Ep114 Transcript: Finding a Hole in the Market – Top Takeaways from Ethan and Stephanie Bull

How do you find a hole in the market that you can serve? In episode 113, I talked to Stephanie and Ethan Bull, who started a brand new business after being laid off as a couple, and they knew they were going to be successful because it was a hole in the market that they could serve well. Tune into my top takeaways as I dive into my interview with Ethan and Stephanie Bull.

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To find that hole in the market, that perfect place where they can start their new business and have it magically grow. Well, there’s no one size fits all pill to figuring that out. But I am going to dive into a couple of things that Stephanie and Ethan Bull talked about in their interview that I think really can help you identify a good hole in the market.

First of all, Stephanie and Ethan Bull had a great matched skillset to be able to start a similar business together. Now, you might have something that’s more complimentary and they definitely have things that they drop into a little bit more with marketing versus serving or training and things like that. But they definitely had a lot of overlapping experience with hospitality and executive assistances. So that’s when they came up with their idea to start the pro assisting business and that’s what I think was genius about this, is that they saw a place that they could really serve and fit in. What they noticed was there wasn’t anyone really doing this particular type of fractional executive assistants remotely like they were planning on doing it. And they saw a need and they were already getting inquiries from people for this type of service.

So they decided to scale it up. And not only do the work, but train other executive assistants to do it in the methods that they knew and that they had developed over the years in becoming really high level executive assistants. And then they knew they could match people together.

So some of the questions that you might ask yourself are, what do you do really, really well? And I have found that, this is actually kind of a hard question to ask because sometimes we don’t always see what we do really well. We think it’s a skill that everyone has. And that is definitely not the case. Sometimes what feels easy to us is harder to someone else.

So really spend some time with this and maybe interview people on what you do well, what you bring to the table. Maybe interview coworkers, past coworkers, past bosses, something like that to see what are your real superpowers when it comes to what you do.

Another question to ask would be, what product or service do you want to see in the market that you don’t feel is there or served in the way that you want to see it served? For example, that’s how I started my business is when I saw there weren’t any tutorials around social media that were super informative, step by step and funny. And so that’s the unique perspective I brought when I started my business and it grew really, really well. So think about what you want to see in the market.

Another way to think about this is what area of the market is underserved and could you provide a unique experience for that? Maybe it’s your own system, maybe it’s your own formula. Maybe it’s a different perspective that really turns something on its head, and it might be something about you watching the trends that are happening out there and realizing that there’s some new opportunity that is currently underserved that you could plug into. So spend a little time brainstorming around that.

And what I like about the way Stephanie and Ethan launched their business is that they were doing the work for a while and then they also have brought people on. That’s a great way to do it. Just start by dipping your toe in, seeing if it is a viable idea, and then growing it from there.

I think sometimes people think the go big or go home mentality, but that’s not always the right approach because you want to make sure that it has some legs first before you try and let it run by itself.

So if you haven’t had a chance yet to listen to episode 113, I highly recommend you go do that. Great tips from Stephanie and Ethan Bull.

Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide Top Tools for Late Starters on the website at latestartersclub.com doing.