Scale Up Strategies: The Business Podcast for Coaches, Consultants, and Speakers
We're your hosts and Business Coaching experts Mary Fain Brandt and Laura Bashore
We’re sharing all our mistakes and insider tips from our 20+ years in business and
how we successfully scaled up our businesses without losing our minds or our husbands.
Sure you can piece it together and try to DIY your way to success
OR
you can listen to us every week and learn the shortcuts because we promise there
are some.
Scale Up Strategies: The Business Podcast for Coaches, Consultants, and Speakers
Gain a Competitive Edge by Owning Your Business Vertical/Niche with Speical Guest Michael Vickers
Ever wondered how businesses can truly stand out in a crowded market? Join us as we welcome Michael Vickers, a entrepreneur and consultant, who shares his secret sauce for success: mastering business verticals. Michael promises to enlighten us with his insight on why identifying and owning specific niches is the game-changer you need to prevent business failure.
With his practical strategies, you'll learn how to position your business as the go-to choice in your industry, ensuring that you not only survive but thrive amidst fierce competition.
But that’s not all. We also explore the dynamic nature of business and the power of focus with personal anecdotes that illustrate the importance of adaptability. Whether it’s leveraging multiple niches or sharpening your focus on a single one, Michael emphasizes the necessity of evolving strategies in response to ever-changing market conditions.
From the resilience of the pharma and tech industries to insights from the banking sector, this episode is packed with valuable lessons on diversification and strategic focus that can propel your business to new heights. Don’t miss out on these insights that could redefine your approach to success.
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Well, today we have a great guest lined up for you. If you ever hear about needing to niche down or stay in your lane, you know it's something that we hear about a lot and we'll be so successful if we can just master this. But we don't want you to have to rely on hearsay any longer. We have brought on a special guest who's going to help us get to the bottom of this. So Michael Vickers will be on with us today and he's going to help us get to the bottom of this. So Michael Vickers will be on with us today and he's going to discuss exactly not only how you niche down, but how you own your own vertical. So I can't wait for us to bring him on.
Mary Fain Brandt:You're listening to Scale Up Strategies, the business growth podcast for coaches, consultants and speakers. We're your hosts and business coach experts Mary Fain Brandt and Laura Bay hore.
Laura Bashore:We're sharing all our insider tips from 20 plus years in business, including how we successfully scaled our businesses without losing our minds or our husbands.
Mary Fain Brandt:Sure, you can piece it together and try to DIY your way to success. Or you can listen to us every week and learn the shortcuts, because we promise they're really awesome.
Laura Bashore:So grab your favorite cup of coffee, tune in and let's start the show. All right, so I'm pretty excited, mary, how is it that you found Michael?
Mary Fain Brandt:We actually met on LinkedIn. Actually, he found me, um, because of my profile and the words in there and the headline. So we've had several conversations. I've been on his podcast and just the way he talks about verticals and niches I was like, oh, we need him on our podcast. He's helped me, like rethink about certain things, like how to position myself or different verticals, so I just thought it would be a great opportunity for him to share his wisdom with our network. So we should go ahead right and bring Michael up.
Laura Bashore:All right. So before we bring our guest, michael Vickers, up, we want to share a little bit with you today about him. So he's a popular speaker, consultant and educator. Michael coaches thousands of professionals every year to grow individual and organizational performance. Summit Learning Systems, michael's training organization, brings leading-edge strategies to clients in every sector of North American economy.
Laura Bashore:Michael's success is completely grounded in and built on his personal experience. A consummate entrepreneur, michael is a graduate of his own franchise retailing enterprise, a manufacturing and distribution company and a highly successful publishing venture. A ceaseless inventor, michael constantly researches leading companies, searches for best practices and distills the experience of success, many of which can be found in his best-selling books entitled Becoming Preferred, how to Outsell your Competition and Dance of the Rainmaker Creating Authentic Differentiation in Today's Competitive Marketplace. So with that, michael will be talking about insights on identifying verticals and niches and positioning your business as the preferred choice in your market. So we've got three main points we want to go over today with you. He'll be sharing why verticals, how to position yourself in the vertical or niche because these are interchangeable and how to own the vertical or niche. So real quick, fun fact too, mary has been a guest on Michael's podcast, which also shares the name of his first book, becoming Preferred. So, without further ado, let's get Michael up here so he can share all of his wisdom with us.
Mary Fain Brandt:Welcome, Michael. It's great to have you here. I want an applause button next, Laura. Can we add that to our podcast? Like you?
Michael Vickers:I'd like one too. Yeah, that would be good. That's a nice intro, so an applause thing would be really appropriate at that time. That's perfect. Thank you very much, laura, you're welcome.
Mary Fain Brandt:Good to see you, lady, had several conversations and I told Laura after Michael and I get on the phone or Zoom and talk, I'm always like I just need to do this, like once a month, because I just feel so empowered and inspired and ignited like, oh, I should do that. So I'm personally excited to have you on the show, Michael, so that our audience can get that same energy that you give to me. So before we get started, Laura and I love our stats. Laura put in the notes there that we need a little bell that does stats, Stats it's time for stats. So here's your stat to start the show, folks 42% of small businesses fail because there's no market need for their product or service. So broad targeting really dilutes your effort. And I have to say that I've created stuff and it failed because I didn't do my market research first. Just because I think something's great doesn't mean that my audience is going to think it's great. Have you seen that before, Michael?
Michael Vickers:I have. Yeah, no, I think it's a common thing. It's lack of focus or identifying your ideal market or verticals, absolutely.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, absolutely Well, michael, we want you to educate our audience, so let's start with why verticals, what is a vertical for some of our business owners and why they should be looking at the different verticals in their business.
Michael Vickers:Well, and that great question, and let's look at it this way, maybe this will kind of set the stage for it. You know, we've all played with magnifying glasses. When you were a kid, you played with one. They were great for starting fires. You could burn ants on the driveway, you know, if your little brother caused you grief, you could, you know, chase him down, or maybe a cat straight into the. No, I'm kidding, but we all, we've all played with magnifying glasses. And well, how does one work? It takes the available sunlight and it focuses it to a single point. So the question we have to ask ourselves is is there power and focus? And the answer is yes.
Michael Vickers:And the problem with small businesses, entrepreneurs, even big mid-sized companies, have the same issue is they basically fish all over the marketplace. So think of a big lake that's our marketplace and you can go out there and you see people catching fish over there and you go, I'll go cast over there, and maybe I'll go cast over there and you're cat, you're fishing all over the lake. You see somebody get a bite here, you get a bite there, and there's just no area of focus. Well, when I go fishing, I kind of like to use help. So if I'm going walleye fishing with a buddy or one of my sons, we use a fish finder. We know they're in the lake, we know we find them, we know they're 10 to 12 feet deep and we know they're biting on dead minnows. So once we locate them, it's just an issue of what are they feeding on? So if I go fly fishing, it's the same thing. We call it matching the hatch. So certain times of the year, you know, in August, we're using grasshoppers. That's what they bite on, and so, you know, in the afternoon it might be caddisflies. So the bottom line is we see this in all areas of our life and yet, as entrepreneurs, we tend to fish all over the marketplace.
Michael Vickers:Well, I created this strategy for me, or at least learned about it. Way back, you know, 20 plus years ago I was working in oil and gas with our company and the oil and gas market was booming. It was hot, so, hey, it was a great time to be in oil and gas. But then the market crashed. The oil and gas market crashed.
Michael Vickers:Well, when it went down, I had to go find another place to go sell, and all of a sudden I found everybody in that food chain was suffering, so it was a bad place to go and sell, and so I started looking at different verticals, and one thing I learned about the verticals which I think is powerful is they're not all down at the same time. There's correlations to them. So, for instance, when war breaks out like, for instance, we've got the Ukraine-Russian thing going on there's a whole bunch of people miserable and unhappy about this, but there's a whole bunch of people very happy about this. All right, because when the pandemic hit, a whole bunch of people miserable and happy, like speakers like me we hated it and you know we you guys lost your income for the year.
Mary Fain Brandt:I have some friends that are keynote speakers, international keynote speakers, like you are, and she lost. She said 50% or more.
Michael Vickers:Oh yeah, no it was almost seven figures that year. It was. I curled up fetal position literally and cried for a week and then it was like, okay, suck it up, buttercup, you know how to do this. What's booming? Well, you had the pharma's doing well, you had Moderna and you had Zoom booming.
Michael Vickers:And so that's why you want multiple niches, or segments, or niche or niche you can use the word interchangeable or vertical, so you can have as many verticals as you want. I have over 16. All right, the key that's a lot. Well, you want to work them because all of a sudden, for instance, I've been working in bank and financing for the last six months doing quite a bit of that, because the verticals all shift and there's different times for them and it causes you to focus and each one requires something just a little different. So if you think of it this way, and whatever your business is and here's a tattoo for everyone you just tattoo it on your forehead, I'll pay for it. If you do it Smaller the niche, bigger the market. Smaller the niche, bigger the market. Who makes more money? The dentist or the orthodontist? And I think we'd all say yeah the orthodontist.
Michael Vickers:But who does the marketing for the orthodontist?
Laura Bashore:The dentist, the dentist. So how do we get the?
Michael Vickers:market to do the marketing. How do we get the market to be the marketers? So that's why what we want to do, for instance, as a speaker, we use speaker bureaus, I. So that's why what we want to do, for instance, as a speaker, we use speaker bureaus. I've talked about that. We use agents. That's our market. They do the marketing for us.
Michael Vickers:So I get tons of referrals based on my network, right, and of course, you do that with your LinkedIn and with everything else. So it's, how do you get the market to refer to you? So some of them are good markets and some of them are bad markets, and so we want to identify what those verticals are. So if we were going to give a definition to it, as far as really dividing the network or the vertical into identifiable segments or groups of people so who network and communicate with one another, so if you want to figure out how to do it for you, there's three ways we could do it. Number one look at your existing customers. Who bought from you last year, who bought from you in the last two years, the last three years. Start putting those people in buckets. Did you have engineers? Did you have teachers? Did you have retail stores. Did you? Were you online?
Michael Vickers:Real estate professionals insurance wherever you're going, absolutely. So look at those last year's two years and three years of customers and you'll start to identify your initiatives. You already have them right. It's just you probably haven't spent time identifying them yet. And that's really what we want to do is spend our time identifying them so you can have as many as you want big or small doesn't matter and here's why they're important. Some are better than others within a vertical. So let me give you an example. If you were to go to a real estate conference and this would be how you would work the vertical If you went to a real estate conference, you'll probably see me speaking at them. I exhibit at their trade shows, I write articles for their magazines. They think I'm an expert on real estate. I've never sold a house in my life, but they think I'm an expert because I'm not teaching. You know how to market to them.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I have a question so when you're? You know we're going all through this and you're talking verticals and industries, because you know that we've had the conversation and I'm thinking a different way now, into 2025, because I have the verticals in front of me. I've just never have identified them. And I have a question Do you think that people, the small business owners, they have the verticals in front of them and they market to everyone? They just do this blanket general market instead of creating for their different verticals? They need a different marketing strategy, right?
Michael Vickers:And you're creating that. You're creating that perception of the reality. So you can have as many verticals, so, but once you've identified them, you position yourself as an expert within that vertical. Let's say everything's equal. Let's say, you, you go to a. You've got a specialist and a generalist. You go to the hospital and emergency says, hey, we got a doctor for you. But you know, we happen to have the specialist in as well. It happens to be here at the moment. She can see you if you'd like as well. There's no additional cost. You can see the specialist or you can see the generalist. Which one do you want to see?
Michael Vickers:you're a specialist every, every time, the specialist. So why not create the specialty? So the key is to appear as an expert in that. So how do we appear in your posts, in your marketing, simply saying it, looking at your clients? So, for instance, if you were to write, you know, say you were looking for a speaker for a conference in your real estate company, I'm only going to send you referrals and references and logos of clients of real estate companies. So the hardest one to get is the first one. Once you get the first one, the rest kind of fall like dominoes.
Michael Vickers:So if you think about it for a minute, here's another example of a vertical. You're in Hollywood, you're a famous actor and you murder your spouse. Who are you going to call? You know which lawyer you're going to call, the ones that you see on TV. They become the lawyers to the stars who murder their spouses. Right, if you're going for plastic surgery, you know, and you're a, you don't just call, open the phone book and go. You know who should I go to? You're going to go, you know, figure out who did what and you become the plastic surgeon to the stars, the astrologer to the stars. So you can have as many of these verticals as you want. So the key is just to identify them and then send your marketing and you have to market to that vertical. So the good news is the verticals don't always talk to each other. So the teachers and the engineers? So in oil and gas I'll give you an example Back to that one or real estate, excuse me, in the audience happen to be the mortgage brokers.
Michael Vickers:Well, I picked up half the mortgage broking companies GE, big companies, big names, genworth, you name it. Who else is in there? The banks? I picked up five major banks just because they were in the audience selling to those people. So if you went to a trade show, for instance, of real estate, how many other speakers and trainers are you going to see there? None, you would just see us. And so because we go to shows for speakers? So let's say, whatever your retail store is, your industry, whatever it is, so you make bagels, all right, it doesn't matter. Whatever the widgets are that you sell, you're going to go to your own trade shows where you have. Your competitors are right across the hall from you and there's another one over here Instead, where do your customers go? So why not fish where the fish are?
Mary Fain Brandt:And fish where the fish are. I got to write that down Literally fish where the fish are. I think that's that's profound. Sorry to interrupt, but I think that a lot of business owners they're fishing in a lake that is empty.
Michael Vickers:Yeah, and it really isn't. So you can have. That's why you can have as many verticals or niches as you can. So how do we appear as an expert is the key. How do we manage those perceptions?
Laura Bashore:Yeah, that would be my question, because I completely am on board with what you're saying here and that makes sense and you're almost kind of like reverse marketing, like the way you're looking at it, and I like that. But then how do we encompass that as just like one human or one business? How can we be experts to all these things?
Mary Fain Brandt:Exactly so wait, michael. So we don't want to be seen as flaky and we don't want to. How can you be an expert for six different industries, mary? How like? What is that perception? Because I do know someone in San Diego. They have pivoted so many times. I'm not sure what they do, right, they're an expert here and then they're an expert and then they're an expert. So you know how do you not look or appear flaky like you're changing all the time and having multiple verticals?
Michael Vickers:Great question. The key is you can become an expert on the vertical over a weekend with a few hours of work. I'll give you a couple of examples. The key is you can become an expert on the vertical over a weekend with a few hours of work. I'll give you a couple of examples. The key is you're not becoming an expert on their business. You only need to be an expert on your business as it relates to the business. So, as a speaker, I know how they sell houses. I've never sold a house, but I know how they position it. I know the conversations they're having, the messaging. It works for speakers and across the board.
Michael Vickers:So her name was Cheryl. She was in insurance. She sold insurance and we got talking. She was in one of our programs and she wanted to get a vertical. I said, well, who do you hang out with? Who do you recreate with? Who do you? And she goes well, my mom. I'm a single mom at school. So other moms. I said okay. I said what are the stress points of the other moms? That's her vertical. So the stress points what are they moms worried about? Well, they're worried about educating their kids. How do I find it? How do I pay for them to go to school.
Michael Vickers:So I said do you have any products or services that they could invest in on a monthly basis? That would then build a nest egg that they could be used and applied for school? And she goes yeah, we have a thing called RRSPs or education funds. They're tax exempt. We have them all over. You know, every country has them, basically. And you put away 50 bucks a month. It's an insurance product, but it's a universal life insurance product, so it has a high cash value and investment. Just small amounts every month.
Michael Vickers:And I, we did those for our own kids. So I said why don't you go get a group of your moms together, eight or 10 of them in a room, have them supply the coffee, you bring the Krispy Kremes and a babysitter, all right. So she did that, got them all together and I said then prepare a 45 minute little workshop on sending you know your kids, ashley and Scott, to college and to go read everything over the weekend. How do I send them to school? How much is it going to cost? What's the best way to get there? So she did that. She prepped over a weekend, went to the bookstore, went online, started looking at everything. So she understood what it took to get your kid into college Three, four hours worth of work, because then, once you've done the work, once you've got it right, you've got it for that niche. So then I said she prepared some slides and talked about and she goes in. She got all the moms together. They had their little event she wasn't selling insurance.
Michael Vickers:Now if she was selling insurance, she says hey, you should buy insurance for your kids. It's 50 bucks a month. The wife because she was that, that's who the network was will go home, talk to her husband, say we should buy insurance for the kids Bad messaging. Instead she said hey, I was at a thing today where we learned all about how to send Ashley and Scott to college and so if we put away 50 bucks a month into a savings plan, that's protected. I said we'll have enough for when they're 18. And we can absorb that. Now we don't have a huge financial obligation. Yeah, honey, go ahead, go ahead and get it. If it's an insurance product, we got work to go through, but because it's an education fund investment program, it was easily done. She now writes articles, she's on television, she's networking, she's the sending your kids to college expert. So whenever they're addressing that issue and the high cost of education, she's the one they call.
Michael Vickers:You can become an expert. All you need to understand is what are the issues of that. So if you've got Google, go to Gemini, your AI, or Mary you're always sending out AI. You've got lots of tools right. You'll be able to do that, and this could be a good follow-up. Just Google and say what are the 10 biggest issues for the printing industry? What are the top seven for retail? What are the top five for this? And you'll get some great ideas. Learn those, learn what they are. So now, when you're talking to people and you're marketing, you now know how to apply those to their issues or to what their stresses are. So you can become an expert real fast. It's just putting a little time. You just need to understand what are their issues, what are their challenges and how are they addressing them.
Mary Fain Brandt:Okay, so that makes sense. So, instead of saying that I'm an expert in real estate and health insurance, I specialize in real estate.
Michael Vickers:I specialize in insurance. I specialize in real estate, I specialize in insurance I specialize.
Mary Fain Brandt:I specialize in helping realtors use AI in their business.
Michael Vickers:Well, here's how I would say it. Oh hi, you know. So it's Mary. I specialize with realtors. I help realtors, all right, and you could sit there. We recognize in our organization that realtors industries are different than anyone else's industry, and I specialize in providing tools for realtors in order to position the competition.
Michael Vickers:Now let's look at this for a minute. Are your needs different from anyone else's needs? I said that you believe it, but it's really not true. Everybody's needs are the same. I've never met a vertical that's. Everyone thinks our business is unique. I just got booked for a big tire conference for tire, and I've worked in tires. You know distribution, lots of companies, and they're all the same. Everybody thinks they're unique because when we hire somebody, we want to hire somebody from that vertical. No, that's all this. People make decisions the same way. They just want to know their specialty. Give me an example. There's a little lozenge called Vocal Zones, and you know I've got one in my mouth right now. As speakers we use them and they're designed for professional speakers and singers. So I have my own lozenge Now. A Halls probably would do the trick, but hey, I'm going with this, even paying four bucks, because it's designed for speakers.
Mary Fain Brandt:I got my own, you know, so it's better, and they know, as a speaker, how you need this.
Michael Vickers:That's right.
Laura Bashore:So whatever your clients are, selling, yeah, whatever they're selling.
Michael Vickers:So if you're a podcaster we specialize with podcasters we recognize that your needs are different from anyone else's needs. No, they're not, but do you think so? Yes, you do so. Therefore, you know, this is how I'm presenting. So birds of a feather flock together.
Michael Vickers:Teachers hang out with teachers, engineers with engineers, doctors with doctors. We still live in a class system, right, we still live in a class system. We do presidents with presidents, ceos with CEOs, and so you know, I was in a conference for an insurance company a couple of years ago and a guy put his hand up and he said 1,000 people in the room and he goes people can't afford my insurance premiums. And I'm like whoa, how expensive are these premiums? I know I'm curious, right, and he goes 50 bucks a month. I said they can't afford 50 bucks a month for insurance premiums? He goes no, I said well, but think about it.
Laura Bashore:It's a vertical.
Michael Vickers:It's a terrible vertical. Sell to rich companies instead of poor ones, you know. Sell to people who can afford your widget, your product, your service, and you don't want their friends either, because we're right.
Mary Fain Brandt:No, you don't want the friends of the people you're trying to market to when they can't afford, and that's something that I've learned throughout. You don't want the friends of the people you're trying to market to when they can't afford, and that's something that I've learned throughout. You know my growth in business. I feel that, as a business owner 10 years in business now we outgrow the customers that we start with.
Michael Vickers:Yes, absolutely.
Laura Bashore:Or at least you should be, Otherwise you're not being very successful, well, and even from two years ago.
Mary Fain Brandt:I've outgrown the customers that I was working with two years ago. Yes, I've served them, served them well, but now I'm at a different yep, new level, new thing new level, new skills, new offers.
Laura Bashore:I do though I have something I I want to bring up before it gets lost in in this really great piece of the conversation. I am noticing, michael, that you are making a distinction to use the word specialized versus expert, and I feel like you're doing that intentionally, and I'd like you to share that, because I think that would be really helpful for people who are trying to figure out how I present myself as a specialist in this niche or vertical, and great question.
Michael Vickers:So you're not going to be an expert on the end. You're going to become a specialist on the industry because you work in that field. So let's go with what we do. There's a great movie called knight's tale and if you haven't yeah, yeah, great movie, great soundtrack, everything.
Michael Vickers:And he's, he's a, he's serf that helps his knight and can put on the armor and everything. And the guy was kind of bloated and a little overweight and ends up dying, has a heart attack, and so he's looking at all this knight equipment, armor and he's going I think I could do this. So he puts on all the knight stuff. Well, he's missing something. And he runs into Chaucer the character who plays Chaucer and he says you're missing the patents of nobility. He goes what's that? And he goes they're not going to let you compete until you have your chronology, your vita, your resume, where are you from? How'd you become a knight? Because you had to be noble birth. So he fakes one right and does it. Well, we have a patents of nobility in our world.
Michael Vickers:When you go into a doctor's office, you see the certificate. There's your credibility and authority. For us, we use business cards. So what happens is most people get business cards and business cards are generally a function of HR. So if you work in a bigger company, it's got your title. I'm this, this is where my position is within this organization. That tells everyone in the organization.
Michael Vickers:But it's terrible marketing. Instead, you could have one specializing in retail, specializing with professional speakers. So I'll give you an example. Or if you phone me up and you go, hey, this is Laura, we have marketing and we work on branding and we do brand work, we do printing, we do all of these things and special gifts, you probably wouldn't even get through to me. You probably wouldn't even get through. The gatekeepers would keep you out. But if you phoned up and you said, hey, this is Laura, we specialize in the professional speaking and training industry. We recognize that your needs are different than anyone else's needs. No, they're not, but I think they are, and I'm like, really, she goes yeah, now, if you're going to name drop, you're going to name drop other companies or other speakers that I might know. Now I'm interested in talking to you because you've made it about me and so smaller the niche, bigger the market, and it's really about showing up. So business card is one way to do it, simple way your website. You can go on your website and then you can have so michaelvickerscom forward slash realtors I'd have all the realtor logos.
Michael Vickers:So whatever your verticals are, it could also just be done on a PDF with all your different logos. It can be articles, it can be blog posts and, mary, I know you teach everybody to do blog posts. So when you work a vertical and you're working with a campaign, say it's more general, just go up to the next level. So, if you're working with doctors, medical professionals, stay with medical professionals. Now you can work with oncologists and radiologists and everyone in the food chain, and then you want to work the niche deep and you want to work the niche wide, because everyone within that niche because they're what's the one thing that they all have in common they network and communicate with one another. So podcasters, we network, we communicate with one another. So, if you had a product for podcasters, we all net. So our suppliers, we go to the conferences we meet. Do you see what I'm saying? Birds of a feather.
Michael Vickers:And so, my friends, if you look on my books, you're going to see all these testimonials from best-selling authors. Did they just read my book one day and go hey, you know what? This is great, I'm going to send this guy a testimonial. See if you can print it book. No, they're all friends of ours that we meet at engagements. Or, hey, mary, I've got a new book coming out. Would you mind doing a testimonial. Laura, would you mind doing this for me? Yeah, sure, I've got one too. Would you do one for me? So these endorsements cause people buy into the concepts of endorsement. So that's again how you can set that. Set that up Trade shows. It'd be the fourth place where you could go go to a trade show, go where the fish are all right so if you went to an oil, and gas show here and I told you it was a vertical.
Michael Vickers:No other speaking and training companies there, no other, no other podcast companies there. But if that's where my market was, that's where I would be going.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I think most people, michael, just to reiterate they think that they should go where people are that are like them. So go to a conference on speakers, go to a conference. If you bake, go to that food trade show, but what you're saying is get out of that circle.
Michael Vickers:Go there. Go there as well. Go other places, but go to where your customer is.
Laura Bashore:Yeah.
Michael Vickers:Where is the customer going? So, for example, you know, if it's banking because I do a lot of banking or oil and gas in my world I'm going to go to banking conferences. Where do they go, you know. So, for instance, there's five major banks in Canada. I have every one of them as a client. In the US we have, you know, phoenix office, we're not too far from you in Arizona, but I also have every major credit unit and then I have all the back office in there. In oil and gas company I got Shell as my first client, then I got BP, then I got Exxon, then I got Halliburton, then I got Baker and I got the hardest one to get is the first one. Once you get the first one, the rest start to fall like dumb.
Laura Bashore:And so, if I'm taking this back to the original question, then what I'm understanding from what you're saying, michael, is when you specialize, it's about the customer, the client. When you're an expert, it's about you. You're more focused on, like, how you relate versus what you do, like that could be a different way that you look at it.
Michael Vickers:That's right. Like, for instance, I'm an expert on sales and marketing strategy. You know, mary might be expert on AI and and technologies, but you can become an expert or a specialist on that within that vertical. So, for instance, I can become an expert on marketing real estate. All right, because we do that. I can be an expert. So be careful where you use the word. But you better know about the vertical. So, whatever you know, engineering verticals, you also get some verticals. You don't want to work and then you learn hey, I have a couple of those.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, exactly lord knows what verticals that I don't want to work in anymore well, and we've all had referrals, but birds of a feather.
Michael Vickers:So what kind of business are people in? What kind of profession are they in? Where do they? Where do they recreate? You know where do they hang out? So you know, I had sons play hockey. I know all the parents. I have access to them. So, when it comes to marketing, the one thing I will say as a big umbrella is demographics don't really work. They point you in a direction, but they'll let you know. You know, 60% of our country is baby boomers, me included. You know we're at a certain age group, but that's not how we market. Look at you and I are communicating and we're probably a few generations apart. Right, we network and we communicate. That's what you want to look for. So who's buying from? Put them into the buckets and then position yourself and you'll figure out and go Holy cow, we got a whole bunch of doctors. We have a whole bunch of teachers.
Mary Fain Brandt:We have a whole yeah, I love it, okay, I love it, I again, I, I I talked to Michael and then I'm like I'm taking notes, literally as we're recording this, because I'm like, oh, I didn't think about that before. So every time that I'm talking to Michael, I get energized and inspired and I really hope that you guys that are listening maybe go back to this episode and pull out those nuggets. You don't have to do everything at once, but I would. I would like to encourage our listeners to list down five verticals. You have five verticals. Michael says so, so you know. If you don't, you can contact him.
Michael Vickers:That'd be ahead.
Laura Bashore:That's what I was thinking. Three is probably good to start with.
Mary Fain Brandt:We'll go with three, but everyone do that.
Michael Vickers:Yeah, and do a business card. Do a business card, put your title and then specializing in, and then you give that card out. When they see it they go oh, wow. Let me leave one more story. Just give me an example. The company was Shaw DMX music. So when you went into a hotel and a restaurant you heard music playing. That was them. They own the marketplace and they had 25 sales reps around the country and we were working in the sales rep and they wanted to expand market share. Satellite was coming in and that was the big thing. So everybody was switching $50 a month. So I said let me see your customer list. They brought back out a phone book this fat. I said okay, way too much. I said give me Italian restaurants. So they went and found a list of Italian restaurants and it was a small list, subset. So then I said now let's get a list of all known italian restaurants. So now we have a big phone book of italian restaurants. So here's who we do have and here's who we don't have. So we had that. I said now let's just business card only we specialize in the italian restaurant industry, that's it. Just put that on the card.
Michael Vickers:We went out for the next two and months, three months. They knocked on doors and they'd see the owner. And they go. Hey, laura, the owner of the restaurant, michael Vickers, with Shaw DMX Music, we specialize in the Italian restaurant industry. Oh, you do. Yeah, we recognize that your needs are different from anyone else's needs. We've created products and tools in order to help you flourish and become preferred in your markets.
Michael Vickers:Well, who else have you worked for? Let me know. You know who else is using the service. So I opened up my phone book. Do you want to see Chinese restaurants? Do you want to see Greek restaurants? Do you want to see Mexican restaurants? You only want to see Italian restaurants. So now I show you all these Italian restaurants, birds of a feather flock, to get you know. They all get their duck or their Italian, their pasta from the same place, or flour. So my point is and, by the way, in the next two and a half, three months, they got like 80% of the market and I can give you story after story after story of that where, if people can do business with a generalist or a specialist and money is the same, who do you choose?
Mary Fain Brandt:I love it, I love it yeah. So, laura, are we ready to wrap up and ask our guests the questions we, michael, we didn't tell you. We like to ask our guests a few random questions at the end of the episode.
Michael Vickers:Are you ready? Yeah, I love that.
Mary Fain Brandt:Okay, so let's start with a business one. What is the last risk you took in your business?
Michael Vickers:Last risk, uh raising my fees. Oh yeah, raising my fees. I've been fighting it for three. Then the. I was going to raise it just before the, the 20, you know the pandemic and then I thought, oh, can't do it in the pack because everybody's hurting. And so the last risk was a year ago, january, and I I raised the fees by about 40%. And the irony of the whole thing is I wish I'd done it years earlier. It I'm we're swamped I think that's.
Mary Fain Brandt:Uh. Everyone has trouble raising their fees, so yeah, yeah, okay, my fees what is a quote that you, you live by in your business?
Michael Vickers:in my business yeah quotes a statement or a quote, something that it's what I do in my business, and I also do it in my personal life too. It's be first, and so be first, which means I'm gonna, you know, if I've made you mad, I'm gonna be the first to apologize, even if it's not me, it's you. Uh, be first, I'm gonna introduce myself to you before you introduce yourself to me, so I just gonna be first I'm going to introduce myself to you before you introduce yourself to me.
Laura Bashore:So I just going to be first. I like it simple and to the point, yeah, and I like that it's doing it in a serving way and also taking care of yourself too. So, just keeping that top of mind, I like that and, well, I like to create.
Michael Vickers:You know I like to create the space, right, I like to create the space. So what I use and actually it's funny to say that, so I'll give you one more that I use from a speaker's point of view People are hurting. People are hurting when you're engaging with people. You don't know that they just didn't lose a loved one, you don't know that they just, you know, lost their job. We put on masks and you see the mask when you meet people.
Michael Vickers:So I use six words before I go speak to an audience heal the space, heal the room. And I start my day this way heal the space, heal the room. It's like an affirmation the space is the space, it's around me. That's something I have control over the room's, the room you're in my room right now. We're all in the same room, but without attachment that the space needs healing or the room needs healing, but what it does is it puts me into a contribution mode versus mr cool speaker, dude, you know, author, whatever, because you can get in. You know your ego can run away with you real fast.
Michael Vickers:So I want to be in a good place and it puts you in a more authentic realm with your, your clients. So heal the space, heal the room, and it just makes me serve them because people are hurting you don't know. So be a good customer, be amazing at what you do, be the bright spot in the lives of the people you serve. End of story. They'll come to you just because they love you. They'll pay for premium because they love you. So that's all part of your experience, but do it authentically and genuinely, and I think you get that way as you get a little older, move it out of transaction and into that experience, and I think that's the key.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, I agree with that 100 percent. Um so next we want to know we ask all of our guests what is the number one social platform that you use for your business?
Michael Vickers:we're on all of them but linkedin, linkedin, and and mary's been very helpful in directing some of that as well, but we've been on. I just got a thing I think I've been on 25 years on linkedin now and now I actually feel like I'm doing you know, talking with you know, mary, and some of the strategies I'm going. I wish I knew this 20 years ago.
Mary Fain Brandt:They also didn't have all the cool features right that they had 20 years ago. That's true. That's true, but you're an early adopter and we're early adopters.
Michael Vickers:I'll try anything as soon as it comes up before everyone else does, and if it works, it doesn't, I don't care. So but I think LinkedIn for me, for B2B we are on all the social networks for, you know, podcast but stuff. But depends on your demographics. There's five generations of buyers out there right now, five. So where are they? What channels? 21 channels of communication, to your point, laura minor on B, you know they're there. Some are on Facebook too, but really not my market. So I stay in the B2B realm and that's something I pay attention to and I enjoy it. I'm learning more all the time.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, well, we agree with you. I mean, that's how Mary and I met two years ago. So we, we, we fully endorsed that. And then our last question is what is the key to your success?
Michael Vickers:reading. That's an easy one reading. Um, you know, I ask audiences all the time I I say to them you know, show of hands how many of you you know you read, invest in your education, and people don't. I said how many books you read a year, and the hands will go one, two, and people are very honest about I'm always surprised how honest they were. I don't know if I'd be that honest. None. So I said then I'll go. Well, mary, okay, you've read one.
Michael Vickers:If I wanted to push this further, I say what was the name of the book and what did you learn from it? Which I won't put you on the spot in front of the audience, right, but people don't read, and so when I get interviewed and asked, they go the answers are in the books. Now you've also got there's books, there's YouTube, there's all kinds of tools now that you can use, but for me it started with books. So if I showed you 10 to 15 of the top business books, let's just go. We're all in business. 10 to 15. I said this is the world's best top 15 right now business books. There are gems in here that are going to help you with your business. Most of us would go. Yeah, I agree with you. That's my diet on a monthly basis, so that's what I consume monthly. Now I'm on airplanes so I can read one coming and one going in the gym.
Michael Vickers:I'm listening to most of them right, because my eyes get tired now, but I do read them on my Kindle. Yeah, I'm loading them up.
Mary Fain Brandt:Laura loves books too I read books. Um, oh right, you're like.
Laura Bashore:Maybe I look that's stevie nicks. I also like barbies if they're stevie yeah, that's a barbie stevie nicks, she's a phoenix girl.
Michael Vickers:She's got so that she's she is.
Mary Fain Brandt:I didn't know that learn something interesting. I love podcasts because I listen to them while I'm driving and exactly, podcasts are a good way to do something.
Michael Vickers:Even there's a good book app called Blinkist. My daughter turned me on to it it's nine bucks a month and you can get a book in 15 minutes while you're making the coffee you want every day. Make your vehicle, if you're in vehicle, your university on wheels. 20, 30 minutes a day, it's all you do. And then, whatever you learn it that day, hey, I was reading or I listened to, and when you say it, you now have it instead so you want to update for me every now, every week?
Mary Fain Brandt:now, michael, is that? Is that what I just heard?
Laura Bashore:I'm just kidding it's like I don't think. So yeah, no, you know, I made a conscious effort to get more into reading, just for that very thing, but also to do something for myself, because I'm a very busy human business owner all the time. And so, but 2019, I made a conscious effort that I was going to start picking up reading again, like really invest in it, and so now I read a minimum of two books a month. One is professional and one is for me, so like historical, fiction or something ridiculous.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, and it works and I fit it in and I enjoy it.
Michael Vickers:You know our only goal as entrepreneurs, as business people, as moms and dads, as partners, is we need to protect the confidence of ourselves first. So you're in the airplane, it depressurizes you, put the oxygen on you first. If you're done, you're done. You can't help anybody. So the reading helps you, it keeps you abreast, it builds confidence and when you have the confidence, there's so much that are beating us up in our businesses. This issue, that issue, it's constant, right, we're constantly hounded. So hats off to all the entrepreneurs and the business people doing their gig. I know nothing else. I've never had a paycheck. I've been doing this 30 years and I've never had a paycheck. I get to eat what I kill, like many of you do, and I've seen ups and downs. I've had good ones and bad ones. Right. I learned far more from the failures and the bad years than I ever have the good years. And but if you're reading, you'll have the confidence to protect that you can go through anything. You can go through. You can weather any storm.
Mary Fain Brandt:I love it. Yeah Well, we're going to invite our listeners at this point to connect with you on LinkedIn to check out your podcast, becoming Preferred, which is excellent. You have amazing guests, and I'm not just saying because I was on there.
Michael Vickers:I actually get your emails. You're just saying because you're on it. That's why you're saying she's biased.
Mary Fain Brandt:No because you send out the emails and I actually go and listen to it. It's very educational, so I love that. So, also to our listeners, don't forget to rate, review, share this podcast. There's someone out in your network that could use a little dose of happiness, encouragement and business tips. Laura and I want to thank you for your continued support with our podcast here. Scale Up Strategies and until the next time, here's to good coffee, great conversations and even greater success. If you enjoyed the podcast, show us some love. Please rate, review and subscribe to our podcast, and if you have any feedback, go ahead and share that with us too, because we want to hear from you. Until then, stay focused, stay motivated and stay caffeinated.
