What can dogs teach us about entrepreneurship? To be intuitive.

Dogs are intuitive by nature. If we follow their lead and are intuitive about our clients needs, we will have more success as entrepreneurs and business owners.

My family and I had to put our dog, Daisy, to sleep last week. My heart still hurts and I’m thinking it is going to take me months to get over the loss.

Daisy was in our lives for 11 years. For 11 years she was by my side. When I worked from home she was by my feet as I sat at my desk. Every time I got up, she got up to follow me to be sure she didn’t miss out on what I was doing.

She was our protector, our comforter, our source of laughs and love. Our constant.

She was intuitive. When one of us had a bad day, were sick, or anything was off, she spent her time by that person’s side.

Be Intuitive

As business owners, we can learn from our four-legged family members. We must be intuitive.

We have to be able to be instinctive with the needs of our target audience.

This is multifold.

How to Be Intuitive

Know Your Target Audience

First: We must know the details of our ideal avatar or ideal client. To define your ideal client, answer the following questions:

How old are they?

What is their gender?

Are they parents?

What type of business do they have? A service-based business or a product or store front?

What problems do they need you to solve?

Do they appreciate quality?

Are they willing to invest in their business and themselves?

Do they appreciate health and wellness?

Perhaps you work with a faith-based population?

What is the size of their business? 1 to 10 people, 11 to 40 people, a large business?

Are they tech savvy?

Is this their first time in business or are they on their second career?

Where do they live?

Do they have an online business?

Are they coffee drinkers?

Do they appreciate fine dining and nice wine?

You want to define the details of your ideal client so that you know specifically who you want to reach and what you need to anticipate as far as their needs go.

You have complete clarity on who your avatar is and the problem they need you to solve for them.

Know the Problems Your Target Audience Needs Solved

Which leads us to the second factor: We must know the problems they need solved and how we can solve them. What are their pain points?

You may think you solve problem X, but your customer may have problem X along with problems Y and Z.

You need to be able to identify the additional problems and offer additional solutions. If you yourself can’t solve the additional problems, who do you have in your network that can solve the problems.

In walks community. If you remember from episode 6 I talked about the 5 C’s of personal branding. Clarity was the first C and Community is the 5^th C.

We often think about our community as those we want to reach and have hire us, but our community is also those in our network who support us and who can and will collaborate with us.

My Business as an Example

As I was working with headshot and branding photography clients, I noticed the lack of knowledge about building a brand. People didn’t know how to use the pictures I was creating for them. They didn’t even know about SEO for their website, they didn’t have captivating copy and it certainly wasn’t converting. Most often, they didn’t know how to use social media to market their business.

How could they use social media even if they did know how to because they didn’t have a brand to market.

That is why I created The Brand Marketing Insider Program and why I have a team of experts to work with.

I am not a copywriter. Website design is not in my wheelhouse, nor is graphic design, and I am not a social media manager or videographer.

The Importance of Collaboration

As I worked with my clients and watched them navigate the process of getting quotes from 3 or 4 different types of businesses and multiple quotes within each business segment, just to have a website created, I saw the overwhelm. When they finally made their selections of people to work with, they were having to spend hours coordinating the efforts and getting materials to the other experts. They were spending hours and days feeling overwhelmed, the process took longer than necessary, mistakes were happening left and right, and costs were exceeding expectations. Time and money were wasted. And at the end of the day, going with the least expensive vendor resulted in poor quality and lack of service.

So, what did I do, I contacted the people in my community who I trusted, and asked them to join me and I built a remarkable program that is building brands for success?

If you are an entrepreneur, ask yourself what your clients need? Learn to listen closely and anticipate the next need they will have.

Become the Authority

Maybe you’re a copywriter, think about what services you can provide:

Email marketing campaigns

Bios

LinkedIn profiles

Resumes

Website copy that is SEO ready

Blog posts

Become the authority in your niche and anticipate your client’s additional needs. Especially now, people are losing their jobs left and right and are going to need help with all of these things as they either start a business or try to get another job.

If you are doing website copy, you can anticipate that your client will need blog posts. You become their content creator for blogs on their website. Once you create blog posts for them, you know they can use the blog post content for email marketing, present this to them and become their go to for that as well.

It is about being intuitive and anticipating forthcoming needs.

And don’t worry about being an expert for every task. If you have a Google search bar, you can learn, fine tune your skills and become an expert. Or, bring on a community member to collaborate.

If you are a social media manager and your client is in a service industry you see the need for content that connects. Collaborate with the photographer in your community for some custom branded photography that will help your client stand out in the see of online noise.

Stay Front of Mind

If you are struggling with identifying your client’s additional needs and ways you can help them, use tools like “Answer the Public” and find the questions your ideal clients are asking that fall within your niche. Expand your knowledge in each area and as you work with clients, address their needs with a solution to solidify your expertise and authority status within your niche.

Begin to anticipate the needs of your target audience and proactively communicate your strategies for providing the service. Use email marketing and social media content creation to communicate this and to stay front of mind. As you present content, your ideal audience will think, oh wow, I have that same question, that same problem, and I’m going to reach out and have Julie solve it for me.

We have so many tools at our fingertips that you have no excuse to not be intuitive for your clients and standout as providing the highest quality of services.