Is your business suffering from the Chocolate Box Problem?

I call this the Chocolate Box Problem. I see a lot of business owners with exactly this problem. And I must admit that I’ve struggled with this myself.

How the Chocolate Box Problem is a challenge in business

It starts when you have so many different things that you could do. You have so many different skills; you’ve gone wide in your skill development.

And now, you could be a chocolate stout truffle, a brandy cube, a bramble and vanilla, or any one of these lovely chocolates. The problem with that is that then people ask you, could you do some brandy cube stuff? Could you do some chocolate stout truffle? You spread yourself thinner and thinner and thinner. Worse – over time, you get better at those particular things. Customers and people in your network start pigeonholing you in the way that they want, not necessarily what you want to be known for. You might want to be a marmalade truffle, but you’ve gained a reputation for being a chocolate stout choccy.

How the Chocolate Box Problem gives us grief

When you spread yourself too thin and you’re doing lots of different things, you’re doing what other people ask you to do. You’re following their agenda.

“Oh Julia, can you do this? Can you do that?”

“Yes, of course I can. Yes, okay.” And you end up developing even more skills. It can be difficult to refuse because, of course, people are offering you money to do this work, and it takes solid cashflow and a steadfast resolve to turn down paid work.

The Chocolate Box problem leads you out of control.

Once you’ve started spreading around the different sorts of chocolates, the danger is that you are not in control of your own life, or your own business. You end up dancing to somebody else’s tune.

And that’s fine. If you want to do that. Just go where the money is, do what people want, you can have a nice life.

But maybe you want to be in control of your own destiny. Just a thought.

Too many different chocolate choices leads you to become a poorly paid generalist

The second problem is even more severe. When you’re a generalist, you get paid generalist money. When you’re a specialist, you get paid specialist money. We see this in all walks of life; the specialist consultant doctor gets paid way more than the GP. For doctors, this is apparent even in the name “general practitioner”, but it’s just as true for the rest of us.

It’s even worse when you want to productise. If you make products that are all over the place, you cannot create a coherent product ecosystem. And from my years of working with people to build product-based businesses, what I’ve noticed is that it’s the people who have an ecosystem of products that are all linked to one another. There’s some sort of unifying theme, which solves the same sort of client problems for the same sort of clients. But you’ve got multiple products; they’re all working together. Those people clean up. They make the good money, and they’re able to move their product ecosystem so that they can focus on what they want when they want.

They’re in control of their own destiny.

So pick a chocolate, decide what you’re going to be, what you’re going to stand for. Decide what your magic is, your big idea, your superpower. Pick one.

Ideally, this one big idea would be a super-niche.

I have a video on the Adventures in Products YouTube channel focusing on explaining what your magic, your superpower is. Here is the original video version.

What is your “magic”?

What’s a super-niche?

A super-niche is where you’re meeting the very specific needs of a small group of people. After all, most of us don’t need or want 1000s of clients. So why not concentrate on the ones we know and like best and ignore all the others.

Free yourself from the Chocolate Box Problem

Do you know what I found from most of the people that I’ve ever worked with who were experiencing the Chocolate Box problem? Usually, all of the chocolates are good. You could just pick one, and that will be the right decision. In business, our mistakes and regrets are often more about what we haven’t done rather than what we have done, and it’s more important to move forward quickly than to be stuck in analysis paralysis. There’s an opportunity cost to every day you spend as a generalist, swapping between different chocolates. Each day is a day when you could have been scaling your business, commanding higher rates, building your reputation within your super-niche and moving away from being just another freelancer.

If you’re still not sure, book a strategy session with me and we’ll sit down to decide on your niche and plan out your marketing to reach that niche.

Go for it – choose your chocolate and move forward.

Chocolate Box Problem – video version

This article came from this video on the Adventures in Products YouTube channel. But I thought it should also have a blog version. Here is the original video version – Is Your Business Suffering From The Chocolate Box Problem?

Credits

The chocolates in the video and photos are from Rainbow Chocolates in Brighton’s Open Market. If you’re ever in Brighton, go to this shop and buy as many chocolates as you can afford because they are delicious. I’m not on any kind of commission, they’re just great. And yes, I did eat all of the chocolates (and some extras) after I made the video.