I'm Dave Lorenzo and this is the Inside BS Show number 761. Hey now, welcome to another edition of the Inside BS Show. Today we're talking about your message.

I just got back to my office from a lunch with a bunch of really smart business owners. One of the topics at lunch today was very specific to helping people understand what we do, specifically messaging and making sure people get what we're talking about when we're trying to explain the value we provide in our businesses. This is a big problem for people in all different sorts of industries.

It doesn't matter if you're a construction company who specializes in developing and building hotels or if you're an insurance broker and you have a whole assortment of products and services you provide, you've gotta be able to communicate the value that you create and the reason that people invest in your services and you have to be able to communicate it to people who may have the mental capacity of a six year old or of a 96 year old. You've gotta be able to communicate it to people who have the attention span of a deep psychoanalyst or the attention span of an ADD entrepreneur. Your ability to communicate your message in five seconds or less is critical.

So you gotta come up with, call it a memory hook, call it a tagline, you have to come up with something that engages people and gets them to say, I need to find out more about that. The example that I gave today is from Exit Success Lab and it's one that Nicola Gellarmino, my business partner and I have recently started using because it really resonates with our target audience. When somebody asks, Dave, what do you do? I say, I help business owners grow their business from one million to five million dollars in annual revenue in 18 months or less.

It's very clear, I wanna meet business owners whose businesses are within that range and want to grow beyond that range. Now the question that I get when I try to explain to people that I'm targeting a very specific, very narrow audience, the question that I get is, aren't you limiting yourself by using a message that's that specific and that's that focused? Keep in mind that I'm sharing this message with someone who's not a business owner in that range. They may not be the owner of a business at all or they may be a professional service provider.

So by giving them a specific revenue range and by saying what I do, I grow the business from this to this in a specific time frame, I'm inviting the question, wow, how do you do that? Then I get to go into detail about the value that I provide and why I'm looking for people in that target range. If they're savvy, they will ask me, well, do you help people whose businesses are 20 million or 10 million? And of course, I'll say yes. They'll say, what if my business is doing 850,000? It's not quite at a million.

And I'll have an option for them, whether it's through my business or to refer them to one of my strategic alliance partners. But I'm getting into a conversation where I can elaborate on the value that I provide. The reason for creating the narrow niche audience when you're stating your target message, your memory hook or your elevator pitch, the reason for giving that narrow scope is to specifically stand out in people's minds and giving them three points of reference, 1 million to 5 million, 18 months.

That seems fast. How does he do it? That's the question I want. So for you, as a business owner, you need to ask yourself, what can I say that will get people interested so that they ask me what my secret sauce is or they ask me why I picked that market? Let's say that you're a financial advisor.

Your target audience could be anybody who's going through a life transition. If they're getting married, they're getting divorced, they're having a baby, they're planning for the care of a loved one who's older, all those people are great target clients for you. But if you mention all those people, nobody's ever gonna remember anything.

If you have a number of clients who are members of the LGBTQ community, that would be a great place to start. So you can say, well, what I do is I help people who are in transition plan for their financial future. That means people who are getting married, people who are getting divorced, people who are having a baby.

But my area of focus right now are members of the LGBTQ community who are particularly interested in growing their families. I love to help them plan for their financial future. People might say to you, why'd you pick that group? Or they might say to you, how is planning for families in that group different than planning for families in other groups? Any way you slice it, you're getting into an interesting conversation.

You're going to have questions that will be asked of you that you can answer that will get them more interested in what you do. The bottom line is this, communicating your message is essential. And making that communication narrow and focused and descriptive is always going to be helpful in people remembering you.

Now, once you get into that conversation, the best thing for you to do rather than list off services is to give a case study, is to give a story of people who've been successful. So for me, here's how it goes. I help business owners who are going from 1 million to 5 million in annual revenue.

I help them do that in 18 months or less. And they'll say, wow, how do you do that? And I'll say, here's how I did it for one business owner. I had a business owner who was in the financial services space.

And they had six financial planners in their business. They were doing a little over 2 million in annual revenue. They had a significant amount of assets under management, and they wanted to grow quickly.

What we did with them is we helped them create classes for people who are brand new parents. And the classes were about saving for college and planning for the future and your financial situation as you save for college and plan for the future. These classes were populated with people who were going through parenting classes.

And what we had these folks do was they did free financial plans for obstetricians and pediatricians. And the reason they did the plans for free for obstetricians and pediatricians is because they wanted them to tell their patients about their services. The pediatricians were not only happy to tell their patients about the services, the pediatricians, some of them, would host these parenting classes in their office, would host these, they weren't parenting classes, well, they would host parenting classes in their office, but they would also host financial planning classes in their offices.

This was incredibly valuable for their patients. It was incredibly valuable for the pediatric practice. They became known as the pediatricians, the obstetricians, who cared about the lifetime of the child, not just the birthing process.

The strategic alliance created between five practices of OB, obstetricians, and pediatricians, along with the financial advisors, was incredibly valuable for both sides. This case study helped blow up the practice for the financial advisors. It also created a lot of buzz around the pediatric practice.

I tell that story when people ask me for follow-ups on how I help people go from one million to five million in annual revenue in 18 months or less. This financial services practice actually did it in a little under a year. They went from one million to five million, and it was under a year from when they started hosting the classes in the pediatrician's office to the time when they actually broke the five million dollar barrier.

They went from about two and a half to five million, so they doubled in size in a little under a year using this one strategy that we introduced to them. So if you are crafting your message, be simple and have a case study for follow-up. I'm Dave Lorenzo.

I will see you back here tomorrow. Until then, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life. That'll do it for this edition of the Inside B.S. Show.

I'll be back here again tomorrow at 6 a.m. with another show for you. Until then, I'm Dave Lorenzo, and here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.