Niche Broad vs Deep Expertise

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello everybody and welcome back. We are cruising through yet another season. This is season 21. We're doing podcasts that don't make it through 21 episodes, much less seasons as we are cranking towards pretty darn close to 800 episodes, getting that north of 750 I think now and just cranking our way towards big numbers. That's just the podcast side. On the YouTube side of shows there, I think we're a couple hundred into there. So there's a lot of content. If you haven't gotten enough of us, you haven't tried because there's more of us than the world needs probably out there. We do have a wide range of topics. This episode though, we're going to focus a little bit on really it's like broad versus deep. We're going to talk about the idea of should you as you're from a career point of view, should you be looking to be a master of everything or more like a guru of a specific maybe stack or silo. And before we get into call too much or before we get in discussion too much, I'll go ahead and introduce I guess myself first. I'm Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Developineur. Also I have RB Consulting. Check us out anytime, RB-SNS.com. More importantly though, say hello to Michael on the other side. Hey, how are you doing today? Hey Rob. Yeah, this is Michael Malosh, also co-founder of Developineur and founder of Envision QA. You can check me out at EnvisionQA.com where we help small healthcare companies, small to mid-size e-commerce. So check us out. And that's exactly where we want to start is we've had discussions over the last weeks, months, and maybe even longer because we both have very broad backgrounds. There's a lot of stuff that we can do. So if somebody comes to us and says, what can you do for me or what do you do? It can be a very long drawn out discussion. And so that however is not the way to drag in new customers. If you're just out of the blue talking to somebody out on the street, then you say, hey, I do all kinds of cool stuff. They're going to say thank you very much and move right along. You might as well be saying the end of the world is coming tomorrow. Instead, you need to have a, you have to have a hook. You have to have like a one-liner or something that is enough for them to say, oh wow, that's intriguing or that is something I need to get. So it would be the idea of there's a difference between, hey, I've got something that you can drink. If you're thirsty, you might say, eh, I'm going to keep along going along until I go to the local store and I'll get a water or soda or whatever. But if you say, hey, I've got this drink I created that is so incredibly tasty that everybody that drinks it gets immediately addicted to it. You're like, wow, I want to hear more about it. That's what you want to do with your, with your focus and your pitch. And while yes, we'll talk, I think a little bit, we'll sort of follow up this as the solving problem side of broad versus deep. I want to talk more from the branding and marketing side of this one. Now, both of us have struggled through this a little bit because we started with consultancies and services that are by themselves, almost by their very nature. They want to be broad. They want to not have a lot of specificity to them. It's like, yeah, we can consult and we can tell you about all kinds of different stuff and we can help you with all of that, but that's not very useful. And so we've walked through this and I guess I'll start with, because you've been in this cohort now for a few weeks and you've really been trying to like, you know, work on your brand on your pitch, on your focus. What are the things, some of the things that you've gotten out of that, or maybe some, some lesson learns or even some, you know, some suggestions you would have to somebody else in a similar situation? Sure. So one of the biggest things I found going into that coaster thing was my previous venture, Milosh Consulting, like your previous venture, we, our websites were too broad. Basically we serviced anything web-based or application-based. You need a software written, you come to us. But the problem is everyone can run, there's so many people out there that can write software. There's really no niche, no, it's like, why would they come to us? We really didn't have that clearly defined in like a one-liner pitch. Now, Milosh Consulting is kind of a different story because that actually started organically. I actually had a friend reach out and said, Hey, I have this problem. And that's where Milosh Consulting started. And then from there, I went from one person, Oh, well, I have this problem. And then it just kind of snowballed into, I had all this work for 20 some years, then COVID hit and well, we're all getting old after 20 years. Okay. Some businesses fold, some people unfortunately passed away and it's time to reset. It's like, well, okay. Now, how do I redo this in today's market? Because post-COVID is a totally different world. People are working from home. People are doing more side hustles. People are branching out and trying different things. They want to get out of corporate America. And one of the things you have to think about is who is your customer? What are you actually trying to solve? What is your product for? And so Milosh Consulting kind of went from an internet of things to I now service health care, small health care companies and clinicians and small to mid-size businesses, e-commerce business. So I've gone from looking for customers online to I'm now looking for nurses, doctors, chiropractors, small mom and pop brick and mortars. Basically I've changed my market. So instead of servicing thousands of people that I could potentially have as a customer, I now have hundreds or maybe in some cases, less than a hundred. If I'm looking in a specific demographic or specific geographical area. And I found that I've already found a customer potential. Today I had a call with someone in town. They're like, Oh, you're local. I was dealing with someone out of Texas and they're down to two customers. We're afraid they're about to like go away. And I'm like, well, I'm right here. And I had a good conversation with them and it just seems that that was so much more organic in the conversation. I didn't even have to really sell anything. Just had a common conversation with the customer as to what their technical problem was, what I could do to help them. And boom, I've got a potential customer and hopefully I'll know Monday, but. That is a lot of what I got out of from the co-starters. What the problem I had going into this was I had changed my idea from being an internet of things to being more a software company that was QA focused. That was very tailored to a test driven development testing services. And I realized very quickly, well, not quickly. It was a nine week program. I was probably about five weeks in when I realized that I've got the wrong model or the way I'm pitching the model is completely wrong. Everyone I talked to did not understand what the hell I was talking about. They didn't understand what my company did. And that was because I was talking tech. I was talking at a lower level than the customer understands. So I flipped the model and now I'm talking about services at a product level that I can provide versus the tech versus what's going on behind the scenes. So now I'm talking about delivering quality software and I still provide additional testing and maintenance services for existing software, but it's at a level that the customer can understand. So now my everything becomes this very narrow pitch and it's very easy now to talk to people. And I think that's the key is getting that conversation. And that's what I've been working on for now. A few months is, is trying to get, I've got a group that's, that's out there and they're trying to like beat the bushes and get leads and they're doing a pretty, a fairly good job of getting leads early on. It was a little bit better. And then things have dried up a little, but it's. It's really an interesting way to approach business is because now instead of like you, I was, I have almost always been able to just be sort of, I mean, I'd search up, look for some stuff here and there on sites, but generally speaking, it was word of mouth and things like that that would bring it and it'd be, you know, you get into a customer and then the next thing you know, they know else and you, you can just sort of grow there or you have a handful of customers that they just, they like you, they work well and you just keep on going. And while there's nothing wrong with that, that's also not a, that's not a, a pattern for success and growth because eventually they're going to move on or they're going to run out of a budget or they're going to change or you're, you're doing stuff right sooner or later, you're going to complete the work. You're going to have them across the finish line. And I've done that with a few where it's like, okay, well, there's really not much more I can do for you. I mean, I come back every so often we do updates, but as far as solid, lot of work kind of stuff, we've done that. We've got you where we want you to be. And that's part of what I'm selling is usually it's like, Hey, we want to come in, do it, fix it, walk away and never, maybe you never have to see us again. But it's that it's getting that hook to say, okay, this is what I do enough to get them to draw, to draw them into that conversation so they can connect and say, well, you know, I need some of that. I have an issue like that. So it does go back to speaking to their problems. And a lot of times I've seen it, especially on successful sites where it's basically focused as, Hey, do you have this problem? Do you have that problem? Do you have this other problem? And if you think about it, that's exactly the pattern that is used by those, like those late night infomercials or all of those like high pressure sales things, it's like, do you need a car right now? Yes, I do. Well, come talk to crazy Dave because he's got cars that he can get you. That's basically what you're looking to do is something where it's like, are you, in your case, are you drowning in software quality issues and finding to do, finding a way to say that to them in a way that resonates to them. So they say, yes, I am just getting beat up by having to constantly fix stuff that you have my people fix and I keep paying for things to be fixed and it never gets fixed and it's, it's always the same bug over and over and all of those things that come out of QA is being able to distill that down to like a couple of simple questions and then get the conversation to start there. And that's really where, you know, I look at stuff where it's like, I've, I love the word that somebody came across. I think, I can't remember which of us came up. I think it had gotten, somebody told it to me, but it's the idea of technology fatigue, the idea that we've just got so much stuff, businesses have got, you know, at least three or four big systems that they're using probably. If you think of like, they're probably using, you know, email with some sort like Microsoft office or something like that, they're probably using some sort of financial like QuickBooks or something along those lines, they're probably, they may be using some, you know, CRM or ERP. So they're either using like maybe a HubSpot or a NetSuite or a Salesforce or blah, blah, blah. And then they're usually also using access or Excel spreadsheets or just a note, like Evernote or something to just keep all of their stuff going. And it's just, we're all tired of having to log in 15 times and find ways that like copy data from system A to system B or export and import and all that other crap that is forcing us a lot of times to be more technologically, technologically or technically proficient than we ever wanted to be. We just want to go like sell yarn on the internet and instead we're learning how to write HTML code. It's things like that, that that's where I said, Hey, let's, let's focus on that. Let's start with you're tired of dealing with your solutions. We can help you figure out where you can improve those things so that you can simplify, so you can reduce costs and licensing. So you end up with less costs, something that's automated, something that's more productive because you're not logging in 15 times and doing all of this double, triple, quadruple entry. And those are the things you want to do is say, what, what is it that you offer that in a nutshell, like it is really getting to what is the end result? What are you going to provide them? So it's things like if it's, if you're in software development, whatever the software is that you're building, there's a reason they want that. And if there's not, then you need to revisit that and figure out either. Why are you doing it? Or what really is the reason? And it could be very, very specific. So you could be somebody writing software that helps people that are buying electronic parts, find the best price, something very niche. It's going to be some little e-commerce shop or something like that. That's going to want it. But the reason that you're, you know, the value you're going to give them, and they're going to be able to find her for a better price and have more selection for their customers. Awesome. You got a sentence, you've got a hook. Now you've also got a niche, you know, who you're going to talk to. If you were listening, Michael mentioned like nurses and doctors and chiropractors and dentists and specific. It's not talking to people. It's talking to more specific people. So you want to be able to put labels in it. It does go down to the classic avatar of knowing who your ideal customer is. How old are they? What's, what is their gender? What is their background? What do they do? What do they eat for? Breakfast, what they eat for dinner. What did, what do they want out of life? What are their goals? What are their hopes or dreams? All that. The better, you know, that that is your ideal that you know, that they would spend all their money on your product or something like that, and then you can expand out of there. So you can go to stuff and say, well, that person is a doctor that's got their own clinic. And so, you know what, every, I'm looking at it and seeing that, yes, any doctor that has their own clinic would have at least a good shot of wanting this product and that's how you get yourself into a niche that's going to fit and it's also one you can address. Because if you want to go reach out to people, you have to know something about the people. You can't just dial for dollars and just start going from A to Z in a phone book. If you don't know what a phone book is, we'll have another episode on that. But especially with the internet and things like that, you've got to have key words. You don't just go to Google and just say, give me my results. You've got to give it specific words and context and something to work with chat, GPT, all that stuff. There has to be context or has to be specifics. And we have to do that when we're building our business as well. I'll pass it over to you while I take a deep breath. Yeah. Now that you made me laugh out of my chair, uh, phone books. God, I don't remember last time I had one of this. The other thing that I briefly touched on and Rob kind of alluded to this as he talked through this is talk to the solution that you are providing to your customer. Avoid the technical talk. Just explain how your product or your solution will solve their problem. They don't care about the rest of it. They just want to know how is it that you are going to fix their problem? And once I understood that it was like, Oh, okay. This is easier to talk to your customer. If you get into the weeds, into the technical, you lose them. They move on. They're like, I have no idea what they're talking about. They're not for me, but it's one of those things, right? Um, it's like when you're dealing with your sales guys, I guess you had to work with them to get your pitch or your target to a specific, uh, market that they could go out to, especially like when we're doing Google ads, you have to narrow down the keywords demographics. Uh, like for me, doctors, nurses, et cetera. If you don't pair it down, it's going to cost you dialing for dollars or. Hundreds of dollars through Google ads, just to even remotely hit one customer of thousands or millions. So you gotta be very careful in how you articulate your customer. I think that's a good place to sort of like, that's a nice bottom line for this, for this episode, when you're trying to figure out what is my scope of my business or my service of my products, who is my customer be thinking about, cause I think that's where your most value is thinking about the solution. What is the value you're offering your customer? What is the, what is literally the problem that you are solving for them or the problems that you are solving for them. But it can't be a long list. If it's a bunch of problems, find a way to pair that down to like one or two summary problems, things like, and you can keep it sort of general at start at the start, so you can say it's things like, uh, improving revenue or increasing customer service or improving quality or reducing errors or returns. There's those kinds of, we'll call it the marketing kinds of words of we do it bigger, better, faster, smarter, whiter teeth, all that good stuff. Find those things that you can apply to that list of solutions that you're giving. Turn that into a nice little, Hey, this is what I provide you in a nutshell. And then don't act like that because it's not, you're not going to act like that's the, that is the be all and end all. That is the start of the conversation. And if you're going to go broad, you can go broad as you get into that conversation. A perfect example that I'll wrap it up with that I had the other day is I was talking to somebody for a very specific type of work and they said, Hey, we were looking at your background and we saw that you can do this, this, and this. And I said, yes, I can, but that is not where that's not the best place for me to be. You're not going to get your best bang for your buck out of that. I've got other people that do a lot of that kind of work and that's a different arrangement. And he's like, cool. That's great. We'll just check in, just wanting to see what you could do. Those are the kinds of things where you've got to sometimes try to be a look, you know, you've got to solve the right problem instead of trying to solve every problem, because it's just, if you try to solve every problem, it's too, it's too easy for them to say, wait, I don't want to do it all. I want to do just one, just this one thing. And so if you could do just this one thing and like, check us out, leave a comment, leave a, you know, leave a review, all that kind of good stuff. If you have questions, comments, additions, subtractions, editorial things, whatever you want us to cover, shoot us an email at info at develop an or.com. You can check us out, subscribe on our, wherever you subscribe to podcasts, we're out there. You can check us out on the developer nor channel on YouTube. You can check us out at develop an or.com lots of stuff out there. And we've got links to both the, the audio, the video, and so many others. We've got PowerPoints. We got, you name it. We're out there. Lots of good comment. That being said, we'll let you get back to your day and we're going to get back to ours. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers, the developer nor podcast. 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