Most entrepreneurs have a wide field of interest. It is in their nature. They often create, run and manage multiple brands. But when they start mixing brands, there is a problem.
Many refer to this as being a ‘multipotentialite’ but having studied this theory and others, it is actually what Barbara Sher called it – a Scanner.
Multipotentialites
Emilie Wapnik did her TED talk about this concept. Multipotentials understand the freedom to follow another path and not be stuck on one career route – and maybe flipping around with different careers.
I did not have a word for it when I was a teenager, but I know I struggled to choose what I was going to do with my life. I was crazy about the science of sports but loved history. Besides becoming an academic and studying the history of sport, there was nothing I knew of that could give me direction.
Scanners
Barbara Sher (in her book ‘Refuse to Choose’) created the concept of a Scanner. This is someone with many interests that don’t actually match or even connect – for example being in love with beekeeping, accounting, submarines, and playing a niche sport. Scanners struggle to find what they can focus on to make money, and this has plagued me all my life.
Creating Brands
So many creative Scanners end up with more than one brand, either at the same time or across their business lifetime. This is remarkable because it is tough to launch, run, manage, and create content for more than one business, and grow each business and income from multiple income streams. It takes someone really very special to make this work, long-term.
Niching
The top marketers will tell us ‘the riches are in the niches’. And we don’t listen. We believe that we know better than people who have made millions in their businesses. Are we scared to niche down?
One option is to niche by creating multiple brands – each with its own niche audience. This is the answer for all those Scanners. And an exciting opportunity to move forward and not get bogged down. We are like often magpies trying to chase every interest and all the ‘pots at the end of the rainbow’.
Crossing over
Now, the problem comes in when we presume that our different brand audiences are interested in all our brands. But remember the golden rule of marketing is to know and understand your ICA (Ideal Customer Avatar). Yes, your community across your different brands loves you, but are you alienating them by assuming they love exactly what you do?
I heard a podcaster talk about her affiliate business. She helps small business owners market themselves online and she discovered amazing meat sticks. She thought that if she loved them, her online marketing business audience would too. And she was so wrong.
Her audience was there to learn about online marketing. They did not care that she ate meat sticks (or not!). She lost a good chunk of her community once she tried to sell unrelated products to them, and had to work hard to win them back.
She learned a tough lesson, and now her meat sticks stay with her ‘meat stick audience’.
My Mixing Brands example
I started my Celebrate Southern Africa brand in 2016. It is started simply to support Southern African businesses in the UK. It has other avenues now, but the focus is on growing an audience around the Southern African culture.
I now work as a county councillor, an authorpreneur, a public speaker, and a trainer, and have a TEDx licence.
I would never ever share my councillor content with my Southern African community. And I would also never share my Southern African content with my TEDx community.
If I did start mixing brands and their content, all my work would become about me promoting myself and not creating content for the relevant audience. If I post cross-over content to different audiences, I am diluting my message, not truly targeting those who could spend money with me. And I am not really respecting each niche/brand audience. I am arrogantly presuming that everyone loves me, everyone cares about my different brands, and they are all loving them.
Are they? Does my content reflect my bank account?
Instagram Tip
It is easy to have an Instagram account that started as your personal account and has morphed into a business profile. I suggest:
- Set up a new IG profile for business and only follow and engage with those in your niche
- Or, if you are converting your existing IG profile into your business, switch to a business account and delete all your friends and family. They are not your target audience. They are doing your brand harm because they are dragging your content into the wrong feeds. You want the right people to see your brand content. And the more un-Ideal Customer Avatar followers you have, the worse the algorithms’ decisions about where your content should be.
Consider how the world is viewing your brand and think about how you can convert your audience into sales, and not just focus on the likes from friends and family.
