Amanda McVicker (0:00)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The OBM Educator. So if you are a weekly listener of The OBM Educator, one, thank you, but two, you probably were like last week, where's an episode? You said we were doing a series, where's the episode? So apologies for that. As a full-time working OBM, client work does come first when it comes to what I do with the podcast and my email list and my social media, which is why there's basically nothing ever on my social media lately.
But we're in a busy season right now. If you have clients, you probably feel this, that same thing as everything I'm talking about of this coming back to business and all of that, we are expanding businesses. My clients, they have so many ideas going on and that's leading to a lot of work, which is awesome.
But sometimes it does mean that I have to skip a week or something like that. So apologies if you are a weekly listener and you're like, where's the second part of this series? If you are someone who just found this and is binging it, well, cool. You can go to the next part pretty quickly.
But we are in the middle of the back to business series that I am doing, a little bit of a take on back to school in September, fresh start, really focusing in, honing in on business. And so with this series, I am talking about being an OBM, going back to the basics of becoming an OBM. So if you didn't listen to the last episode, we were talking about understanding the OBM role and really getting into what is an OBM, what do they do, how do they support businesses, all of that good stuff.
So if you didn't listen to that one, after you listen to this one, go listen to that one. I keep these short so that if you miss one, you can binge it pretty quickly. But today we are going to be talking about ideal clients, which is something that I think a lot of people get stuck on and they let it become something that keeps them stuck.
If I don't know my ideal client, then I can't market myself. If I don't know my ideal client, then I can't create my packages. If I don't know my ideal client, I can't move forward.
And so we're going to be talking about ideal client today, why it's something that shouldn't keep you stuck, and how to kind of move beyond the idea of I must have this perfect ideal client. So let's get into it.
Welcome to The OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven figure entrepreneurs, as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and competence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights, behind the scenes sneak peeks and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business.
So when you are starting a business, something that gets talked about a lot of times is your ideal client, creating an ideal client avatar, creating different personas for your ideal client, and making sure that everything that you do is really centered around who that ideal client is.
Like I said in the intro, that can keep a lot of people stuck. Because if you come into creating a business, specifically an OBM business, and you don't have an idea of who your ideal OBM client is, it can be really overwhelming to think about that and to make a decision. So I first want to say, if you have an idea of who your ideal client is, and I'll give you an example of when I first started my business.
So I started as a VA, and I decided to work with event planners, because that was my background. I was pretty set on that. I was like, I know the ins and outs of event planning and conference planning.
I know I can support this particular niche very well because of my experience. So for me, that was pretty easy. Like, okay, cool, event planners, got it, ideal client, let's go.
And it made everything else super easy. It made me figuring out my marketing pretty easy. It made me figure out the different packages that I had pretty easy and the services that I was going to offer.
All of that was easy because the ideal client was easy. And so if you have a specific background that you're really passionate about, that's also important too. It's not necessarily like, oh, I worked in a doctor's office for a few years, and it was okay.
I guess I can work with doctors. It's not really that. For me, with event planning, I loved event planning.
I still do love event planning. I loved doing conferences and all of that. And to be able to work in that niche and industry was really exciting for me.
So if you have something that you're just really excited about, and like, I love this ideal client, go for it, do it. This episode isn't necessarily going to be talking to you because you have that doubt. But if you don't have that, if you don't have that excitement over a particular niche or past experience that you have, or like, I definitely want to work with these types of people, these types of businesses, the rest of this episode is for you.
So when thinking about ideal client, instead of, this is kind of like the mindset shift that I want you to make. Instead of thinking about the niche or the profession, the industry or anything like that, I want you to think about the person. More often than not, when you are working as an OBM, you're working with an entrepreneur.
You're working with someone, one person who is building their business. There might be a team and all of that, but there's the CEO that you are working with. And so you want to make sure that that person meshes well with you.
And it doesn't mean like you have to be like the same identical person, personality, all of that, but you need to be able to work well with them. And that kind of just goes beyond, okay, give me those tasks. Okay, here's a project.
Okay. Blah, blah, blah. Right.
It's can you get on a call with them and chit chat about your day for five minutes before the actual meeting starts? Do you dread getting on a call with them? Or are you excited? If you see a message from them, are you excited to see what they're saying? Are you like, whatever? Right. Personality wise is so big when it comes to like the OBM fit of, you know, what works well with the fitting with a client and what doesn't work well. And so I want you to think about past managers that you've had past bosses, past employers, and what have you liked about them? Like if there was someone that you just really enjoyed working with, what did you like about them? If you had someone you really didn't enjoy working with, what didn't you like about them? Right.
Start getting an idea of those types of personality traits, quirks, habits, things like that. And you know, it's not like a steadfast list that you're holding to, but it's an idea of the type of person that you would enjoy working with. That's going to be kind of your basis to begin with.
As you grow in the OBM role, as you get clients, as you become more picky, that list can be tailored, you know, specific to the OBM space. But to begin with, let's just take like your past experience and use that to mold like what this ideal client personality is going to look like instead of necessarily the ideal client. So then after that, if you don't have like a specific industry or niche that you're wanting to go for, let's keep it general.
Let's look at the online space. Online space being coaches, service providers, website designers, graphic designers, social media managers, course creators, podcast hosts, all the people in like this online little bubble that we created that is, you know, a billion dollar industry. It's going to be the most general place that you can start and a place that people are going to need your services.
But I think starting in like this general terms of the online space, like the pain points are all pretty similar. The hopes and aspirations are all pretty similar. And as an OBM, you are going to be helping them all in a pretty similar way.
So when you work on your marketing, right, you're able to direct those pain points and the hopes and, you know, dreams that you want to highlight in your marketing. You're able to direct those to the people in the online space. And it's going to feel personal to them because it is what they are going through, right? There's the saying, like if you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one.
And that's where people encourage you to niche down and find that ideal client. But if you can get specific, at least starting out, right, if you can get specific in the pain point, in the hopes and dreams and how you support them in achieving that or erasing the pain point, that's going to be specific enough for them. And then again, as you get more clients and become more picky and figure out who it is that you do actually like working with, then you can narrow it down and you can be more niche in what you're talking about.
But to begin with, let's just keep it general because that's what's going to allow you to move forward. So as you begin, just try not to get stuck in the mindset of like, I must work with this XYZ specific person, right? When we're starting out, to be honest, let's find someone who pays you, right? Who pays you on time and respects you and the work that you do. We can get more specific as you go because as you get the OBM clients, it really is momentum that builds on each other.
Getting that first client, it's hard, right? There's a lot of waiting. It might seem like months of nothing happening, but then you get that first client and you do good work with them. That's important.
I'm not discounting that. That is super important in the process. But then your second client sometimes kind of seems to pop up out of nowhere right after that.
And then you're doing good work with them as well. And then they start telling their friends and telling their peers and telling their colleague who does the same thing. And they're like, oh my gosh, you need this person on your team.
And then you start getting referrals. And then all of a sudden you have like nine clients and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know how this even happened. And I'm overwhelmed.
And that's a whole entirely different story. But getting that first client is the challenging part. And that's why we kind of need to be as open as we can in who we might be working with so that we can get the ball rolling on the next part.
So I hope this was helpful as you are looking at who your ideal client might be as you're starting your OBM business or transitioning from VA to OBM. And I hope it helps you or reminds you to keep an open mind around it. So next week in the series, we are going to be talking about packages and offers and services and how we can create them depending on who the ideal client is or the person that we just want to work with.
So I hope you will come back and listen to it. I am putting it on my calendar that I am recording on Wednesday so that you can have this next week as well. I will talk with you all next week.
Bye.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on The OBM Educator.
