There's No Such Thing as a Saturated Market
How many times have you heard that there are way too many coaches and course creators out there and that there's no way to actually build an online business?
This notion of saturation and competition is an often used excuse to make building your side hustle feel harder than it needs to. Because, the truth is, there's room for all of us to make and impact and and income online.
If you want to “overcome a saturated market,” you only need to define three things:
Who you help
How you help
Why you help
These three branding elements are the key to differentiation and helping your side hustle stand out.
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Show Notes:
So something really interesting happened the other day and I want to pass this on to you guys because I think it's valuable. One of my Side Hustle students is creating a program that I think I'm probably gonna sign up for and register for it where she is focusing on intention and purpose.
I was really moved by her idea. She kept using this word of autopilot and I was like, man, that word really resonates with me. So I offered to do a validation interview with her. And it got me really focusing on this idea of an autopilot-versed intention. And I'm just really resonating or ruminating, like ruminating on that - thinking about it all the time - about just autopilot-versed intention.
And after that interview, I sat down and brainstormed some new things. New routines. Some things that I'm doing lately are taking a walk in the middle of the day. If you were following along with the hundredth episode giveaway that was a few weeks ago, I shared when I did a live while I was taking one of my afternoon walks - that's something I'm doing. And then every chance I get I'm working outside more. So after this recording, I have office hours for Side Hustle, and I'm going to go do that on the back porch. So any chance that I can just be outside, I am taking advantage of that. I'm a month into these new routines now, and I'm really enjoying being a little bit more intentional.
So it just goes to show how a little spark of inspiration from Heather's program, it can really have a huge impact on someone, right? So those of you who are brainstorming your Side Hustles: keep going because you never know who you're reaching with your message. You never know who is going to buy your programs, but also who just in listening to you talk about what you do is already starting to take huge action.
Yes, money in the bank for your program is important, but that impact that comes from what you're doing, that reach, that presence that you're having with other people, it can be a really big thing and it in itself can bring about transformation. So I hope that just motivates you a little bit more and inspires you just a little bit more to do what you're doing and keep going with your side hustles.
Today's episode, I think is going to be fun. I'm going to be sharing with you two big metaphors that I use a lot with my students. But I think we're going to be leaning into a topic that resonates whether you're brand new to building your Side Hustle, or even if you're thinking about your fifth offer or maybe your 500th offer - especially if you've been in the game for a little bit longer.
One thing I hear over and over again is that, Oh, somebody is already doing this. The market is saturated. That's what I hear from people who've been in the game for a while. Oh, the market's too saturated for that. From new therapists, the way that I hear them talk about this (or not new therapists who are new to Side Hustles) the way I hear them talk about this is, "Oh, there's already somebody doing that.
So I, I don't want to try to do it" or "I can't do it." Or if there's somebody else already out there, "I shouldn't. I shouldn't make my own version." And all of that is... I'm going to disprove that today.
People think that saturation, or if there's somebody else already doing what they want to do, it means there's no room for them. There's no room for me to even try. And that's what I'm going to dispute today. As the truth is there's no such thing as a saturated market, it's a myth.
Cause what I want you guys to think about is the idea that there aren't really any new ideas, right? Unless you're like going back in time to Ancient Greek or Babylonian or whatever - just times when people were literally writing stories for the first time - there's really not any new ideas. In fact, I have a couple of books on novel writing (because this is a dream of mine to write a novel one day) and I have a book about plots and it literally is like the five plots that exist.
There's five plots that exist. One's the quest, ones, whatever. And every story that's ever told now is just a version of those five plots. Yeah, the characters are different. Yeah, the details are different. The setting might be different, but the story arc, the plot, the action in the story: there's five of them. And it makes me think that if we can remake Spiderman or Batman or Avenger-man, for the 500th time, there is room for you to launch your program. If they can remake all these movies and all of this stuff, and people are paying (pre-pandemic) millions or billions of dollars to go watch the latest same movie. Then there is room for you to launch your program.
So the first metaphor that I'm going to share with you is that it's a lot harder to be a groundbreaker in an industry. I've talked about this before on episodes where I've talked about how that competition is validation, and this is the same type of concept, but we're going to talk about it in the sense of the saturated market.
So, I want you guys to think back to the early or the late 1800s, early 1900s (I'm not exactly a historian, so my dates might be not quite right). So let's think, post-civil war, pre World War One, somewhere in that timeframe when electricity in houses is becoming a thing.
We've known about this concept of electricity for a while, but people are just now starting to get lights in their houses. They're just starting to have light switches on walls. We had Thomas Edison and we had Nicola Tesla both working on things like electric currents.
We had AC and DC alternating current and direct current. I know these things because my husband is a nerd. We're watching History channel all the time. But we had two people who were really groundbreaking this industry, right? These are massive inventions that changed the world forever. And they're important, but there were still tons of people who didn't understand why they needed electricity in their house.
Right? Why can't we just use candles? Like we've been doing this for hundreds of years. Why can't we just keep doing what we're doing? It already works. We have things that work for us. Why do we need something new? And then if they're like, like, all right, I can see why maybe we need electricity, but you're telling me I have to rip my entire house apart to add these like, switches and wires that are carrying electricity? What do you mean?
So everybody is having to be convinced that they need this. It is a much harder fight and a much more uphill battle to be the groundbreaker of the industry. You have to prove a need for your product. You have to prove a need for your service. You have to tell people they need it. They don't already know they need it. They're not already seeking it out. They have to be convinced. You also have to educate them. "Yes, electricity is safe. I promise it's safer than candles! In fact, in less fires." So you have to educate these consumers and they have to be persuaded to buy from you.
Now, fast forward a hundred years and we're all sitting here literally like light-years (haha, pun intended) from where Thomas Edison was. And we know that electricity and the technology advances that have come from it are very much a thing, but let's take a look at the market. Now that it's established, now that electricity is a thing, GE or whoever makes light bulbs, they can introduce any light bulb they want.
Thomas Edison invents it, creates a market for it, proves that we need it, fights this uphill battle, and now GE has high efficiency, LED, daylight, green, purple, orange, dimming, three-way... all these light bulbs that we had consumers can then go look at the difference between these light bulbs and pick the one that is best for us, right?
We need groundbreakers. We absolutely need them, but we don't have to be them. We need people who are going to fight that uphill battle, who are going to prove that these things are needed, and are going to convince entire groups and categories of people to get on board. However, it's much easier to be general electric and to say "here, which one do you want and need? I can meet that want or need."
It's these differences between these light bulbs. The light bulb, the differences might be price, they might be longevity, they might be eco-friendliness, right? Whatever those differences are and they are based on our values. So if you are into sustainability and eco-friendliness and things like that, you are going to search out those light bulbs versus the ones that are worse for the environment or bad for the environment.
If you're price-conscious, you might be going to the dollar store to get your light bulbs. But we now have a plethora of decisions and it's on the consumer to decide what they want rather than on the groundbreaker to try to convince people of what they need. There's literally aisles and aisles of light bulbs at the store. Hundreds, if not thousands to choose from. It doesn't stop us from buying light bulbs. We don't walk in and be like, "oh, there's too many light bulbs" and then we turn around and we leave. We walk in and we go and we buy the ones that we want or the ones that we like best. And it also doesn't stop a new company from introducing a different one.
I don't know who GE's competitor is, but whoever their light bulb competitor is like, okay, I can now compete on these differences. I can make an even more eco-friendly light bulb. I can make an even brighter light bulb. I can make an even true to daylight light bulb. So they can now look at these differences.
I can do it cheaper. I can do it faster, whatever. It doesn't stop any company. They look at that aisle of thousands of light bulbs and it doesn't stop them from saying now I can't make a light bulb. And it doesn't stop people from buying light bulbs. We can see this in any industry. We can see this in the coaching industry.
We can see this in courses and memberships - whatever you are thinking about for your Side Hustle - there's going to be people who are doing it. That's actually the good thing because the Brooke Castillo's or the people who've been in this industry for 10, 15 years, some of them 20 years, like literally dial-up internet and there were coaches, right?
Those are the people who broke the ground. Those are the Thomas Edison's. Those are the Nikola Teslas'. Now here we get to say: here's my fancier light bulb, here's my more effective coaching package, here's my coaching package and why it's different. So we get to then have the benefit of the people who broke the ground before us, and we get to the market where it's easier. It's much easier to be different in a market than it is to create a market from scratch.
If you haven't guessed yet the answer to saturation is differentiation - and that's just a fancy way of you just gotta be a little bit different than everybody else. You just gotta be a little bit different and different doesn't mean better. Cause I know you guys and I can hear your wheels turning and saying "I'm not better than anybody else. No one's going to pick me." And it's not about being better. It's about being different.
So the best example - here's my second analogy or metaphor or whatever that I'm going to share with you guys. My best example of this, I wouldn't have shared last year, but it's political primaries. Okay, and I may have shared this way back on the show before, but I know during the election I didn't really talk about anything political. But thinking of political primaries, when it's best to conceptualize a year where we're putting people from both parties up.
If somebody is in the political primary, sometimes there's eight candidates. Sometimes there's 10 candidates in the primary, right? There are several people at the start, and our goal is to whittle it down to one person to represent the party (hopefully the best person), and then that person goes to campaign against the primary winner of the other party.
So on that stage, whether it's the Republican primary, whether it's the Democratic primary, we can assume some things about those people based on which stage they're standing on. Oh, this is the Republican party, the Republican primary. So we can assume some very core things about those 10 people.
Same thing: this is the Democratic primary, so we can assume some core values and poor things about those 10 people. However, during the primary, each one of those candidates starts to talk about their platform. This guy becomes the climate change guy. This girl becomes the education girl and all of that stuff in between. This person campaigns on taxes, this person campaigns on healthcare, and their platform starts to differentiate them and that's how even though they are on that democratic stage. And we make some basic assumptions about them on that stage. That's how we start to be able to know the differences between them (versus the climate change person, the healthcare person), and then based on our values, we align with that person and we vote for that person.
So we can take this exact example and bringing it into the business arena. And instead of political platform, you can fill in brand. Okay, so your platform becomes your brand. What are your brand values right? Around here, my brand values are authenticity, really figuring out what works for you. We have a brand value around here about slow business. Slow growth means sustainable growth.
Once you've got things up and running and they're sustainable, then let's pour the gasoline on it. Then let's crank it up, but let's build it sustainably first, right? Those are the values that you're going to get from me. While there's many other people teaching online income, and they have many different values. There's some people who teach passive income right away. There's some people that teach get to 100K in three months, and those are great. They are not better or worse. They are different.
So when you are lumped in an arena like a political party stage, we make assumptions about those 10 Democrats or those 10 Republicans. The same thing happens with your industry. If you are coaching moms in the fourth trimester, right? You're a brand new mom coach with a new baby. We can make some assumptions about all the postpartum coaches, or the fourth-trimester coaches. We can make some assumptions about all of them. They probably talk about sleep. They probably talk about feeding. They probably talk about self-care for the mom. They probably talk about, maybe milestones for the baby or something like that.
So we can make some assumptions, but within that industry, you're going to have the one who is all-natural, the "crunchy mom", talking about breastfeeding and baby-led weaning and cloth diapering. You're also going to have the one who's "I'm the mom who says fuck." And so you're going to have a totally different brand feeling/brand personality over here. And so within the category, we start to look at the way people have branded and how that makes them different.
And then according to how we feel about that, how our values align with those differences, that's who we pick. There’s going to be a hundred thousand people in your industry - just have what is different about you. Have your brand values. Okay, so how do we do this?
There are three things that you want to think about when you were thinking about your differentiation and your brand values. The first one is going to be who you help. Now, there's not going to be a lot of differentiation here, but this is what puts you on that stage, that Democrat stage versus the Republican stage. The mom with a brand new baby versus the mom with school-aged kids, right? When you pick who you help, you're really shrinking down your stage or at least defining your stage, putting parameters around your stage.
So you're really claiming your space, you're claiming your arena. So that's the first thing that we have to do because we have to narrow down who we're competing against. If you're just like "I'm a coach" and then there's 20 other million coaches. So when you think about "oh, coaching is saturated." - yeah, if you look at every single person out there, who's trying to be a coach, sure. There's lots of people out there, you can't really compete with that.
So first defining who you help, like I said, defines: what part of coaching do you belong in? And here's a tip, the narrower your niche, the smaller your stage. The less people who are up on that stage with you. That's why niching is important. But at least starting with who you help sets the boundaries sets the parameters, what stage you're standing on.
The next point of differentiation is where we're going to start to tease out some things, and that's how you help. Do you help as a one-on-one coach? Do you help with a membership site? Do you help with a group program? Do you help with workshops? How you help is the first level of differentiation. It's the first point where you say "I'm for climate change" or "I'm for education" right?
It's the first place where you start to stand out. Because anybody who is looking for a membership site, they're automatically going to push the one-on-one coaches to the side. They're gonna be like, okay, not looking at them. I'm only now looking at membership sites. So essentially you're taking this saturated market and you're starting to like, peel layers off of it.
And you're starting to say, okay, I don't belong with these people. I stand out from these people. And now based on who you help or who you help, you stand out from these people. Then based on how you help you stand out from another layer of people. So that's what you're doing each time.
The next thing, the third level, the third point of differentiation after who you help and how you help is why you help. Now, this is the biggest differentiator because no one else is you. Your why, your story, your method, your journey is completely your own. No one else has the same story as you. No one else has been where you've been, and no one else has done what you've done. So why you help is the number one differentiator.
And so once you've gone through these three levels, you'll cut off a few people with who you help. You'll cut off even more people with how you help. And once you stand on that smaller stage with a few people who help in a similar way that you do, that's when your why starts to come through. And that's when you really start to differentiate yourself, right? Why you are starting the Side Hustle.
Your therapeutic background is going to come in there - everything that you've done up to this point, the leapfrog moments in your life that have been the catalyst for how you got to where you've gotten - each of those contributes to why you're doing this, why you're helping those people, why you want to work with moms with new babies or whatever and that is what's going to set you apart.
So the truth is there's no such thing as a saturated market. With a few strategic decisions and a few strategic actions, we can shrink down those stages, which we're standing on. We can cut away tons of people. We can get to the point where, hey, it's really actually not that saturated. Then we start standing out with our story, our journey, and our why.
As you've been thinking about your Side Hustle, if you felt that there are already too many people doing it, just know that this is a myth. A saturated market is a myth. It's definitely not about standing out as the best. It's about standing out as someone different.
So I hope this has resonated with you guys and inspired you guys a bit. If you know that you've been wanting to start a side hustle, but you have no idea what it would even look like, or you have a hard time conceptualizing that "how you help" piece, this is where I want you guys to go over and take my quiz.
It's Which Online Income Stream is Right for You, and it's 10 quick questions that will help you determine that "how you help" piece. Which type of program is a good fit based on your wants, your needs, your personality. And you can start to play around with trimming off some of these people from your stage. Start finding your smaller stage so that you can bring you and your unique journey to it.
Alright so to take that quiz, it's totally free. You can just head over to marissalawton.com/quiz, simple and easy. 10 questions, and it'll pop out an answer that'll help you start moving forward on which online income stream is right for you.
All right guys, another episode coming next week until then keep on rising.
