Kingsley knew that his brand had hidden value. He uncovered and dramatically expanded that value through three simple steps:

• Leaning into his brand’s existing success
• Focusing his scarce resources on success without distraction
• Using effective communications to expand his target market while staying on-brand

Let’s explore each of these critical components of uncovering your brand’s hidden value. Further analysis and other case studies on each of these areas can be seen in our recent published work at Forbes.com (lean into existing success), Newsweek (stay focused and on-brand), and The Washington Post (expand your brand value and target market while staying on-brand).

Lean into your existing brand success

You can’t expand your brand unless you know what it is. The Kabari Wellness Institute initially found success by targeting people who had specific, niche health needs as part of a limited “health and wellness” brand. That success gave evidence that a brand variation focused on the general population would drive more revenue under the same umbrella while increasing the pool of clients for the initial chiropractor and muscle activation businesses.

The latest expansion took the first two successes and expanded the “health and wellness” brand and its target markets to business owners. The first two target markets are now bigger than ever because those business owners bring in their own clients, which puts them in touch with the Institute’s other branded operations. And the third target market requires little effort while bringing in significant money and turning the Institute from another gym or chiropractor office into a local hub of health and wellness offerings.

The key to the Institute’s success wasn’t chiropractic services and branding. It was a health and wellness brand which included chiropractic services. This same process is available to companies in a host of other industries. You can brand an accounting firm as a “tax service” company…or a financial strategy firm which lives up to that brand promise. You can brand a restaurant as a place for food…or as a place to find great experiences through food, drinks, events, and music.

As we described at Forbes.com, the best way to expand the definition of your brand is to lean into what works. But you have to first know what you’re branding.

Stay disciplined and focused

The Kabari Wellness Institute has disciplined, laser-like focus on its health and wellness brand. It doesn’t rent to lawyers, car repair shops, or music tutors because any short-term revenue gains would be offset by the brand distraction.

Kingsley also doesn’t let critics drag him down. But success is the best brand for a business, so he and his team have stayed focused on building a brand and an infrastructure that proves itself.

Lastly, the Institute doesn’t get distracted by off-brand messages. For example, as we highlighted at Newsweek, companies which get involved in politics often spend a lot of time, money, and human capital on crisis communications instead of signing new deals, hiring more people, and making more money. By staying on-message and on-brand, the Institute has created significant value for the community’s small businesses and health care customers – far more than it could through off-brand messages that at best waste resources, and at most risk driving away potential and existing customers.

Clearly communicate

The Kabari Wellness Institute used to define “health and wellness company” as “chiropractor and niche muscle activation services.” That brand has expanded twice. But the language hasn’t changed because the brand hasn’t changed – it’s just expanded.

Clear, on-brand communication ensures continuity of the company’s mission, focus, and use of scarce resources. Amazon’s growth from books to everything didn’t change the company’s flywheel – it just expanded it. The same is true for the accounting firm which initially offered tax services four months a year and expanded to providing year-round financial strategy consulting.

This is a key growth principle no matter what your brand is. We urged politicians in The Washington Post who want to represent “all” of their constituents to expand their “electability” and “representation” brands by clearly communicating a message that will increase their ability to reach their target market – voters.

The value is there – go find it

Businesses survive because they add value to the marketplace. Those that thrive often find new ways to add value to their existing operations. The best way to add new value is to stick to what you know best. That’s what Kingsley did, and it’s turned him into a successful entrepreneur, medical professional, and landlord.

Where’s the new value in your business? Go uncover it.

“Initially, I did financial planning, helped clients with investments, and sold insurance products,” said Bernhardt. “It took me six years to focus on what we do well and not try to be everything to everyone. Therefore, I quit selling insurance.” He later narrowed his niche to clients with at least a million dollars in investible assets. During that transition, Gordon sold 75 percent of the company’s clients to existing staff – helping them launch their own business – and reduced total staff size from six to two.

Despite being smaller, the company grew faster. “We cut our payroll costs, and within a year we had more assets under management than before. We grew faster because we streamlined our client service process and I was able to focus on the new niche in a more exclusive fashion.”

Gordon’s journey from solo operator to established market player was years in the making. He built teams that specialized in what his company did best. He twice narrowed his niche, launching the company to faster growth. And throughout the years, he updated his business plan and made the entire operation more efficient at serving its clients.

These are the keys to blasting through growth ceilings, whether you’re a start-up operation or an established firm facing stagnation. Let’s explore each of these components of growth and success.

Start off right – have a well-researched business plan

The first ceiling to overcome is development of a well-researched, targeted business plan. Many companies limit growth, gross revenue, and net revenue by never fully engaging in this process. Here are five keys to a great business plan.

• Provide a specific product or service. Don’t reduce your company’s value, dilute its experience, and diffuse its marketing by trying to be all things to all people. Gordon went from selling insurance and financial service products – which everyone does – to focusing on wealth management, then narrowed his services to those valued by high-net worth business owners, executives, and professionals.
• Identify and serve specific target markets. Gordon stopped serving people whose investible assets are under one million dollars – giving up short-term revenue but growing the company faster.
• Establish the company’s mission, tagline, philosophies, and goals. Where do you want to be in five years, three years, and one year? How will you get there? What do you want customers and staff to understand about the company culture?
• Develop a branding and marketing strategy. What will your logo and colors be and what will your website say about the company? What roles will marketing, personal relationships, and public relations play in your success?
• Determine your prices and stick to them. One of the biggest limitations to a company’s growth is a lack of confidence in pricing. Companies which negotiate on price are negotiating their future, and companies which have the lowest prices will get the least profitable clients who create the biggest headaches.

A good business plan is your first competitive advantage over competitors who guess at their prices, aren’t looking long-term, and don’t know their target markets. It also allows you to dynamically adjust to new information and update the plan.

Build the right team

Your most important investment may be your team. This includes direct staff, vendors, contractors, and a referral network. The question is: how do you develop the right team for success?

First, know who should be on your team and why. Start with your staff, from senior leaders down to the newest intern, including 1099 employees. Then consider necessary outside experts like lawyers, accountants, and bankers. Without the internal team, your company won’t produce for clients. Without the outside people, your company will be fine until an emergency hits. You don’t want to be scrambling when you’re sued, fighting the IRS, or need a line of credit.

The second answer is to consider personalities, skills, and experiences. Uber targeted experienced taxicab drivers who wanted a safer, calmer work environment and the flexibility to work their own hours. Tony Piloseno was hired by Florida Paints because of his passion for paint, not because of expertise in any specific area of business. One home service company hires former restaurant managers because they are trainable, hard-working, and appreciative of a good working environment.

The final answer is to develop a process to find and build the team. Do you want highly-paid, experienced staff members who can produce right away, or less expensive people who require more training? Do you use Indeed, your company’s professional network, or a headhunter to find your team members? What sort of mentalities should your accountant, lawyer, and banker have to drive your success?

From co-workers to your inner circle, always surround yourself with the best talent available. Successful leaders know that sevens and eights hire nines and tens – because CEOs aren’t always the expert, but they know how to surround themselves with experts.

Find your niche – don’t try to be all things to all people

Bernhardt Wealth Management blasted through multiple growth ceilings because Gordon did one thing very well: build a company around the strategy of a more focused niche. Success came from developing and implementing a plan, a team, a brand, and a client base around that strategy. His success can be yours because — no matter the industry — your organization is better off with a tighter niche focus. Here’s why:

• Your team’s expertise will be higher – just like the restaurant that has a small menu often produces higher-quality meals than the restaurant that makes everything. Team members will be able to adjust more quickly to client needs and market changes, find new ways to add value to clients, and need less oversight.
• Your gross and net profits will be higher. Better service to clients means they will likely sign new, and perhaps more expansive, contracts. This reduces your marketing and sales costs while increasing gross and net revenue. Additionally, your clients will tell their colleagues about you – colleagues who are most likely in your target markets. This will further reduce your sales and marketing costs while increasing your bottom-line revenue through new clients.
• You may discover new ways to serve your clients. As Jim Collins explains in his short but powerful Turning the Flywheel monograph, Apple’s niche expanded from Macs to iPhones without changing much of their operations but vastly increasing their target markets. Likewise, Amazon started as a book company…and now they own Whole Foods and a gazillion other non-book entities, and founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest person.

Apple, Amazon, and a restaurant that adds live music during happy hour all have a core niche – and once the core operation effectively served their niche, they saw opportunities to dramatically increase revenue with the same core operations.

Don’t let ceilings slow you down

When it’s all said and done, your company is only limited by the choices its leaders make. Blasting through growth ceilings is possible through an ego-less, company-focused approach that establishes a niche, puts clients first, and builds the right team to service those clients. Gordon Bernhardt has done it three times – it’s why he’s a leader in the region around Washington, D.C. How many ceilings will you hit – and which ones will you blast through?

The first study is Edelman’s Brand Trust In 2020 special report. Forty-four percent of consumers said that seeing positive press would help them choose a brand. Conversely, 51 percent of respondents said negative press would drive them away from a brand!

The other study showed that one positive media mention drove 19 percent of consumers to visit a company’s site. After 10 positive media placements, 85 percent of survey respondents had visited a company’s site.

What is means for you is that getting in the press drives customers to enter your sales funnel. A thought leadership op-ed in the right outlet, an interview with a trusted media gatekeeper, or a press release announcing major company news can be the first step towards customers purchasing your products or services.

We get these kinds of results for clients all the time. From website visits to real dollars to reaching key influencers, we can help you grow sales and increase market influence. Our proven process for success and our good-faith pledge will help you understand how we work and why we’ve succeeded with diverse clients in the financial, technology, and political spaces. We’ll also help you avoid bad press — the kind that drives customers away.

Are you ready to take the first step towards reaching and influencing target markets? Contact us today.

Of course, they won last-minute. The Death Star gets blown up, Yavin is saved, and Darth Vader is forced to retreat. All thanks to Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and the Force, right?

Nope. The Rebels won because they knew that their target wasn’t the lasers, fighters, or Darth Vader. Their movement’s entire hope rested on the order to “stay on target” to hit a two-meter exhaust port while flying at top speed.

Hopefully, your small business doesn’t have to rely on X-Wings and the Millennium Falcon to survive. But just like the Rebels, you can’t get distracted from your target (market) to grow and succeed.

Why such a small target (market)?

The Rebels had to hit a small target because they were in tiny ships that didn’t have much firepower. They were also outgunned 100 to 1. There was no margin for error.

Start-ups should likewise seek a defined, reachable target market – especially if you have lots of competition. Otherwise, you’re wasting marketing, sales, and financial firepower hitting diffuse targets – accomplishing very little even if you make a lot of noise. In the meantime, your competitors will pick off parts or all of your target market.

As your company grows, you can go after Star Destroyers – secondary targets which strengthen your business and weaken your competition. But first, you’ve got to hit that small target market which brings in revenue, teaches you about your customers’ goals and desires, and guides your company to set up successful internal structures.

Just like the Rebels, you’ve got to survive today to get to tomorrow.

Secondary target markets

Destroying a Death Star is hard. It’s much easier to go after small TIE Fighters. But defeating them when your Rebellion is small often takes as much effort, resources, and planning as destroying a Death Star… with far fewer results.

The same is true in business when seeking the proper target market. Customers with little money often require as many marketing resources as more profitable prospects. However, they expect more from you while paying less for your services or products. They are more easily reached and secured, but the profit margin just isn’t there.

The time to go after secondary target markets is once you’ve secured a profitable sector of your target market and set up your company’s infrastructure. At that point, however, you’ll be able to fine-tune your attacks on Star Destroyers – and leave the TIE Fighters to your smaller, less able competitors.

Avoid tunnel vision

One major risk with going after a Death Star-style target market is that it can deplete your resources quickly if revenue isn’t quickly obtained. Only four ships survived the Death Star assault; you want to leave have the flexibility to adjust to new ideas, knowledge, and opportunities.

Another risk of tunnel vision target marketing is thinking that a single big success will turn your company around. Yes, the Rebellion beat the Death Star, but they had to also survive Hoth and win at Endor to defeat the Emperor. Likewise, your company may get a big client – but how you use that contract to prepare for long-term success says a lot more about your acumen as a leader and owner than does getting the client.

A final risk of going for the big client is appearing desperate. The Rebels had to win; saying no and walking away from the negotiation table was not an option. Always leave yourself room to negotiate.

Don’t end up like Tarkin

The biggest risk a small business can take is going after a target market without being prepared. The Rebels were outgunned and outnumbered, but they knew their target and developed a plan to accomplish their goal. The Death Star’s commander, meanwhile, didn’t know that his ship had a major weakness until it was too late, and he didn’t use his resources to their full capacity.

As a small business owner, you have to know what your resources are and how to use them effectively. Tarkin didn’t, so he became a footnote while Luke Skywalker became a hero.  

All rights reserved. This column is the property of Proven Media Solutions and may not be reprinted without express permission.

However, most normal topics have already been addressed, often by high-profile leaders. The small business owner may therefore see the most press success by addressing unusual topics which relate to his or her company’s services or products…but are not necessarily something which the company offers. This offers three advantages compared to a more normal topic:

• The topic offers target audiences unique insights because it is unlikely to have been covered elsewhere.
• This type of thought leadership is not likely to be misinterpreted by target markets as a hidden sales pitch.
• Uniqueness plus non-salesy thought leadership means greater trust in the message and the messenger. This can often be the catalyst to a sales conversation.

Three examples of bank-shot branding

• One of our clients is a private lender. We got them published urging the Small Business Administration to make certain policy changes during the current economic crisis. That’s right — our client helped its target market get money from another source. Doing this earned our client significant gratitude, trust, and greater probability of future business with a number of clients and potential clients.
• The leadership coaching industry is saturated with experts of various stripes. Breaking free from the pack may require talking about leadership-related topics, such as strategies to reduce staff turnover.
• Institute for Excellence in Sales President Fred Diamond created his own successful press outlet — the Sales Game Changer podcast. The podcast has received 250,000 downloads and transcript reads since 2017 and played a significant role in doubling the Institute’s sales in 2019. Diamond’s success comes from putting his own goals last, and speaking to guests about their interests — which is why so many guests turn into clients.

Opportunities to reach and influence target markets through the press exist in good times and bad. Contact us today to develop your unique and compelling story.

One recent example of this is a client which hired us to get them more unique website visits. We accomplished this by getting them the right publicity in the sweet spot of their target markets — and by specifically reaching media outlets which have “downstream” influence.

The right timing and topic

This client’s goals were simple but not easy. We waited for the right moment: they published a groundbreaking economic study.

Our team then developed a press release, a media list, and a subject line to get the study in front of the right media gatekeepers. We worked closely with the client to ensure that their messaging with accurately presented with as much attention-getting flair as possible.

We kept the client’s goal in mind the whole time — what message and media outlets would get readers to their site?

The downstream effect

We targeted a number of industry and mainstream outlets for our client. Within the industry outlets, we specifically aimed at those which are widely read by leading influencers.

One of those outlets led 2,000 industry-leading visitors to the client’s site. That was a direct impact from the gatekeeper we contacted.

However, the downstream effect was even more impactful. Approximately 30,000 visitors came to the client’s site because one outlet is widely read by the industry’s top influencers. One of those influencers, a national radio show host, read the study on-air.

Process was key to client success

The most important part of the process for success is understanding our clients. Only then can we find the right publicity for them.

In this case study, we closely worked with the client to understand their goals and messaging. We then took that messaging to the right gatekeepers who influenced the end audience.

We use this process for all of our diverse clients. Contact us to see how we can use publicity to accomplish your goals!