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Interviewer:     Sophie, one of the things obviously very aware of in terms of the way your business model runs you specifically focus on woman in business and some people might suggest that clearly is a risk because it is potentially cutting out sort of 50% of the market place.  How do you respond to that?

Interviewee:     Do you know I actually got asked this the other day and it threw me a little bit because I wasn’t quite expecting it but I was at a networking event and a woman that was there came up to me and she said what do you do and I said well I teach women in business how to create and develop a brand and she stood there, she spread her legs, she put her hands on her hips and she said “So let me ask you a question, how does it feel to have categorically cut off 50% of the people that you could be working with?”

Interviewer:     Okay.

Interviewee:     I went oh I wasn’t expecting it but I answered and said well it means actually that I get to work with 100% of the people I want to work with on a daily basis but if you look at that a little bit closer there is like eight billion people in the world and by choosing women I’m cutting that in half to say four billion if you take out the third world and a lot of people who aren’t in business who wouldn’t want to work with me then you know you might be able to cut that down to a few million.  Now if I had a few million people to work with I would be a very happy bunny.

Interviewer:     That’s still a big list.

Interviewee:     It’s a big list so actually if I had 10,000 people that really wanted to work with me that I could really help that would be absolutely awesome.  If I had 100 clients who loved me wanted to work with me all the time, were paying me for it and telling other people how brilliant I was and I was giving them real value and changing their lives then I can’t think of much better than that so why would I want to try and connect with thousands and thousands of people who don’t really want to work with me?  It’s far better to find your tribe, is a very trendy word at the moment, but to find your tribe and to really connect with them, to really give them great value and the only way you can do that is by niching and finding something that you are passionate about, that you know about, that you can genuinely help people with and then delivering to them in a targeted way.

Interviewer:     And do you think as well it helps you to identify and match your product more specifically to their needs rather than simply creating a product and taking it to market you can obviously almost kind of reverse engineer the product in terms of what they are looking for?

Interviewee:     Absolutely, I am a big believer that actually starting with the product is almost the wrong way to do it, you need to start with the problem because if there is no need for that product then there is no point in taking it to market, however good an idea it is whereas if you know because you have chosen your target market you know who your ideal client is, an ideal client doesn’t mean having just one you might have 100 products but they are all going to be relevant for different people so to try and advertise them all in one go is never going to be as effective as marketing each one to the people strategically.

Interviewer:     Absolutely.

Interviewee:     You look at the SMA advert that is out at the moment which is baby milk, it is very, very clever advert because the women it’s targeting at are mums who have babies it’s not targeted at the dads, they probably have a dad advert but this particular one is at mums and it, you know I’ve got a 14 year old but I can still connect with the things they’re saying it’s the mum opening the cupboard and everything falling out, bleary eyed at night, it’s the baby crying, it’s the trying to work at the computer and the baby is on your lap, all of these things and then ta-da the SMA solves that because you’ve got the happy baby with the milk, lovely mummy cuddle time and then all it says is “You are doing great.”

Interviewer:     You’re doing the right thing.

Interviewee:     You’re doing great and every mum I know wants to know they are doing a good job.  So that advert speaks 100% to those women, it’s not going to attract mothers who are breast feeding, it’s not going to attract people who aren’t interested in that you know it’s only going to attract people that want that experience and those people will connect with it 100% and they are going to love it.

Interviewer:     And because the message is kind of tailor made for their needs and their expectations they have already jumped several steps forward in the process, they are already aware of the fact that it is relevant to them, they are not seeking relevance first before they go and make any further decisions with it.

Interviewee:     Yeah and it’s there you know all they have to do is buy it when they are next in the shop so it’s and when you watch adverts now more and more and more adverts are very specific with who they’re targeting whether it be a holiday advert, an insurance advert, or anything they are very specific you know insurance adverts that are targeting builders, there are insurance adverts targeting older drivers you know they’re, everybody is now niching and I think more and more people will do this, but people aren’t yet waking up to how powerful it is and they’re still very much in a fear place thinking what am I doing I might limit myself when in actual fact they’d freeing themselves.

Interviewer:     Exactly.  That is great thank you.