To Niche or Not To Niche? How We Chose Our Freelance Focus

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It’s time to settle the age-old freelancer debate once and for all: to niche or not to niche? 🤔 Should you become a specialist or generalize your services?!

On today’s episode we’re breaking down exactly when specializing can pay off big time vs when diversifying your offerings is the smarter move.

We’ll cover our thoughts and best tips on:
☕ The pros and cons of mastering one service area vs being the one-stop shop
☕ How we made our own winding journeys through specialization purgatory
☕ Tangible tips on finding your personal hybrid of broad expertise + niche focus
☕ The crucial step to identify who your ideal clients are BEFORE niching down
☕ Our biggest face plants when specializing didn’t quite go as planned 

So whether you feel pressured to niche down or want to continue wearing all the hats, tune into this ep for honest advice and funny fails on figuring out it all out.

At the end you’ll feel WAY less confused about the best specialization strategy for your unique gifts and attracting aligned clients! So get comfy and hit play for the real tea on all things mastering your market niche. Steep, sip, spill! ☕️✨

Our Service Guides:
LaTara’s Services
Molly’s Services

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Molly Block: Hey everyone. Today on the Burnout Freelancer Podcast, tackling one of the most 

Molly Block: face when building their business, to specialize your skills or be more of a generalist. We all know mastering a niche can help you charge higher rates, diversifying lets you offer clients a one-stop shop, so which is the smarter move. today's show, we'll break down the pros and cons of focusing your offerings versus expanding your repertoire as a solopreneur, 

Molly Block: We'll share our journey plus tangible tips on discovering your ideal combination of broad and niche services so you can magnify your income without losing your mind. the end, you'll have clarity on smart ways to niche down or generalize. So you can showcase your unique value to clients. 

LaTara Dunn: Hey everybody. We took last week off. We hope everybody had a really nice holiday week, [00:01:00] and we are ready to be back sharing . All these awesome things with you, so . I'm excited to talk about this topic because I have gone through this journey myself. When I first started, as you know, I was offering, basic, generalized things, and then I started doing this thing that I like to call VA creep, and it's basically where.

LaTara Dunn: Just start offering everything under the sun because someone will pay you and you know, all of a sudden you're doing a million in one different types of tasks and you become spread very, very thin. Um, especially when you're getting paid hourly, you just think, well, if I'm getting paid hourly, whatever, I can just do a bunch of stuff.

LaTara Dunn: But I quickly learned that that was not sustainable because of the task jumping. How you're always going from task to task in your brain needs to switch a lot and, you know, and so I realized that that [00:02:00] wasn't for me. probably about a year into it is when I started deciding like, okay, there's gonna be less things that I'm gonna offer for services.

LaTara Dunn: , I wrote a list down of all the stuff that I didn't like doing versus stuff I did like doing. And then I realized that I was gonna start kind of niching down and specializing. In the tasks and the types of projects that I enjoyed.

Molly Block: I think this question or this topic is great for LaTara and I because we're kind of opposites. Even though I'm trying now to be more niche, I do generalized services and to me there are pros to it, but there's also cons and I know LaTara can talk about the pros and cons of niche work and you know, how it's beneficial and some of the challenges it comes with. I've been doing this four years and I, up until recently. Did generalized services, and it was mainly because didn't know what I [00:03:00] wanted to do. I treated it similar to how I talked to my stepdaughter about college, like I tell her I. Because she's 15, so right now she's talking about different careers that she wants.

Molly Block: And I'm like, before you just jump into a four year school and get this degree in something that you're probably not gonna use, why don't you go to community college, kind of learn, you know, generalize classes, and then once you Figure out what you like and what you don't like, then you can niche down. So that's kind of how I relate my, journey I think it's taken me so long to niche down because I didn't really know what fueled my soul. there's so many different aspects that I love and I'm not going to sit here and say I love every aspect of my job. There's things I don't like and I'm sure everyone can relate to that, whether you're a freelancer or not. I tend to offer generalized services and where I think it's benefited me, and [00:04:00] again, everyone's journey is different, I've also got referrals and I've, mainly got them from one client.

Molly Block: And it's funny because I've gotten so many clients from this one person, she's in like these sacred circle groups and. All these women need generalized services. They need email management or random graphics made sometimes for a upcoming class they're gonna do or a flyer and i's quick work. I can get work easily, but. When LaTara said about, your brain having to jump, basically jump back and forth, that's where it's really hard for me. And that is the one downside to generalizing. Again, in my standpoint, because I already have issues, memory issues, as the day progresses with MS. And I do so many different things that In a certain day, you know, on a Tuesday I could [00:05:00] check everyone's email inbox. I could also a website edit here. I could log into this platform that I might not even really know and try to do edits there, and then help with funnels and social media. And again, it's great because I can be more of a one stop shop, it. becomes a lot sometimes, when all these clients have deadlines or projects around the same time. a lot for my brain, like to try to go from being engulfed in WordPress to then get out of that and get into, all the various email platforms my clients use because they don't all use the same type. again, I can find clients pretty easily, but sometimes the workload just, it just becomes a lot.

LaTara Dunn: Yeah, it really does. It becomes overwhelming and I think that's why I realized that I needed to, kind of just take it down a notch, [00:06:00] you know, in what I was offering. And at the time that I was thinking these things, I actually ended up joining this online program. it's for freelancers uh, the whole like foundation of this program.

LaTara Dunn: Was to like niche down you know, they kind of came along the lines of like, if you're talking to everyone, you're talking to, no one. Right? And we talk about that a lot when it comes to who you're marketing to on social media or who your website's referencing, or who your target audience is.

LaTara Dunn: people are really into the whole term, like niche down, But then you'll also hear some people that are like. Think about big brands like Nike and Adidas, they're not niched down, they market to frigging everybody, So there's give or take with every type of situation.

LaTara Dunn: so I was in the mindset like maybe I need to kind of niche it down a bit and get real specific about what I do and who I offer. And this program, seemed to kind of know what they were talking about. [00:07:00] And so I actually ended up going from one extreme to the other and I learned a big lesson, along the lines doing that because I actually lost a quite a bit of work because of it.

LaTara Dunn: And.

Molly Block: Wow.

LaTara Dunn: Yeah, because I had people wanting to work with me 'cause they received referrals and references and they were like, Hey, I heard you're really great. this is what I'm looking for. And I was like, yeah, sorry. I don't offer that anymore. This is what, only what I do, only what I offer. I only have two packages.

LaTara Dunn: That's it. If you'd like, I can send it over to you and show you what's on it. They'd look at it and 

LaTara Dunn: They'd be like, that's not what I'm looking for. And I was like, okay, well here I have someone that I could reference, you know, that might help you out. And they'd be like, okay, great. And I'd just hand 'em off to somebody else. And that kind of sucked, right? Because I don't wanna have a million different types of tasks.

LaTara Dunn: I'm niching down. And now I'm losing work like potential leads because I don't wanna offer these services. So that started to [00:08:00] feel like it was a con to me to niche down or a challenge like, is this how it's gonna be for me? Am I gonna miss how a lot of work, right?

Molly Block: Right, right. I can see that.

LaTara Dunn: Yeah. And so, I gave it some time.

LaTara Dunn: I tried to follow, you know what me and , there were me and a bunch of other female freelancers in this space. And we all became really close and a lot of us actually still talk to this day online, which is super cool. And we all kind of realized, not all of us, but many of us kind of realized we were like.

LaTara Dunn: Really extreme in this, right? So we all took a little bit of a step back and loosened up the reins a smidge, but still made it clear who we serve. So we got more clear along the lines of the type of client we were gonna be taking on. Right? so at first it was just like, okay, I'm only gonna be helping people that need[00:09:00] an OBM or going to, or, or need courses built inside of Kajabi, and that's it.

LaTara Dunn: And an OBM is an online business manager. And I quickly realized putting those two together were was quite a challenge within itself. And just because of the type of work that you need to do when you're an OBM. Instead of me niching down super hard on what my services were, it ended up being who I served.

LaTara Dunn: And that kind of just happened throughout that whole journey naturally in itself. And I realized that I really liked working with female founders. They're just a CEO. They're it in their business. Most likely. They're a coach of some sort and she is in the holistic space. At first I thought I wanted to work with business coaches, and I quickly realized that that wasn't necessarily the right type of coach.

LaTara Dunn: If she was just a, like a business classic. Business coach, and that's just because [00:10:00] we just weren't aligning. Like with who I am as a human, I'm not very, oh, how do I put it? . I can be unorganized to a business coach,

LaTara Dunn: and so. Yeah. Yeah. And so I realized that that wasn't, who I wanted. So I like working with like holistic female coaches and usually she works in the mindset space and , she's helping you , with some healing and whatnot, and their health, health is super important. As I realized, I need to niche down who I wanna talk to, so I became really specialized in the type of client I wanted to talk to.

LaTara Dunn: But at that moment, I still was just offering a specific service and that really was still killing me. So I loosened up the reins a little bit. And do anything along the lines of, building your digital course, launching it, you know, helping you with your funnels, [00:11:00] optimizing your website, building your website, managing your email marketing and strategy.

LaTara Dunn: So it's kind of this little umbrella of strategy in marketing with a focus that hopefully she only works with Kajabi, or I'm gonna migrate her over to Kajabi. But I do have a couple that still do not use Kajabi, and that's okay with me now, and it's because my processes are still the same. So I've been able to evolve and create these types of processes.

LaTara Dunn: So for example, when I have a new client come on and this is like a brand new project for her. We need to get clear on strategy, branding, marketing, messaging. So I have a whole process that I follow, that I have like a baseline with, and they all work off from that. So if she's not using the same platform, I still feel really organized and it still feels super niched down because the point of my [00:12:00] services is the same.

LaTara Dunn: You get what I'm saying?

Molly Block: Yeah, and I like that. I also was really intrigued when you just said about niching down Specific client demographic. And I guess I never thought of it that way when we were looking at this topic to cover on the on the show today.

LaTara Dunn: Yeah.

Molly Block: I didn't really think of it that way. And I guess I, I do niche because I, I'm very similar to LaTara.

Molly Block: Like I only work with female entrepreneurs who, it's just them. They're the CEO, they're the founder. My clients range from, holistic birth coach to, light council where they channel messages through them. So my, I guess didn't think of it that way, that I would be niched down in the client space,

LaTara Dunn: Right.

Molly Block: not in the workload, um, or the type of work that I do. [00:13:00] You were talking about even if people don't use Kajabi, you still use the same Funnel, the same strategy, the same playbook, the same flow as you would for somebody that uses Kajabi. That's where I think you and I differ a little bit in the specializing and generalizing because I, let my clients, like I do whatever I, I'll give my advice and my expertise on things,

LaTara Dunn: Mm-Hmm.

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: gotten better about trying to get my clients to all follow the same structure,

LaTara Dunn: Mm-Hmm.

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: so long I just did whatever my clients thought was okay. You know, or how they wanted it done.

LaTara Dunn: Right.

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: There. There, you know, could easily be a time where I had three clients who are all launching something and they all have different launch strategies and some we did together.

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: Some of 'em they decided. Some of 'em I decided and kind of, you know, they built off of, so it was like I. The, the organization there [00:14:00] and sometimes still isn't because not all of, again, I'm trying to get all my clients now similar to LaTara, where no matter what platform, or no matter if I'm putting it on Kajabi or Moments or WordPress, like we're still following the same thing, but. That still hasn't really happened too much with me, so I'm still sometimes like, oh fuck, and all over the place and having to like make tons of notes because. I am like, oh my God, I'm doing this for this client. I need to make sure I follow A, B, and C. And then this client has A, B, C, D, E, F, G. it just, it gets, frustrating. It definitely, I would say it's one of the cons or, or challenges generalized work is not only Flip flopping back and forth between all of these different tasks, but also all of these different platforms and all of these different playbooks or tasks, whatever you wanna call it. It can [00:15:00] definitely be be challenging.

LaTara Dunn: Oh yeah, absolutely. And that's how I felt for the longest time. as I started Realizing okay, I've now decided who I wanna work with, what type of client, right. I know what I wanna do. I know what I don't wanna do that. Then the next step I took to specializing is taking more of a lead.

LaTara Dunn: In how their launch process or funnel goes. And it was a really scary step for me to do that because at first they were running the show and like obvi and I mean, and when I say running the show, I mean we were following their current processes is what I really should be saying. Right. And like weren't necessarily

LaTara Dunn: The most optimized, and they knew that, which is why they hired me in the first place. And so a lot of the things we were doing would take a really long time. Right? And it's because we just didn't have a solid plan or [00:16:00] a solid format. I Started seeing a lot of patterns because I was working with similar women, 

LaTara Dunn: they're all visionaries. None of them like tech and don't like spending a lot of time in front of a computer. I realized very quickly the things that I needed to get from them had to be in a very simple format. And so, that's what I've created. And then I have a whole, you know, workflow for them that they go through and how I collect information from them.

LaTara Dunn: . And that helped me really get clear on, what I was gonna do and who I was gonna help.

LaTara Dunn: if I were to do it again, right, what I would do is first start out generalize, get gain skills, figure out the things that you like, figure out the things you don't like. I originally thought that I hated email marketing. And that I was never gonna offer it.

LaTara Dunn: It was actually originally in my, cons list when I first niched down and I was like, yeah. I was like, I'm never gonna offer email marketing again. I hate it. Blah, blah, blah. And you know, I spend all of my time writing [00:17:00] emails I spend so much time just helping someone figure out their email marketing strategy.

LaTara Dunn: No. So we just wanted to pause real quick and say a little side note since we're talking. We had a little mention about email marketing.

LaTara Dunn: If you are looking for an email platform that you are wanted to work with or you wanted to check out, we highly recommend you check out Flow Desk right now. We a code for you down in our show notes um, you can try it out free for a little while and get it half off. So feel free to click that link below.

LaTara Dunn: It's super easy user-friendly, beautiful emails templates already set up for you to try landing pages. You can do checkouts if you wanted to, and it's a great place to connect your service guide as well. So feel free to check that out in the show notes and back to the show. 

LaTara Dunn: and the reason why I thought I didn't like it is because I wasn't working with the niche down type of client.

Molly Block: Right, right. And I can see that.[00:18:00] 

LaTara Dunn: mm-Hmm, . And figure out the things that you like and that you don't like, , and then try to niche down on the type of client, , and then niche down more on the type of services that you're gonna be offering her to gain more, more. Skill of a skillset, so then you can start taking the lead.

LaTara Dunn: And when you start taking the lead, you won't feel so all over the place because you're like setting the pace of how things need to be. When it was generalized, it's like, Hey, I'm gonna send you task after task, after task, after task, after task. And all these people are coming at me with all these tasks and

LaTara Dunn: I do not like short, quick tasks, and I think that's part of like my A DHD, , it's gonna take me six months to do something that literally takes five minutes

Molly Block: Right, right.

LaTara Dunn: And I don't like it because I like getting deep into something , I'm gonna become like hyper-focused on. most of the projects I do involve, like deep [00:19:00] thought, lots of strategy. Lots of thinking, how am I gonna make their designs be a step above the others, you know?

LaTara Dunn: And I really love that type of work. And if I was still generalized, I wouldn't be able to do that.

Molly Block: It is funny because LaTara just showed me like mapping she made for, a client's calendar and Kajabi and I looked at it and was like, oh my fucking God. This is so detailed so. But it's a, it was amazing, and I think that's where differ a little bit and why I like generalized services

LaTara Dunn: Mm-Hmm.

Molly Block: sometimes, my ms, some days are really great.

Molly Block: Like I'm, I'm happy, I'm upbeat, my brain is, I'm able to fully focus. And other days like. I feel like I physically have to pull myself out of bed, to get stuff done. it gives me a little bit of a serotonin [00:20:00] boost when I have smaller tasks and I can send in Slack or email or however I communicate with that particular client. I. When I can send a green check mark and say email checked, like it helps. It's a great way for me to start the day doing smaller tasks because then it helps me get more focused for the rest of the day. If I started off my day with like something super detailed similar to what LaTara was just doing, I would give up and go back to bed.

Molly Block: Like I would be like, this is, I would push it, I would push off something like that, which you can't push off. You can't push off any task or you shouldn't. We all do it, you know, a little bit. I would push off the bigger tasks and do the smaller ones first. Like I know that about myself and when I do get a list, whether it's in Notion or email or Slack, always the quick ones first and one, it makes me feel good.

Molly Block: And two, [00:21:00] I can just get it outta the way and that way I don't miss it. 

LaTara Dunn: And

LaTara Dunn: I'm the exact

LaTara Dunn: opposite. 

Molly Block: that's where we differ. 

LaTara Dunn: And so I think that's why I knew generalized work was

LaTara Dunn: not for me, but I will say always have a freelance bestie who does generalized work because it'll come in handy. Prime example, Molly and I just had a real life situation. I had someone that connected with me and wanted me to work with her.

LaTara Dunn: And we were emailing back and forth for a few days and her budget that she currently had wasn't really aligning with , my services and my rates, she was asking me about like my lower tier and what I would be doing in it and what I normally do for my clients and how many hours I would be working I had to explain to her, well, it's not necessarily aren't really about the hours. it's about the type of work would be doing for you at this rate and the level of work I would be doing. And she was like, you know, this is great. Oh my gosh. [00:22:00] But based off from where I'm currently at in my business and what's gonna be happening over the next few months and six months, or whatever, that doesn't really make sense for what I need right now.

LaTara Dunn: And she's like, so I'm gonna keep you in mind. And I was like, well, hey, I think I might actually have someone, my girlfriend does more generalized services. That really sounds like what you want. So I'd love to have you connect with her. And I asked Molly and Molly's like, yeah. And I connected her with Molly, and she hired Molly

Molly Block: Yep. Now she's my newest 

Molly Block: client, 

LaTara Dunn: So, yeah, so 

LaTara Dunn: it's always good to know even

LaTara Dunn: if you, you are niching down or you're generalized, you have a friend that does the other side of the work that you're not doing.

Molly Block: Yeah. I mean, roles reversed. , similar thing happened,

Molly Block: one of my current clients asked me to perform a task one I had not done before. it was something that I can't, I couldn't just be a yes man about, [00:23:00] it was way too detailed and important for me to just be like, yeah, I'll figure it out. It's not something I niche about. It's not something I offer. I recommended LaTara and my client cannot stop talking about her. She's she is so.

LaTara Dunn: She 

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: And it, it just, it, works out. One, we've talked about this in other episodes, making sure you have a freelance community, one, so somebody you can talk to that understands what you're going through, but also so you can bounce off each other. 

LaTara Dunn: Mm-Hmm. 

Molly Block: I, mean, I've said it numerous times, most of my clients are referrals in one way or or another,

Molly Block: right. You know, when you're talking about niche and generalizing I like what you said earlier, LaTara, in reference to we're all gonna start off general and who you want to serve first, and then you can start niching the actual services. I think sometimes people 

Molly Block: yeah exactly 

Molly Block: they [00:24:00] niche who 

Molly Block: their,

Molly Block: Well, I mean, that's 

LaTara Dunn: what I said that I and I wish I didn't, you know, and it took me a very long time to figure that out, so I definitely recommend that too. Niche, the, the type of person first. 

Molly Block: and I wouldn't have thought of that. And I know a lot of people who are just beginning. I don't think that's something that crosses their mind either. I think it's either I need to know everything

Molly Block: I need to know one thing.

LaTara Dunn: Right, 

Molly Block: talks about the people you're working with. 

LaTara Dunn: right, right. right. Exactly. and and I, and I see a lot of that happening on social media., like me, I say in my bio, like who I work for or who I work with. . And some people will do that too. But there are a lot of people that are just say 

LaTara Dunn: custom show it templates or customized WordPress or launch specialist or whatever, but they don't go into any detail about who they work with. And I think that that is so incredibly important because you have to align with the client first [00:25:00] on a human level.

Molly Block: Yeah, you do. And I've, learned this and it just never clicked until you mentioned it. I definitely worked with people where the type of work that we Did was something I was very familiar with, but, and it's not saying that they were bad people or mean to me or anything, you're just not gonna click with everybody 

Molly Block: when you go out and you're being social, most people don't click with every single person they talk to, so you're not gonna normally click with every one of your clients. And I've definitely had it where I take on somebody because it's work that I know how to do, and then a few months down the line I'm like, this isn't working.

Molly Block: Like we're not vibing. 

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: And so when I realized I work with female entrepreneurs who are holistic or spiritual coachesmean, I can't emphasize it enough. It's really one of the most important things when you're evolving as a freelancer to figure out [00:26:00] who you serve, who you want to serve, and maybe who's not for you. 

LaTara Dunn: 

LaTara Dunn: Yeah, exactly. And if you wanted to see how Molly and I have our services broken down, so you can see the difference based off from what we offer . We always display our service guides in the show notes to give you an example of how you can set your service guides up or your portfolios up for your future clients.

LaTara Dunn: so feel free to take a peek at those 

Molly Block: Well that's gonna wrap up our episode for today. Speaking to generalizing or niching services. And what we learned is niche your clients first.

LaTara Dunn: Mm-Hmm. 

Molly Block: always, please rate, review, follow us, subscribe the things.

Molly Block: We'll love you forever. any questions you have, you can always send an email to imtired@theburntoutfreelancer.com. 

LaTara Dunn: thank you so much for joining us. We had so much fun. We'll see you next week.

molly_1_11-29-2023_132533: bye.

 [00:27:00] Huuuuuh Huuuh Huuuh