are in that market, frankly, the back, you know, business owners, God bless them, they’re probably being inundated by everybody and, you know, under the sun, too, trying when their business and that’s a lot of noise. Tremendous amount of noise.
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Corey Quinn
And so that one way to make signal is by being, you know, genuinely wanting to help.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. Because that authenticity shines. Yeah. And it can be felt rather than just heard. So one of the questions that I’m sure that anybody that’s listening to this that maybe has not chosen an edge before or thought about it, you know, how do I find my niche in a saturated market? That’s probably one of the first questions. And we can kind of go back and forth between it.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
But what are your initial thoughts?
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Corey Quinn
Well, my initial thoughts are I would love to dig in if I was asked that question. I’d love to dig into this this assumption that there is that there’s a saturated market. My belief and my experience is that every market that’s worth going after is quote unquote, saturated. A lot of you are going after it.
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Right.
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Corey Quinn
So I should prevent you from developing an expertise in a in a vertical market. I always come from the empathy piece. And, you know, where do you feel a connection? Who do you want to help? Number one and and or two. You know, who who do you want to what problem do you want to solve better than anyone else in the world that said, there’s there’s a list of criteria I have in my book.
00:15:16:15 – 00:15:35:00
Corey Quinn
You mentioned earlier I have a book coming out that that I that I walk through to help guide people through this niche or vertical specialization process to help narrow down the number of available niches down to a small sort of subset.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. I like how you immediately attacked the saturated market part of that question. Yeah, because, yeah, anybody that does the market research will realize which ones are available.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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Corey Quinn
Any market it really any market has been is being pursued by, you know, a sophisticated, you know, established companies. And on one end of the spectrum, as well as young upstarts who are, you know, just launching landing pages and doing, you know, I generated, you know, generative AI based, you know, content strategies like there’s no there’s no rock that’s been that hasn’t been turned over.
00:16:19:00 – 00:16:42:14
Corey Quinn
So I think this this this quote unquote, belief that it’s saturated is is it’s a limiting belief. Even this is even true in, you know, gosh, I’ve been I’ve been doing this for a while. But, you know, the attorney markets and even the home services, very, very popular verticals, I still think there’s opportunity. I’ve seen small upstart agencies be very successful in these spaces.
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Yeah.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. I guess how I would answer that question as well, regardless of the saturated market being a piece, but finding the niche, I think there’s kind of two main paths depending on what stage of business the is and if they’re kind of on an earlier stage where they’ve had a few clients or they’re just starting off or trying to figure that out, or they’ve only had like maybe one one type of a client that fits what they would like to go after.
00:17:10:10 – 00:17:47:17
Jesse P. Gilmore
Then that piece where they’re trying to figure out the niche, they have to do a little bit more testing and market validation and and so forth and go a little bit more into, you know, like a testing stage and reducing the amount of risk it takes to make that jump. But if people have had a lot of clients that might be in that certain niche or they just serve a lot of clients are kind of like that generalist agency or serving pretty much everybody, then it’s really based around getting client feedback and getting to understand a bit more about what are the commonalities between clients that’s gotten great results from your services.
00:17:47:18 – 00:18:06:09
Jesse P. Gilmore
What did you deliver? You know, what type of business was it? Was it more of like that premium service or high volume? Getting to understand a bit more about those kind of things directly from client interviews and getting client feedback is one of the things I’m a big, big proponent of that. I find a lot of agencies are not actually doing.
00:18:06:11 – 00:18:41:20
Corey Quinn
Yeah, yeah. And speaking to your first point, you know, unless you have a very strong, clear signal that, hey, I want to serve dentists or serve the specific market, I’m actually a fan of being more of a generalist, serving lots of different types of companies for a period of time because it allows you to go from you know, a pure start up agency to having an operational business where you’ll have clients, clients will come and go, and over time you begin to see, Hey, you know, we’re really good at this and we really good at serving this type of client.
00:18:41:20 – 00:18:55:02
Corey Quinn
And this these type of clients need this specific problem. And at that point you’re able to make a much more high quality decision on where to focus your your agency versus just taking a shot in the dark and seeing how it goes.
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Yeah.
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Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. And depending on and so that kind of leads to a question that I wasn’t really perceiving or a thought that was going to happen, but so sometimes people think in that earlier stage that let’s just say that their SEO and websites, that’s, that’s their main thing and they are trying to figure out who to target for SEO and websites and they think that the targeting or the message resonance is not going to happen just because they’re trying to.
00:19:29:01 – 00:19:48:09
Jesse P. Gilmore
They haven’t really gotten the experience there. I find that that’s one of the biggest challenges that they have. And then they figure out, do I, do I need to niche? And according to the specialization that we had, we had done on a previous training. You talked about specialization being on, you know, what you do and then also on who you serve.
00:19:48:09 – 00:19:55:03
Jesse P. Gilmore
So yeah, would you say that they’re already kind of specialized because their services are, you know, more specific or But.
00:19:55:05 – 00:20:17:01
Corey Quinn
Yeah, absolutely. There’s this idea of specialization and to your point, it goes in if you can be specialized in what you do, we are, you know, we are an SEO agency. We’ll work with businesses small and large, B to B, B to C, you know, you hire us because we have a great product. We will your specialized specialize in what you do.
00:20:17:03 – 00:20:38:27
Corey Quinn
Or alternatively, you can say, you know, hey, we just work with plastic surgeons. You know, that’s this is more of the other specialized and like this is who we work with. And yeah, we’ll do websites and we’ll do content and we’ll do, you know, a whole bunch of different things for them. But whatever marketing or digital marketing problem that they have, you know, we will do that because that’s who we are.
00:20:39:02 – 00:20:59:15
Corey Quinn
We’re focused on solving the growth problem for, for plastic surgeons. And the the combination of those is when you blend a specialization in what you do for a specific audience. So in this example, you would be it would be SEO for plastic surgeons. Sure. Right?
00:20:59:18 – 00:21:01:00
00:21:01:03 – 00:21:34:06
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. It’s interesting because in business, I’ve always realized that as you solve one problem, another one emerges and that’s like not never ending, but that when you get to a point where you’re focused on like the plastic surgeons SEO, that kind of focus, you have a very targeted group. But then one of the things that I’ve realized just interviewing like a thousand agencies over the last five years is that the new problem is based around having it to where your clients are not competing against each other.
00:21:34:08 – 00:21:35:27
So it’s like a.
00:21:36:00 – 00:21:38:03
Jesse P. Gilmore
Different, different problem to have. Yeah.
00:21:38:05 – 00:21:58:17
Corey Quinn
Yeah. No, it mean it’s kind of a high quality problem, but it definitely something that when you are working with local businesses, you know, some attorneys don’t want their competition across the street using the same marketing company that they do because they feel like they have a competitive advantage by working with your agency. And so they want to prevent that.
00:21:58:17 – 00:22:10:28
Corey Quinn
So yeah, there’s that definitely comes up and there’s there’s playbooks to address that head on and be able to minimize the impact to your business. But you can’t you can’t erase that completely.
00:22:11:01 – 00:22:12:05
Yeah.
00:22:12:08 – 00:22:42:22
Jesse P. Gilmore
And I would say to anybody, so if for any reason, not necessarily that you’re doing SEO for plastic surgeons, but if you have done that hyper personalization, you have some issue with the the services and the kind of like having certain areas where you can’t compete and so like that, that would be a time as long as you can deliver a premium service to raise your prices or create a waitlist and make it to where if you’re not going to be serving as many clients, that ultimately you’re still increasing revenue based around increasing yeses.
00:22:42:25 – 00:22:45:09
But yeah, yeah.
00:22:45:11 – 00:22:49:00
Jesse P. Gilmore
So a couple more questions. I like how this conversation has gone. Core answer.
00:22:49:03 – 00:22:50:28
Yeah, yeah, I love, I.
00:22:50:28 – 00:22:52:02
Corey Quinn
Love this topic.
00:22:52:05 – 00:22:52:28
Yeah.
00:22:53:01 – 00:23:00:17
Jesse P. Gilmore
So here’s another question. What strategies can help me understand the needs and problems of my target niche?
00:23:00:19 – 00:23:29:19
Corey Quinn
Absolutely. This is such a great question. You said it not too long ago. I’m a huge fan of actually doing client interviews. And there’s a whole, you know, in the world of product marketing, there’s a whole world or a whole universe of different types of client interviews. You know, you have user interviews, you have win loss interviews. But I really care about when when building a strategy to target a specific vertical is the buying journey.
00:23:29:21 – 00:23:59:00
Corey Quinn
And the buying journey interviews are when you have an agency, let’s say you are a generalist and you identify that you want to really want to focus on attorneys. You go to your attorney clients and you ask them, Do you have a client interview, which is a structured conversation. It’s not a loose, casual buddy buddy conversation. It is a structured conversation where you’re trying to elicit the, you know, how and why they bought from your firm.
00:23:59:03 – 00:24:22:07
Corey Quinn
So there’s there’s a there’s a list of criteria and and a way to do it so that you can get to really high quality information that will help you to sort of turn around and leverage that in your positioning and your messaging that communicates alluding to what we were saying earlier, communicates you truly understand this market. You have empathy for them because you’re using their words.
00:24:22:07 – 00:24:32:10
Corey Quinn
You understand how to articulate their problems better than they can and all of those type of things. But it comes from those client interviews. It’s a great source of of.
00:24:32:12 – 00:24:33:20
That.
00:24:33:22 – 00:24:42:25
Corey Quinn
Information for for for knowing how to really to get to know them and how to ultimately serve them better.
00:24:42:27 – 00:24:47:05
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, that’s cool. I call it. Why did you purchase interview?
00:24:47:07 – 00:24:48:08
Yeah.
00:24:48:11 – 00:24:51:09
Corey Quinn
That important. And you see your point? Most people don’t do it.
00:24:51:12 – 00:24:52:18
00:24:52:21 – 00:25:13:08
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. One of the things that we do with our agency clients, and I just finished a revised curriculum, and I don’t know if you can see behind me, but I got, like, a whiteboard with a bunch of Post-it notes. But. But, yeah, we actually build that into the operations, and it’s just a touchpoint that we have built into our clients agencies.
00:25:13:08 – 00:25:40:17
Jesse P. Gilmore
And so over a period of time, they’re able to develop and understand a bit more about why did you purchase and what results they experience so far. And it actually sets up for really what’s most important in this whole journey is client feedback, whether it’s positive or negative or anything like that. It just gives you an opportunity to not only understand what is working and then also what needs to be improved for a good client experience.
00:25:40:19 – 00:26:01:24
Jesse P. Gilmore
And so yeah, I would say one of the main strategies, I think we’re in alignment there with the way you purchase or the informational interview and just understanding a bit more about their buyer journey and, you know, even the decision making process that led them to decide that this is the agency or the business that we want to move forward with.
00:26:01:26 – 00:26:02:22
Yeah.
00:26:02:24 – 00:26:06:22
Corey Quinn
That’s that’s that’s an important critical step.
00:26:06:25 – 00:26:07:21
Awesome.
00:26:07:24 – 00:26:21:20
Jesse P. Gilmore
All right. I got another one for you. And this one, I think that you focus on a little bit more than I do, which is how do you evaluate the profitability of a niche before specializing?
00:26:21:22 – 00:26:54:04
Corey Quinn
Sure. Well, there’s definitely a process that I recommend going through to become very clear on what vertical to target and basically to to really dedicate the future of your agency on. It’s a high, it’s a very important high, high value decision. So knowing that they are profitable and that things like there are a large enough pool of those businesses that it makes sense to focus on them and that, you know, that there’s enough revenue there that makes sense.
00:26:54:07 – 00:27:23:17
Corey Quinn
There’s a couple of benchmarks. One is that the target vertical has greater than 2000 businesses in it, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you get below that, it’s probably too saturated with other other agencies. Not a lot of opportunity for for growth potentially it’s slower. And if there’s more than, let’s say, 10,000, you’re probably not targeting specifically enough.
00:27:23:21 – 00:27:55:16
Corey Quinn
You’re you’re targeting to part of an audience. And so therefore you’re marketing your positioning may or may not be as impactful as if you were more focused. The other thing that I talk about, and by the way, that came that comes from David C Baker in his his book, The Business of Expertise, I believe, And the other the other metric that I like is does the average business in the industry that I’m interested in targeting, do they make more than $1,000,000 a year on average, like there are all the businesses in that vertical together on average?
00:27:55:16 – 00:28:30:07
Corey Quinn
What is the you know, is it more than $1,000,000? And the reason why is because $1,000,000 at million dollars revenue at least, you know, ballpark, let’s say they they invest 10% of that revenue back into marketing, which is $100,000 and that’s a year. And you divide that by 12 months, that’s about 833 $8,333. And in today’s world, $8,000 does not go that far for for marketing any type of business.
00:28:30:09 – 00:28:56:03
Corey Quinn
Yeah. When you include the website, the reputation management, PPC page, social, your podcast, your content marketing, your SEO plan, you know, on and on and on and on. And $8,000 gets gets chewed up pretty quickly. And if you’re targeting an industry or a vertical that’s making on average, let’s say, $200,000, there’s just not that much money to go around.
00:28:56:05 – 00:29:22:14
Corey Quinn
And you know, unless you’re a SAS point solution, you know, like an email platform, you know, there’s a little load, a dollar figure which, you know, obviously we’re talking to agencies here that doesn’t it doesn’t really compute. So I recommend trying to target verticals where the average business is making over $1,000,000 so that you know, that you’re going in industry and there’s there’s actually cash available for for people to pay you.
00:29:22:16 – 00:29:26:05
Yeah, Yeah, I.
00:29:26:07 – 00:29:35:22
Jesse P. Gilmore
I was on, I was on a discovery call with a potential client like about two weeks ago or so and I was like, so is your ideal client. They’re like a client that pays.
00:29:35:24 – 00:29:46:14
It’s like, yeah, I that’s going to be hard to target, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like those, too. That. That’s awesome.
00:29:46:17 – 00:30:21:12
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. A couple more questions. I think one of them that I want to dive into is like, how do I communicate my new specialized focus to existing clients? So let’s say they are that generalist. They’ve decided to go towards lawyers or, you know, whatever the focus is, you know, how do I communicate that? And sometimes to, to the second question is sometimes they get really nervous about making a switch switch to my website that I’m now focused around plastic surgeons when I might be serving somebody else that might not fit that niche.
00:30:21:12 – 00:30:25:12
Jesse P. Gilmore
So I guess know what’s your what’s your take on that?
00:30:25:15 – 00:30:47:17
Corey Quinn
My take is that your clients, your current clients who are non who don’t fit in that new vertical, don’t really care about the fact that you’re now positioned to help plastic surgeons or attorneys as long as they continue to get the value that they’ve been getting from you and nothing else materially changes for them. And they’re going to get the same account manager and the same results and the same intention.
00:30:47:20 – 00:31:12:18
Corey Quinn
Great. They couldn’t care less because what they’re at that point, it’s all about the relationship, you know, this positioning stuff that doesn’t affect them at all unless it does, you know, if it does affect them, that’s a different conversation. But but pretty much every almost every single agency power that I’ve interviewed took that approach where, yeah, we went from a generalist to a specialist and our clients are still with us.
00:31:12:18 – 00:31:30:27
Corey Quinn
The legacy clients are still with us today, 15, 20 years later, you know, the balloon maker and the pool cleaner, you know, whatever that is. And that’s fine. You know, frankly, from a practical perspective, you’ve got to keep the lights on. As an agency. You can’t just fire all your clients and then just start from scratch. I wouldn’t recommend that.
00:31:30:29 – 00:31:32:16
00:31:32:19 – 00:31:56:14
Corey Quinn
You know, and then when it comes to, you know, switching over time, you don’t necessarily have to burn the ships and, you know, just say no to anything else that comes in. What I see a lot of agencies do is they’re transitioning is they’ll focus their sales and marketing towards a specific vertical and maybe reposition the website and the messaging.
00:31:56:16 – 00:32:15:21
Corey Quinn
But they may be getting inbounds. The referrals that don’t that are businesses that aren’t in that new vertical. And I think it’s a good idea to continue to say yes until you don’t need to say yes anymore. Right. And so, yeah, just be I would say take a very practical approach. The vertical focus is about the future.
00:32:15:24 – 00:32:17:02
00:32:17:04 – 00:32:32:28
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I was working with that client and. And she is like, I don’t know if if I change the website or the LinkedIn profile, I don’t know. There’s like a lot of issues that I’m foreseeing or concerns with that. And I was just like, do it by Friday.
00:32:33:00 – 00:32:35:19
And then I’m.
00:32:35:21 – 00:32:39:16
Jesse P. Gilmore
Doing it. And then she’s like, What I realize is that.
00:32:39:18 – 00:32:39:29
No.
00:32:39:29 – 00:32:55:16
Jesse P. Gilmore
One really like came at me and it wasn’t that big of a deal. And I was like, nice. And then of course I have a mastermind for six figure agencies, and then the next person is like two steps before her. And I was like, I’m really worried about it. And then she is like, It’s actually not that big of a deal.
00:32:55:16 – 00:33:07:29
Corey Quinn
So hey guys. Yeah, I think people make it much bigger in their heads than it is. And by the way, your clients aren’t going to your website, so they’re not going to know unless you tell them.
00:33:08:01 – 00:33:13:05
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, it’s not like you have to do some like company wide or client wide announcement.
00:33:13:05 – 00:33:15:13
That I’m now focused on these people.
00:33:15:13 – 00:33:27:11
Corey Quinn
And yeah, if you plan on firing them because for whatever reason, yes, you should talk to them and help them to understand why. But, but if it’s going to be business as usual for them, you know, it’s not there’s not much to do there.
00:33:27:13 – 00:33:28:22
00:33:28:24 – 00:33:47:00
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. That kind of leads towards and something that I’m a big proponent of and experience in my own business. I don’t own an agency, but another thing that I teach agency clients is the power of a proof of concept. Are you familiar with that term generally?
00:33:47:06 – 00:33:47:27
Corey Quinn
Yeah.
00:33:48:00 – 00:34:18:01
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. The way that I view it as a proof of concept, you have to have five paying clients for the particular offer service or it delivers an understanding of the validation piece. Yeah. And, and I find that any time someone is trying to figure out like testing, messaging, testing a new offer or a package or even a niche or any of that kind of stuff, you have to go through a proof of concept and being able to test is it working?
00:34:18:01 – 00:34:42:06
Jesse P. Gilmore
Is this service delivering what it’s supposed to do conceptually? And I think that anybody that is trying to maybe switch from being that generalist and more of a specialist and they’re trying to figure out the communication piece, ultimately you’re going to want to test the communication with that new niche and go through a process of a proof of concept before potentially making a big switch.
00:34:42:06 – 00:35:00:03
Jesse P. Gilmore
And maybe that is more based on those earlier stages of an agency. Maybe those people that we talked about before that might only have a few different types of clients and they’re trying to figure out exactly. I’ve only had one client and this one thing, what I need to do, the proof of concept seems to be really important.
00:35:00:06 – 00:35:21:03
Corey Quinn
And it brings up a good point, which is that, you know, the proof of concept gets you evidence that what you created is of value and there’s a demand for it. But I believe that these things are always in draft. There’s no final version of any of this. You’re always going to get more information. You’re always going to be refining and improving and learning new things.
00:35:21:06 – 00:35:46:07
Corey Quinn
And yeah, as a byproduct of focusing on a vertical, you’ll be able to, in my experience, accelerate that a bit only because you’re you’re just you’re targeting a specific customer, have specific needs and the longer you spend time in that world, the lot, the quicker you will pick up on the so the nuances that they care about that you as an outsider, you wouldn’t be able to pick up because you’re just not focused enough.
00:35:46:09 – 00:35:47:16
00:35:47:19 – 00:36:05:10
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. That kind of leads towards something I haven’t really ever shared on my podcast. I think that. But how did I infiltrate the agency niche? And because ultimately everybody asked me, like you wrote a book about agencies and you haven’t an agency, How did you learn that?
00:36:05:12 – 00:36:06:15
And.
00:36:06:18 – 00:36:34:17
Jesse P. Gilmore
And one of the things that I did that I’m just actually starting to remember and kind of teach my clients is that secondary research department. So not only was I getting kind of like discovery calls and getting to understand that and I take copious notes, never see me and like a call, I’m just like this typographer. But, but anyway, the secondary research that I did was one of my mentors when I first started off is like, it’s like you’re going to choose two different paths.
00:36:34:19 – 00:37:05:12
Jesse P. Gilmore
Either you’re a consumer or you’re a producer and you can’t really make it big if you’re a consumer constantly. And one of the best ways that you can get secondary research is actually take all of your social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, so forth. And just unfollow anybody that’s not in the niche and then start following all your top 100 or dream 100 influencers within their right and and then subscribe to like set up a new email.
00:37:05:17 – 00:37:06:15
Not your that.
00:37:06:15 – 00:37:34:21
Jesse P. Gilmore
Your work one, but set up a new email and subscribe to all the newsletters are based around that industry or niche. And what I’ve done is I’ve done that. I unfollowed everybody on LinkedIn when I first off, I had 2000 connections from all different like probably on some of my 28 jobs before this, you know, And, and then I started focusing on only connecting with people that were my ideal clients.
00:37:34:24 – 00:37:59:19
Jesse P. Gilmore
I did the same thing with Facebook. I started joining a bunch of Facebook groups, all based around agencies, right? I started taking notes on what were the problems that people, you know, came up with, what were the questions that people were asking? And I started to do that. I did that over five years and every single discovery call and I have I take copious notes and I review those, and I’ve probably done about a thousand sales calls or discovery calls over the last five years.
00:37:59:21 – 00:38:09:18
Jesse P. Gilmore
And that is one way that I can speak the language, I can understand trends, I can do different things that others might not be able to do, that even might be an agency owner, which is kind of cool.
00:38:09:18 – 00:38:42:04
Corey Quinn
Yeah, it’s great. It does take time to kind of saturate your understanding of the nuances of being in that vertical, the language, the the unspoken cultural aspects of it, the true pains, the nuances. I do think it takes, it does take time. Unfortunately, it’s not a quick fix type of, you know, marketing thing where you just throw up a landing page and you can say, well, you know, and we specialize in agencies or whatever it is and see immediate long term results.
00:38:42:04 – 00:38:49:29
Corey Quinn
It does take time. But but the the impacts are real. Like you could build a very profitable business over time.
00:38:50:02 – 00:39:09:15
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. And I think in the webinar that we did on specialization, you had talked about like 18 months. Is that kind of like a time frame that people, if they’re making that switch and they want to gain traction and start, you know, you know, increasing their market share and stuff like that is 18 months, kind of like at least.
00:39:09:18 – 00:39:32:23
Corey Quinn
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s, it’s kind of a you know, it’s a good benchmark to to plan for a couple other benchmarks depending on the type of business you target is 100 clients. So if you’re targeting painters house painters you know get to 100 at your first big milestone. And as a result of having 100 or more, you begin to see the flywheel of referrals and whatnot.
00:39:32:25 – 00:40:12:03
Corey Quinn
The other big milestone that that I like to talk about is the 3% market share in. That presumes that you understand how big the market is that you’re targeting, which is a lot of agencies, even ones who are successful in a niche, don’t really understand how big or small their agency, their vertical is. But once you know it, once you know it, you can if you if you target 3% of that, that market, that is a signal that you may be ready for your next vertical market to get to 3% requires a lot of effort and a lot of a lot of success, especially for big markets.
00:40:12:03 – 00:40:33:15
Corey Quinn
And once you’re able to get to that 3%, you’re probably in a position where able to systematize and be very product driven, process driven in that vertical that you as a founder can lift your head up and say, okay, we’re good on attorneys, We’ve got the people, the staff, the processes and the software, everything’s great there. We know how to go get more.
00:40:33:18 – 00:40:37:20
Corey Quinn
Now let’s go find the second vertical to go dominate.
00:40:37:22 – 00:40:42:13
Jesse P. Gilmore
But what I love is that you’re mapping out the milestones, you know.
00:40:42:14 – 00:40:43:08
Yeah.
00:40:43:10 – 00:40:48:16
Jesse P. Gilmore
For people that are probably my audience are like 100 clients.
00:40:48:19 – 00:40:51:05
Jesse P. Gilmore
Meanwhile, you’re like, right. Is is is this a milestone?
00:40:51:05 – 00:40:56:02
Which is, I dream big baby now that call.
00:40:56:02 – 00:41:27:05
Jesse P. Gilmore
And that that kind of leads towards my next question where you know and maybe this is probably a bigger topic but you know do you if you’ve identified who you’re going after, you know, the niche and and how do you actually, like, start getting more of those types of clients? And I think that one of the greatest things that we that you can do in an agency is switch from that kind of passive referral system to more of an active referral system through those like informational interviews that we were talking about.
00:41:27:05 – 00:41:40:20
Jesse P. Gilmore
And that sets up conversations about testimonials and cases and stuff. And then you can use that in your outbound campaigns, inbound campaigns and so forth. But what do you. Yeah, I guess. What’s your kind of take on the attraction?
00:41:40:20 – 00:41:42:14
Yeah, Yeah. Well.
00:41:42:17 – 00:42:20:05
Corey Quinn
So the three primary sort of phases of doing this, number one is finding your focus, finding a net or a vertical. Then number two is positioning. People want to jump right to the true I call the attraction phase, which is when you start doing all the marketing stuff. But you really need to focus on the positioning of your agency, the people that we’re targeting and pretty much every case are not professional marketers, they’re not professional agency buyers, and that forces us as agency owners and founders to be able to articulate who we are and what makes us different very, very well.
00:42:20:05 – 00:42:53:00
Corey Quinn
And so there is a process that you go through that includes the client interviews, understanding the buying journey. I also recommend going and analyzing and researching your competitors within that vertical market. So if I’m an attorney and I’m and I realize that my current agency is not working, I need to find someone else, there’s going to be a handful of competitors that are going to get through the the the default ones that everyone’s going to look at, generally speaking, can be, you know, scorpion could be, you know, rankings that I whatever, whatever those are.
00:42:53:03 – 00:43:13:22
Corey Quinn
And so as an agency who wants to win that business in the legal space, I want to understand how Scorpion’s positioned themselves, our rankings position themselves so that can begin to try and identify some whitespace in the market. I want to see something different. I don’t want to just say, you know, we try harder or better, right? It is you want to focus on being a being different.
00:43:13:22 – 00:43:34:27
Corey Quinn
And so there’s a process to analyze what the market’s currently doing and whether it the open spaces. And then the third step, which is probably the most important one and the most durable besides because, you know, in agencies they’ll still each other’s positioning and all that stuff. It’s like it’s it’s very easy to do. So the thing that’s very durable is a point of view.
00:43:35:00 – 00:44:06:04
Corey Quinn
And we talked about this earlier around having an empathy for the the people you serve in the industry. And so being able to articulate when you work with my agency, you work with an agency who cares about the future of blue collar workers or whatever that is, and you need to be able to first develop that. And then once you have that, then you have to again, articulate it in a way that is really signals that, you know that you really are here for them and you’re here for the long term.
00:44:06:07 – 00:44:35:28
Corey Quinn
Once you have all that, then you can start talking about attracting new business. And so with all that said, there’s three different sort of approaches that I that I typically talk about when it comes to growing your agency. Once you have a niche or the focus and then the positioning that is the three things aren’t in the one inbound marketing, which the way I define it is making sure that your offer and brand is in front of your target vertical buyer when they are in the buying process.
00:44:36:00 – 00:44:59:23
Corey Quinn
So that could be everything from content marketing, thought leadership, launching a podcast to doing paid ads both on like Google and Facebook and LinkedIn, but then also doing advertisements in their association magazines or in these other places where they tend to get together, congregate and maybe congregate.
00:44:59:25 – 00:45:02:03
Jesse P. Gilmore
I might say conglomerate and those like now and.
00:45:02:03 – 00:45:04:09
Still congregate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:45:04:11 – 00:45:31:17
Corey Quinn
It’s inbound. Make sure you’re findable when they’re looking. Number two is outbound. Outbound to me is about is traditional patterns very inefficient. But what I talk about and I teach my clients to do is something it’s called gift based outbound, which is going out, developing a list of your target audience. You go through a process to get your 20% list, which is the 20% of those businesses that are perfect for your agency and actually leading with them with like, an earthquake.
00:45:31:19 – 00:45:39:21
Yeah, an earthquake. Yeah. So kids are leading? Yeah.
00:45:39:23 – 00:45:41:03
Corey Quinn
Fun times.
00:45:41:05 – 00:45:45:24
Like, stay tuned. Yeah.
00:45:45:26 – 00:46:08:20
Corey Quinn
I don’t think my son missed anything either. I’ll think about it. So do gift. Gift as a first touch outbound. And then the third one is relationship based marketing and empathy comes in. This is where you go and you actually meet with people in person, go to conferences, go to events, and you begin to focus on people like the influencers in that space.
00:46:08:22 – 00:46:18:18
Corey Quinn
That is how you approach it. There’s a lot more there, but those are the three. Sort of the biggest levers is the inbound, the gift based marketing and sales, and then the relationship stuff.
00:46:18:18 – 00:46:20:16
00:46:20:19 – 00:46:33:09
Jesse P. Gilmore
That’s awesome. I’m glad you didn’t dive into, like, the strategies of client attraction before. Very fundamental or foundational piece, which is that positioning and getting to understand. Yeah, I know where you said that.
00:46:33:13 – 00:46:46:13
Corey Quinn
I’ll tell you why it is so easy to to waste money on advertisements and landing pages and offers. If you don’t have your positioning down tight, you’re you’re going to be there’s may a lot of waste in there.
00:46:46:15 – 00:46:48:21
00:46:48:23 – 00:47:21:16
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah, I noticed. Yeah. As we’re kind of going through this, I’m also kind of associating Mission Control and trying to figure out what is our differentiator and stuff. And one of the things I notice a lot is we focus a lot more on like the mindset components and time management components and being like a master of yourself and how this has like an inside out perspective to business growth where we focus on the founder and making them, you know, the best version of themselves that they can be before focusing on and the growth.
00:47:21:18 – 00:47:45:18
Jesse P. Gilmore
But then the other piece, when you’re talking about, you know, the inbound gift based outbound and then the relationship, what I’ve noticed, because I wrote a book agency Owner’s Guide to Freedom, and what I started to do is just give it for free. So I have it on my podcast and I have the audiobook for free, and we have like mini courses and stuff like that in our community, which is also free.
00:47:45:20 – 00:48:11:19
Jesse P. Gilmore
And then and then now what I’ve started to do is every LinkedIn connection, I just send them the book and it’s, it’s been fun as it’s having a good time actually distributing something of value to people. And I had not done the gift based outbound until I was actually subscribe to our newsletter. So I was like, if Cory likes that, I’m worth trying it.
00:48:11:19 – 00:48:15:26
Jesse P. Gilmore
But now people love it. I started to finally getting Amazon reviews.
00:48:15:28 – 00:48:17:04
Because.
00:48:17:06 – 00:48:19:01
Jesse P. Gilmore
People are like, Great.
00:48:19:04 – 00:48:31:07
Corey Quinn
Yeah, beautiful. That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you. And I love the fact that you have a book out there and you’re sharing. Yeah. Your your magnificence and your brilliance with the market. It’s just great to see.
00:48:31:09 – 00:48:37:11
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. And you got yours coming out. Since we’re talking about books, do you want to talk a little bit about yours?
00:48:37:14 – 00:49:00:23
Corey Quinn
Yes. Everything we’ve been talking about today is part of a five step process that I take my clients through. I observe my high end clients agencies doing greater than a million. We do through this process, becoming a vertical market specialist, escaping founder led sales, simplifying your marketing. And so the book is basically the five steps I take by my high end clients through so anyone can, by the book, go through the steps.
00:49:00:23 – 00:49:23:22
Corey Quinn
There’s actually an online workbook and a whole bunch of worksheets and checklists and steps that go along with that. So it’s going to be can be, I hope, very helpful for folks who want to make this trend transformation in their in their agency. And so it’s going to be available next month. It’s called. Yeah. And I know anyone, not everyone.
00:49:23:24 – 00:49:36:04
Corey Quinn
And it’s the five steps to the five proven steps to Escape founder led sales. So yeah, so that’s going to be coming out and I’m hoping that it will have an impact in people’s lives.
00:49:36:07 – 00:49:37:27
00:49:38:00 – 00:49:45:03
Jesse P. Gilmore
That’s awesome, man. Yeah, it’s. It’s anyone. Not everyone. I that.
00:49:45:06 – 00:49:46:11
Yeah.
00:49:46:14 – 00:50:28:05
Jesse P. Gilmore
Yeah. It’s very simple. And, yeah, I think I preordered or I’m going to preorder. So if you’re listening to this and anything is resonating based around specialization and, you know, definitely check out Corey’s book and if you guys listen to either Fargo’s podcast and you haven’t gotten a copy of my book as well, if you’re looking for ways of really growing your agency and making it to where you’re not like a hustler, you’re more of a CEO in the agency, you can check out the Agency Owners Guide to Freedom in Go to Mission Control that concierge book, or you can join our community at niche and control that com slash community and I’ll give you
00:50:28:05 – 00:50:29:01
Jesse P. Gilmore
a free book as well.
00:50:29:03 – 00:50:32:22
Corey Quinn
So that’s awesome. So much value there, Jesse.
00:50:32:24 – 00:50:33:21
I mean.
00:50:33:23 – 00:50:35:17
Jesse P. Gilmore
There has been awesome talking with you.
00:50:35:20 – 00:50:42:03
Corey Quinn
Yeah, I love this. I love hanging out with you. And this topic is, you know, makes me sing. So thank you for the opportunity.
00:50:42:05 – 00:50:58:21
Jesse P. Gilmore
And for anybody listening. And if this resonates with you, I highly recommend getting Corey’s book when it comes out. Preorder it. Yeah, I know that when we launch this and put it on my podcast, I’ll put links to everything that we’ve talked about so far.
00:50:58:21 – 00:51:02:19
Corey Quinn
Anyone script anyone? Not everyone. XCOM for easy.
00:51:02:21 – 00:51:03:00
Jesse P. Gilmore
sweet.
00:51:03:06 – 00:51:06:18
Awesome. Yeah, Yeah man, all that.
00:51:06:19 – 00:51:26:14
Jesse P. Gilmore
And then last but not least, if if anybody else is listening to this and there are some questions that we have not answered yet or that you want to submit some, some way, now you can find me or Corey on LinkedIn or if you want to send me a message and Jesse a niche and control that. Com just ask your question.
00:51:26:16 – 00:51:29:06
Jesse P. Gilmore
We might have to do a part to Corey.
00:51:29:09 – 00:51:31:16
Corey Quinn
I’ll be awesome. I would love that.
00:51:31:18 – 00:51:35:21
Jesse P. Gilmore
Go man. Well, I guess that’s that’s it for now And.
00:51:35:21 – 00:51:37:21
Corey Quinn
That’s a wrap bell.
00:51:37:24 – 00:51:38:03
Go.
00:51:38:09 – 00:51:57:09
Jesse P. Gilmore
Agency owners if you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, or you can stop working in the business and start working on the business and free up your time delegate work more effectively. Have an offer that resonates with your ideal clients. You’re finally getting paid for what you’re worth and having the team run the day to day.
00:51:57:09 – 00:52:15:06
Jesse P. Gilmore
While you focus on growth, go to niche and control dot com slash case study and you’ll have an opportunity to book a free strategy session with me where I look at your systems and give you an action plan for the next 12 months on how to live the life of entrepreneurship you’ve always dreamed of. Go to niche in control dot com slash case study.
00:52:15:06 – 00:52:15:19
Jesse P. Gilmore
Now.
