In this episode, the host of "The Game" podcast, who is building a billion-dollar venture with acquisition.com, challenges the common entrepreneurial belief that market saturation limits growth, emphasizing that it's often an entrepreneur's mindset that needs expansion. He illustrates this with stories of business owners who prematurely perceived market saturation, highlighting the vast potential for growth by exploring new methods, platforms, media, and volumes in marketing. He introduces the concept of the "Pyramid of Markets," advising listeners to consider going upmarket, downmarket, adjacent, broader, or narrower to scale their businesses. The host also shares insights from his book "100 Million Dollar Offers," detailing four criteria for selecting a market and the importance of persistence and confronting the work necessary to build a substantial enterprise.
"When you do niche down, sometimes you can still make more money because of all the points I said earlier, which is you're not even close to tapping the methods, the platform, the media, or the total amount of volume you need to do to reach all of those people within that niche."
This quote emphasizes that narrowing down to a niche does not necessarily limit revenue. Instead, it suggests that many businesses haven't fully exploited the available channels to reach their target audience.
"Your market isn't capped. Your mindset is capped."
The quote encapsulates the central idea that perceived market limitations are often a result of a business owner's limited thinking, not the actual potential of the market.
"If you're an HVAC and you're making $2 million a year and it's a $50 billion industry, guess what? You're probably not capped."
This quote suggests that by understanding the broader market size, a business owner can realize that their current revenue does not indicate market saturation.
"So each of these are levers, and this is just framework number one in terms of how much available is out there, and if you've just done one method on one platform with one medium, and you haven't increased the quantity of that thing, and here's the telltale sign, if there are other people in your market marketing to the same audience."
This quote outlines a framework for expanding marketing efforts and indicates that a singular approach to marketing is often insufficient to fully penetrate a market.
"There's four things I want to look at. Number one, are they in pain? Am I actually solving a problem for someone? Number two, are they easy to find? Because if I can't find them, I can't sell them. Right. Number three, do they have the money to spend in order to buy my thing?"
The quote provides a concise checklist for evaluating a market's potential, focusing on the customers' needs, accessibility, and purchasing power.## Market Selection Criteria
"l to broke people, it's probably not going to be a good idea."
This quote emphasizes the impracticality of targeting a market without financial resources, highlighting the importance of selecting a market with spending power.
"I want to be selling to something like old people, that there's more of them every single day that are retiring."
This quote illustrates the strategy of targeting a growing market, using retirees as an example of an expanding demographic.
"Can I do a new method? Can I do it on a new platform?"
This quote suggests exploring innovative approaches and different platforms to attract more customers.
"Can I expand to multiple types of media within the platform I'm currently on?"
The quote implies that diversifying the types of media within an existing platform can help reach a larger audience.
"Can I increase the volume that I'm currently doing in the mediums that I have?"
This quote indicates that increasing the intensity of current marketing tactics could yield more leads and customers.
"There are five directions that you can go in any marketplace to expand."
This quote introduces the concept of the pyramid of markets, which outlines five potential paths for market expansion.
"All of them were going after bigger markets than I was."
This quote highlights the importance of targeting larger markets as a key factor in the success of the entrepreneurs in the speaker's story.
"Big lesson, big shit takes time."
The quote conveys the lesson that significant achievements in business are not immediate and require patience.
"We'd already spoken with 20,000 of them."
This quote exemplifies market saturation, indicating a need to explore new market opportunities beyond the current niche.
"That's where you go into enterprise sales."
This quote suggests that moving upmarket entails targeting larger businesses or franchises, which can be more lucrative.
"It's bigger stuff. We're talking franchiseors, as in people who have hundreds of locations under one umbrella or multilocation or chain owners that's upmarket for salon owners."
The quote details what it means to go upmarket, specifically for salon owners, by targeting those with multiple locations or franchises.
"Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this, and I don't sell any anything."
This quote informs the audience that the podcast is ad-free and product-free, relying on listener support.
"And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the word so we can help more entrepreneurs make more money."
The quote is a call to action for the audience to help disseminate the podcast's message, which aims to support the entrepreneurial community.## Market Expansion Strategies
"The second direction you can go is you go to hairstylists. You talk about people who are renting chairs and doing hair with their hands full time, not running the business of hair."
This quote identifies a specific subset of the market (hairstylists renting chairs) as a potential area for expansion, emphasizing a hands-on approach rather than business management.
"The third direction you can go is you can go adjacent. So that means like sidestepping."
The quote introduces the concept of targeting adjacent markets, which are similar but not identical to the current market, to expand the customer base.
"The fourth direction you can go is you actually go broader."
This quote suggests expanding the market to include a wider range of services within the same industry, thus increasing the potential customer base.
"The last direction you can go, and this is an interesting point, is the only one that makes your market smaller, but it doesn't necessarily mean you make less money, which is you could become narrower."
The speaker explains that focusing on a narrower market can still be profitable due to less competition and more specialized offers.
"If right now you're not getting as many leads as you want, and you think that your market is saturated because of what you do, and realistically, all you did is you know there's five other competitors, and you think you have 20% of the market, you should be looking the way an investor looks at the marketplace and says, this is a $60 billion industry. I have not even 1% of this industry."
The quote encourages entrepreneurs to reassess their market position and potential for growth, suggesting that they may have a smaller market share than they think and that the industry has more room for expansion.
"Time to build big shit. Usually there's this big checklist that you probably already know as an entrepreneur of what I call the should do's."
This quote emphasizes that significant business growth requires time and dedication to a list of essential tasks that entrepreneurs are often already aware of but may not be implementing.
"The last thing I'll do is I'll tell you the end, why we decided to do health clubs as our next move within the licensing business at gym launch."
The quote indicates that the speaker will explain their own business decision, likely applying the market expansion strategies mentioned earlier, reinforcing the practical application of these concepts.## Market Dynamics in the Fitness Industry
"All right, they became really popular right after the crash in 2008 because people couldn't afford personal training anymore. And so group training became the more economic option."
This quote explains the rise of micro gyms as an economical alternative to personal training after the 2008 financial crisis.
"CrossFit dropped by 30% because their gyms went out of business, because there were too many of them..."
The quote highlights the decline of CrossFit gyms due to market saturation and the negative impact of too much competition.
"The reason we went to health clubs is that I asked our team one question, I said, of these different potential avenues or avatars that we could pursue, who do we provide the most value to by absolute metrics, in terms of dollars made, and it was no contest."
This quote reveals the strategic question that led to focusing on health clubs due to the high value that could be provided to them.
"Health club owners, we are able to immediately make them tens of thousands of dollars within the first month by restructuring some of the things that we could do within their business..."
The quote details the immediate financial benefits that could be provided to health club owners through business restructuring.
"A lot of micro gym owners are fitness passionate first, business second. And so we have to break a lot of beliefs with them..."
This quote contrasts the mindset of micro gym owners with health club owners, indicating the former's need for a shift in business perspective.
"But with the health club owners, they already have ten employees. They've already put $500,000 into the facility. They understand return on capital."
The quote demonstrates health club owners' more advanced business understanding and investment, making them more receptive to business improvements.
"So it was very minimal operational change. We didn't need to learn a lot of new stuff, stuff. We did a beta test with 20 of them. They crushed it."
This quote emphasizes the ease of transitioning to the health club market due to minimal operational changes and successful beta testing.
"And then we used that data to substantiate how we'd market and set expectations for new health clubs that would come in..."
The quote explains how the successful beta test data was used to develop marketing strategies and set expectations for prospective health club clients.