15. Be Known for Something

Welcome to another episode of The Imperfect Podcast with Wendy Lloyd Curley.

In this episode, we dive into the timeless principles of strategic networking and the power of niching—specializing in your business in a way that makes people say, “Wow.” Wendy shares personal stories from her own journey of mixing work and play, building a career of independence as a BNI franchise owner in Sydney North East, and the lessons she’s learned along the way.

Whether you’re listening now or years from now, the lessons here are designed to stand the test of time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Imperfect Podcast. This is Wendy Lloyd Curly coming to you on wow, it's already May 12th, 2026. And I know that some of you might be listening to this a long time from now, and you're thinking, wow, that was a long time ago. Well, you know what? The neat thing about strategic networking is it doesn't change much over time. And some of the stories I'm going to tell you in my podcast are ones that I think are really they're going to have long lives to them. And though the people might change the stories will really resonate. So welcome to another episode. For those of you who have not listened to me before, I just want to let you know that I am really excited about the career that I've chosen. You know, I'm 57 years old now, and I've I've chosen a career of independence where I am the owner of a BI region. I'm a franchise owner of a BI region in Sydney Northeast and really enjoying helping those people get the value out of BI, just like I got when I was a member. And so I'm the executive director there. I do miss being a member of BI. I really enjoyed the weekly rhythm. Uh, but I'm also enjoying this other career that I am working to build and grow and develop. And that is where I mix work and play. And I think everybody can appreciate that, can't you? I used to always try and separate work and play. I would make work uh, you know, I'd feel guilty about playing when I worked because I felt like if I was going to be overseas on a working holiday that I needed to work the whole time. And I'd also feel guilty when I played, because if I was going somewhere for a holiday for a vacation to play, I would also find that I'd start working a little bit and I'd feel guilty about it. Well, last week I went to the US for work and play, and I made sure that I was in the now, no matter what I was doing. So if I was working, I was there and I didn't worry about it. And I responded to messages, I forwarded information, I did presentations, I met people, I did networking. And so that was amazing. And when I was with my mom or my dad or my brother or my nieces or my sister-in-law or my friends, I was 100% with them. And it felt really, really good. And it's part of the reason why I've designed this life for me. And uh I want to encourage you, design a life that you want. And you know, if you're not, if you're not doing the things that you really want to do, then then change. It hasn't happened overnight for me, though. These are things that I've worked really hard to develop over time. And I just wanted to share that with you to start. I also wanted to share with you that I think it's really important that you get the support you need. So uh a lot of people who listen to me are solopreneurs. They work for themselves by themselves. Others are small businesses who have listened to me at my keynote presentations or in my um in my master classes, and you follow me in order to get hints and tips about growing your business. So normally that's businesses that have about 20 employees or fewer. The way I describe it is it's mostly people who don't have a person besides themselves who's responsible for sales. So they might have people doing operations, they might have people doing admin, they might have people doing uh other support tasks, but and they may even have some salespeople underneath them, but they are ultimately responsible for sales. Those are the kind of business owners that I work really well with, and I'm sure that most of you who are listening to this can resonate with that. Um, the other people who might be listening to this would be people who are trying to figure out if I can put two words together in an eloquent way in order to do a great keynote presentation for the firm or the event that you've got coming up. So I'm really excited that so far I've put a few words together and they've made sense, at least to me. So, uh, for all of you, what I thought I would do is share with you a little insight from the event that I just went to because it was really powerful. And what I want to talk about is I want to talk about the power of niche. You can call it niche, you can call it niche. It doesn't matter what it is, it's a specialization, a specialization that you develop for your business that makes people say, wow, wow, because people expect you to expand your target market in a way that enables you to support as many people as possible, and they don't expect you to narrow down your target market to a small entity that they and you might struggle with to think, wow, are there enough of those people in the world? And the answer is yes. The more specialized you get, the more you'll be recommended to those people as an expert that's just for them. So, a couple stories about this. I met a gentleman while I was in Salt Lake City for my last presentation, and his name was Carson. He was a fantastic man. Uh, he had just decided to make the leap of a career change. He had been for the last decade a handyman, had run his own business as a handyman, and was very successful at it in a small community. There was a community, I think he lived in an environment where there was only about 3,000 people. And he was busy. He was a busy handyman. So he decided that he wanted to think for the future and get involved in something different, and he chose bookkeeping. And he was at this event in order to learn about bookkeeping, and while he was there, he made the decision uh to do some study in that area and that he would move into that. So I met him and I was talking to him about his career gone by and the career that was coming, and he was really excited about it. I I asked him who he intended to serve, who who did he intend to do the bookkeeping for? And his answer was anyone who needs it. Now, those of you who've met me would know that I would say, well, I can't think of anyone that fits that category. Because everybody needs a bookkeeper. And many people who need bookkeepers already have them. So I suggested to him that there was an area in business that he knew a lot about, and he would probably be able to serve those people very well. And those were people in the building and trades industry, or particularly even more narrow handy people. And for him to be the bookkeeper that handy people can rely on, because he understands their business very clearly, and he only works with people who run handyman businesses. Those could be franchisees, that's fine, but he could actually create strategic alliances with the franchise owners of those franchises and say, listen, I focus only on handy people, so I'm the right person for you to recommend to your franchisees. Yeah. He could also do the sole proprietor and focus on helping them because of course they don't have time to do their bookkeeping. And he could focus on the small business owner, the one that's built their handy man business up to support more than one employee. I think it would be an amazing opportunity. And it does pull him into larger communities so that he's not just serving in one target market. He probably is going into more target markets, meaning geographically supporting people across a region, maybe the southwestern United States, or maybe the state of Utah, if that's where he decides to settle. Or perhaps all states that end in an A. Just to be fun. You could you could create something like that. It by the way, is a lot of states that end in an A. And so that would be a tremendous opportunity for him. But if he only is supporting handy people, then you will remember that. And when you meet someone who has a handyman business, you'll say, Listen, do you already have a bookkeeper? And if they say yes, you can say, Well, listen, if you ever need a bookkeeper, I know one who specializes in supporting people who run handyman businesses. And that will make them curious. That will make them curious. Something to remember and something that made you go, yeah. I'm going to tell you one more story before we finish up. And that is that a friend of mine told me about a surgeon who was a surgeon. And they got paid surgeons' fees, which I'm sure were quite good. It was in the United States, and so it wasn't a socialized medicine situation. I'm sure they were paying being paid well. But the surgeon decided that they wanted to focus on arms and legs and limbs and making sure that the joints of the hips and the knees and the shoulders were working well. And so they became a more specialized surgeon. And over time, uh they realized that if they got more specialized, they'd be able to shorten their customer list, of course, but increase their prices. And so they decided to focus only on shoulders. So a shoulder surgeon. So if you needed shoulder surgery, you'd want to go to a shoulder surgeon, wouldn't you, rather than a general surgeon? Well, that made a lot of sense. But there was one more thing that they could do, and they could decide which shoulder they wanted to specialize in. So were they going to specialize in the right or were they going to specialize on the left? Well, this surgeon decided to specialize on the left, and they became a specialist in left shoulder surgery. Now, who are the people who would pay for someone who would specialize in left shoulder surgery? The answer is professional athletes. Professional athletes that have the money and are willing to spend it on someone who has that kind of a specialty because they only have one left shoulder. And if they need surgery on it, they don't want to go to a generalist who does anything. They want to go to a specialist who knows exactly what they need. That's a wow, wouldn't you agree? So niching is an important element to your story, to your business, and to your networking. Because when you can make people say, wow, that will make you more memorable in a networking environment. And it will make you more memorable later when they meet people who need your services. They will remember that you specialized in something like that, and they will look you up and remember how to introduce you because of that little strategy called niching or specialization. Or if you're in America, call it a niche. It's really, really powerful. And that, my friends, is going to be our episode this week of the Imperfect Podcast, where I get to talk about anything I want to. And I'm glad that I have you here. By the way, the music that you're about to hear is from a band that I used to be in called Concord Joe, and my friend Ben wrote this song. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll see you next time.