Episode #30: “I didn’t choose a niche for the first 5 years of my business”

Interview
Written By Studio Elias

Sonia Thompson is a well-known and well-respected inclusive marketing strategist, consultant, and coach. 

She shares her journey of going from feeling completely directionless in her business, to being THE go-to inclusive marketing expert and being regularly featured in publications like Forbes, Inc, and Hubspot.

In this episode, we chat about the impact of niching, as well as why even smaller brands and businesses should make the effort to be inclusive in their marketing.

 
 

Listen to the Episode

 
 

Show notes

Time Stamps:

  • 00:00 Introduction

  • 05:02 Meet Sonia

  • 36:54 Sonia's mistake

  • 01:07:36 How this mistake made Sonia

  • 01:20:15 What you can learn from Sonia's experience

  • 01:22:06 Final thoughts

Links from the show:

If you loved this episode, take a screenshot, post it on Instagram, and tell everyone you know that this is the podcast to listen to. Don’t forget to tag me! @emancopyco.

  • Eman Ismail: Whenever anyone says the word inclusion, the first person I think of is Sonia Thompson.

    Sonia is a well-known, extremely respected inclusive marketing strategist, consultant, and coach. She writes columns for Inc., Forbes, and HubSpot on inclusive marketing, customer experience, and belonging. She's also the host of the Inclusion and Marketing podcast.

    Sonia has officially nailed her niche. She's a fierce thought leader in this field, so it was really surprising to me when she told me it took her years to discover and then master her niche. She actually told me she felt lost for the first five or six years of her business and that she wasn't really sure what she was working towards until she did.

    Now, I am a huge proponent of niching or specialising because I've seen the impact it's had on my own business. I went from generalist copywriter to email strategist in late 2019, early 2020. And being known for one thing skyrocketed my business, brought me dream clients and dream brand partnerships as well.

    I believe in niching so much that I created a 90-minute masterclass called Nail Your Niche for service providers and consultants. It's probably the most popular product I sell. By the way, I'll put the link in the show notes for you in case you are also ready to nail your niche. It's only $39.

    But here's the thing. I don't think niching is the only way to become successful in business, but I do think it's the fastest way to become successful in business. As you'll see from Sonia's story, becoming an expert in one particular area, becoming the go-to specialist in your field, can take years, but the effort is almost always gonna pay off.

    Sonia Thompson: I basically had just spent, let's say five, six years in my business where it felt like I was floundering around developing extremely valuable skills that whenever I finally realised, "Oh, Sonia, this is your niche," all I had to do was flip the switch and the skills were there and I just needed to activate them.

    Eman Ismail: On today's show, I'm speaking to Sonia Thompson, inclusive marketing strategist, consultant, and coach about how not choosing a niche meant she was just floundering around for the first five or six years in her business and making a tiny fraction of her previous 200k corporate salary.

    Sonia Thompson: There's not a whole lot of proving myself specifically for them because I've been proving myself over the years with the body of work. And so you just sort of eliminate a lot of the competition and you almost sort of write your own template or job description for the different clients that you work with, which it's just a really wonderful feeling, and then hopefully it turns into, "Oh, talk to her, talk to her, talk to her."

    Welcome to Mistakes That Made Me, the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success. Mistakes That Made Me is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name's Eman Ismail and I'm an email strategist and copywriter for online business owners like you at emancopyco.com. I'm a podcast lover, a pizza binger, a proud mama of two, and I have this radical idea that if maybe us business owners were a little less guarded and a lot more open about the mistakes we've made, we could help each other grow a business that brings us more joy and less regret.

    Super quick question. How many tabs do you have open right now? Go to your browser and actually check for me. If you're anything like me, it's a lot. And when you're running a business, it's a lot more. I, myself, have been known to have hundreds of tabs open at the same time. You might have a tab open for your email service provider, one for your payment software, one for your CRM, another for your content tools.

    And with all those tabs, you're spending more time searching through data and less time, you know, actually growing your business. But with HubSpot's Customer Platform, you can close all those tabs and access all your tools all in one place. You'll optimise workflows for marketing, improve pipeline management for sales, and help keep track of every customer question, big or small. So close those tabs. It's time to start growing your business. Visit hubspot.com to get started today.

    Sonia Thompson: I am Sonia Thompson. I am an inclusive marketing strategist, consultant, and coach. You don't probably hear that too often, but basically what I do is I help brands attract and retain a bigger, more diverse, and fiercely loyal customer base through inclusive marketing, which basically means I help them do a better job of re-engaging people that most brands have ignored for a very long time because of their identity. And in most instances, it was never intentional ignoring them. It was just because they never thought that people have these differences and that impacts the choices that they make as consumers, or that people with differences, which we all do, could impact overall the way in which they show up and receive messages, then they're losing out on a lot of people.

    So as more and more brands are starting to recognise that everyone has some sort of difference and that they care about that, whenever it comes time to make their buying decisions, they're recognising that they have to change their marketing. I like to say inclusive marketing is the future of marketing and more and more we're starting to see that that future is today.

    Eman Ismail: Yeah, I love that. This is a topic that I feel really strongly about, for so many reasons. I think the work that you do is so important, and it's also just fascinating. I was watching one of your breakdowns on—was it Ben & Jerry's? And how their marketing is exclusive and what they're doing well and I think even like what they could improve. It was fascinating. It was so interesting to watch.

    And when I think of this work, I think about me as a little Black girl who used to run to the shop every Saturday morning and buy, you know, those teen magazines and never see anyone who looked like me. And I remember, as a young teen, feeling so unseen, just like I didn't exist. I didn't matter. People who look like me didn't matter. We didn't even warrant like—I mean, just give us a model, just one model who looks like us. The makeup pages would be catered for white skin and European hair with all the hair pages. And honestly, it was a very difficult experience. And I know that every little Black girl has experienced this, but then you grow up and it stays with you and it impacts you in so many ways.

    And I guess my question is, I care very deeply about this topic, but why should brands care? And also, why should people in privileged positions who can just carry on with their lives and not bother themselves with it because they're not impacted by this in some ways. I'm sure they are in other ways, because, like you said, we all have differences, right? So I think everyone will experience this in different ways, but why should brands care And why should people care?

    Sonia Thompson: So there's two different things. There's the moral imperative, right? Which is being inclusive and making more people feel seen is the right thing to do. But we've seen over the years that the moral imperative isn't enough to make brands care about this and make meaningful change that lasts more than a new cycle. So ultimately, brands should care about inclusive marketing because it's what they need to stay relevant and to grow. Inclusive marketing is directly related to business results.

    So, give you a quick example. I follow a gluten-free diet for health reasons. And a couple of years ago, we went to a small family reunion. There were 14 of us. Not very many, right? But I'm gluten-free and my sister is also gluten-free. And there were a number of restaurants we went to in New Orleans that we were looking at for the dinners that we had scheduled. And guess what happened? We only went to restaurants that had gluten-free menus that were dedicated, that they specifically—it was clear on their website that they had taken the time to think about and say, "Hey, gluten-free people, we see you. You're welcome here." Not just a restaurant that's like, "We've got one thing on the menu for you to eat." because nobody wants that, right? So, we went, all 14 of us, even though only two of us were gluten-free, the only restaurants were considered were the ones that had taken that approach.

    So what I like to think about this is the niche consumer or the underrepresented and underserved identities are often the lead consumer in instances because people want to do things where their friends, their families, their loved ones can take part.

    And so anytime I go out to eat with a person, a family member, a friend, guess who chooses a restaurant? It's me. I choose the restaurant because they want to know that we're going to go to a place that I am going to be able to have my needs met, where I'm going to be able to have a wonderful meal that I will enjoy and not be mad because I just paid $50 for a meal that was just a salad that wasn't good.

    And so there's a lot of that, that really is starting to help people make their decisions, not just for the people who have that who are part of that community, but also the people who love them. But there's also more and more that we're starting to see that, as I said, a lot of consumers have differences. And there are so many different dimensions of diversity and not saying that every brand needs to be thinking about all those dimensions of diversity and serving all of them, but we just need to be aware.

    This really hit in 2017 where we started paying attention to it more whenever Rihanna's brand Fenty Beauty launched and she launched with 40 shades of foundation to take into consideration people of different complexions all over the world, right? And so there were colours that were selling out. They had put a lot of thought into this campaign. People were just overjoyed. I saw all these posts and there was all these talks about the records that they broke, the sales that they generated, and what happened.

    Previously, the makeup industry where, oh, making all these shades of foundation was never something that they could do. It just wasn't possible for whatever reason. Suddenly, they were able to all start making 40 shades of foundation. And that became the standard. Why is that? Because they saw the business benefit. There are people who are going to buy these products, who are demanding it because now they see that it's possible, and they know that they are going to lose out on sales from people because they're going to be going elsewhere because their brands were inclusive.

    So they changed their ways, not because it was the right thing they do. They did it because they saw that it was going to, one, help them grow and also prevent them from losing more sales.

    Eman Ismail: Yeah. I mean, like you said, it would be great if the moral imperative was enough, but I mean, I don't know. A part of me feels like I wish it wasn't always about the money, but then also it's like, it is what it is. We live in the world that we live in. And at the end of the day, we get what we need, which is diversity and whatever it is that we're talking about.

    You mentioned dimensions of diversity. And I find it really interesting that you don't just talk about one dimension of diversity. When you talk about inclusivity, you're talking about a range of dimensions. I mean, these are just some of the ones that I picked up on listening to you talk. But age, disability, gender, race, religion, body size, diet, just so many.

    So, I mean, I heard you say a little earlier that it's impossible for us to kind of meet every single requirement of every single dimension of diversity. It can feel really overwhelming for those of us who are trying to do better. I personally decided to focus on a couple of areas I feel really strongly about, but then I feel like I'm doing a disservice to all the other issues that deserve just as much attention. What can you say to this small business owner who is grappling with that? Is it okay that I'm just choosing one or two issues to work really hard and deep in?

    Sonia Thompson: Absolutely. So let's give a quick definition of what inclusive marketing is. So it's all about acknowledging the many ways that people are different—and this is the important part—then choosing which identities you're going to serve and then incorporating them throughout all areas of your marketing mix. So that's the choosing part.

    Most brands struggle with inclusive marketing—meaning they're just not being inclusive, they're pushing people away—because they haven't gone through the process of choosing who are the people that they want to make sure that they feel like they belong with them.

    So they'll say something like women, but they forget there's a broad diversity of women out there. And so because they don't choose, they end up excluding a lot of identities that they never even thought of. So that's just kind of like the first rule of inclusive marketing is you have to choose.

    If you have enough resources, like Rihanna, for instance, like Google, those are brands that are choosing to serve everyone. Love it. More power to you. That's great. We love to see it. However, there are a lot of other businesses and brands, especially small business owners who can't do that.

    So, you've got a podcast. Now, your podcast obviously isn't available in 10 different languages for all the people who speak different languages, prefer to learn and listen to their content in their preferred language. That's an intentional choice. We're doing this podcast in English. That's your audience. And that's what you can do at this moment, right? Over time, you might choose to expand that if you have the resources, but that's not what you're going to do right now. And so we have to think about what can we do effectively, what are the audiences that we most want at this point in time to feel like they belong with our brand? And how can we make sure that, in whatever it is that we're producing throughout our marketing mix, we're making those identities feel seen?

    Another caveat here is if you're choosing, if you decide to say, "Hey, I want to serve, left-handed people. I want them to make sure they feel like they belong. I want to serve gluten-free people. I want plus-size people to feel like they belong." That does not mean that someone who eats gluten and is vegan isn't welcome, right? It just means that you have specifically decided that you wanted to create a welcome environment for this group of people. And you can still serve a broad range. And even though you might not speak to them specifically, that doesn't mean that you're saying, "I'm not taking your money. You're not welcome here."

    Eman Ismail: Okay. That's really great to hear. And so in terms of—well, what I'm hearing you say is for the small business owner who wants to get better at inclusivity, they should pick an identity that matters to them, that they feel strongly about, and then work on doing better for that particular identity.

    Sonia Thompson: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's use an example because you might say that "I want to make sure that I am supportive of the disability community, right?" The disability community is very diverse. There's a lot of different types of ways in which people can have a disability and the way that can show itself.

    Now, you might then say, "All right, specifically, I want to make sure that people who are neurodivergent feel like they belong with me. So I'm going to develop products, services, experiences, communications that make them feel seen and like they belong." That doesn't mean, of course, that everybody else isn't welcome, but you specifically want to make sure that the neurodivergent community at this point in time feels that.

    You may, later on, expand it to people who are visually impaired or who are colourblind or whatever it is that you're choosing or it's on your heart to do. Those things can happen once you have more capacity, once you have more resources to do it right, but at this point in time, for instance, we're going to make sure that we do what we can to make sure that we see and support and make neurodivergent achieve success with my brand. And that's totally fine.

    Eman Ismail: Okay. I love it. So here are some of the issues that I've been experiencing, which I'm sure you have also experienced. So, I mean, I've experienced frustration sometimes when I've seen people celebrating themselves and celebrating the fact that they have been, for example, able to gather such a diverse speaking panel or whatever else. And I look and yes, it's all women, but it's all white women. And there's no other types of diversity in there. So you did great in terms of gender diversity if I guess like platforming women was your goal, but you failed in so many other different areas.

    And I've been in positions where I've been asked to do speaking events, and I'm sure you have too, where you say yes to this thing and then you see the lineup and you're the only Black person and you just think-

    Sonia Thompson: I feel like a token.

    Eman Ismail: -Am I the token? Yeah, great. Because this is something we've lived with our entire lives.

    I saw a TikTok recently that made me laugh so much because it was so true and so painful but so funny is, you know, when you're at university or your campus, you hide from the camera people, and you just hide because they're always on the lookout for you because they always want to take pictures of the Black people, or ethnic minorities as we call us in the UK, to prove that we're a diverse community, and they're usually really not. That's why they're chasing you with a camera. But then it becomes like that. It's like, "Oh, I'm the token. Oh, great. I'm just a symbol of the fake diversity that you're trying to create, that's not even real."

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah.

    Eman Ismail: And I haven't done anything about this yet because honestly, I'm exhausted. But how do you even go about challenging something like that? How do you even approach a host and talk about something like that?

    Sonia Thompson: So I've only sort of said something one time because different people take different approaches and generally my approach isn't to call people out, or as other people like to say, they call them in. I did so one time with an influencer that I very much respect and I did it in the format of I sent her a DM because I saw that she was promoting a conference that she was going to be speaking at, and whenever she showed the graphic that they provided, I'm like, "Where are the Black people?" Because I define diversity, not just of, "Oh, look at all the women." For me, I'm specifically looking to see, "Do you have any Black women?" I'm specifically looking at—

    Eman Ismail: And also, can I clarify as well? And, yes, I mean, Black women, but also I think we mean actually just non-white women as well. A lot of the time it's literally you are the only non-white woman or there are no non-white women. So where is the diversity? It's insane.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah. Well, so I wrote her this DM and I was just like, "Hey, this is what I see. This is how it makes me feel." And she was wonderful. She was gracious. Actually, it was Jasmine Star 'cause we did a podcast episode on it on her show. She invited me to talk about this very specifically. And it was a wonderful, from what she said, a learning experience from her that she said that she was going to now use to as a criteria for whether or not she was going to accept speaking engagements moving forward.

    So depending upon what position you're in, do you want to be someone who focuses on changing what it is that you see? Then yeah, it might be helpful depending upon if you're being asked to speak, whether you choose to accept or whether you're choosing not to accept and why, and giving people that bit of criteria of, "Listen, I'm only accepting speaking engagements where there is a sufficient amount of diversity and I'm not the diversity on the stage, in your speaker lineup," or as a consumer, you might decide that "I'm not going to give my money to conferences that obviously feels like—basically, the signal that they're sending, the message that they're sending is there aren't people like me who are worthy to be on this stage."

    Generally, a lot of times the excuse they give is, "Oh, but we don't know anybody." But that really just means that you haven't done the due diligence to expand your network so that you can find them because they're there, it's just you might not know them. But if you're putting on an event, it's your responsibility to find them.

    Eman Ismail: It absolutely is. I have a friend who I will not name, but she was invited to speak at a big conference and she's Muslim and visibly Muslim, so she wears a hijab as well, a headscarf, and the organiser of this event told her openly that they don't know any Muslims. They don't know any Muslims that they could invite to speak at this event.

    Sonia Thompson: Oh, wow.

    Eman Ismail: It's not that you don't know any Muslims, it's that you don't care to know any Muslims. That's what the issue is. Let's be honest, like you said. And I will never go to that event. And it's a popular event as well. I will never go to that event. I will never give my money to that event. I will never say yes if they ever asked me to speak at their event. Yeah, it's shocking. It's shocking.

    Sonia Thompson: Well, going back to where we were starting in the conversation about why should people care, because people are making decisions, buying decisions, about whether or not a brand is inclusive or not. And it's not just inclusive in terms of the marketing materials that you're putting forth, it's, are you an inclusive brand overall? So there's a big distinction between just doing inclusive marketing and being an inclusive brand.

    And I've done a couple of research studies. I did one in 2021 and I'm analysing results for the refresh of it for 2024. It's all about the state of representation in marketing. I mean, the responses that consumers are giving in both of these surveys—I talked to over a thousand people for each one of them—and they're like, "We don't want just inclusion and representation in the marketing materials or in your ads or your campaigns. You need to be an inclusive brand throughout. It's the people that you have in your companies. It's the consumers, the actual customers. It's all of it."

    And so it just goes, you can't be superficial in your approach. And if you have conversations with people that show that you actually really don't care about that specific community, you're just kind of checking the box, or you can't be bothered to sort of engage and find the very many and vast amounts of people who are Muslim who are in this space, then they're not gonna do very well when it comes time to attracting that audience because people know, and they see, and they see when things are performative, they see whenever it feels authentic and like they belong, and belonging really is the key to all of this.

    Eman Ismail: Oh, I love that. Belonging is the key to all of this because we all just want to feel like we belong. We all want to feel seen and heard and as if we matter enough that people are and brands are catering to us in the way that we need them to.

    So one question I have for you—because you talk a lot about customer experience, this is all tied in with a customer's experience of a brand or business—can you give me an example of a time where you were just completely delighted by the customer experience you received from an inclusive kind of perspective?

    Sonia Thompson: I'm going to give you this example. And I feel kind of bad about it because it feels like the bar's so low. When I was living in Argentina, Argentina and Buenos Aires specifically, they do a good job of catering to people who are gluten-free, generally, and mostly, they relate it to having coeliac. I'm not coeliac, but that doesn't mean that—I'm not doing this by choice. So I remember I came across this restaurant, which is entirely gluten-free, and it doesn't taste like it's gluten-free and it's so good. It's a parrilla. A parrilla in Argentina, think of it's like a steakhouse. But it's so good, the food there, that people who don't eat gluten-free enjoy eating there. They will go.

    And so I've eaten there so many times. I've taken so many people who are not gluten-free and they've enjoyed themselves. They enjoyed the meal. And it was a really good example of a restaurant who has chosen a specific type of consumer as their lead consumer, the gluten-free people, but they have not suffered at all in choosing this one group of people. Because the food is good, people like coming there.

    And so I just remember the first time I went and they came and they put bread on the table and I could eat the bread. I don't think that you realise how a wonderful feeling is like, if you've gone out to eat and you've gone to restaurants and like all your life, you get bread and then you have to go a number of years and they're still going to give you bread, but you can't eat it. And then finally, after years, they put bread on the table and you can eat it. It's just the joy that comes to not feel like I have to be that person that's got to ask a million questions to make sure that what I'm going to eat is going to be okay, that I'm not going to be sick.

    So it was just, the entire environment that they created, because it was designed specifically for me, was one that just made me feel so "normal." I'm putting quotes here, and it was just a wonderful experience. I still think about, "Oh my gosh, I could eat the bread. I can eat the bread."

    Eman Ismail: Oh, that's amazing. And that's not a low bar. That's the joy of just being included, like you said, belonging. And it's interesting that you chose a food example because this is stuff that I never, ever, ever thought about. I don't have any kind of allergies. I've never had anyone in my family who had any kind of allergies until we discovered that my son as a baby, toddler, which is very common in young kids had a cow's milk allergy. And oh my gosh, that he had to go vegan. He went vegan at four years old.

    And honestly, it was so much. It was so difficult. It was difficult for me, and I wasn't even the one going through it. But our whole lifestyle changed. Everything changed. It was just so hard on him. And things like his nursery on—he was four years old. And on, of course, people's birthdays, they would come into nursery with cake and all these sweets and everything. And he can't have any of it. Nothing. None of it.

    And so I remember almost crying one day. I know this sounds really dramatic, but-

    Sonia Thompson: It's not.

    Eman Ismail: -I remember almost crying one day because I came and picked him up and he told me that everyone in his nursery had birthday cake and he didn't have any. And they gave him fruit and he took it like a champ, quite frankly, but I think that made it even worse. He just took it, as a four-year-old, so maturely and so well. And I was absolutely devastated, truly devastated, that he'd been excluded so badly that they couldn't even be bothered to like—I don't expect them to go shopping for him, although I did actually pay, I used to pay money for them to shop for him. So you could have really considered the fact that you now have a vegan in your class and it's not of our own choice. And even if it was, that should still be fine, but he literally, he can't have it. So how could you not think about him? How could you exclude him actively?

    And so I told them, initially, like, "What can we do? There's nothing really we can do." And I was like, "You know what?"

    Sonia Thompson: That's not true. [laughs]

    Eman Ismail: "I'll sort it." Yeah. "Well clearly, you're not going to do anything, so I'll sort it." So I went shopping and bought him this humongous, I mean humongous, bag of chocolate, sweets, everything that was suitable for him to eat. Cake that he could eat, humongous bag. And I gave it to them. I said, let me know when it runs out. Every time there's a birthday, you give him something from this bag so he has sweets, chocolate, a cake-

    Sonia Thompson: That's amazing.

    Eman Ismail: -just like everyone else. Yeah. But it was so upsetting that they didn't just make just a little bit of extra effort to include him. And so now, bear in mind that I'd never been opened up to this world of like, there's just dietary requirements beyond, quite frankly, halal, not halal, vegetarian, that kind of stuff. And now we have birthday parties with kids, my son who's no longer allergic to cow's milk, thank God, he grew out of it, which a lot of kids do, thank God. I'm always thinking about the kids with the allergies. I'm like, "Who's got allergies? What can we get for them? Let's get the vegan stuff. Let's make sure there's—"

    Sonia Thompson: It changes your perspective.

    Eman Ismail: It entirely changes your perception. It opened up a whole world and just a new window that I never knew anything about. And so now even my son is super aware of it. He comes home and he tells me about his friends who have severe food allergies. And I'm like, "Okay, great. Good to know. Let's note this down. Make sure we don't put this in your packed lunch and this in your packed lunch."

    And so yeah, I just remember what a huge deal it was. And it's food, like you said, it's an everyday part of your life. It's not something little, it's huge, it really is.

    Sonia Thompson: It makes a big deal. It makes a big deal in the experience of it. Everybody has a different relationship with what makes them different, their identity. And sometimes people would just rather forget, or they would rather forget or maybe they're fine with it, it's no problem, but at this point in time, with all these other things that are going on, I just don't want to have to deal with it today. And so it's just really nice whenever you can engage with a brand who—I don't want to say they proactively do things to deliver an experience that takes that burden that may exist, or you may feel, away because they thought of you and they've considered you in advance and they paved the way for you to have a delightful experience, no matter what your identity is.

    And that those are the brands I gladly give my money to, I gladly pay more for, because most of the time you do have to pay more for gluten-free stuff, but I gladly do it because they have taken the time to show me that I am important and I so much want to reward them for it.

    Eman Ismail: So I think of you now every time I walk into a bathroom and see a sink that is lower than the other sinks for-

    Sonia Thompson: Yes.

    Eman Ismail: -either little kids or the ones that are for people in wheelchairs. And you spoke about this on your podcast. And now every time I go into a toilet and I see that, I think of you. I think it's so important. And actually, as we speak, I had an accident last week and I-

    Sonia Thompson: Oh, no.

    Eman Ismail: -injured my foot. Yeah, I injured my ankle quite badly. I thought it was broken. Thankfully, it's not broken, but I tore a ligament in my ankle and so I've currently got a cast on, I'm wearing a cast for the next three to four weeks. I was in a wheelchair for the day that I was in the hospital and I just remember thinking how ill-equipped this world is for people in wheelchairs.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah.

    Eman Ismail: It's shocking. And it took me—I mean, we know this, but me actually sitting in a wheelchair and being unable to walk and just thinking how ill-equipped is this world for people in wheelchairs? I'll get out of this today, but you know, it's upsetting.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah. Imagine that you're in a wheelchair for a much longer period of time or for the rest of your life, which brands are you going to choose? Are you going to choose the ones who have make your life a little bit easier, or a lot easier, by having wheelchair accessible options for entry, for restrooms, for whatever it is. We go to the brands and we are loyal to the brands for our identity, they see us, or they see the people that we love. Like in the case of, your son, right? It changed the way you operate as a family, right? So yeah, it's not just that one person with that one identity.

    Eman Ismail: No. And like you said, it has this huge impact. It has this ripple effect. It has this ripple effect on not just you, but the people around you as well and the people around them.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah.

    Eman Ismail: Fascinating stuff. Okay. I could talk about all of this with you all day, but I want to get onto what we came here for. Are you ready?

    Sonia Thompson: I am.

    Eman Ismail: Stick around. Don't go anywhere. We'll get right back to this episode after this quick break.

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    Okay. Sonia, what is the mistake that made you?

    Sonia Thompson: I would say the mistake that made me was not choosing a niche.

    Eman Ismail: Okay. Not choosing a niche. Whether you say niche or niche, there's going to be a lot of niching today, right? Okay. Take me back. Let's go back because you clearly have a very strong niche now.

    Sonia Thompson: I do.

    Eman Ismail: Take us back to the days where you didn't. What was going on? Tell us about your business back then.

    Sonia Thompson: Okay. So I worked my corporate job for nine years. I worked at Johnson & Johnson. I was in marketing and then, I quit. I quit, this job to start my own business. And my dream was to start a business which was all about helping smaller brands to apply the principles that these big brands know and use on a daily basis that has allowed them to become these big brands.

    Because my experience was, as a frustrated consumer, that far too many small brands just didn't know basic business principles. And so they had a great product but a terrible experience. And I was specifically remembering salon experiences where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is a great salon," but I'm like, "Oh my gosh," like—

    Eman Ismail: I'm never coming back. [laughs]

    Sonia Thompson: Right? So I had written a book, I self-published a book. It's called Delight Inside. It was all about customer experience and weaving those in with basic business principles, et cetera. So my dream was to focus in doing some business coaching. So, just to kind of set some foundation for you, whenever I left my job, I had saved up two years' worth of expenses.

    So I had a good amount of cushion. And so whenever I got started, I did not use my cushion wisely [laughs], but whenever I got started, I ended up taking on different projects, different jobs, just kind of, you know, "Hey, I'm excited. Somebody is paying me," et cetera. And then I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, how do I market my business? I need to learn how to attract people to me." So I started following Copyblogger. I started really getting deep into content marketing and learning how to create content, I joined different programs, I learned how to blog, I started guest posting, I started a podcast.

    I had a podcast for three years. It was called I Am the One: Entrepreneur Edition. So basically, I did interviews with entrepreneurs. I did 150 episodes for three years straight. And over the course of this time period when I'm learning, I just sort of got lost in terms of like, I love creating content, I love it, to the point to where I'm creating content and learning all these things, but I'm not actually doing anything specifically to attract the clients to me because, "Oh, wait, what is my niche again? Is it customer experience? Am I a business coach?" I'm just talking about all these random things.

    And I'm getting different clients and work, but it's a hodgepodge because it's not really clear. And I tried a bunch of things. I did a virtual summit. Like I said, I started a podcast. I was guest posting. Eventually I worked with a coach who helped me get a column in Inc. So I was writing for Inc. Magazine. I was writing six articles a month, and that's a lot. And what was I writing about? Business stuff. Random business stuff and I was writing.

    So I was working hard doing a lot of stuff. But if you were to ask anybody, "What is it that you do, Sonia? What is it that people can hire you for? What is your area of expertise?

    It kind of then sort of shifted in, "Well, I do all these content things." And so I kind of shifted to content, but that's not really what I wanted to do. I didn't want to be known as a writer or a copywriter. Those were just vehicles that I was using to help me with my business.

    So, as you might imagine, I struggled. I struggled. And during the course of that time period—I left my job in 2012. In 2014, I travelled to South America for the first time. And I travelled for two months by bus through five or six countries in South America. And I landed in Argentina and I spent five weeks there and I loved it, fell in love with Argentina, and I ended up going back several times over the course of the next couple of years until I just moved there.

    And Argentina's cost of living is much different than it was in the US. But what was I doing? I was continuing to learn all these things about content. I had gone to a conference that was about the media and how to get into these big publications, get the media to feature you. And so I took one of the lessons that I learned from this one-day conference. And I pitched this woman at Business Insider who was speaking at this conference and I pitched her story idea. And the story idea was like, this is like the title of it. Oh, this woman was happy. She was making 200,000 a year and now she's even more happier making a quarter as much.

    And so they're talking about the contrast between my corporate job and now my other job, my full-time job as an entrepreneur where I wasn't making very much money but I was like, I'm living in Argentina. It's great. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm living this dream. And so now, again, I've learned how to pitch, but I pitched an article that's not actually going to help me get clients. It's just about how I went from making a lot and not being so happy to making a whole lot less than just being over the moon.

    And so ultimately, through all this, I learned a ton of skills [laughs]. I got a column, I learned how to pitch, I learned how to get media attention, I learned how to podcast, I learned how to write articles that people want to read, I learned how to create content and blog posts and videos. I learned how to do all of that stuff, but I didn't want to do it for other people.

    So I was just kind of figuring it all out. And so what I'd started to do was kind of go back to my roots to think more about customer experience. And around that time, I got a Slack message from my editor at Inc. This was 2017. So five years or almost five years have passed. So I got a Slack message from my Inc. editor. And she was like, "Hey, Sonia, there's this trending hashtag on Twitter and you're uniquely positioned. You're basically the only one who has enough experience to talk about this."

    The hashtag was #BlackWomenAtWork. And basically, of the contributor network that they had at Inc.—this is me deducing—there really aren't very many Black women who can speak on this topic. So I was like, "Sure." And I cranked it out in like two hours and it was live. And I was happy with it, she was happy. A couple of weeks later, "Hey, Sonia," she sends me a note again. "This is happening. You think you have a point of view that you can write on this particular—what's happening in the news?" "Sure." So I wrote it.

    And then a couple of months later, Rihanna launches with her line for Fenty Beauty. I start writing about it because now this is a great topic, but as I was starting to look at the things that I was writing about, things that were sort of happening, more and more I started to see that the stuff that I most enjoyed writing about were related to diversity in marketing, or inclusive marketing, as I now call it. And I have a lot of unique experiences, they're my experiences, they're my lived experiences, but I had completely taken them for granted as the value to the business world.

    So I'm still now working on—I've sort of pivoted a little bit to the consulting world and I landed a big client, all about customer experience and helping them with their African American engagement strategy. And so I've landed this really big multi-six-figure or six-figure contract, which I am over the moon excited about. It's more money than I had made all the years in my business combined and then some. But part of it was, it was customer experience. There was an African American engagement strategy and there was one other thing in there.

    So I'm going through that, but I'm still working on trying to give myself even more credentials for consulting clients. So I was committed to getting into another large publication. I'm still writing for Inc. So, I'm part of this organisation. I was part of this coaching group that's specifically designed to help you get into Forbes because I had applied for Forbes once or twice and both times had been rejected.

    And then one woman who is part of the community, she's like, "Hey, Forbes is looking for diversity columnists. And so here's the contact information," because she saw something that someone posted on LinkedIn. So I reached out and I pitched myself. "Here's all my writing samples. I write for Inc.," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And through the process of it, I pitched them not just a column in diversity because DE&I is not the same as inclusive marketing. They're related, but they're two distinct things.

    So I pitched the column idea as part of the marketing vertical, and I would be talking about inclusive marketing. And so they loved it. And so, now I have a column in Forbes specifically on inclusive marketing, customer experience, and belonging. And so now I've got this Inc. column, I've got this Forbes column, I just finished with this client. Then I went, in September of this year, of 2018 now, to Shine Bootcamp.

    Shine Bootcamp was a weekend-long program, which the whole objective was to equip women speakers to be ready for the stage. So we would go for this weekend bootcamp, we would get teamed up with coaches, and at the end of it, we would deliver a 10-minute speech. They would video the speech for us. They would take our headshots. So we finished the program with assets that we could be using.

    So of course you could talk about whatever you want. And I talked about inclusive marketing. And I did this talk and they loved it, loved, loved, loved it. So I'm getting some momentum and people that I knew within the industry, I knew their names, they were talking to me. I got invited to do a guest post on Joanna Wiebe's Copyhackers.

    Eman Ismail: We love Copyhackers over here. We love Joanna Wiebe.

    Sonia Thompson: We do, we do. Joanna was one of the coaches. She wasn't my coach, but she was-

    Eman Ismail: Oh, wow.

    Sonia Thompson: -one of the coaches and she was present. So she heard it and she's like, "Oh, I've been thinking about this from this point of view. What do you think of writing an article?" So I published on her website. My coach was Oli and he was one of the co-founders of Unbounce. So a couple of months later, I got an invitation to be one of the keynote speakers at their-

    Eman Ismail: Wow.

    Sonia Thompson: -CTA conference, so I did that. I got another speaking engagement to speak on inclusive marketing, which was very much, they wanted an expansion of my 10-minute talk. So the momentum is coming. So I'm continuing along with my consulting work, which I'm happy about because they're higher ticket clients, they can take me for a longer period of time. I'm still living in Argentina.

    And so while I'm living in Argentina, I met my husband, married my husband, and then we got pregnant. And so my daughter is born in April 2020. And so what happens in May 2020? George Floyd happens and the world is just upside down. So I'm in maternity leave. And then I get this message from the editor-in-chief of Inc. and was like, "Hey, can you write an article about what's happening, like, what should business owners be doing? What should they be thinking about? How should they respond to this?" And I'm like, "Um, I'm on maternity leave, but okay, I'll write this," you know?

    So Luna, that's my daughter, while she was sleeping, I cranked out an article, sent it. And so I'm working with them, collaborating. It went live the next day. And so I'm like, "Oh, wait, this really got some legs and it's a unique moment." So then I was like, "Well, let me see something else." So I pitched Amy Porterfield to be a guest on her podcast to talk about inclusive marketing. She responded right away. The next week, we recorded the episode. It was published the next week, the end of June.

    So yeah, there was a lot of momentum, a lot of things happening. So through the rest of my maternity leave, because I took three months, when Luna was sleeping, I would start to update my website, start to change my messaging a little bit. And whenever I came back to work, I fully committed, I am all in on inclusive marketing.

    Eman Ismail: Wait, okay. Wait a minute.

    Sonia Thompson: [laughs]

    Eman Ismail: It was only at that point that you started to lean in to—

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah.

    Eman Ismail: Okay, wow. Mind blown.

    Sonia Thompson: I started to really connect the dots. So I went through a lot in like a year's time or two years' timeframe, but I was doing it, but I hadn't made it-

    Eman Ismail: Official.

    Sonia Thompson: -a hundred percent my thing.

    Eman Ismail: Okay, wait. I need to know why. What was going on? Because at this point, you've established yourself in this area, in this field. What were you feeling or going through or what was stopping you and preventing you from going from nicheless to with a niche?

    Sonia Thompson: I had gotten interest and momentum, but I hadn't fully gotten all of my income from there.

    Eman Ismail: Okay.

    Sonia Thompson: So I was doing consulting. And so let's say that one big contract that I had back in 2018, one piece of it was inclusive marketing, but I hadn't necessarily thought through or figured out like—so in 2019, when I had another contract, it was about customer experience. And so it wasn't necessarily directly connected. So because the things that people were hiring me for at this point, they were more customer experience focused, I hadn't fully switched. I was getting requests, I was getting known for inclusive marketing, but it wasn't yet paying the bills.

    Eman Ismail: Okay, so this is a really interesting topic. I talk a lot about how to niche. I have a 90-minute masterclass called Nail Your Niche, which you can find on my website. And I talk about this a lot because a lot of people who come to me expect this—I call it this transition period. They expect this transition period to really happen overnight. Like, "Okay, today I'm waking up and I'm going to be an expert in this and everyone should just accept that and I'm gonna launch the website and that's it." And it's done, but actually, there's a transition period that can take a really long time.

    For me, I went from generalist copywriter to email strategist and copywriter, and I would say it took a full year before I was only getting great email projects. Before that point in that transition year, I was taking on whatever would bring me money and help me pay the bills behind the scenes. So I would take on all these other projects that I didn't really want to do but would help pay the bills. But what I didn't do was talk about those projects and tell everyone, like, "Hey, this is what I'm doing," because it didn't align with what I wanted to position myself as.

    So I only spoke about the email projects. I only spoke about the email strategy stuff that I wanted people to hear me talking about and then hire me for. And so there's this long period where it can take a while before you are really in a position where your niche is the primary moneymaker, and that's okay.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah. And it takes a while to change everything, right?

    Eman Ismail: It does.

    Sonia Thompson: And so let's go back. Also, we have to consider with inclusive marketing. It's still very new. And even though it was hot and people were thinking more about it in 2020, I was able to capitalise, but not so much because, again, I was on maternity leave. And then also, I was living in Argentina, so I wasn't able to go all in. So I created an online course, which is all about inclusive marketing, Inclusive Brand Academy. I was able to build a framework and combine that with customer experience because inclusive marketing and customer experience go hand in hand.

    So I was able to do all of that. And I've spent the last few years really focusing on thought leadership in the world of inclusive marketing because there isn't really a ton of information out there. And because it's such a newer field, there are people who understand it and they get it, but they don't necessarily realise what that means for them in terms of how to change and shift their marketing.

    I think sometimes they feel like, "Oh, we can just change up some of our photography and that's it." And we don't need to hire somebody to do that, but it's so much more. So I've spent more time on the thought leadership aspects of it. Aligning my content, my website. I ended up launching a new podcast. So the original podcast I had, I Am the One: Entrepreneur Edition I like to call as my starter podcast that prepared me to launch a very niche-focused podcast, is the one I have now. It's Inclusion and Marketing. So after some time, I think I launched that in 2022.

    Eman Ismail: And it's also part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

    Sonia Thompson: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I started that, I had 20 episodes in, and then I was able to join the HubSpot Network. And then momentum keeps going. I've been working with consulting projects actually coming specifically related to inclusive marketing with large companies. Some of them I can't even say their names because contractually-

    Eman Ismail: NDAs.

    Sonia Thompson: -I'm not allowed to say them, but working with some very well-known brands on inclusive marketing and helping them with that transformation. And then I now have columns that I write for HubSpot every month on inclusive marketing. And so the body of work is deep and the niche is deep. But there's also when you're sort of pioneering an area and educating and thinking about it, that takes a lot of effort to help people understand more about what they should be hiring for.

    So I would say just this year, after all that, even though I've been inclusive marketing, let's say I started in 2017, all in since 2020, I finally feel like I really nailed down my roadmap of what my product offerings are, how I can best help people, what it is that they need most. And that's only been because I've been in the trenches thinking about it, trying different things, doing it. "Oh, this doesn't work. Oh, that works. Oh, this is what they need." And then, yeah, it's a process,

    Eman Ismail: I have some questions for you because you have done this so well. What moved your needle the most? Because this is what people struggle with most, is like, "How do I get that momentum? How do I start that momentum?"

    Sonia Thompson: I was on publications that people trust talking about this topic. So I had an Inc. column, I had a Forbes column, I did the guest post on Copyhackers, I got on stages from brands that people trusted. So, it was all about leveraging, borrowing other people's trusted brands and audiences. And that was really what did it for me, I would say.

    Eman Ismail: And it's such a clever strategy because we spend years trying to build our own platforms from scratch and publishing into the void. And it will get traction eventually, but it just takes so much longer. So yeah, that's a really great strategy and a great reminder for me to keep pushing to keep doing that.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of work. And you just have to think of it like—I would never think of it in terms of one article or one podcast or video is going to do it. One guest post is going to do it. You just have to think about it as your body of work.

    I remember there was a contract that I had gotten that turned into a six-figure contract over the course of a year from an article that I wrote on Forbes. I had no idea that that article would lead to a contract. And I've written a lot of articles over the years and every now and then you can point to, "Oh, I know it was this one or that, or maybe people are looking at it over time."

    A client that I've been working with this year, she found me through my podcast and she's listened to some episodes. But it's not one episode in particular, it's the body of work. So you really have to just think about how can you create that body of work that people are gonna say, "Oh, inclusive marketing, like Sonia," like, "Oh, email marketing, Eman," you know, it's obvious, you're the obvious choice because everything that you do is synonymous and you've been doing it for such a long period of time, not like you wrote that one post one time.

    Eman Ismail: Yeah. You know, I mean, I love this idea of body of work. That's really sparked a light bulb in my mind because that's exactly what it is. And it's so motivating because, you know, sometimes we have those moments, especially when you're going down the kind of thought leadership route, you are publishing here, you're going on this podcast and that podcast. Sometimes you have this dream in your head, like, "If I can just get on this platform, if I can just get in front of these people, if I can just be interviewed by someone, if I can just speak on this stage, my life will change, my business will change." And then when that thing happens, and then your entire life and business doesn't change overnight, it can be really disappointing and you can lose a lot of motivation.

    And so instead of putting the pressure on one thing to change everything, it's working on all these little things and you're building all these things on top of each other. That really makes progress happen.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah, because you never know when one person will read something, see something, hear something, "Oh, this clicked. This is exactly what I need in this moment. Let me reach out to them because I know they're an expert and because they're the person that I need at this point in time." And so you don't know what it's going to be.

    And the thing sometimes that you think, "This is going to hit, this is going to be popular. They're going to be banging my door down to come and hire me," and it's nothing [laughs].

    Eman Ismail: Yeah.

    Sonia Thompson: And then, you know, it could be this random other thing that you produced and, "Okay, wow. All right, let's do it." But that's why you have to focus on just doing the work, creating that body of work consistently. And you'll wake up and you're like, "Oh my gosh, now my podcast, I've got over 100," I think I just sent to my editor Episode 129. It's a process. I've written hundreds of articles for Inc. and Forbes over the years, and it's all part of it.

    Eman Ismail: Wow. You got to do the work. I mean, I totally agree. For me, niching definitely changed the trajectory of my business. It changed everything for me, but even so, I would still say it's only now, how many years into it, four years into it, nearly five years into only talking about email, being just crazy about email strategy and copy and nothing else. I would say only now do I really feel like I have become that expert in people's minds, that that association is always there.

    And it's funny because when I see people posting stuff on social media and they're like, "Oh, I'm looking for an email marketer," or "I'm looking for an email strategist, someone to help me with my emails." If I don't see my name in those comments, I get so annoyed at myself. Not at them, at myself. I've got work to do. I've still got work to do because I should be being mentioned in every single post that mentions email.

    Sonia Thompson: I'm with you a hundred percent. And it makes perfect sense, right? And I think because there honestly aren't enough people who commit themselves to that thought leadership into that work of creating that body of work on a particular topic. It makes you sharper and has a point of view on a lot more things.

    And to the benefits of niching, I have a client that we're in the contracting phase right now. It's another corporate client, which, we'll start this year, but hopefully, we've got plans to continue along for more work next year. And I remember they reached out to me, whenever they reached out to me, and we started talking and they're like, "This is a really specialised skill set and there aren't a ton of people who can do this."

    And so I really appreciate that the body of work has now made me an ideal partner with these corporate clients that turn into much larger contracts for me, and there's not a whole lot of proving myself specifically for them because I've been proving myself over the years with the body of work. And so you just sort of eliminate a lot of the competition and you almost sort of write your own template or job description for the different clients that you work with, which it's just a really wonderful feeling. And then hopefully it turns into, "Oh, talk to her, talk to her, talk to her." And it's about making sure, of course, that you deliver with the work.

    Eman Ismail: Yeah, they already trust you. They don't need any evidence from you. They don't need you to prove yourself. You've already proven yourself. You've been proving yourself. It's amazing how that works.

    Okay, so tell me, how did this mistake of not niching make you?

    Sonia Thompson: So whenever I finally started to connect the dots about inclusive marketing being the thing that I needed to go all in on, I had the skills to maximise it. So I already had an Inc. column. Oh, I want to focus on inclusive marketing. All I had to do was just start writing about inclusive marketing. Whenever I was able to get the Forbes column, I already had an Inc. column and so I was able to connect the dots with articles that I had already written.

    I already had all the skills that I needed to do what I do at a high level. All I needed to do was just change the topic and topic on something that I already had an entire life of lived experience on and these are skills that wouldn't have happened overnight. And so the same way my expertise in inclusive marketing didn't happen overnight. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'm an inclusive marketer. Now I got to figure out how to get the word out." I already know how to get the word out. And I've already got these platforms that I have access to where people trust me because, one, they know I know how to create content, and, two, they know that I will be able to do it consistently at a high level. And it was a topic that we are lacking on in terms of expertise.

    So that three-year starter podcast that I have paved the way for me to have this podcast that is now part of the HubSpot Network. That wouldn't have happened if I would have just started a podcast for the first time with this Inclusion and Marketing podcast. How long would it have taken me to get into Forbes if I didn't already have the Inc. column? Would I have even been thinking about that I needed to get into Forbes if I hadn't already been writing? Would I have been invited to write guest posts if I didn't already have relationships? And would I have gotten invited to speak on stages if I hadn't already done the training, gone through this bootcamp where I had all these assets ready to go? So that people already know, "She knows how to speak," it's just, "How do we get her on our stage to talk about this topic?"

    I basically had just spent, let's say five, six years in my business where it felt like I was floundering around developing extremely valuable skills that whenever I finally realised, "Oh, Sonia, this is your niche," all I had to do was flip the switch and the skills were there and I just needed to activate them. So it's kind of one of those things where I like to say that nothing is ever wasted. And even though at the time, it was painful and it felt like it was wasted, all of it worked together to support me in what I'm doing today and has just made me to be able to be this thought leader because I had already developed the skills on how to do that in a number of different mediums. It was just time to activate it.

    Eman Ismail: See, I think this is such an important part of the conversation because so often when people decide to niche into something that's different from whatever they've been doing before, there's this feeling that, "Oh my gosh, I have to start all over. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing this to myself. I have to start from scratch. I'm at square one again." And it's just never the case. It's just never the case.

    I remember I did feel like that initially in January 2020 when I decided to tell the world that I was an email strategist and copywriter. I remember just thinking, "First of all, will anyone even hire me?" At this time, at that point back in 2020, this wasn't a huge specialism. People would go to a generalist copywriter and say, "Hey, I want emails," and the copywriter would just do emails. That's what I had been doing as well for my clients.

    And so I was having conversations with people who were hiring me, who would say things like, "I didn't even know this was a thing. I didn't know that I could hire an email strategist or an email copywriter. I just didn't know. I thought that you just hire a copywriter. This is great that I can have a specialist." It felt like that's how early I was in this picture in the scene.

    And I remember just thinking, "I'm gonna have to start all over again. I can't believe I'm starting all over again." And then thinking, "No, I'm not starting all over again. I've already been in business for two years. I'm not new to this. I'm not starting from scratch. I have a business that's two years old. I've been doing really well. Now I build on this, I build on it."

    And so what you're saying I think will give people a lot of hope because like you said, none of that work is done in vain. None of it goes to waste. I believe that there's a reason for everything and that there's a lesson in everything, which is what this whole podcast is about. And you take everything that you know and you run with it. You just run with it.

    Sonia Thompson: Absolutely. And I would say, from 2021 until today, 100% of my revenue has been related to inclusive marketing. So we're in September now as we record this. And so I've already got revenue booked for 2025 related to inclusive marketing, but all as a result of being niched. But that niche came from that years of preparation in frustration.

    Eman Ismail: Wow, amazing. So I have a friend who is a pay gap consultant and her true love is this work of being a pay gap consultant and helping companies figure out that pay gap and how to close that pay gap. Now, gender pay gap specifically.

    Sonia Thompson: Such a cool job and so needed.

    Eman Ismail: It is.

    Sonia Thompson: Unfortunately, but yeah.

    Eman Ismail: It is. Well, listen to this. So she's a Black woman. And then when everything happened in May, 2020 with George Floyd and companies actually started to be concerned with diversity and inclusion, everyone was calling her up. "We need you to come and speak to our company about racial justice and the ethnic pay gap or the racial pay gap." And she was like, "Okay, this is great, but this is not my passion. This is not my passion. My passion is the gender pay gap." But she was being pushed into this sphere because the need was so strong.

    So I remember at that time, first of all, how big this conversation was, and I remember also having conversations with her about how in demand she was and how successful her business was at that time. And I wonder, did you have any fear going into this that it was a phase? That it would be a phase that would just phase out once this conversation was over?

    Sonia Thompson: So I didn't have fear, but I would say last year, it became clear that the momentum that a lot of brands had put into thinking more inclusively in their marketing specifically—and it was happening with DE&I and overall—was fading. The momentum from 2020 was fading, and, in some instances, backtracking. And now as we see more things that are DE&I related seeming to be attacked, it did, I believe, cause some hesitation on some people as it relates to marketing.

    However, for me, that just meant a messaging pivot in terms of how I talked about inclusive marketing. And so then I started saying and making sure that I leaned hard into how it tied to business results and speaking about how it impacted conversion rates and customer success and all that other kind of stuff. So it just like messaging shift and showcasing the ways in which brands that we all know and love are still doing this and are thriving because of it and about what consumers are really saying. It really kind of shuts that out.

    And because I don't need 50 clients or 100 clients for it to work, I need to make sure that I'm speaking specifically to the people who really get it and they know it wasn't a fad to make sure that I am able to make the numbers I need to for the year. And so because more and more large companies, they get it, they see the numbers. And because of the transformation that needs to be had, they need more of a longer-term partner, I guess you would say.

    So it's not like whenever I first started here, there was a lot of training. That was the common request that would come through. And I've done so many trainings, and it's great to do the training. However, now, as I've worked with them and see what was actually done with the training, I recognise that training isn't really what is needed for them to have that transformation. They need a transformation plan. I've got a framework, I've got product offerings now that speak to that, and training is a component of it. It is not the thing.

    And so because I evolved in terms of understanding more about what brands need and what marketers need, it helped me better tailor my messaging, my conversation, the thought leadership things that I talk about, and even what I offer to be more aligned with what people need to achieve success. So it's more being driven around, of course, my expertise in terms of what I feel like the market needs, but less about it being consumer-driven, "We need training." Actually, you need more than that [laughs].

    Eman Ismail: Yes.

    Sonia Thompson: Right? And so if you're just coming for a training session, then it shows that you're not really the ideal client for what it is I'm trying to accomplish because you need something bigger than that. And I'm happy to be a partner with you on becoming an inclusive brand, which requires more time, more mindset work, more policy shifts and adjustment, structure, et cetera.

    Eman Ismail: More budget [laughs].

    Sonia Thompson: Yes. More budget [laughs].

    Eman Ismail: So this is fascinating because I'm hearing you say that when things kind of slowed down in your field, the answer was to just dial in, just really dial into your niche again, the purest form of the people that you're serving and that you want to serve.

    Sonia Thompson: Yeah.

    Eman Ismail: Yeah.

    Sonia Thompson: It wasn't to retreat at any point because the work isn't done. We are just scratching the surface. But that was part of what I felt was my role as a thought leader in the industry was to continue to sound that alarm on it doesn't matter what's happening and what you see from the noise standpoint. This is what your business needs. Your business will suffer if you don't do this.

    And the way I like to describe it is started doing a better job of speaking to the love language of the clients that I wanted to serve. Their love language is business results. It's business results. So how can I make sure that I'm connecting the dots and their risk of not taking action to business results?

    Eman Ismail: Oh, I love that. What is your ideal client's love language? I love it.

    Okay. Sonia, it's been amazing talking to you. Last question. What do you want other people who are listening to this to learn from your experience?

    Sonia Thompson: I want them to know that nothing is ever wasted. And although you might not be today where you want to be, know that every experience, every frustration, every win, they're all connected. And if you are in tune to letting everything teach you a lesson and give you the pushes and the nudges in the direction that you need to go, know that you will get there. And as you're going through that process, don't look for any one thing to be a single home run. Focus instead on the overall body of the work that you need to create and know that in time, you will get the results that you seek. So in the meantime, do whatever you need to do to make sure that you can pay the bills so that you don't have to give it all up.

    Eman Ismail: Amazing. Excellent advice. I totally agree. Where can people connect with you if they want to stay in touch? Where can they dive into your world?

    Sonia Thompson: Go to inclusionandmarketing.com. That's where you'll find the podcast. That's where you can sign up for the Inclusion and Marketing newsletter. And if you wanna touch base on social, I am @soniaethompson on LinkedIn and Instagram and YouTube. Or in YouTube. I'm actually Inclusion and Marketing as well.

    Eman Ismail: Okay. We'll put those links in the show notes. And your podcast is fantastic, so go over and listen to Sonia's podcast. It's brilliant. If this conversation has interested you, you'll love Sonia's podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It was amazing talking to you.

    Sonia Thompson: Thank you. You too.

    Eman Ismail: I loved this convo about niching because I think it's quite balanced. Sonia and I talked about how impactful niching has been for us, but Sonia also said she didn't think any of her pre-niching years were a waste. So if you're in the pre-niching stage and you're trying to figure out your niche, I don't want you to think that what you're doing is a waste because it's absolutely not, as Sonia's story has proven. All those years without a niche prepared Sonia for what was coming.

    So after all this, I know if you haven't niched but you want to, you're probably wondering, "Well, how do I pick a niche? How do I know what to go all in on?" My advice is that picking a niche too quickly is almost as painful as not having one at all. So don't rush it. Try a bit of everything and see what you enjoy doing most. See what you're good at and also see what the market responds well to.

    And don't forget if you're a service provider or consultant and you've already picked your niche but you're struggling to get seen, get noticed, and get known, check out my 90-minute masterclass, Nail Your Niche. It's only $39, but if you stuck around this long, I want you to enjoy a nice little $10 discount when you use the coupon code Mistakes at checkout. The link to the masterclass is in the show notes. Maybe I'll see you inside Nail Your Niche?

    Oh, by the way, I am also on Sonia's podcast this week. So if you enjoyed this episode and you're interested in inclusion and marketing, head over to the Inclusion and Marketing podcast and subscribe so that when my interview with Sonia drops, I think on Friday, in just a couple of days, in a few days, you get notified.

    Me and Sonia are talking about my experience as a Muslim speaking on stages at events and attending events and the kind of issues I face and have to try to navigate and how events in the business space can just be more inclusive.

    Ever wondered what goes into creating this podcast? What my production process looks like? How I came up with the concept for this show? How I choose which guests to invite and how exactly I research them? Well, I'm sharing everything inside my bonus episode, Behind the Scenes: Making the Podcast. For this special episode, the show's podcast producer, Zuri Berry, takes the reins and interviews me so you can find out all the juicy details and behind-the-scenes stories.

    I reveal, for the first time ever, how I landed the HubSpot partnership and what that agreement involves, as well as the key to sending a podcast pitch that'll get my attention, the interview methods that helped me nail my podcast interviews, and the resources and strategies I've used to help make this show a success.

    If you want instant access to this bonus episode, click the link in the show notes or head over to emancopyco.com/bts, that's behind the scenes, emancopyco.com/bts. Put in your email address, and that's it. It's yours.

Studio Elias https://www.studioelias.com
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Episode #29: “I let my fear of rejection hold me & my business back” (ENTER: The Rejection Challenge)