Value propositions

To build a successful career as an expert or practitioner in wellness, you need to understand how you will carve yourself out a clear space in the marketplace.

Of course, the way that you teach, deliver, and provide care for your clients will always be unique – after all, there is only one you! That said, as we’ve previously covered, it helps to know who you’re serving and why you’re serving them.

Renowned British serial-entrepreneur, Richard Branson, explains that your business will fail unless you know your clients and “experience their pain”. He also says: “To launch a business means successfully solving problems. Solving problems means listening.”

This is an important quote to consider as we begin to explore the notion of value propositions or, in other words, exactly what it is that you offer as an expert. Indeed, what makes your expertise valuable is not the knowledge itself, but rather the way in which you bring it to life for a client or audience – which is also going to be a key element to making this career sustainable.

Before we decide on what you’re going to sell (which is coming up in the next activity), we need to really get to the heart of why your client will buy your expert offering. This means solving a key problem for your client that is clearly defined, and that enough people experience, to create a powerful niche.

Once you have clarity on the problem your client is experiencing, you need to also establish three additional things:

1. That this problem is widespread enough that there is a big enough group of people for you to serve
2. That you really enjoy solving this problem and feel passionate about investing the time and energy into becoming an expert in helping your clients to solve this problem
3. And finally, that people are willing to pay you to have this problem solved!

Checking in on these three elements and asking yourself whether they are true for your chosen niche, is critical – especially before you start to develop an actual service offering.

Primary pain points:

The first thing you might think about is any primary pain points that you know that your expertise can solve. These might be things like physical discomfort, emotional stress, anxiety, or tiredness. They are problems that affect an aspect of the whole person, perhaps on a physical, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual level. Writing a list of pain points that you could resolve, or would like to help people with, is a great starting point when it comes to refining your value proposition.

The frustration that the pain point is causing:

You might also think about the sort of frustration that this pain point is causing for your potential client, and how this is impacting their lives. In the examples we just used, physical discomfort might be causing your client to be frustrated because they cannot play sports, look after their family members, perform day-to-day tasks, go to work, or just enjoy daily life. When we dive into the frustrations that these pain points are creating for your client, we can get even more clarity on why they need you.

What your potential client is most afraid of:

And finally, on perhaps the deepest level of all, you might consider what your potential client is most afraid of if this problem does not go away. Could they be afraid that because of the tiredness they are feeling, they might not be able to achieve a life goal, get the job they want, have a family, travel, or do other things that they love? Tapping into the fears that our ideal client has, creates an emotional connection that enables us to truly understand what they are facing and why they need you.

This clarity is the foundation on which to build compelling marketing messages and brand positioning so that clients can find you when they need you most.

What do you think?

When you think of your ideal clients, can you pinpoint two or three of their pain points, their frustrations, and their fears, and share these with the group in the Comments section? How does this help in both motivating and inspiring you to create this career for yourself?