In The Trenches videos are brought to you by Thriveal and Bill.com.
You can find Cari on the web at Carianne Weston, Certified Public Accountant or follow her on twitter at @carianneweston.
Be wowed by our blog
Consider this
Choose your favorite writer
-
Adrian -
Greg -
guestblogger -
Jason -
Jennifer
-a brand involves a set of expectations, memories and stories. There are definitely certain things you expect when you are talking about Dolly Parton (some I would blush to mention in this blog post), as well as the memories of her songs and the stories you’ve heard about her.
-you will pay a premium for the brand. You will pay a premium to see and hear Dolly’s music live.
-you will choose a brand over something else. Obviously, Dolly Parton is not for everyone, but you have to admit that she has a cult following.
The idea of serving a niche is so counterintuitive. By choosing to focus on one segment of a market, you are saying no to others. This idea came up a few years ago in a conversation between Jason and me. (I remember where I was standing.) It scared me. Money was tight, and he was suggesting we focus ONLY on serving people in creative professions (web design and development mostly). At that point, we had only a handful of customers in that field, but they were Jason’s favorites and he wanted to serve more of them. But what about the construction companies, lawyers, dentists, veterinarians, and manufacturing customers we had at the time?
Everyone wishes they had better negotiation skills. Sort of. We want to be amazing negotiators, but we don’t want to be sleazy A-holes, and it’s hard to be the former without (intentionally or unintentionally) becoming the latter. Regardless, it’s fun to watch people with questionable morals use their Jedi mind tricks to con people out of money (and maybe we can learn something along the way).
Consider the following sleazy A-holes¹.