B2B Versus B2C - Which one’s right for you?
Should your side hustle serve businesses or consumers?
Whether your online business is set to impact someone’s lifestyle or their business, you have the power to make a genuinely positive impact.
Both types of businesses are valid, and BOTH have the potential to supplement or increase your income. That said, each model has its pros and cons, and you may want to consider those before you get your side hustle off the ground.
Listen to the latest episode to learn what those pros and cons are and figure out which option makes the most sense for you.
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Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 150 of Empathy Rising. Today's kind of going to be a short one. I really just want to unpack one single concept that I cover inside of Side Hustle—well, in multiple programs and in multiple ways, but I don't know if I've talked about it specifically on the podcast. I know I've mentioned it in passing, but I wanted to do a full episode on it, and that is the difference between a B2B offer and a B2C offer and how to kind of decide which one feels like it's right for you.
I will be getting into that today, but first I just wanted to chit chat, like always. I'm excited because we fly out of Atlanta tomorrow to go home to Arizona. And I don't know, I guess I wasn't thinking, well, it's not that I wasn't thinking this is spring break. This is the only time that we had, but literally, the time change was like two days ago. So we're still trying to adjust to that, and then we're gonna go back to a different time zone that's two hours earlier, and then we're going to come back and try and go to school.
So I have no idea what that's going to do to my kids. Like, the time change already screwed them up. We went forward and now we're going to go back two hours and then we're going to come back. So who knows? But we always go up to Atlanta the night before because the flight leaves at like seven, eight, and we'd have to leave our house at like three in the morning to be able to get there in time, you know, to get through security and all of that.
So we ended up staying there and we get an airport hotel, and then we sleep in until like five, and then take the shuttle over to the airport. So because I'm still packing and because I'm still... it's funny, I'm packing suitcases, but then I'm going to unpack this idea for you guys, but that's why this is going to be pretty short.
I want to just get into the definition here, and I think even just knowing the difference between B2B and B2C and knowing the pros and cons will help you really be able to isolate which one you're going for.
So B2B of course means business to business. And B2C means business to consumer business, to customer, you'll often hear this. D2C, direct to consumer or direct to customer. If you watch shark tank, you'll hear it talked about that way D to C a lot, meaning that the customer orders directly from you. When you're talking about direct to consumer, it's usually more like the retail space or the product space.
So instead of wholesaling out to a store like Bed, Bath, and Beyond people just buy it directly from you. Well, in our case with online businesses, we're always going to be B2C. We're always going to be selling directly to our customer. What makes the difference is what is the return on that purchase? And is it specifically geared towards someone's business?
So that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to compare and contrast both, and that way you'll have a clear idea of what you are looking for from your side. Now, the first place we take a look at this decision is in my course Space Holder. Space Holder is specifically designed to help you craft your first online offer, that first concept from start to finish. It's where we come up with an idea that's going to be both impactful, so it's going to help you broaden your reach. It's going to help you help more people than just the handful that you can have on your caseload.
But also we want to do this in a sellable. Like impact is great, but we're also here for income and I'm not shy about that. So we need to make sure that it's both impactful and sellable. So what's great about Space Holder is you can enroll in that course, anytime it's open year-round. So if you're interested, you can head over to marissaLawton.com/space-holder, and then if you decide to join us for Side Hustle in the next cohort you get to apply your space holder purchase directly off the top of your side hustle purchase.
It's really nice to be able to get started now and be working through this concept, and then be able to take that concept into side hustle when we open. Also, we see this B2B versus B2C come up in the Side Hustle program. It usually always ends up being split who is going to be doing a business-to-business offer and who's going to be doing a business-to-consumer offer. It's not always 50/50, but I've had grounds where it's been close. Like, we've had a heavy amount of students doing business to business and an equal amount doing business to consumer this round that just started at the end of January.
I think we're probably 70/30, 70% business to consumer and 30% business to business, and so this is where in Side Hustle we take the concept that people worked on in space holder, and then we build it into the business. We build it into a sustainable, revenue-generating machine with funnels and automations and things. So that's where we build support structures. We also build the audience and we also launch and enroll those first pink customers.
So knowing whether you're going to pursue B2B or B2C pretty early on in the process is pretty necessary, and that way you can build out your concept and then also build out the infrastructure that makes sales of that concept. Now with B2B and B2C, we're just going to quickly kind of define them and talk about pros and cons. Like I said, we're not going to be here very long today.
As I mentioned before, B2B is business to business. So the customer is a business owner. The way to think of this as the whole, like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square type thing. Business to business is business to consumer, but business to consumer is not business to business. Meaning you will always be selling to the person who is consuming your goods or services.
You will be selling to your coaching client, whether you're doing life coaching or whether you're doing business coaching, you will be selling to your course student, whether you are selling a lifestyle course or a business course. So you're always going to be selling directly to the person who participates in your program.
The difference for B2B is that the customer is a business owner or trying to be one, right? Like maybe launching their first private practice or launching a business, and the product you sell directly affects their business. So ultimately, the bottom line of their business or how much money they can make. What sets a business-to-business offer apart from a business-to-consumer offer is that there is a return on investment for your program that the business owner can directly trace back to your program.
So to put this in terms, we're kind of all familiar with a practice building. Let's say you just started your private practice and you have three clients and they were all, you know... came over from your agency with you, or they're all referrals from that first networking person that you met. And you've got three clients, but you need to have like 23 clients to have a sustainable income from a new private practice. Right?
What a practice building course would do... Let's say you buy from Alison or Katie or any of these really fabulous practice building coaches out there, and you take their program, you implement their strategies and you go from three clients when you started to 15 clients when you finished, well, you had a growth of 12 clients, which call it a hundred dollars an hour, $1,200 an hour, you know, each session and you can directly tie that money back and that growth in your business back to the participation in that program.
If you had not participated in that program, you cannot say for sure that you would have gotten those 12 clients. So the return on investment in the program can directly be tied back to revenue growth in the business. So this is like business skills or strategies, right? The practice building that I've talked about. I would say that's in, like, a business strategy, how to grow your business, but it could also be business skills.
So who comes to mind is Betsy, a current Side Hustle student, and she is creating a program that is going to help with clinical competency around a certain area. Joanne is another current Side Hustle student and she is working on clinical competency. So by increasing or improving your clinical skills, it still will have an effect on your bottom line. You'll be more confident you can raise your rates.
Clients who we're not seeing progress might see progress and so then they might choose to continue to work with you. Right? So strategies in terms of, like, business growth or marketing or increasing revenue, but also business skills in terms of facilitating the actual work you do getting better at coaching, getting better at being a therapist.
Now, these are the first that come to mind, but they're not the only. So you could still do a program that was insight-based or mindset-based and have it still be business to business. It could be in more of a supportive element.
Jenny is a current Side Hustle student as well and she is creating a membership site for trauma therapists, not to help them grow their practices and not to help them be well. Sort of to help them be more effective trauma therapists, but what she really wants to do is create an emotional support community around, like, vicarious trauma and those types of things for trauma therapists.
Now it's still will be—it will still have an impact on their business because if by being a part of this membership, they avoid burnout or they avoid, you know, transference or countertransference or they avoid a sticky situation, it's only going to make them perform better in their practice, which ultimately will have a result on their bottom line. If they burn out and they have to take four weeks off, five weeks off, that's revenue that's not coming in. Right? So even though it's an emotional support program, and it's more mindset-based or more emotion-based, it still directly affects the bottom line.
Cindy is a previous Side Hustle student. She started The Whole Therapist, which is very similar to sort of what Jenny is doing. Helping therapists not feel isolated and lonely in their profession when they can't share with their significant others what they do for a living, or they can't share with their best friends, how their day went, or things like that. So that is what Cindy helps with.
It's still considered business to business because it still affects the bottom line of their practice. However, it's not business strategy, it's not business skill, it's business support. We can also think of people who are helping more with a mindset shift.
So who comes to mind for me is Tiffany McClain from Lean In. MAKE BANK., right? She's working on your money story and your money mindset. So when you're breaking through a mindset block or this making this mindset shift, you are then able to make more money. You're able to raise those rates. You're able to do those things. So it still is business to business, even though it feels like it is more mindset or emotional based.
Okay. So all the ultimate takeaway here is that whether it's skill-based, whether it's strategy, whether it's support or whether it's mindset, the end result still impacts the owner's business and the owner's bottom line. That's how you know if it is business to business. So when we move over to business to consumer, instead of directly impacting a business owner's business, we are directly impacting a person's life.
All of the same types of programs apply. So it could be a skills-based program. It could be a strategy program. It could be a support program or a mindset program, but the ROI instead of being revenue or business growth or business bottom line is relationships is confidence is personal growth is wellness. Now, this person could still be a business owner, but the program is not marketed as a business program.
Also, it's probably not marketed only to entrepreneurs. I'm thinking of, like, an example of this could be... let's say you want to market to women business owners who have become the breadwinners. All of a sudden they're out-earning their partners and it's causing, like, a power differential in their marriage and so you want to help them improve their marriage.
They're still a business owner, and the business has caused a problem or caused an issue in their life, but you're not solving the business-related problem. You're solving the life-related problem. The end result isn't a measure in ROI, but how the person feels at the end of the program or how the person relates to others at the end of the program. So that lifestyle piece instead of the business piece. So that's how they are different.
Let's talk a little bit about the pros and cons. When we talk about business to business, there are definitely some. You can charge a higher price point for a business-to-business program because if somebody is going to be making money from the advice that you taught them or the coaching that you gave them or whatever, then you get to charge appropriately for that.
So business-to-business programs are at the higher end of the price point. So let's say it was like six months of coaching and it was in the business to consumer. So lifestyle, life coaching for six months, depending on the type of work you do, let's call it. It could go up to, well... it could be priced anything, but let's say a reasonable price that you will see on the market is, like, six grand for six months of life coaching.
But in business coaching, it could be 10,000 for six months of business coaching. Those are arbitrary numbers that I'm just throwing out there, but you would see, for the same duration, you would see a higher price tag on a business program than you would on a lifestyle program. So as the facilitator, that's kind of nice. You get to have the same duration, but you charge higher for the customer.
It's also a write-off. So that's a pro for the person purchasing the program. They can then write off the business expense, and it also can make selling easier because they might be like, oh this money is... sometimes when you're playing with your business money, it doesn't feel like you're playing with your household money.
So people sometimes are willing to make bigger purchases. They might make purchases more freely. And also knowing that they're going to get a chunk of it back at the end when they write it off, or it's going to help offset other costs, can sometimes make that purchase happen more easily be less of a concern. They're more willing to make the purchase.
Another pro is that it's also potentially easier for a customer to track or measure results. When you go from three clients to 12 clients or 15 clients because you took this program, you can track that and measure that and see a concrete before and after. When we're talking about business-to-business programs, your feelings are subjective, right? So you could feel better a week or two after you take the program, but then you don't feel any better after that or whatever. Right?
Like, feelings are subjective. So they're harder to measure. They're harder to track, and it's harder to talk about results. But there are definitely some drawbacks to B2B as well. It's not all roses, right?
When you're business to business, you have to be a narrow niche. You have to be even narrower niche than when you are business to consumer. So you have to isolate the type of business owner and the type of problem that you are solving for them because when the niche is narrower your impact can be deeper within that niche. But it's not going to be as broad.
When I think about my marketing to clinicians, I've had opportunities to pitch TV stations, or to be on Yahoo business, or to be on these things. But it wouldn't have made sense because the percentage of my ideal customer who would have actually seen that interview or two who would have seen me on that TV show or that segment. It would have been cool credibility.
It would have been like, yeah, it was on this, you know, NBC morning, whatever, but it would have kind of been for show because the chances of ideal customers actually watching that and it turning into bottom-line dollars in my business were low. So you don't have as many visibility opportunities or as broad or diverse of visibility opportunities when you are B2B.
So sometimes the result of that, the end result of that, is feeling a little bit pigeonholed. You're always talking to the same people and you're always solving the same problem. Now that is a great way to get initial recognition and to get a business off the ground is to, you know, to stand out in a market, but over time it can feel restrictive. It can feel like it holds you back.
So when we move over to B2C business to consumer, we have pros and cons here as well. The pros are this is the most scalable. Right? Sure you could go on shows like Good Morning America, you could go on all kinds of visibility opportunities because the chances of your customer watching mass marketing or watching big visibility shows like that is way higher.
So you have an offer that is more scalable. You are not limiting the people who can join as much as you are when you are working business to business. Therefore the program is also more marketable. It has more mass appeal and it gives you that impact. Like if you really want to start a movement or you really want to start impacting people the world over, it's much easier to do that when you are working business to consumer.
And the other pro that I think happens when you're doing B2C is that allows for more passion or more like capital W work. Often when I start doing Dharma work with people or purpose work with people it's around relationships in some way, and not necessarily romantic relationships, but it's about belonging. It's about feeling connected with others and that is not as easy to do in a business-to-business niche as it is to do in a business-to-consumer niche.
So I feel like the more passionate work that we have is usually on a person-to-person basis instead of a person-to-business basis. There are some drawbacks here too. So I want to point those out.
So the cons of B2C is that they are more price sensitive. You've got to really understand your ideal customer very well, and you've got to be able to price it according to their purchasing power. So price point becomes more sensitive and you can not charge as much, or we definitely do not see the trend to being. I don't want to say you can or can't, but the trend is definitely not to charge as much for a lifestyle program as a business. So price sensitivity is potentially a drawback.
Also, sometimes you have what you might think that you have a tougher sell in business to consumer. I think this is a myth though, and I'll explain. So where I was saying purchases, when they come from your business account or, you know, it's a write-off sometimes they become, you become looser with your wallet or looser with your money.
With business to consumer, we're playing with their household funds right there, their household income. And so sometimes it feels as if it's a tougher sell or that you have to do more convincing to get a business to consumer purchase, to get somebody to buy something for their life instead of their business.
But what we have to understand is there's something called an awareness scale, and maybe I'll do a separate episode on the awareness scale to kind of break this down a little bit more, but there are people who are completely unaware that they have a problem that needs fixing. Then there are people who are problem aware. They realize there's a part of their life that's sucking, and they really kind of want to start to fix it.
And then there are people who move into solution awareness. So they're probably listening to podcasts that are probably buying books, buying, reading, listening to books. Ideally, when you are business to consumer and you're selling a course or you're selling coaching, you want to talk to people who are already familiar with courses and coaching. If they've already made a purchase of a course before, they're ultimately more likely to make a purchase of a course again.
So what it's really about what business to consumer is finding people who are solution-oriented and really want to fix the problem and who are also familiar with the types of solutions that are out there beyond books. When you isolate that ideal customer, the sale is not hard on them. It's somebody who is already invested in their personal growth and they're willing to continue to buy programming for personal growth, then boom, you're fine. The sale isn't hard.
It's when you're trying to talk to people who aren't invested in personal growth already, then there's a lot more convincing that has to go into that. And that's when you're going to have a tough time. And the last con that I see in business to consumer is it can take longer to gain traction, right? Because you have to niche down so far and really have what I call a pinpoint niche. When you're business to business you gain traction faster.
Yes, it makes you feel pigeonholed, but you really stand out with: This is who I help. This is how I help them. And this is what I do when you're in business to consumer. I still teach you in my programs how to have a very clear problem and a very clear promise that helps you gain traction faster, but sometimes in the lifestyle arena, or in the business to consumer area, it might take longer to nail down your messaging and to nail down your marketing.
For example, I am using Tiktok to market Rooted, my new lifestyle program, and it has a spiritual angle and it has a natural angle, but on TikTok, there is spiritual talk, there is tarot talk, there is witch talk, there is occult talk, priestess talk, goddess talk. And so all of these have overlap with what I'm doing, but it's taken me a while to understand the nuances of these different markets and to figure out where I fit.
This is also happening right now with one of my Side Hustle students named Melissa. She's creating a curriculum for homeschooling parents, which I think is freaking amazing. But when she started looking into the homeschool niche, you think that homeschool itself is a niche, but you've got the people who homeschool for religious reasons.
You've got the people who homeschool for medical reasons. You've got the people who homeschool because they are unschooling and they're living in a van and like off-grid or whatever. So even within light niches that feel lifestyle, you still have to sometimes go even deeper and you still have to really examine the marketplace and that just takes time. It doesn't mean it's not possible. It just takes some time.
So ultimately what I find is that when clinicians are pursuing their Side Hustle, they're often wanting to move away from therapy or to add something in addition to therapy that allows them to shrink their caseload down because they're pursuing another passion.
And so this is why I think that most of my students, I wouldn't say the vast majority that's going too far because I definitely do have some B2B students, but most of my stuff, you know 60/40, 70/30, and up doing B2C. So this is just something to think about. Some of you really want to make an impact with other therapists or really want to make an impact with other business owners, and that's amazing.
Also, it's amazing if you want to make an impact in people's lifestyle or relationships or personal growth. Both are just as valid, both sell. There are some pros and cons to both that I hope I've pointed out to you guys today. But don't let the idea of like, oh, business to business is so much better or it sells so much faster. Everybody goes into like teaching how to do a practice thing because that's what they learned in their job or whatever.
Yeah. That is certainly one. But don't get into your head about thinking that business to business is better. They are just different from each other. They require a little bit different approaches, but both work just as well.
So when you're contemplating your side hustle, I just want you to think about: What is it that I really want to do? What is it that I really want to do here? And what is the impact that I really want to make? And of course, I want to make money from it too. And that will help us guide the direction of business to business versus business to consumer.
Now, if you're ready to start diving into this concept and you're like, okay, I think I'm B2B, now I want to start figuring out my program. Or I'm pretty sure I'm B2C, now I want to start figuring out my program. Go and head over to Space Holder. You can enroll in Space Holder now. You'll get instant access to the six on-demand modules.
So you'll learn program type person, problem, promise, price, and practical steps to figure out your idea. And then you'll be able to meet with me monthly to hang out, chat about it, get it really refined, and then from there, you can go on and, you know, take it on your own. Or if you want to come into Side Hustle when we open for the next round, you can totally do that and you get to apply your purchase right towards the big program.
So this is a way that we can start working together now and you don't have to wait, and you'll just be that much further ahead when you do go to bring your side hustle to life. So again, the link for that is marissalawton.com/space-holder. And I can't wait to see you in the program, and I will be back next week. Until then, keep on rising.
