AP 1132: How Do I Niche Down and Build a Successful Business Out of My Brand?

AP 1132: How Do I Niche Down and Build a Successful Business Out of My Brand?

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Pat Flynn:
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Pat:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1,132 of AskPat 2.0. This is a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur, just like you. Today we're talking with Rick McEvoy and Rick is a photographer who has a really interesting dilemma when it comes to niching down. He's actually got a specialty within the photography space and we're going to be talking about pivoting, about going deeper and more all-in on an opportunity that he has. We're also going to be reverse engineering exactly what his goals are, or in fact, his goals are what they are, and you'll hear what they are, and we're going to reverse engineer what it might take to get there.

Pat:
You'll hear some realization that it might come with in terms of, "Well, hey. It's actually achievable and we're going to go and get it." So if you're somebody who's just starting out or even if you've been doing this for a while, this would be a great episode because it'll allow you to recalibrate with Rick here. So let's check him out. You can also find him at rickmcevoyphotography.com. That's Rick M-C-E-V-O-Y photography.com. Here he is. Hey, Rick. Welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Rick McEvoy:
Hi, Pat, delighted to be here-

Pat:
I'm delighted you're here too. Yes. Why don't you tell us really quick, a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Rick:
Sure. Thank you. I have a day job at the moment in construction project management. I also do architectural photography work and construction photography work. I have a website which I've had since 2008, which I principally started building to grow a photography business, and that's not quite worked out. In the last couple of years, I've been building, writing a blog and building on that part of the business to try and get the passive income, which was something I came across when I found your podcast because I never thought about doing it. So I have a website, I have a blog; I have all sorts of things going on and it's not really going anywhere. It's not getting me where I want to be.

Pat:
So this is all based on the photography sort of aspect of what you do?

Rick:
Yeah. The blog posts have been about all parts of photography, but I've just recently started focusing on construction and architectural photography in the blog post I'm doing. I've been trying to appeal to far too broad, a very competitive market, I think.

Pat:
I like the direction you're going in terms of niching down a little bit. You've probably heard me say, "The riches are in the niches." I know you pronounce it niches, but that's okay. I like that because there's less competition. There's more of a specialization and I would imagine that there could be some people who are just going to be more interested in your stuff because it's more relatable to the things in the fields that they're involved with. So before we dive into how we can start making this work for you, I'd love to know what defines this working for you? Where, eventually, do you want these things to end up? Sort of give me some insight on the future of a successful blog and website.

Rick:
It's not that I don't enjoy my day job, but my ultimate aim is to perform adapts and give up my day job and earn a living from ideally, just a website, blog, and the passive income side of things. Ultimately, I don't want to have to take photographs for clients. I love doing it, but that's the ultimate thing. So I've got time and financial freedom, so that's my end game.

Pat:
At what point would you know that this is working for you and you could potentially quit and remove yourself from the nine to five?

Rick:
When the income from my website and photography business was exceeding my day job. When it costs me money to go to do my day job over my own personal job, that would be the crossover point-

Pat:
There you go. I like that form of thinking. Then if you don't mind me asking, how much, and you don't have to answer with specifics if you don't want to, but how much would that be? The reason why I'm asking you that is because sometimes I speak to a lot of people who I'm helping out with their business and they want a million dollars, right? That's just a nice seven figure number. "I want a million dollar business that makes me over a million dollars a year." I'm like, "Okay, but what do you actually need?" You find out that it, well, they only need $35,000 a month to live on and for the lifestyle that they have currently and that would be beautiful. Well, a business that would earn a hundred or a million dollars a year is completely different and would require far more energy and effort, at least initially, to get to that point versus a business that's making $35,000 a year.

Pat:
For example, what if it's just 100 people paying you $350, right? That, in and of itself, could get to that $35,000 mark. So then it's like, "Okay, well what could we offer that would get a hundred people within a year?" So that's one every three days to pay $350 to get access to something, for example. Do you see how the math starts to play a role in sort of what we do. So I'm just curious, again, you don't have to get specific, but this then defines, "On these websites and blog posts, what do we do? How many people do we need and what are we offering?" Then we can start to actually materialize, "Okay, well now we have a plan and way to get there," right?

Rick:
If I could earn $10,000 a month, I would be ecstatic and that would way exceed any expectations or day job income.

Pat:
$10,000 a month, great. What I also love about the industry that you're in is, so you have this specialty in the photography space. I know some other photographers who have specialties as well, some who do more commercial type work, some who do literally filming of music videos. That's their niche. What's really cool is when you niche down like that, you can become known a little bit easier, right? Have you sort of experienced any of that yet?

Rick:
No, not at all. I'm actually professionally qualified in construction. I'm a chartered construction manager and I'm also professionally qualified doing photography. So I've got that, which I don't think many other photographers will have.

Pat:
I think that's really cool. Is there money to be made by, if I were interested in following your path and being a photographer, specifically for architecture and construction, is that actually a way that I could potentially generate more income learning from you?

Rick:
Yes, and I started writing posts along the lines of how to be a construction photographer, things like that, because people will always need photographs of buildings. Regardless of all the technologies and how everything happens, people will always need photographs of buildings. It's just a fact, and there will always be buildings. So I think it's quite a solid area of photography to work in.

Pat:
Well, that's great because that's actually where I think we should focus. That's what can help you fast-forward to get to those results where you can eventually either, in whatever way you choose to. We don't know the answer yet, but once you start to build up an audience of people who are coming to you because you can help them in their career, help them with learning this photography, everything from the equipment. Obviously, the equipment in and of itself is a potential income opportunity, right, with the affiliates and all that stuff.

Rick:
Yes.

Pat:
But that's just one component. Then there's the idea that they can get training from you. They could potentially get coached by you. They could potentially be a part of a group that you could teach or even come to an excursion that you one day create, once we can all sort of be with each other in person, where you go "Okay, for a large ... " I'm just spit balling here, but what if you had such a crowd such that they would be willing to pay you "$1,000 to come visit you in some location to learn with you, hand-in-hand, right? You're over their shoulder looking at their lenses and everything that they're doing to come and learn from you directly, $1,000 for a two-day experience. You get 10 people to pay you $1,000 and you just do this once a month. We'll hey, guess what? You just made $10,000 a month by offering this neat little excursion.

Pat:
So this is where the fun things can happen because we don't know exactly what the offerings are going to be, but when you start to develop, "Okay, these are the kinds of people that we're helping." How we can justify asking them to buy things from us is well, this is very simple because you're helping them with their career. In fact, there's a lot of nuances to this from getting their first gig to how they can do this on top of their job that they already have already within construction and architecture. This could be something that a person who is an architect, and as you know, I used to be an architect or was on my way to be an architect myself. We hired another company to take these pictures for us, for buildings and constructions that were being done as you know. Well, what if I learn this skill? I can add that to my resume. All of a sudden, I'm an indispensable asset in my architecture firm, because I'm the photographer as well.

Pat:
There's so many cool things that you could do that this could help out and it becomes a lot easier to sell something. Just truthfully, it's so much easier to sell something if a person knows that they can get that money back, right? This is what I would write about. This is where I would focus. This is what I would create videos about to help people understand the nuances of this space. This is what I would ask people to give me their email addresses about. Let me give you some tips to help you get started with your photography career in the world of architecture and construction. What's really cool is now you could come at it at two angles.

Pat:
You could go to architects and construction and designers and such and teach them this skill and have them pay to get access to it in whatever way you choose to offer it to them, or you go to photographers, "Hey, you're a photographer and you're looking to make some extra money. Well, let me help you understand this world of construction in architecture," right? So you actually have two different audiences that you could sort of capture the attention of. How are you feeling after hearing all this? I'm just curious.

Rick:
That was one of my questions. Can I attract the photographer and the client in the same website or does it just become blurred and I'm trying to, again, appeal too broad?

Pat:
No, that's a great question. I think that you definitely can because the different kinds of content you create and/or the different articles you write or videos or podcasts or courses even, that you have. If you could make it clear who it's for, here's a blog post that's specifically about how to take amazing photos. You use your own examples of buildings and stuff, but it's a beginner tutorial for anybody. It just so happens to be in and around the world of construction. Well, a person who already knows photography is not going to be interested in that. They're going to be interested in the other blog posts that's about, well, how do you take this photography that you know how to do now, which some people who didn't know photography before will now unlock that skill because they're learning from you.

Pat:
They're on sort of phase two of that journey now, right? They come in at phase two versus the phase one people, if that sort of makes sense and then they'll know that that's for them, right? There could be different categories on your website for learning photography, just in general. There's another one that is learning the business of architecture and design photography or, I don't know if there's a specific name for it. For example, maybe some keyword research could be really interesting in and around this; but, this is pretty unique as far as I know. You can capture different people with different pieces of content that altogether, create this whole experience on your website and brand.

Rick:
I had far too many categories before. Oh, one question was, I have over 2,000 blog posts and I've been doing this ... when I started off, I thought it was just a case of getting something out that short, low quality, irrelevant blog post. I'm going through an exercise, at the moment, for determining that most of my old stuff is rubbish. I'm going get rid of it, delete it all and just make links to a page that says, "Oops, sorry. This post's been deleted. Check out these instead." It's that something that's going to help with my website performance, or is it a way-

Pat:
It will. It absolutely will. If you listen to episode 200 of the Smart Passive Income podcast, you'll hear a man named Todd Tresidder who deleted a third of his content and had a 300 percent increase in his blog traffic.

Rick:
I actually emailed him and he got back to me, which was really nice.

Pat:
Oh, cool.

Rick:
I heard that episode. I actually got in touch with him and he gave me a nice reply, so that's worth doing then.

Pat:
It is. It is. I know it's hard because it's like, okay, well you spend all this time creating that. It would be almost feeling like a waste if you were to just delete it. But you're not necessarily deleting it because it could still bring people into the website, but you're bringing people now into stuff that's more relevant.

Rick:
... Higher quality.

Pat:
Exactly, and more just overall, within where you want your brand to go now. The big thing is we have to think of our blogs almost like, and then this is the way they're written. They're written like the first draft of a book, but once you get honed in on what the title of the book should be and what this thing is really about, well then it would behoove you not to remove those chapters from that book, if it doesn't make sense to be in there, right?

Rick:
Yeah. Sure.

Pat:
So that's the kind of mental approach to that; but, I think that would be a very smart thing to do. You could start with the low-hanging fruit, the really obvious stuff that doesn't need to be there, and just kind of rip that bandaid off and then you can start to experiment with some other stuff if it-

Rick:
Well, I've identified about a 1,000 posts, which I can get rid of. I've got somebody who I can get to do it for not too much money, which will hopefully have a big impact.

Pat:
That's great. Imagine going to a person who would be excited about learning from you and go, "Hey, here are 2,000 blog posts that will help you," versus, "Here's 1,000 blog posts," for somebody more likely to be happy with the lesser number of blog posts.

Rick:
Almost to the point, "Hi, my website's got 1,000 rubbish blog post and a thousand and a half decent ones-"

Pat:
Well, there you go-

Rick:
... Or maybe 150 half decent ones.

Pat:
Right. So they would go, "Okay, well, I guess I'm not in the right spot," versus, "Oh, Rick knows exactly what to say. Every piece of content here matters to me. I'm going to dive even deeper." That's more time on site, which means higher rankings. Yes, you're making the right decision.

Rick:
I shall continue with that. Thank you.

Pat:
Sure. What else you got?

Rick:
What else have I got? I've got a massive list of things I've narrowed it down to. One of the questions is, I notice on the Smart Passive Income website one of the little popups is you need an email list, which I took as meaning I need an email list. So I've signed up for ConvertKit and I managed to do my first landing page, which was horrendous. At the moment, I have the princely number of 22 people on my email list. I've signed up for your 100 email challenge and I've not done anything with it because the question I have is, how do you make money from an email list?

Pat:
Good question. First of all, I'm glad that you started an email list and hopefully, you understand the importance of that. But hopefully, this answer can even make it more relevant and more important, meaning the email list becomes a direct connection to people. Even though you have only 22 people on that list, you have 22 people on that list. Imagine a room with those 22 people who you can now have a conversation with about what you do about, what do you need help with? What do you like? Tell me more about you. Tell me what kinds of things you wish were here on the blogs that aren't here yet so I can create those things for you.

Pat:
This is a direct line of access to, not just those 22 individuals, but who those 22 individuals represent, which is the other people in this world who are just like them and who have the same problems needs, pains, wants or desires. So that's why it's important. Now, when it comes to monetization, there's a number of different ways that this can be utilized. There is the indirect way to monetize, which means you use your email list to let people know about things that then have money making opportunities. For example, you write a blog post and in that blog post, you talk about this really specialized camera that's used specifically for ... or maybe it's a drone, right?

Pat:
A drone so that you can get some really sort of bird's eye view for your perspective cameras. In that post, you talked about this drone and then you have an affiliate link for it. Maybe you even struck a deal with the company. I don't know, or if it's just through Amazon. It doesn't matter. You use your email list to go, "Hey everybody bird's eye perspective photography is huge. Obviously, you need a drone to be able to take photos like this, unless you have access to a helicopter or an airplane, which likely you don't. So check out this blog post, because I talk about two or three specific kinds of drones and they're all at different budget levels for you. Here's the link to check it out."

Pat:
Now there's a direct link that they have in their inbox for something related to something they're interested in, that they can now click on. Then it go to that blog post, they read it. Hopefully, you have a good hook in the beginning of that blog post and now they come across this really exciting thing called the drone and they click the link to buy it and then now, you're making money as a result. So that's a version of an indirect way to do it. A direct way to do it would be sending an email using the same product, a drone, for example, and in that email, you say, "Hey, everybody. We know that bird's eye perspective ... " the same language, and essentially just go, "Here is the drone I would recommend. Click here to get access to it now."

Pat:
Or maybe you do a partnership with DJI and they give you a special link and you send an email and you include that link, especially with the bonus offer or something else that might go along with it. Maybe you now come out with a course and you want people to become a part of a beta program where maybe you have spots for five people and only five people. So, "you better act fast because you get a discount and you get a special access to me and you become one of the first students of this course." You use that opportunity to then work people through a process. You could even build the course alongside with them, essentially delivering content every week for four weeks or what have you so that by the end of this, now this course is now done.

Pat:
You've offered it and have already gotten results for four people or four or five people. Now you have these great testimonials so that the next time you send an email out, when this thing is open, you go, "Hey guys, the doors are open. Enrollment closes tomorrow, so you better act now," or, "It closes next week." Then you can send emails that are about the objections or telling stories about some of your successful students and kind of the email is a communication tool that can lead to trust and knowing and liking so that a person will feel more comfortable purchasing from you.

Rick:
The other things I was thinking with on the making money side was starting a podcast. I have a YouTube channel where I put quick videos up. I've only got 44 subscribers on that, and I was thinking of doing a podcast on just called Photography Explained. It'd be a 10-minute weekly thing. Then I thought about, "Should I do an architectural photography podcast, which nobody else is doing?" That was where I started getting a little bit muddled about because I have a day job. I have wife, children, family. So I get up every morning at five o'clock and I have two hours to work on this and then if I get a lunch break, I do, but that's the only time I have. So I've been trying to do too many things and not achieving any of them, really. So should I just stick with blog only and focus on that until that builds up?

Pat:
I would for now, if there is indeed not a lot of other times in the day and in the week to try new things, then continue on the things that you have been working on and essentially, see how you can optimize them and get more time back so that with the same amount of time, you can perhaps add something new. So this is the same journey that I took, 2008, the blog started. Then it got to the point where I was doing pretty good with getting things up and batch processing content so that I only had to create it once a week for the whole month and whatnot.

Pat:
Then I got time back to start the podcast in 2009 and then, or the YouTube channel in 2009, the podcast in 2010, public speaking in 2011. So it took sort of getting to the point where I was comfortable and things were working a little bit, for me to get comfortable moving to the next thing. Many times, it's not even appropriate to move on to the next thing because we haven't fully invested in the thing that we're working on. I like the idea of a photography podcast and I would actually keep it general to reach more audiences. I would have some sort of unique selling proposition within that show down the road, of course, but these quick tips, I think that there's something interesting there.

Pat:
Then the idea is, at the end of that show go, "Hey, by the way, if you're a photographer and you're looking to make some extra money, might I point you to my specialty, which is the architectural and construction space. If you're looking to make some extra cash, I'd love to share with you a resource that you could use to learn more about this undiscovered niche in photography to help you make more money," right? That's kind of the pitch there and I think that would be really interesting because people are more likely going to be wanting photography tips and less likely to search for construction photography because they don't know that exists.

Rick:
That's interesting. My unique selling point will be photography explained in 10 minutes in plain English because I have a short attention span and I know how the work my tele. I haven't got a clue how it physically works and I don't care. The only bit that's relevant to me is I can change the channels on my tele and turn the sound up and down. I don't need to know any more than that. That what I was going to base it on, just telling photographers enough to help them with their photography without getting lost in irrelevant detail.

Pat:
I like that. I like that, photography without the irrelevant detail.

Rick:
Yeah. So photography explained in plain English in 10 minutes and just do that as a weekly thing and just do it as a one off. Obviously, I've used your own podcast cheat sheet. So I've drafted out the first three episodes and I just-

Pat:
It takes work for sure, but in terms of production and your schedule, you could take a two-hour period once a week to crank out an entire month's worth of episodes and then you're good for the rest of the time. There are ways to get it done.

Rick:
I was just going to do them as straight tags without any editing because I don't know how to edit audio. I haven't got a clue and I think if I just get good enough, actually, I should get away with it.

Pat:
I would agree with that. I hope this was helpful for you. We talked about a number of different things, but it sounds like I've been able to at least guide you in the next direction.

Rick:
Like I say, my problem was I keep on coming up with ideas for things to do, but I haven't got time to do them, so I just need to do something and do it well.

Pat:
I would definitely, and like I said, stay in the realm of helping people with their careers as photographers or start a photography career within this space. I think there's something there for sure.

Rick:
So architectural and construction are good areas to just own, basically.

Pat:
I would own it and then you can get invited on all these other podcasts about photography in general and become that go-to specialization person in this space. It's going to be much quicker than a general site and trying to attract people who are often going elsewhere already anyways.

Rick:
Can I ask you a quick question about YouTube? I got into the routine of doing weekly YouTube videos, which is me talking about the blog posts. I'm trying to just repurpose the same content over and over every week. That's not really gone anywhere and I lost momentum with that as well. Is that worth doing? Again, a short video, a six- minute video.

Pat:
Very similar to the podcast, it can be a mechanism for capturing more attention and whatnot. I think that especially if your blog posts start to become a little bit more honed in on photography and the career and that sort of aspect of it, it can definitely be well worth doing. However, the trouble with YouTube is that YouTube is a very specialized platform where in order to grow there, we definitely need some things that are very specific to YouTube, like some great visual things to look at while learning about this content. Even though it's the same content as the blog, we need to have a very, very clear hook in the beginning of the video to keep people watching all the way through.

Pat:
We don't have to worry about that as much with a blog post, although we should still worry about that in the first paragraph, of course. The ability to keep people watching more of your videos from video to video, will help you amplify your reach there as well. So those are just some little nuances of YouTube. Again, if you've not yet put the full focus on the blog, then repurposing blog stuff is not going to help you just by putting it elsewhere because at the root level, at the blog, it's not where it should be, or it's not speaking to who you should be speaking to yet.

Rick:
So blog and podcast are the things to focus on.

Pat:
Yeah, or blog and YouTube. I like the combo of one multimedia platform and one written platform. They can be repurposed, but I know a lot of people who go a little too deep with repurposing. In fact, that repurposing takes up way more time than even just creating original content and that shouldn't be the case.

Rick:
Yes. I've made that mistake before.

Pat:
If it were easy, what would it look like? That's kind of where I want to hone in on.

Rick:
Well, I think, I've actually got somebody who's helping me do proper titles, and he's a bit of an expert in this field and it's 30 blog posts I've written and I've got him to redo the titles, so I'm just rewording those at the moment and then republishing those and deleting the old ones. So I'm getting a bit of traction already as well. I don't know if it's the same for everybody, but my web traffic, I was only about 3000 page views a month at the start of this year. Then my web traffic just dropped down to virtually nothing, which I don't know if that's a global thing or if it's just my website, but it's on the up now. I'm up to 2,000 page views, that's all, but it's improving about 40 percent a month. It's increasing.

Pat:
That's good. No, as long as we're going back up, that's what's important. But just keep up the good work and keep trying to find that voice and who that target audience is. I think we talked about a lot of things that are going to help you, trimming of the older posts and the focus on the revenue generation that you could do for others, and again, sort of reverse engineering what the ultimate goals are. This 10K per month is a great number to have and eventually, you'll be able to come up with some products that can help tighten that gap for you. Thanks, Rick. Tell us the website link. I want to have people check it out if any of you are interested.

Rick:
It's rickmcevoyphotography.com. It's R-I-C-K M-C-E-V-O-Y photography.com. That's my website. If everybody can go there and subscribe to my blog, I'd be very grateful.

Pat:
We'll definitely put it in the show notes and give people a chance to do that. So Rick, thank you so much for your time today. Good luck with everything and hopefully, we'll catch up again later.

Rick:
Thank you very much for today and thank you for your podcast and all the other information you share, which I just think is brilliant. Thank you so much.

Pat:
My pleasure. Take care.

Rick:
Thank you, Pat. Cheers.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Rick and that coaching call. If you want to get a coaching call with me, just like Rick did today, all you have to do is go to askpat.com and that'll redirect you to a page on SPI where you can leave an application and we can hopefully, potentially, have a chat with you in the future. I would love to have a chat with you and help you out too. So Rick, thank you so much for listening in today. I appreciate you. You can find him once again, rickmcevoyphotography.com. and good luck to you, my friend. I appreciate you.

Pat:
For everybody listening in, thank you so much for making it all the way through here. Hope you got some valuable information that you can actually put forth and conquer with into the future. I look forward to, speaking of the future, the next episodes, where we're going to be chatting with you about some other interesting businesses with some other interesting and really amazing people here in the community. I would love to invite you to come and be a part of that by just hitting subscribe. That's all. If you'd like to leave a review too, that'd be super excellent as well. Cheers. Thanks so much and I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Peace. #TeamFlynn for the win.