Do you think that if you dropped your prices just a little, all of those problems would go away and new business would start rolling in?

The good news is that you’re not alone. Lots of smart entrepreneurs have thought the same thing. The bad news is that they (and you) are dead wrong.

Today you’re going to learn that your prices are causing unimaginable damage to your business. More importantly, your going to learn why (it’s not the reason you think) and how to fix it right away. I’m even going to share some pricing mistakes I’ve made in our company, how it impacted us, and how we fixed it. That lesson alone worth it’s weight in gold, and you get to enjoy the benefits without the pain, hard work or lost profits we had to go through.

The race to the bottom is fast and painful

No matter how low you drop your prices, there will always be someone willing to sell for less. Many of those companies may not be around in a year or two, but there will be plenty of new companies lining up to take their place. And even if their quality and service is inferior to yours, to the customers who just shop for the lowest price, you’re just the same as everyone else.

To add insult to injury, the customers who chose you because of your price will jump ship as soon as someone new offers them even a slightly lower price.

Eventually, you’ll end up selling your products or services so cheaply that you’ll make little to no profit and your begin to hate your own business and resent your customers. Along the way, you’ll damage your company’s brand because people will associate it with cheap, inferior products and poor service.

A few years ago, I made this same mistake. I dropped our prices by 60% during a particularly rough patch in our company’s history. Did we make up for the loss of profit by an increase in volume?

Not even in the slightest.

In fact, our volume remained almost exactly the same. What changed was the type of client who contacted us.

Instead of getting calls from peoples who were interested in value, we were contacted by people who were only concerned about the price. Even though our prices were at rock-bottom, we were repeatedly asked for discounts and payment plans because the people who contacted us had the wrong mindset. To make matters worse, many of the clients we did work with during that time couldn’t afford to finish the projects they started.

You’re known by the company you keep

The success of your business depends on the type of customers you choose to work with. Another way to look at it is that the type of customers you turn down can have a greater impact than the ones you choose to work with.

When money is tight, it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking on any customer who is willing to spend money with you. Most entrepreneurs, including myself, have made that mistake.

The problem is that you then become know for working with that type of client and end up getting more of the same.

Imagine a real estate agent who sells only luxury waterfront property, but she has a slow couple of months, so she takes a listing for a small home in a bad neighborhood. She does everything right and sells it quickly at a fair price. Her client loves her so much that they refer their friends and family to her. Not being one to turn away business, she helps them too.

It’s admirable that she was willing to help these people, but now she doesn’t have the background that the seller of a beautiful and expensive waterfront home is looking for in a listing agent, so she’s stuck selling more homes in bad neighborhoods.

Success breeds success

My company has worked with small start ups, Fortune 500 companies and everything in between, and that’s taught me that usually, the higher up the food chain you go, the easier the customers are to work with and the more realistic their budgets and expectations are.

Many solo entrepreneurs are brilliant, dedicated and ambitious people, but they can often difficult to work with because they’re so used to doing everything on their own. Because of that,they’re often less willing to part with their money even though it would mean seeing better results faster than if they did the work on their own. They also like to have a lot of control over every tiny detail.

On the other hand, executives of larger companies who are comfortable delegating are more than happy to let you do your job your way while they focus on the end result. There is far less hand holding and your profits are usually higher.

That’s great, but my business is different

I’m sure you like to think of your business as a unique and beautiful snowflake, but it’s not.

Unless you’re selling a commodity, dropping your prices is a short term solution to a long term problem. You might get an increase in new business, but it’s not the type of business you want, and your profits will suffer.

The choice is yours. You can either turn a profit while you enjoy working with reasonable clients who have realistic budgets and expectations, or you can work at a loss while you’re miserable working with unreasonable clients who are simply looking for the absolute lowest price.

What’s the solution?

The difference is whether you choose to focus on the value that you’re bringing to the table, or on the price.

When we dropped our prices in response to a slow economy, we began attracting the wrong type of prospect. So the obvious solution was to raise our prices. In fact, we raised them even higher than they started off at.

To most people, it probably seems counter intuitive. How can the solution to a slow period be to raise your prices? That can’t work, can it?

Indeed. It can, and it did. And it will work for you too, if you do it right.

That’s not to say it wasn’t “keep you up all night” scary. It was, and initially, I fought the natural urge to go back.

But instead, I stuck with it and focused on the value that we provided. We spent more time qualifying our prospects – we were interviewing them just as much as they were interviewing us. And since our profit margins were higher (though still very reasonable) it allowed us to only work with the clients who were the best fit and turn the rest down. As a result, our clients got better results, we made a decent profit, and everyone was a lot happier working together.

Are you ready to make that sort of dramatic change in your business?

Grab a note pad and make a list of all the benefits you bring to the table, then raise your prices by 50% or even 100%.

You’ll still be reaching the same number of people with your marketing dollars, but their perception of your company will change, so the type of people who you speak to will be drastically different. They will be more concerned with the value and the outcome they’ll receive from working with you instead of just your price.

And for any small business owner, what Christmas would be complete without a mad dash for some last minute profits before the height of the festivities?

You’re probably wondering “Is it even worthwhile to ramp up my marketing during the Christmas Season with so many people focused on holiday parties, shopping and travel?” The answer is “Absolutely!”

A well though-out out marketing plan can transform your December from a slow and possibly dismal month into one that breaks old records and sets you up for a rocking new year. Here are a few ideas to get you going…

Don’t be Afraid to Say Merry Christmas

In today’s politically correct world, everyone is afraid of offending someone, but is that really justified? In my opinion, it’s ridiculous, but it turns out that statistically speaking, at least in terms of email, people actually respond better to the phrase “Merry Christmas” than they do to “Happy Holidays.”

Send Out Dimensional Mail

Dimensional mail always works better than traditional mail, but it can have a tremendous impact at Christmas time because a promotional item and your company’s literature wrapped in festive wrapping paper with a bow on top is sure to be received and opened by your prospect rather than intercepted by a gatekeeper.

This is a sure-fire way to get noticed, remembered, and more often than not, make direct contact with a decision maker. The key is laser focus on a small, very specific list of prospects because your cost per piece is going to be higher than traditional direct mail, but your response rate is going to be higher – often exponentially.

Offer a Christmas Sale

Sales and discounts can often be counter-productive pricing strategies unless there is a very valid reason behind them. Fortunately Christmas and the end of the year are very valid reasons to hold a sale or offer a discount – just make sure it’s seasonally-themed so that everyone understands the reason behind it; more importantly, they understand that there is a limited window of opportunity to take advantage of your special pricing.

Hold a Christmas Party

Most companies hold some sort of holiday party but fail to use it to really promote themselves. A good way to do this is to hold a raffle where the winner will receive certain products or services for free. This is a great way to showcase some of your offerings to all of the attendees without coming off as being overly self-promotional.

Be sure to invite clients, AND prospects. It will give them a chance to meet and talk about your products or services, which will help build your credibility.

Send Gifts to Your Clients

Everyone wants to know they’re appreciated – especially your clients. Sending them a gift is an easy and relatively inexpensive way to do that while staying on their mind and setting yourself apart from the competition.

If you’re prepared, you can enjoy goodies that even the Easter Bunny can’t bring—and that’s new customers for your business.

Easter, like Halloween and Thanksgiving, gives you the opportunity to tie your marketing to a holiday theme that is enjoyed by almost everyone, and you won’t even have to hunt for ideas! Here are a few…

Hold an Easter egg hunt

If you run a retail business, you could hold an Easter egg hunt on your property. A few dozen plastic Easter eggs will cost less than $20, and you can stuff them full of a variety of candies along with your business card, or better yet—coupons for your business.

If your business is strictly online, you can still hold an Easter egg hunt, you’ll just have to do it at a public location like a park or beach, or you could partner with a retail business and use their property.

Getting the word out is the easy part. You can post flyers anywhere that parents are likely to frequent, as well as using your own direct mail and/or email list. Anyone who has kids know that every parent is ALWAYS looking for a nearby event to entertain their kids.

Hire the Easter Bunny

An easy way to bring families to your business in droves is to have the Easter Bunny in full costume on site. You’ll have a captive audience because the parents will be standing around while their children wait in line to meet the Easter Bunny, so it’s the perfect time for a captivating product display or demonstration.

Launch a new product

Most people see at Easter as a fresh start and a time to welcome change. Make the most of this feeling by introducing a new product or service.

Send an Easter-themed direct mail campaign

Direct mail will usually generate a 1%-2% response rate, but with an Easter themed piece in April, the response rate can climb significantly. You can expect even better performance if you skip the traditional postcards or brochures, and instead send dimensional mail. In this case, an Easter basket full of candy along with a personalized note and marketing materials will do the trick. Dimensional mail has a higher cost per piece, but is more likely to reach your potential customer instead of being intercepted by a gatekeeper, and it often makes a greater impression, which means a higher return on investment.

Often, with just a little more effort than your competitors, you can turn your company into something that media outlets want to cover. You simply have to innovate in some useful way. For some, that may mean developing a way to offer significant price reductions (while making sure that you are still generating reasonable profits) while for others it may mean a more effective way to offer consumers what they need or want. It could be a new solution to a problem, a more environmentally friendly process, a broader or faster moving distribution network, or just about any major advantage that your company has over your competitors.

Google did it by first developing a more effective search engine, and then continuing to develop a variety of new tools for their consumers. Facebook did it by developing a way for their consumers to interact with their friends and family, meet new people, and even achieve their own 15 minutes of fame. Dell did it by allowing consumers the ability to invest in the exact computer that they need from the comfort of their home via direct mail.

So how can you innovate your company to become more newsworthy? To get started, take some time to brainstorm with the following questions, utilizing the opinions of your employees, clients and prospects.

1. What are some of the major challenges or obstacles that we face?
2. What is the largest cost incurred in doing business?
3. What are some of the weak points in our business model?
4. How can we deliver our product or service to our consumers more quickly, more precisely, or at a lower cost or a higher profit?
5. What do our consumers want that they are not currently getting?
6. What aspects of our business model are we not effectively utilizing?

Once you start answering these questions, you’ll inevitably come up with more ideas and even more questions, and your idea cloud will grow. Implement just a few effective innovations and watch how quick your company begins to grow while becoming more newsworthy. Innovate enough and you can bet that you’ll begin to see your company in the media without any additional work on your end.

Now get to work! Get out there and make your company newsworthy!

It’s easy to do what’s expected, to keep doing what your industry has always done. Especially when you’re still making money. It’s a lot harder to look for, accept and plan for a future that completely changes your industry.

Can you?

Are you an innovator who can objectively look into the future of your industry and adjust your business model accordingly? Or are you the more like an ostrich, burying your head in the sand and hoping things just go back to the way they used to be?

Ostrich: Newspapers

Newspapers are a perfect example of the ostrich’s “ignorance is bliss” approach. They laughed at the Internet at first. They were used to being one of the most trusted and established sources of news, and after four centuries, why should they expect anything different? They couldn’t believe that anyone in their right mind would ever listen to some silly blogger.

They were wrong in a big way.

Instead of accepting that their industry was changing quickly and dramatically, they clung desperately to their old business model. Instead of adapting, they mocked and ridiculed other sources of news, claiming they weren’t legitimate or credible. The worst part is since they were so set in their ways, they couldn’t even see (or refused to see) that people had sought out other sources of news because most newspapers are full of biased trash!

Publishing in general has been declining for a number of reasons though. Cost being one of the most significant.

The costs associated with publishing a physical newspaper are astronomical and the profit margins are generally meager compared to other industries. It requires a staff of journalists, photographers, editors, graphic designers, press operators, delivery people, sales and customer service reps, along with all of the equipment and facilities that they need to do their jobs. But what if you could trim that back a bit? Assuming that they were producing content that people actually wanted to read, could a newspaper effectively compete with a strictly online publication?

Absolutely. They already have quite a few advantages and opportunities that an online publication, especially a new one, doesn’t have.

• They have (in most cases) an established infrastructure, brand and reader base.
• They can use their existing print publication to drive traffic to their own online publication, and vice versa.
• They can reduce the number of printed copies they produce and focus more energy online, which would slash their overhead and increase readership. But how many of our “venerable” newspapers are doing this? A lot fewer than you might think; as of January, 2011, only 78 US newspapers are available for the Kindle!
• They can use their online publication to develop an email list, creating another marketing channel.
• They can create a “value-added” scenario by offering advertising packages that include both online, email and print advertising.

Instead they choose to focus on raising prices to cover the loss of readers, which leads to more readers leaving, followed by more price increases. This pattern can throw even the most well funded companies into a financial tailspin.

Ostrich: Blockbuster

Movie rental companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had enjoyed a dominate position for years, but like most newspapers, they also ignored the writing on the wall.

Increased access to broadband Internet and lower costs for DVDs gave people more options. Now instead of rushing to a crowded store to fight for the latest release, people can choose from an almost unlimited number of movies to watch on-demand through their cable provider, join a subscription service like Netflix, which will mail your selected DVDs, along with pre-paid packaging to return them, directly to your home, visit a local DVD kiosk like Redbox, or even download movies directly to watch on their computer or Internet-enabled TV.

Like most lumbering giants, Blockbuster was slow to adapt to their changing industry and it cost them plenty. They quickly lost market share, both to well-established local cable providers, and to nimble start-ups who could provide the same product, more conveniently, with far less overhead.

Blockbuster’s inaction drove them into bankruptcy as of September, 2010. While they did eventually adapt to offer the same options and convenience as their competitors, they moved too slowly and showed that even an established leader can easily be toppled when they don’t keep up with major changes to their industry. Along the way, they lost considerable market share.

Innovator: Kodak

Once upon a time, Kodak was best known for the film they produced. But technology moves quickly, and as more people began purchasing digital cameras and high-quality, inexpensive printers became commonplace, Kodak’s leaders could see that demand for their film was inevitably going to decline drastically.

Not content to wait around for the fallout, they began to focus their efforts on the emerging aspects of their industry, namely digital cameras, photo printers, ink and related accessories. It’s important to note that while they don’t manufacture the highest rated cameras or printers, they have been able to leverage their existing brand equity to capture a reasonable market share for both, especially considering their recent entry to this market. Many of their competitors haven’t done as well.

Innovator: Apple

If you’re under 30, you probably don’t remember a world where Apple wasn’t a powerful and trendy market leader, but that wasn’t always the case.

The Apple Macintosh was relatively popular in their early days when few people owned a personal computer, but as Bill Gates built what would later become a giant empire named Microsoft, IBM compatible computers became easier to use, cheaper and far more common and quickly took over the market. For nearly two decades, Apple quietly chugged along with a small but loyal following of creative-types, like web and graphic designers, video editors and publishers.

The first major innovation that put them back on the map was the iPod. A brilliant and perfectly-timed product launch combined with an unbelievably effective advertising campaign made them a household name almost overnight. They quickly followed up with new versions of the Macintosh that looked completely different than people were used to, capitalizing on a powerful operating system that was just as user-friendly as Windows, but less prone to crashes or viruses. Apple’s new consumers excitedly spread the word to others, helping them to roughly double their market share for personal computers.

This led the way for the iPhone which revolutionized the cell phone industry, followed by the iPad and I’m almost certain that there will be a lot more to come. Apple’s innovation brought them double-digit growth for each of the last six years, transforming them from a relatively small and struggling company into an industry leader.

So, are you an innovator or an ostrich?

Will you seek out and adapt to the changes in your industry before your competitors do, or will you be forced to catch up after the fact? Will you be proactive or reactive? Will you innovate, or will you  simply stick your head in the sand and hope things go back the the way they were?

The choice is yours.

It’s important to remember the point of Thanksgiving, but it’s also important to use the holiday to help grow your business. While your competitors are busy buying turkeys and making pies, you should be busy courting new prospects. After all, business is still taking place, there are just fewer pilgrims harvesting the same crops.

Drive Sales with a Holiday Promotion

Everyone loves a great deal, and it’s even more credible when there’s a valid reason behind it. Thanksgiving is a great time to offer special promotions for any customers, but it works even better for your existing customers. Think of it as a way to say “thank you” to your valued customers.

Share Your Good Fortune

No matter how tough the economy may have been on your business lately, you’re still better off than a lot of people. You could invest some of your time and money to organize a food drive to help the less fortunate while building good publicity at the same time.

Offer a Prize to Your Customers

One lucky customer could win a complete Thanksgiving meal (uncooked, of course). You could hand out a raffle ticket with each purchase, and then announce the winner a few days before Thanksgiving.

Create a Thanksgiving Themed Widget

Let’s face it, as a nation with hundreds of years of Thanksgivings under our belts, most of us still have no idea what the hell we’re doing. That’s why widgets like the Thanksgiving turkey calculator are so popular.

Send out a Thanksgiving cards

Business is really all about relationships, and if your customers matter to you, you need to let them know. A Thanksgiving card with a short personalized note that says what you appreciate about them will go a long way in doing that.

For some, it might be the latest social-media-web-2.0 software. For others, it may be something more practical, like custom wall murals. What ever your product is, I can almost guarantee that you haven’t done your homework before jumping in with both feet. Most people don’t.

Oh sure, you may have refined, tweaked and polished your idea until you felt it was perfect. You probably researched potential competitors well into the wee hours of the night and toiled endlessly to develop a solid business plan. Hell, you may have even asked a few friends and business associates what they thought about it. But you missed one critical step.

You didn’t find even a handful of people who would commit to actually buying what you’re selling!

Look, you can spend all the time in the world perfecting your product and creating a flawless business plan, but until it’s time for money to change hands, it doesn’t mean a damn thing. People are going to tell you that your idea is great. Depending on your point of view, they are either too nice or too weak to tell you what they really think.

So you just keep barreling down the road because after all the work you’ve already put into your “baby” you’re afraid to find out that you’re the only one who cares about it.

But if you don’t change course, and change it fast, you’re going to fail because YOU ARE NOT your target market (neither is your mother, wife, friends or kids) and your opinions don’t matter. Focus groups are used for one reason: The participants don’t know you and don’t care about your feelings, so they’re going to say what they really think. If your product sucks, they will say so, and that’s exactly what you need!

So what’s the solution? Get your product out there, imperfections and all, and start building a customer base. Then make adjustments based on THEIR feedback. A great blueprint for doing that is Blue Ocean Strategy, which outlines exactly how to find out what matters to your customers and give them that while getting rid of what doesn’t matter to them. It also has tons of case studies of companies that have been refined based on what the customers wanted — not what the owners/managers wanted.

If you can do that, you’ll have a serious advantage over your competitors, and before long, they’ll become irrelevant!

The connection is obvious for some companies, like Costume Discounters, but what if your company has absolutely nothing to do with Halloween? Can you still use a Halloween theme to market your business?

Absolutely! You’ll just have to get creative…and maybe toss in a bit of eye of newt and toe of frog for good measure.

Host a Halloween party

Invite your staff, vendors, clients, and of course, prospects to enjoy traditional Halloween activities like bobbing for apples, pumpkin carving and maybe even a costume contest, along with some networking and self-promotion. This is a great opportunity to make a personal connection with prospects outside of the typical work environment, which could lead to a business relationship. Be sure to hand out goody-bags full of candy, treats and your marketing materials at some point during the event.

Send out a Halloween-themed direct mail piece

A well designed and written direct mail campaign usually produces a 1%-2% response rate, but when designed with a Halloween theme and sent in October, the response rate can climb dramatically. You can get even better results if you skip the traditional route of mailing postcards or brochures, and instead send dimensional mail, such as a trick or treat bag full of candy and a personalized note introducing your company. Dimensional mail has a higher cost per piece, but is more likely to reach the intended recipient rather than being intercepted by a gatekeeper, and it often makes a greater impression, which translates into a higher return on investment.

Hold a special Halloween sale

A great option for retailers would be to host a “Midnight Special,” opening the doors late at night for an ultra-special – and spooky – sale. Employees can dress in costume while scary sounds are be played overhead and refreshments are served. If you try this, make sure you make the deals good enough to bring people in that late, and that you get the word out ahead of time.

Create a scare house

Everyone loves a good scare, especially at Halloween, and you can turn your office into a unique and memorable scare house complete with decorations like ghosts, skeletons, hanging bats, eerie music and creepy fog. Your staff can even dress in costumes and walk around startling your visitors. Be sure to hand out goody-bags full of candy, treats and your marketing materials as people exit your little house of horrors.

As a result, a question I get asked a lot is “Do you have any advice for the average entrepreneur?”

And my answer is an emphatic “Yes, don’t be average!”

The failure that I mentioned earlier was a publishing company I started when I was much younger. One of my biggest mistakes was neglecting to differentiate my brand new publishing company from my competitors, so there was really no incentive for my potential clients to end their existing relationships to work with my company. It didn’t take long for it to fold. I lost a lot of money, but learned a lot in the process.

No matter what industry your business is in, you have to set yourself apart from your competitors. You have to find or create something that make you unique and gives you a major competitive advantage. Tuck away your own personal biases and self interests for a moment and put yourself in your prospect’s shoes; why should they choose your company over another? What advantages can you offer that others can’t?

Most people think the easiest way is to be the cheapest. The problem is there will always be someone else willing to offer the same product or service for less, so you’ll be perceived as nothing more than a commodity. Besides, you don’t want to attract the type of customers who will jump ship when your competitors offers to beat your price by a few dollars. We have a client in the wholesale seafood industry who regularly faces this challenge. Even though his company enjoys a loyal customer base and doesn’t compete on price, about 40% of his customers will try a new vendor to save a few cents per pound of seafood. Most end up coming back because of his commitment to quality, but this creates a lot of fluctuation in his income.

Here are a few ideas for the above-average entrepreneur:

1. Provide customer service that blows peoples’ minds the way Zappos does.
2. Turn an industry upside down. Think of what Redbox did to the movie rental industry.
3. Target an extremely specific niche with laser focus. Instead of targeting women who exercise, target expectant mothers who practice Yoga.
4. Provide the fastest turn around time in your industry. The option to get an order out the door in 24 hours can mean a lot to certain customers.
5. Offer the widest variety of products possible; think of Walmart or Amazon.
6. Provide an unconditional lifetime replacement guarantee—and actually follow through on it. Sears does this with their Craftsman line of hand tools.

Your goal isn’t just to be different than your competitors. It’s not even just to stand out from them. Your goal is to make them irrelevant and make your company the only logical choice. Ignore what doesn’t matter to your customers and focus on exactly what does. Give them that and you’ll be light years ahead of the average entrepreneur.

After all, the mindset of most people is that when we want to make more money, we need to find more customers. This almost always leads to more sales calls, broader and more expensive marketing efforts, and of course, lots of extra work and frustration.

Sometimes it pays off. Usually it doesn’t.

Is finding more customers really the answer to making more money?

For most businesses, the answer is usually a big, loud and booming no. More customers means more work, more headaches, more staff and of course, more overhead. Sure, you may generate more revenue than before, but do you really want those new customers if, after the additional expenses, you’re still bringing home the same amount of money? The only thing you’re really gaining in that scenario is stress, and I think we all have enough of that already!

No, what you want is more of the right customers. This means focusing on a niche; the tighter, the better. Then, only target customers who fit that niche.

I know your gut reaction is something like “If I focus on a niche, I’ll leave a lot of potential customers (and money) out there for my competitors and I won’t make enough money.”

Yes, you will leave potential customers out there, but you will still make enough money. In reality, you’ll make more money with less effort and stress.

It will be scary as hell. You’ll use every excuse you can come up with to put it off. You’ll continue doing what you’ve always done until one day, something just just clicks and you realize it’s not working the way you want. Maybe you realize you’re spending far too much time catering to the whims of a few customers who, coincidentally, are your least profitable accounts. Or maybe you finally see that your close ratio is horrendous. It could be anything, but somewhere down the road, you’re going to see that some, if not most, of your clients just aren’t the right fit for your company.

What do you do once your eyes are open?

Figure out exactly who you want to work with. Who are you most profitable customers? What traits do they have in common? Who can you truly help the most right now? Those are the type of customers you want to need to focus on.

Now, start going after these type of customers while weaning yourself off of the wrong ones as quickly as possible.

That’s right, you’re going to have to fire some of your customers! It can be scary, awkward and liberating all at the same time. The key is to treat it just like a break up. Be tactful, yet firm. Don’t place blame or say negative things about them. You can just say that your company is shifting focus and they just aren’t the right fit for you anymore. It’s the business version of “It’s not you, it’s me.” You can even point them to a few companies who might be a better fit.

Getting rid of the dead wood allows you to develop better relationships with your profitable customers and find new customers who fit your company better.

As you begin to focus on a specific niche, you’ll see your sales process improve too. Similar prospects will have a lot of the same questions, and as you develop the right answers, it will almost be like following a road map. I used to work at a software company that targeted people looking for IT certifications. They had the process so well refined that when you would ask a prospect a question, you could be assured you’d receive one of two or three answers. If you followed the process properly, twenty minutes or so was all it took to close the deal on a $2,500 software training package.

Focusing on a niche usually means that people who know and respect each other will talk about your company and the products or services you provide. If you do things right, it won’t take long before you have an almost cult-like following. It’s a hell of a lot easier to sell to people who have heard about you through a trusted source.

Remember, you started a business to make money, but not sell your soul. If you spend your days doing work you love for clients who respect and value you, you’re going to perform better, feel better, have more free time and probably live longer too!