Whether you’re planning to start your own business or looking for ways to expand an existing venture, there are three time-tested secret weapons you can use to gain a dramatic competitive edge. This weapon represents three broad business strategies that can help you create a new business or take your company to the next level of success:
- Go on a treasure hunt and find an empty niche
- Reject Conventional Wisdom
- Find a new trend and lash out
If you adopt these strategies as your entrepreneurial mantras, you are more likely to identify and seize real opportunities to expand your company’s product line and customer base. The stories of America’s most successful entrepreneurs prove that inventive, smart, and timely application of these strategies can help a small startup become an industry leader.
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Go on a treasure hunt and find an empty niche
There is nothing more exciting in the business world than finding an underserved niche that is a lucrative market that no one else has been able to discover and target. It’s like looking for gold bars on a crowded beach – they were visible to everyone else, but it was you who noticed that golden sheen in the sand.
This is exactly what happened to Gary and Diana Heavin, founders of fitness franchise Curves International. When the company launched in 1992, the Heavins had only $10,000 in savings to invest in their company. Today, Curves is the world’s largest fitness franchise with 10,000 franchise locations in 65 countries.
How did the Curves get to the top? Instead of competing head-to-head with fitness giants like 24 Hour Fitness or Bally Total Fitness, the Heavins decided to cater to the fitness needs of three underserved niches: middle-aged and older women who want to get in shape but may be afraid. great gyms full of young, strong bodies; busy working women whose schedules can more easily accommodate a 30-minute Curves workout; and frugal women who simply couldn’t afford the monthly membership fees charged by the big gym chains. Early on, Curves clearly stood out from the gym competition; his services and clientele were different.
Targeting an underserved niche is a route small startups can take. Even a huge multi-billion dollar company cannot offer Everybody behind each. Targeting the right niche—one that other business owners have neglected or ignored—can help build a strong and loyal customer base while limiting competition.
Another entrepreneur who followed this strategy was Liz Lange. She founded a phenomenally successful maternity wear design company. Liz Lange Maternity was eventually sold for around $50–60 million in 2007. She also partnered with Target to launch an additional discount version of her line.
Like the Heavins, Lange reached the pinnacle of success by targeting an underserved niche. In her case, that meant focusing on the needs of pregnant fashionistas—women who didn’t let pregnancy rob them of their sense of style. Lange used newly developed stretch fabrics to create chic, formfitting and stylish maternity wear. They had nothing to do with the tent-like and clumsy maternity clothes widely available in department stores.
Tank of Traditional Wisdom
Rejecting conventional wisdom means ignoring those who say, “This won’t work” or “This has never been done.” When entrepreneurs rely too much on traditional formulas for success, they end up with a business that is, well, common.
The most successful entrepreneurs are ready to abandon established formulas and ways of thinking. If you’re running your own business, don’t just blindly accept the so-called best practices in your industry. Look at them with a hypercritical eye. Analyze them, slice and dice them, and think of various what-if scenarios in your mind.
Without any capital — just $700 in cash — John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of hair product giant John Paul Mitchell Systems, broke with conventional wisdom when he launched the Paul Mitchell hair care line and decided to sell them exclusively to stylists. and salons – never to supermarkets or pharmacies. Today, the company boasts more than $900 million in annual retail salon sales.
This unique distribution system has contributed to exceptional customer loyalty. The Paul Mitchell brand not only offered quality hair care products in salons; it also created a new source of income for stylists. Many of their own customers have purchased shampoos and conditioners for use at home.
Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, broke with conventional wisdom when she approached hosiery factories with the idea of making footless tights. The product she envisioned was a shaping underwear that would hide panty lines and strengthen a woman’s butt so she could confidently wear her favorite pants and open-toed sandals. Blakely knew there was a market for such a product. But over and over she was told that legless tights were just a bad idea. Factories are accustomed to making hosiery designed to enhance the appearance of women’s legs. But Blakely tried to convince them to make a product completely hidden under their clothes. She received rejection after rejection. However, it’s good that she persevered until she finally found a suitable factory in North Carolina. Today, Spanx has estimated retail sales of around $350 million.
Find a new trend and pounce
Often a shift in cultural or economic trends creates new opportunities for entrepreneurship. Sometimes this shift occurs due to advances in technology. Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens took notice of such trends when the home PC market exploded. He found that most PC owners have limited technical knowledge. If their hard drive failed, they went into a state of panic. But unplugging their computer and dragging it to a repair shop where it would stay for about a week wasn’t an attractive option. Stevens noticed the trend, lashed out, and carved into a new and underserved niche. The Geek Squad went home.
When Stevens launched Geek Squad in 1994, a poor college student could only invest $200 in his business. But that same business eventually made millions in 2002 when he sold the business to Best Buy.
Andy and Rachel Berliner launched Amy’s Kitchen, an organic vegan frozen food brand, because they realized that more and more Americans were trying to switch to a healthier diet by ditching processed foods in favor of organic vegetables. The vegetarians themselves, the Berliners, were also well aware that they would not have serious competition. They personally tried the frozen vegetarian options already on the market and they were terrible. The people of Berlin knew that if they used quality ingredients and recipes, their business would flourish. Today, Amy’s Kitchen generates $270 million in annual revenue.
All these entrepreneurs are featured in the new book, Risk takers: 16 women and men share their entrepreneurial success strategies. The book explores in detail how extremely successful entrepreneurs have applied these three strategies and seven others to take their business to the top.
Entrepreneurs often easily lose sight of long-term goals when they are busy with day-to-day business operations. But using these three strategies at the forefront of your business planning can help you take your company to the next level and beyond. Throughout the life of your business, you can channel your creative energies into finding new and fresh ways to apply these principles to create competitive advantage, expand your product line and customer base, and keep your business viable. Just think of them as your three secret weapons.
Author biographies
Don Martin personifies the success story of an entrepreneur from rags to riches. Growing up poor in a small town in the Ohio Valley, over the next four decades he founded and built the largest private insurance company in California: Cal-Surance. Cal-Surance is one of the top 50 insurance brokers in the US and generates over $200 million in annual revenue.
Rene Martin was a dynamic real estate broker when she completely changed her career to community work. She has become a rape counselor, court-appointed special counsel for the Children’s Court (CASA), director of public relations for a child abuse crisis center, and public relations spokesperson for many community organizations.
