A common mistake business owners make when they first start out and in the building phase is trying to be all things to all people. It makes perfect sense. When you are trying to ramp up your business and make the entrepreneur dream happen, it is only natural to try to do whatever you can to earn those first dollars.

Their websites casually offer every type of service under the sun in hopes of booking someone, anyone.

I see this ALL the time with newer wedding planners.

Their services read like a Cheesecake Factory menu.

If you’ve never been to Cheesecake Factory, I’ll tell you they have the CRAZIEST menu. It is pages and pages and pages long filled with every type of food under the sun.

Major decision fatigue happens every time I happen to visit. And I don’t know about you, but I am always skeptical of restaurants who try to sell a million different types of dishes. Like there’s NO WAY they can be good at cooking all this stuff. I immediately get suspicious that everything is just mediocre.

Like Cheesecake Factory, I see a bunch of newbie wedding planners list out more services than you can imagine. Take a peek at how long the list can go:

1. Day of Coordination
2. Partial Planning
3. Full-Service Planning
4. Design Services
5. Planning Consultations
6. Bridal Shower Planning
7. Bachelorette Party Planning
8. Wedding Welcome Box curation and assembly
9. Rehearsal Dinner Planning
10. Wedding Favors curation and assembly
11. Floral Design
12. Wedding Day Bridal Party Concierge services
13. And then I’ll see wedding planners even list services like Corporate Party Planning, Birthday Party Planning, Baby Shower Planning, and on and on.

I mean seriously, I’ve seen the list go on.

There is nothing wrong with being a full-service or multi-passionate company, BUT when your offerings and products on your website rival a Cheesecake Factory menu, the customer loses sight of what makes you unique. What you are BEST at. How you can BEST serve them.

Coming Face to Face with My Own Cheesecake Factory Menu

I recently came face to face with this dilemma in my own business. My Unique Value Proposition is: Easy to Edit Website Templates that Convert.

But I didn’t start my digital product shop with website templates. The MMC shop started with Marketing and Client Experience templates available for use with Canva and Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator.

I sold templates like a client welcome packet, email marketing opt-in PDF templates, a mission and pricing guide template, brand and mood boards, and more.

The templates did okay in terms of sales, but when I introduced the website template line, I was blown away by the success of that new line.

My ideal customer evolved along with the website templates and so did my unique value proposition. Most all of my online efforts including my website right down to that tagline were directly focusing on my website template customers.

The Pareto Principle in Business

Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle?

It states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Or 80% of the output comes from 20% of the input. The 80/20 rule is a phenomenon that has many applications in life and business.

A few examples that have been proven in business with the Pareto Principle:

80% of traffic to your website lands on 20% of your website pages. –That means those 20% of pages are the most critical to your customer journey.

80% of your leads come from 20% of your marketing efforts. – Which is why it is so important not to waste your time trying to be present EVERYWHERE, but rather hone in on the marketing strategies that produce the highest quality results in new leads for your business.

20% of your time produces 80% of the results. – That’s why people preach work smarter not harder. Ever heard of the international best-selling book The 4 Hour Work Week? Tim Ferriss is the king of figuring out what you should spend your time on and teaches you how to eliminate the 80% of excess work hours that aren’t contributing to growth.

80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers – This is why it is paramount to figure out who your ideal customer is so you can go find more of them!

And similarly, 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products or services. If this is true (which it has been proven time and time again), then it brings us to a major decision.

Should we remove the excess 80% off of products or services that aren’t profitable?

What would happen if you did? Could you get even clearer in your messaging across the board in WHO you serve and WHAT you do for them? Could you spend more time on your website speaking directly to those 20% of customers who bring in 80% of your revenue? Could you remove more decision fatigue from the equation? 

The answer is yes! Of course you can!

Is your website anti-cheesecake?

Take a few minutes to pull up your own website and look at it through the lens of the Cheesecake menu.

Are any of the products or services you are actively and publicly offering competing for attention with the core 20% of offerings that bring in the bacon? If the answer yes, I’d encourage you to think about what it would look like to remove them from your mental load, your workload, and your website.

It took me almost a year to commit to removing the Marketing Templates from my own product lineup, but I can guarantee you that my unique value proposition is all the more stronger without them!

Letting go can make all the difference in a powerful website that converts!

PS: Dear wedding planner that has a Cheesecake Menu of services, I get it! I was you once 😉 I used to be a wedding planner and made this very mistake (hence me spotting it so easily these days!). No shame, girlfriend! We all start somewhere!