“You need to niche down so small that only you fit in.”
Leona Carter empowers women to build intimacy with their husbands through the power of dating again to enhance communication, from the kitchen to the bedroom.
Leona is an International Empowerment Speaker, International-Multi-best-selling Author, and a Certified Intimacy and Relationship Coach. As the President and CEO of Carter Strategies, Leona hosts, Hey Coach Carter TV, where she talks to married women who are building their business and their bedroom. Leona has been featured on CBS, FOX, ABC, NBC, and more.
Married since 1995, Leona, and her high school sweetheart, Omarr, have six children and one grandson. Leona and her family moved from Seattle Washington to Kalamazoo Michigan for the tuition-based program called The Kalamazoo Promise, where her family was featured in the New York Times.
Leona’s energetic personality and vibrancy set her apart from the normalcy of entrepreneurship. She blazes a trail everywhere she goes through her passion for serving.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us today. Please introduce yourself to our readers. They want to know you, some of the background story to bring some context to your interview.
Leona Carter: I am an Intimacy and Relationship Coach for married women. I married my high school sweetheart, and we have six beautiful kids. A fun fact about me is that growing up, I had no desire to be married and no desire to run a business. Today, I have been married 26 years and having a relationship coaching business. I think God has a sense of humor.
You are a successful entrepreneur, so we’d like your viewpoint, do you believe entrepreneurs are born or made? Explain.
Leona Carter: I believe entrepreneurs are born with a gift to serve the world even before they fully understand. Most people think being an entrepreneur means you know what you are doing 100% of the time, but it’s quite the opposite. When an individual finally accepts the call on their life to impact others, it takes courage to share your idea with the world. Entrepreneurs understand that their gift is bigger than them. Character and integrity to share their brilliance with the world are cultivated and developed over time. In addition, plenty of people decided that staying the same is more painful than changing and created or made an entrepreneurial pathway for their life.
If you were asked to describe yourself as an entrepreneur in a few words, what would you say?
Leona Carter: I would describe myself as S.P.I.C.E.
- Shows
- Powerful
- Intentionality
- Consistently
- Everyday
Tell us about what your company does and how did it change over the years?
Leona Carter: As an Intimacy and Relationship coach, I empower women to build intimacy with their husbands through the power of dating again. Over the years, I have created more confidentiality in my business model. A few years ago, I used to train public speakers, which is a very public platform. When I switched to being a Relationship Coach, the methods I used before for marketing were ineffective in the relationship space.
Thank you for all that. Now for the main focus of this interview. With close to 11.000 new businesses registered daily in the US, what must an entrepreneur assume when starting a business?
Leona Carter: Assume you need to employ the H.E.A.R.T. Method to get clarity in your coaching business. Here are five things you need to do to create a successful business.
- H — Hearing
What do you hear your audience saying? It’s essential to listen to your audience’s needs so you can accurately provide the transformation they need.
- E — Excellence
Where do you excel in excellence? Often, coaches look at the industry to find what’s trending instead of operating in excellence in the expertise they didn’t know was valuable. Many new coaches dismiss what they’re good at because it comes to them so effortlessly, but people will pay you for your expertise.
- A — Articulation
Are you able to articulate the solution you provide for the problem your clients have? Because of the power of clarity when communicating to your clients, copywriting is such a phenomenal skill set because it helps you articulate the solution for your brand.
- R — Receptive
When starting your coaching business, understand, as a C.E.O., be open and receptive to learning and growing. If you come up with an idea, you don’t have to marry that ideal for the life of your business. I didn’t realize I could change an idea when it was no longer working in my business. I thought I was obligated to make it work. Being receptive helps you to understand why it’s not working and what could work better.
- T — Transformation
What is the transformation you provide for your customers? For example, if you’re a health coach, you may not be the health coach for someone’s entire journey. You might be the health coach for them until they lose their first 25 pounds. You may not be the coach for their entire health journey of losing one hundred pounds. It’s essential to get clear on the specific transformation you provide.
After you have employed the H.E.A.R.T. Method, assume your ideal target audience is still too broad and narrow your niche even more.
A common mistake many people make is that their target audience is too broad. One of my business mentors said, “You need to niche down so small that only you fit in.” Most people think their niche is small enough, but nine times out of ten, it’s not. I wrote an article in October 2019 titled, ‘How small can you get?’
Here is an excerpt from my article where I outline an example of narrowing down your target audience: “Every book, every business, every store, and every clothing line has an ideal client. The smaller your focus is, the easier it is to market and write to your client.
HOW SMALL CAN YOU GET?
- I write for an audience of women readers.
OR
- I write for an audience of married women readers.
OR
- I write for an audience of married women, readers who never experienced motherhood.
OR
- I write for an audience of married women, readers who never experienced motherhood and married a mama’s boy.
I have taken the bigger picture of women readers and made it very small and specific.”
Coaches need to evaluate if they are fine-tuning their audience enough. When you do this, that’s when the client says, “Wow, it’s like you were speaking directly to me.”
Did you make any wrong assumptions before starting a business that you ended up paying dearly for?
Leona Carter: A mistake I made was serving my audience a buffet instead of appetizers. Many times I created a product or service, and I had steps 1 through 25 in one program. I often overwhelmed clients or potential clients with too much information at once. People need to consume bite-size appetizers.
For example, if you are a Parenting Coach, first of all, be known for the “one thing.” Just because someone wants to hire you to help them with their children doesn’t mean you coach them until high school. You may be the coach that trains parents to teach their children how to transition from one activity to another the prevent meltdowns. You can be known as The Meltdown Mama because you help parents support their children to rid meltdowns.
Look at your coaching programs and determine if you are overwhelming your clients. Even if you do comprehensively help clients, you can’t market that way. You have to promote the “one thing” so that it’s bite-size and easy to consume. In my 28 Dates Intimacy Coaching Program, I market by asking how intimacy is in your marriage. Many marriages suffer from communication issues, parental issues, and more, but my specialty is empowering women to build intimacy with their husbands; therefore, it’s clear how I serve. It doesn’t mean we don’t talk about other areas. I am serving appetizers as their first course. Once they have consumed the appetizers, then I serve the second course. I don’t present clients with all 8-courses at one time.
If you could go back in time to when you first started your business, what advice would you give yourself and why? Explain
Leona Carter: I would tell myself, focus on the “one thing.” Many times being multitalented and multi-passionate makes you feel like you have to have multi streams of income right away. It’s important to work and perfect one area so that you have the energy to dedicate to the “one thing,” otherwise your energy is divided between too many tasks and projects.
What is the worst advice you received regarding running a business and what lesson would you like others to learn from your experience?
Leona Carter: The worst advice I received was a Pastor telling me, “People don’t invest in their relationships. You should think of something else to coach.” I was shocked at that horrible advice. Luckily for me, I knew it was not good advice; therefore, I never acted in the poor direction; instead, I pondered if other Pastors thought likewise. I am a relationship coach because of the many ups and downs I had in my relationship. We invested in our relationship and are still married today because of it.
In your opinion, how has COVID-19 changed what entrepreneurs should assume before starting a business? What hasn’t changed?
Leona Carter: It’s important to understand the fear that people may have since Covid-19. Many people have lost love ones and interacting with the public will never be the same. You also don’t know the varying levels of how Covid-19 has personally affected individuals who had it themselves and thought they were not going to live to tell their story. I have a male friend who has a very tough exterior and shared on his Facebook live just how scared he was that he would die from Covid-19 because it affected his body in such a devastating manner.
What hasn’t changed is the level of customer service we should continue to have for our customers. Even though our world has been through a pandemic, customers should know that we value them and their business.
What is a common myth about entrepreneurship that aspiring entrepreneurs and would-be business owners believe in? What advice would you give them?
Leona Carter: A common myth is that you have to be an expert who knows everything possible in your niche to be effective. The reality is you can take your audience on the journey with you while learning and growing together, even though you are the expert.
What traits, qualities, and assumptions do you believe are most important to have before starting a business?
Leona Carter: The top trait to have in business is resiliency. It’s not about if things happen in your business; it’s about when things happen that disappoint you. The quicker the turnaround, the quicker you can get to your eyes.
An excellent quality to have is asking questions. This will expedite your learning and growing when you get comfortable asking questions. A great assumption to have is that no one will work as hard or be as passionate about your business as you.
How can aspiring leaders prepare themselves for the future challenges of entrepreneurship? Are there any books, websites, or even movies to learn from?
Leona Carter: One of the best resources leaders can do is join niche-specific groups. This will provide the ongoing support you need in your business. Also. find the business division to your state capital so that you can call with any questions you have about starting your business.
You have shared quite a bit of your wisdom and our readers thank you for your generosity but would also love to know: If you could choose any job other than being an entrepreneur, what would it be?
Leona Carter: I would be an attorney. I am an advocate to the core. As an adoptive mother, I would be a family law attorney to empower and support families.
Thank you so much for your time, I believe I speak for all of our readers when I say that this has been incredibly insightful. We do have one more question: If you could add anyone to Mount Rushmore, but not a politician, who would it be; why?
Leona Carter: It would be the gospel singer Kirk Franklin because his music has taken us through so many transformational times in our world. His music has comforted, inspired, and uplifted millions of people all over the world.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Leona Carter for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Leona Carter or her company, you can do it through her – Facebook
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