133. Carving Out Your Niche with Casey Fuerst

You're excited to carve out a niche, but struggling to differentiate yourself in a saturated market. We talk with Casey Fuerst who's here to share her strategies for standing out, and the power of language in framing your business. We navigate the importance of presenting ourselves distinctively, and how a simple shift in the way you talk about your business can make all the difference. Casey is a certified StoryBrand Guide and uses this framework to create marketing messaging, plans and collateral to increase impact and grow business. She owns and provides lead consultation for Tic Tac Toe Marketing.

Connect with Casey Fuerst:
Website: https://www.tictactoemarketing.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-fuerst/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tictactoemarketing
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tictactoemarketing/

Follow the podcast at @itsjustbusinesspodcast on all the major podcasting platforms.

Connect with us:
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www.itsjustbusinesspodcast.com

You can find Dana @adashofboss, @dana.dowdell and @hrfanatic
Dana Dowdell – Boss Consulting – HR Consulting
Google -  https://tinyurl.com/y4wxnavx

You can find Russ @reliable.remediation
Russ Harlow – Reliable Remediation – Disaster Restoration
Google: https://g.page/r/CXogeisZHEjMEB

Transcript

Dana: 0:04

Hi Russ Dana.

Russ: 0:06

I'm excited.

Dana: 0:08

I'm so excited. So you and I feel like talk a lot about what value we get from the podcast, and one of those things I think for both of us was a previous guest, casey, first, and you got all roped into story brand stuff. Her and I connected about some of her consulting services and a family contact she had, and she is back with us today to have another conversation. So, casey, welcome back to. It's Just Business.

Casey Fuerst: 0:39

It's so good to be back. You guys are so fun.

Dana: 0:41

We are very grateful to have you here, so you own TicTacToe Marketing and, for new listeners, just tell them a little bit about what you do, who you are.

Casey Fuerst: 0:52

Yeah, I mean, you know we're like a lot of small businesses, we serve a lot of different markets and we're trying very hard to niche down. You know, the more that we can serve the specific audiences, the better we are at it, and so we're really working hard at niching to serve primarily, if not only, coaches and consultants, so that audience has some unique needs that we feel like we can meet better than other marketers and do it affordably. So that's that's who we are.

Dana: 1:21

I have to tell our listeners. So Casey and I had a kind of like a discovery call, because I'm a consultant and you were just fantastic with what you brought to the conversation and the ideas and I got my wheels spinning. And then not only that, but you followed up like a month or two later I was like, hey, I just I just talked to this person. It reminded me of our conversation and wanted to revisit it with you. So I'm just I am very impressed by by what you do and how you serve people.

Casey Fuerst: 1:53

That is awesome. I'm so glad that you got value out of it. That's you know. That's happened. So often I hear the stories of the people that I get to work with and I immediately just invest in them, like I love the work that y'all do and it's so important. There's such a gap in the marketplace right now that, especially when budgets are getting cut and internal staffing costs are going down Fortunately for a lot of companies, though, that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't still hire outside consultants and coaches that can help them, and it's becoming much more mainstream for people to do so, which is an amazing thing for all of us that serve in that way.

Dana: 2:29

Yeah, so you support coaches, consultants in the marketing sphere and we were talking offline about it's. It can be a saturated market 100%.

Casey Fuerst: 2:40

Yeah, I mean speaking to the it can get. It's. It's much more mainstream, right? The people are used to having coaches. They understand the concept of bringing in a consultant to help with a very specific slice of what they're doing, and that that means that there are just an enormous amount of new coaches and consultants in the marketplace, especially since COVID right, everybody we had this great resignation. Everybody left the marketplace and they said we're going to do our own thing, and they saw the success of others being coaches and consultants, and so they grabbed ahold of that. Unfortunately, that does mean there's some out there that are either not very experienced or they're just not good at what they do, and for those of us that have been around beyond that amount of time and are good at this, it means that we've got to show up in a different way so that those that are looking to hire us recognize immediately these people are legit, they have authority in the space.

Russ: 3:35

And I think what's important to understand, even if you're not a coach or a consultant. This is true in any industry, right, you know? Somebody sees a way to make money and everybody jumps in and gets on board and there's good and bad companies. There's experience and not experience, and those don't always mean the same thing. Experience doesn't necessarily mean good. So there's. Please just don't shut this off because you're not a coach or consultant, because there's definitely something to learn here.

Casey Fuerst: 4:01

Right. I think a lot of times for small business owners coaches, consultants, whomever you are when you get in front of people and you deliver what you're good at delivering, they say, oh my gosh, how did we not know about you sooner? We're going to tell all of our friends. All of that stuff is happening. Unfortunately, in this kind of a market, you can't just rely on referrals and other people's good word to get you new business. You need to be getting that on your own, and the only way to do that is to look really good when you present yourself, and the way you talk about yourself has to has to mean something.

Dana: 4:33

So for someone that might be listening, that is wanting to start to get into consulting or wanting to start to be a coach, that idea of talking about yourself in a legitimate way, I think is really essential. I remember when I first started my business I used to say I'm starting an HR consulting business. And when I flip the script and started to say I own an HR consulting business, like the language that we use when we talk about ourselves is really important. Do you see that with the people that you work with as well?

Casey Fuerst: 5:09

Yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, all of us are human and for anyone that has a reasonable EQ level, right, there's a humbleness that comes with us and part of that is, you know, there's this sense of we need to tell people what we don't know. We need to tell people who we aren't, because otherwise they might think that I'm something I'm not and then be disappointed and it's just not true, right, I mean it's just not you. When you show up with confidence and authority and you speak about yourself as who you are now I am an HR consultant, I do work that matters for the marketplace then people believe you, people, they hire you, they want to be a part of your world. Because of that and so often I mean even with really seasoned coaches and consultants there's still some of that in there and you know that humbleness can come through when you serve people, but it shouldn't come through in your, in how you sell yourself.

Russ: 6:05

Now it's important, Casey, because I know you niche down and work with consultants and coaches. But if there's coaches out there working with all different kinds of brands and services and products and everything else, so even though there are a ton of people out there doing this, they have to find their people right, Because they work better with certain people, their ideal clients, and they probably help solve a special problem that maybe somebody else doesn't do. So how do you help people figure out what that problem is and start attacking and figuring out how to find their people?

Casey Fuerst: 6:43

Gosh. I just had this conversation yesterday with a consultant. It was such a common conversation. So often we think, oh, I'm afraid to limit my reach, I'm afraid to limit my message to exactly who I really want to serve, because if I do that, I might miss somebody out here on the fringes, somebody might not think that I'm for them right.

Casey Fuerst: 7:05

Here's the example that I like to use. I hope this makes sense. If I want to hire a plumber, I get online and I Google plumber. Right, that's just that's what I do and I hire a plumber. I don't look for handyman who lists plumbing as one of their things. I hire a plumber. What that means is that that handyman who's listing his services as six different things is getting no business because they are there for everyone. But the plumber is getting a lot of business, the electrician is getting a lot of business, the woodworker is getting a lot of business. So it's the same for us. If I'm for everyone. If I'm for all small businesses, coaches and consultants will overlook me because they don't think that I'm for them specifically. So I get more business by saying I am for coaches and consultants than I do if I say I'm for small businesses. Is that helpful?

Russ: 7:59

It's 100% helpful, it's simple and it makes absolute sense 100%. And so now, now that I know that I have to do that, how do I start to kind of weed out the how do I get my message? It's because not everybody's just looking for a plumber, like we're looking for marketing help, or how do I. You know what I mean. So how do we start to kind of flesh out the rest of that so we can find more of our people and clone them, and so we can?

Casey Fuerst: 8:29

Yeah, Once you know who you're, for once you've got that niche kind of narrowed right and it's never going to be perfect.

Casey Fuerst: 8:36

You're always going to be kind of widening or narrowing or kind of. You know, there's some flex on either end of that with who you serve and sometimes you might decide to add a completely separate audience or expand big. And those are big kind of marketing campaigns that we run that help you get into new markets and those kinds of things. But assuming that you kind of set on your niche right, then it becomes really getting clear about what their problem is that you solve for them, right.

Casey Fuerst: 9:03

This gets into the story brand stuff for us. This gets into the space where we say if someone is hiring a plumber, right, they're looking for not just someone who can fix their toilet, they're looking for someone who isn't going to make a mess in their house, who's going to be really fast about it, because nobody wants a broken toilet for more than a couple of days, right. So those are the things that start to matter when you market yourself. So you really have to get into the brains of the people you want to serve and say, beyond the basic service I provide, what are the other things that they're looking for that can help differentiate me from my competition.

Russ: 9:37

It's hard to find the philosophical in that one oh right. Yeah, you know what? It's not fair that pipes just break and now you have this mess in your house.

Casey Fuerst: 9:51

Well, it sucks. Yeah, it sucks when you're down to one toilet, right? I mean, we're suburban Americans, we're used to two, three toilets for our family. If we all have to share one, we feel like it's a hardship. Yeah, this example has maybe gone a little too far, but for coaches and consultants, let's go back there, right? For coaches and consultants, they spin in a space of looking the same as all of their other, all of the other people that they work with. So what we do and this is a huge piece for us is we really help to differentiate them by taking those unique solutions that they're always offering and turning them into their custom proprietary content.

Casey Fuerst: 10:27

So let's just take, for example, dana, who works with HR. You're kind of regurgitating a lot of the same solutions all the time. Companies are constantly coming to you with here's our problem and they're nuanced, but they're basically the same, right? It's true for marketing, it's true for mold, it's true for everything. The problem is roughly the same and because of the work you do and your specialties, you've kind of gotten good at regurgitating those solutions. You repeat, rinse and repeat. You say them a lot. That becomes your kind of pillar of who you are and it becomes the thing that you're known for. So what we do is say let's take that and let's capitalize on it. Let's create frameworks, and by frameworks I mean ways of understanding things that you can own as your own copyrighted content and then build from that the stuff that it takes to charge more, to get more business and to scale faster.

Dana: 11:25

I think as a consultant I am in, I think the point in business that is the perfect client for you, because I have been training time for money right and I think we might have talked about this on our call like time for money and time is finite and unless you keep raising your prices, your income is potentially capped or hiring right. So you get to this point in your consulting or coaching business where you're like how do I scale without cloning myself? And it's about cloning your content, your material, to help scale your business.

Casey Fuerst: 12:13

It is and it's about saying I provide something different. So I am no longer trading time for money, right. So when I first started in this industry and I started kind of selling my services, I had a wonderful mentor and friend and she was in a similar space and she said, basically, when I price myself, I figure that I'm about $1,000 a day. That's kind of how she priced. So if I think something's going to take me three days, I charge $3,000. That's kind of how she figured out her pricing. And so I started there, right, I started in this headspace of like, okay, well, I think that's going to take me so much time, so therefore I'm going to charge this amount, and very quickly realized that is very limiting and it's not quite.

Casey Fuerst: 12:54

It feels weird to me when some of the services that I provide are they're getting way more value out of than other things that I do.

Casey Fuerst: 13:03

For example, we do my agency does some graphic design stuff. You can get graphic design services for 30, 40 bucks an hour on Upwork, right. So we're not competing with them, we're charging more than that and that feels weird. So you know, but some of the consulting services I'm doing they're turning that around and making hundreds of thousands of dollars with those recommendations that I'm making, so those ought to be at a higher price point. So, instead of that kind of time for money solution, when you create your own framework, when you've got your data framework that says here's how I do this and here's how your HR, your group is going to now adopt my philosophy for doing this. You provided such a high level of value. You go from trading value trading time for money to trading value for money, and instead of saying my day is worth $1,000, you say I'm going to deliver this. I don't care how much time it takes it might take three hours, it might take 30 hours, but it's worth $5,000.

Dana: 14:03

Instead, I feel like that's a huge conversation in itself. That idea of value-based pricing right, because it's like I we talk about this in starting a business too. Right, I have a good idea, everyone's going to want my service or my product or whatever because I have such a good idea, right. And I think it's like the same. You can get stuck in the same thought process around value-based pricing and in that, yeah, my services provide value and it sounds like it's more than just saying I think I have value and I'm going to price that way. It's about communicating what value you provide.

Casey Fuerst: 14:42

Absolutely, and I'm not the expert on value-based pricing. There are really good books out there of which I cannot pull one off the top of my head right now, but there are good books out there that you can look into how to kind of figure out what is that value-based pricing? For me it's a bit it's loosely defined. It's defined based on an average, whereas other companies will literally say what do you anticipate earning from this product? You're launching this thing you're doing. I want 10% of that or I'm going to charge you what you estimate to be, and so they're leaning into a much more technical way of pricing things versus where most coaches and consultants are. And that is kind of grappling with what is the average of what I would expect you to earn or make from the services that I provide you, and I'm going to kind of figure out a percentage that I would charge.

Russ: 15:41

So important. How do people start to figure out this framework and kind of build up Are there like steps to take? Are there things to do? There's got to be a procession. It's not like can't be random, I can just do this, this and this. I've got to do this first and then what's the next thing? And how do I build that up?

Casey Fuerst: 15:58

Yeah, so okay, so assume that you are a coach or consultant. You've been doing this a while. You've got your set of solutions that you're kind of leaning into and you're going this is what I'm being known for, this is what people are getting the most value from. I want to kind of turn this into something that I can lean into right. So think about it in terms of you know, you've got your smart goal setting, your everything disc, your enneagram, your Maslow's hierarchy of needs that you can immediately imagine a graphic that goes with it. You want your stuff to be known in a similar vein. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. So the first thing that you do is you start to kind of map out what are the solutions that I'm repeatedly offering? What problem do they solve? Right, and then how might that go into serving the people that I serve better? So that's kind of step.

Casey Fuerst: 16:43

One is really trying to do that and, frankly, it's hard for us to do by ourselves. So I have a hard time sitting by myself and saying here's how I serve my clients and I'm going to map this out and create a framework. It's why we exist right when we can get on a call with someone and say to them Russ, tell us how you work with people and you spend a half an hour talking about. Well, we typically go in this process. Here's the things we're looking for, here's what we're doing. We can synthesize that fairly quickly and say okay, so here's what I'm hearing.

Casey Fuerst: 17:12

I'm hearing that you lean into these three pillars when you do mold remediation and because of that, you're different than the other guy doing mold remediation, and so we're going to take that, create a beautiful framework from it and say this is the reliable remediation model for how we serve you. So it's sometimes not even that sexy, it's just simple, and simple is better when people can remember it and go I get it. Then they're more likely to grab hold of it and reuse it. So the best kind of frameworks are the ones that you leave people with. You come in, you teach it, you teach them how it's going to make their lives and their jobs better and their bottom lines better, ultimately, right. And then you walk away and they keep using it and they keep going oh yeah, we got to remember that thing. And when we keep our house clean and when we keep moisture out of the air and whatever else that looks like we don't have to hire a bus again.

Russ: 18:12

So how does this manifest itself in most ways? I mean, is this a webinar program? Is this a coaching thing, an online coaching? Is this an e-book? I mean, how does this manifest for most people and how they kind of get that framework?

Casey Fuerst: 18:25

That's a really great question. So for most coaches and consultants, what they're doing, well, let's just use a coaching model. A typical coaching model is they want more coachees, right? And they're typically charging, you know, anywhere from $150 to $500 an hour for coachees to come in. That's a one and done kind of thing. Those are very hard to scale and very hard to make a lot of money on to do that. Dana, you're nodding.

Dana: 18:50

Yeah, yeah, it's exhausting. It's exhausting the time you know one-on-one stuff. It gets exhausting.

Casey Fuerst: 18:56

Right, and when we start to think about what does it take to feed my family and how do I thrive and build a retirement fund for myself as a solopreneur in doing so, you quickly realize it's got to be more than that. That is just not going to get me where I need to go to just do those one-and-done kind of client engagements. It's great that you want to do that and that can definitely be part of your income. But there are ways that you can accelerate that much faster. One of those ways is taking that framework that you're using and turning it into a workshop. So when coaches have this kind of I'm working with a client right now.

Casey Fuerst: 19:27

He's fantastic and, oh my gosh, sitting with him feels like a masterclass in leadership. Every time I'm with him, he's genius and he pulls these things out of people and he gets them inspired and he helps them see themselves differently. But he's doing that on a one-to-one basis and it's sad to me, and so what we've done is take what he does, turn it into a framework, turn it into a half-day workshop. Now he's selling that half-day workshop for $5,000 a pop. So he's doing two of those a month and he just increased his monthly income by $10 grand a month. And it's the same content every time he delivers it. So he doesn't have to do a lot of prep work. Right, we've created a workbook for him. He throws the company logo on it that he's serving, gets them printed at the FedEx and goes in and delivers, and then he walks away and he's done, and they are wowed by all of this and that program then feeds his coaching clients. Then they're like oh, I had coaching with you.

Dana: 20:23

I can also say that type of framework you can do train the trainer 100% and scale even further. My business coach owns a training company and she has told me she's like I'll train you on our programs and then you can deliver them and that's just essentially passive revenue into your business. If someone else is training your proprietary content.

Casey Fuerst: 20:50

Doesn't that get you excited? Like I get goosebumps when I think about the coaches that if they just capitalized on their genius they could just scale and escalate their income exponentially very quickly when they do this kind of a thing.

Dana: 21:05

All right, I want to play devil's advocate a little bit, because I exist in a world of self doubt all the time, and so I and I think I might have said this to you at our initial conversation like but everything I do is customized for the client, right? Or like but what if something changes? It can still content proprietary information. Your genius can still be scalable, right, 100%.

Casey Fuerst: 21:36

Yeah, I mean, and I have the same question, because I'm like, well, but they hire me, they want Casey. They don't want my people, they want Casey. It's just not true. I'm not that good, right, like. I think that's too often. There are big chunks of what you do that we can carve out and create that core from, and the customization comes in, delivery later. So deliver the workshop, deliver the coaching, call about around your framework and add the extra as you go and that becomes the does, become the things you can charge even more for because they are you there, they're 100% you.

Russ: 22:10

Well, casey, you are that good. I mean I've been, I've dived into the, you know Storybrand podcasts and stuff to with, and you know I've learned, and they say it on every single one Storybrand guides are the best marketers in the world.

Casey Fuerst: 22:24

I like to think we are too, but you know there there's the other good marketers out there.

Russ: 22:29

So what other things can can we be doing as coaches and consultants to help find ways? Maybe I don't want to write a course, or what are some of the other things that I can do to clone myself and my, my genius, so that I can at least make a little bit more money?

Casey Fuerst: 22:47

That's a great question. You know, I don't know if this is the direction that you were wanting me to go with this, but I'm an enormous fan of virtual assistance. I think that VAs can make our the work that we do so much more effective and efficient, and I think that, for coaches and consultants, especially when we're spending so much time on the details and in the weeds, we don't get to develop and create and deliver content. And so you know, I'm a huge fan of getting getting somebody on your team that can help you get through the daily tasks so that you can deliver much more efficiently. Yeah, you know I'm going to turn direction a little bit on you.

Casey Fuerst: 23:24

I do want to mention, though there's it's really important, when we're creating our own materials, to we talk about it as is it inspiration or is it imitation, when we're leaning into other people's frameworks. So it's really important that we recognize, if we're using somebody else's framework, that we give them credit, and also, if we're using that to build our own, that we're doing it ethically. So there's there's some just basic questions that we ask when we're doing that, and we're real careful when, when somebody else says this is based on Patrick, on Sione's, blah, blah blah. We say okay. So we just want to go through some questions with you and make sure that we're that we're doing this ethically. One is are we breaking any laws? And those laws are fairly straightforward IP laws are pretty basic and pretty easy to discern.

Casey Fuerst: 24:11

Whether or not we're breaking the law, does the decision or action align with your professional values and principles? How would you be comfortable with this decision being, or action being made public? So are you okay with people knowing that you did that? And have you asked others, others that are in the business? Is this something that I feel good about? And those kinds of things help us to discern. It's a gray space to be able to to use other people stuff and and own them as our own, and so we just want to make sure that when we're doing that with our clients, that they feel good about it and that we feel okay about it. We're not going to let things go too far into that. I'm stealing. We definitely want it to be inspiration, not imitation.

Dana: 24:54

And I think that also ties into the idea of like personal brand, in terms of if you're just taking what someone else is doing and repackaging it, then it's not you, it's not, it's not the, the person that people were drawn to and they first asked for an initial call.

Casey Fuerst: 25:14

Yeah, and it's hard to write, because if somebody says to me what makes you unique, what's different about you, I might struggle with that answer. Sometimes I need to, I need someone else to tell me that. I need someone else to experience what I'm talking about and saying this is different from what I'm hearing out there, and here's why. So it's not something. This, this idea of taking what you do and turning it into a framework, is not something that most new coaches and consultants can do well. It really takes a few years of practice and repeat and testing ideas to get to the point where you can own the content yourself.

Russ: 25:50

So what's the biggest obstacle? I mean, is it people feeling like, oh, they're not getting me? Is it overcoming the idea that, well, I want to make more money but I don't want to just be some shill for my workbook? Or like, what's the biggest obstacle people have to come overcome to jump into this with both feet and go, yeah, no, this is definitely the thing I need to do.

Casey Fuerst: 26:13

Yeah, two things. One is confidence, right, you know the self-doubt that Dana was talking about. We all have. We all kind of wonder is it really good enough to invest in? That's big, that's the number one. And the second thing is just taking the time to do it. There's so many people out there, so many coaches and consultants that are out there that are going this sounds really good. I'll do that next quarter, I'll do that next year, right, and it's like Dana's raised her hand, right. Yeah, it's chicken and an egg which comes first, the doing the work or making the money, and doing the work comes first. Do the work and you see that money come in.

Dana: 26:48

I also think it's important to recognize, especially in the service that you provide, like you are coaching people through the process of building that product, service, course, class, whatever, and that's so much of the value is like there's an accountability, there's a framework to develop it, and sure you could probably do it on your own, but it's so much easier and so much more structured and so much more thoughtful and intentional when you have that guide to work you through the process.

Casey Fuerst: 27:22

Absolutely. We always tell people if you can do it on your own and you just need somebody to design it and make it look good, go out to Upwork and find a designer, because they're cheaper than we are. But if you need someone that can help download your brain, turn it into amazing resources, help you see things that you're not seeing, and do it within four to six weeks and have a product you're ready to sell and walk out the door with, then that's us.

Russ: 27:46

That was sales pitchy, sorry, no absolutely, Because I was just going to say how do we start to present this to our clients and potential clients? So, you're the marketing guru. Now we've got this framework, how do we sell it?

Casey Fuerst: 28:02

That's a great question too. And again it goes to that once you've been in business for two, three years, you've got a natural pipeline of people that you've already sold to that already know your value. So you start with them. So once we've created your materials and let me mention that 90% of the packages that we do we also create a landing page for this new content, so a space for you to sell it. Oftentimes we're also creating emails and stuff that you can start to kind of talk about it.

Casey Fuerst: 28:28

Now, sales at this level don't come from the internet. You don't just get people clicking buy now on your $5,000 half day workshop. It does require personal connections, sale, selling it yourself. So you do need to be a network or be somebody who can get in front of people, be confident about how you talk about it. Once you have all those resources to say to the people that you've already served hey, I'm launching this new thing that I know is going to meet your need. And let's lean back into Storybrand a little bit here and say, when you know the problem that's problems that they have and you do because you've already served them you again go back to those problems and you say, hey, when we work together.

Casey Fuerst: 29:06

Last time I remember you talking about this How's that going? That's number one. And then you know, based on their answer, you say you know what. I really would love to get back in there and do this new thing that we're doing and see if we can dial this up a little bit for you and get some better results. How's that sound? You know those kinds of conversations. First of all, you have to be brave enough to have them and this is a good reminder for me to like. I still struggle with this and you've got to be brave enough to be in front of your ideal clients, not just those that have paid you lower amounts in the past. But you've got to say who are my ideal clients? Who's willing to pay what I need to charge? And I'm going to get in front of them and be brave.

Russ: 29:46

Now, beyond our existing clients and people we've served in the past, I would think that there's got to be a framework for building a funnel. You know getting new email addresses, new clients, putting out value added information so that people start getting. I mean, that's I see it working within the story of brand framework. Right, I'm in the funnel, you know I'm getting the emails. I'm listening to the podcast. I'm, you know, working with a coach now. So finding ways to do that within the business is also some of the work that needs to be done, right.

Casey Fuerst: 30:24

So I'm going to be contrary on this, russ. I know that Storybrand and others really lean into lead generators and sales funnels and all of this, and in theory they work. In five years ago they definitely worked. The problem is that everybody's doing it now, and so it's harder and harder to build a lead generator that can actually get you leads, and for the coach and consultant space it's even harder. They're everywhere. So that is that is.

Casey Fuerst: 30:57

Don't tell the Storybrand folks that I said this. It's really tricky to do that and expect really great results. So I say to coaches and consultants and this is specifically for coaches and consultants you have to tap into your network, you have to tap into your networking and you've got to niche down. You've got to narrow your audience. If I'm, if I'm, an executive coach, it's tempting to be able to say I serve executives across the United States, and you might. You're going to get much better traction, like when you niche before, if you say I serve executive coaches in my city, and going to networking events with those executives becomes much more practical. And being face to face. Hiring coaches and consultants is oftentimes dependent upon either a strong referral or a personal experience with them, and so you've got to find ways to have those things and then they become the lead. So it's still a lead generation of sorts. It's still that funnel, but it's not all digital.

Dana: 31:58

I have two thoughts on this. I feel like the sales funnel, email marketing. It's very easy to fall into that trap of doing what everyone else is doing, like someone will tell you oh, I got this much in sales, so you should be doing it without really thinking through like, does this work for my business, what I'm selling, my network, my community. But I also think it's important to recognize in that example of executive coaching. Russ and I met in a B&I and guess it might be a little bit culty, but we often say, like your network is your net worth. So if you're networking with executives in your city, they network with other executives, so let them network for you with your ideal client, right?

Casey Fuerst: 32:47

I think that's brilliant, yeah, and I think that you can start. You have to start somewhere, so start local. Start where you're at start, with the people you have the easiest access to.

Russ: 32:58

You know and that goes with anything Like when we first started, you know, my local service business I thought cast a widest net as possible and every new business owner thinks that I will work for food. I mean, you're literally holding up that side. And then I realized, oh wait, I just I need to own my backyard. I need to be the only person that comes up when somebody in my town or city searches and then we start dialing out for the surrounding area and everything else. It's the exact same concept and it seems counterintuitive. I will drive 70 miles to get what? Now, just focus in on that. That's closest and easiest. It will come.

Casey Fuerst: 33:38

Yeah, it's the same. When we post social content too. You know we post on social. Let's just use LinkedIn as an example. When I post on LinkedIn, if I'm marketing it to all small business owners or all coaches and consultants, even that message can be really wide, and it needs to be wide in order for it to be for all of them. When I start putting on paper who are the top 10 people I want to work with and I craft my messages to them, the likelihood that they connect with me is more. But also it's amazing how other people connect more. The same people I didn't really realize needed to hear that message are going that that's specific. I really like that. So it's true there too.

Russ: 34:19

So, to kind of get in, I want to talk a little bit about Story of Rain. I know we did it last time, but I've spent more time learning about it since then. So, yeah, I've loved it too. I mean it just makes so much sense. But be warned movies are ruined forever. They really are.

Dana: 34:38

They really are.

Russ: 34:39

I just figured oh my gosh, I'm not connected to this because they didn't follow the stupid framework, right. So okay, now as a culture consultant, and how can we start to kind of figure out not just that we know the problems that we solve, but how do we start to focus in on the right things, like we always want to solve that external problem, right, this is what I do. We think we're selling that external problem, but people buy on the internal and the philosophical. So whether we're business to business or business to consumer, how are we kind of focusing in on some of those things and kind of changing our mindset so that our customers, our clients don't just cut us out as noise, they actually go? Oh, I see myself in that now.

Casey Fuerst: 35:25

Yeah. So let me back up and give you the 10 second education for your listeners who aren't as familiar with StoryBrand. So in StoryBrand we talk about we have to solve a problem in order to be the solution that they choose. And so in StoryBrand we talk about there's an external problem, an internal problem and a philosophical statement. An external problem is a statement of fact I need my lawn mowed. That is a fact. I have a problem my lawn is a mowed. I need my lawn mowed. That's an external problem. The internal problem is I want my lawn to look better than my neighbors, and internal problems are much more important than external problems. People will pay more and buy more often when you solve an internal problem than when you solve an external problem. So if a suburban household gets two postcards in the mail from lawn care companies and one says we mow lawns and the other says we make your lawn look better than your neighbors, the second one will always get more business, okay.

Russ: 36:23

What about the one that says we give you back time to spend with your family by giving you a great, best looking lawn in the neighborhood?

Casey Fuerst: 36:30

Great transition. That is a philosophical statement, right. That's yay, good job. That's where we name the kind of ought should deserve. What's just plain wrong about what you're dealing with now that kind of thing that people can rally around. And the very best philosophical statements are the ones that people might even disagree with. They're a bit divisive because again, it tells people who you're for and who you're not for. And when you can rally people to your cry lawns, your lawn needs to look better than your neighbors. My husband would reject that postcard outright because he's like forget that Laws are not meant to. He's a farm boy, so he's like we ought to leave the leaves on the lawn, we don't need water or whatever. He would reject that. But those who agree with it, who live in these neighborhoods where they're competing patterns in their lawns, those people would be drawn to that and get more business and that's better for the business owner, right. So philosophical statements are powerful when you can get them right. That's the space where you say people deserve clean drinking water, right In today's, in the coaching world.

Casey Fuerst: 37:38

Let's say you are a, let's say you're a family I'm struggling with the right word a lifestyle coach, somebody who helps people get balanced in their lives, right. Making a statement like the healthiest people have lifestyle coaches, that's kind of divisive. Like I don't have a lifestyle coach, I'm a fairly healthy person, right. But for a really health nut, they might be drawn to that and say, oh, now that's a thing I'm missing. I can up level myself by getting a coach right. So there's a difference there. So those are the kinds of things that you're talking about. For coaches and consultants, let's say you know there's that was an example of a lifestyle coach. For an executive coach, right. The statement can be something like being an executive is lonely, you sit alone a lot and you don't have that sounding board or that venting space. You don't have someone guiding your thinking. An executive coach can really help you take it to the next level and dial it up with how you serve the company that you serve.

Russ: 38:39

I love it. I mean, I'm just starting to change my mind and how I look at things so that I can continually look for those internal and philosophical problems to be communicating better with my clients and potential clients. So, media posts, website, everything, email marketing, all the places that we communicate with people, videos that we create, everything else, because I just honestly, it was a five-hour audible listen and I, you know, I did it multiple times because I was just like no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes it makes sense, right?

Casey Fuerst: 39:17

The great thing about those kinds of messages is we can test them. They're not like your logo and they have to stay the same for 10 years. If you're finding it's not working, test a different twist on it and see if it connects with people differently.

Russ: 39:29

Casey, how can people connect with you, find more about kind of working, getting this framework, so that they cannot be exhausted all the time by just putting themselves out there and only working with clients? What can people do and where can they find you?

Casey Fuerst: 39:47

TicTacToMarketingcom and there's a set up a call button on there. I'm very, very I love doing consult calls, whether it results in business or not, it's just super fun to get to know your business and how you work and see if I can offer some value to you in that short amount of time. And if you're interested in working together, then we can talk about that during the call too.

Russ: 40:07

I love talking with marketing folks. I love talking with you, casey. You're one of my favorites. If you haven't heard episode 118 with Casey, it's called Understanding Marketing. Go back and check that out and take this one and share it with some people that need to hear it, because this is just it's not real hard, but sometimes, working through it, you need a guide. Yeah, and Casey, you're a great guide.

Casey Fuerst: 40:34

You're the best.

Russ: 40:35

Thanks for being here. Thanks for our listeners for being here. Share this episode, like it, love it. Send us some criticism, I don't care, it's not personal, it's just business.