Published on January 11, 2016
The start of this year has been extremely transformational for me. I’ve uncovered beliefs I have about life, and people, that have held me back. And I’ve realized a new direction Reliable needs to go in.
The two are completely tied together though.
For example, I realized I have a fear that people aren’t willing to pay our prices, which are higher than 99% of our competitors. Deep down I was afraid that our market doesn’t care if the quality or the service are that much better – they just want cheap and fast, even if it’s riddled with problems and headaches.
But in looking at the actual numbers, and the actual feedback we get from clients, I’ve faced these fears and beliefs head on, and challenged them.
For example, Reliable grew 2.41x last year.
And a ridiculously high percentage of people who use us once use us again and again.
We also have a Slack channel (Slack is a team chat app that we use, in case you aren’t familiar with it) called “Client Love” and every day April (our awesome Director of Projects) posts amazing things clients write us when they receive their work.
This growth and feedback show me that there are people out there who crave the quality and service we bring to the table. And it’s made me realize that by worrying about everyone else – I’ve been taking my energy away from the people who are ready to work with us and are happy to pay a bit more if they get a lot more value for the price.
I’ve been letting my energy and focus get distracted by people who just really aren’t our market.
So I met with Lou (another co-founder and my amazing wife) and shared these thoughts and we decided to really clearly define who Reliable is for and what it’s all about.
In a nutshell, we answered the following 4 questions:
- Who are we for?
- Who are we against?
- Who do we want to attract?
- Who do we want to repel?
This exercise was extremely transformational… and relieving.
It gave us permission to laser-focus on a very small group of people (our core market) and ignore the rest.
It clarified Reliable’s vision. We’ve already put systems in place to better serve our true audience – and removed systems that try to serve anyone else.
I wanted to share this with you because I think if you do it in your business too, you’ll have a similar experience, and get yourself on track to really take this year by storm.
This post was last updated on February 17, 2020
Melanie Beaudoin says:
January 5, 2017
Your “Who do we want to attract” statement is exactly how I felt about working with you guys & gals… it is like a friendship. Also, as a client of yours, I feel that I fit nicely in your description—passionate about quality, caring about my clients and wanting to do the best possible work I can. Thanks for sharing this tip! I have been working on writing up my own set of values for my business and this exercise will help.