Episode #644: From Generalist to Niche: Scaling Through Focus, Certification and Community - with Janet Tanguay

What happens when you stop saying yes to everything and commit to the part of your business that customers really want?

In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, host Kevin Brent talks to Janet Tanguay, founder of The Hammock Way of Life, about the journey from broad business consulting to building a scalable business around vision boarding, coach certification and a growing global community.

Janet's story is a great example of how focus can unlock growth.

The turning point came during and after the pandemic. Janet had been using vision boarding to help businesses think creatively about their future, and demand began to grow. Rather than treating that demand as just another service opportunity, she recognised the market signal and made a deliberate decision to niche.

Importantly, that also meant saying no.

Janet turned down a significant project that didn't fit the direction she had chosen. That decision gave her the space to commit properly to the vision boarding opportunity, and she believes it accelerated the subsequent growth of the business.

But finding a niche created another challenge: how do you scale something that depends on your own expertise and delivery?

Janet's answer has been certification.

She developed a programme to train and certify other coaches in her methodology, with Module 1 accredited for CPD in the UK and Module 2 progressing through the process. The model combines online learning, live Q&A and curated resources, enabling Janet to build a global network of independent practitioners rather than relying on a traditional employee model.

What is particularly interesting is that the real value isn't simply the certification.

It's the community around it.

Members share resources, learn from each other and collaborate when clients need expertise outside their own areas. The community continues to develop its knowledge too, including work around aphantasia and making vision boarding more accessible to visually impaired people.

Rather than trying to protect the methodology through highly restrictive agreements, Janet's approach is to make the network valuable enough that people want to remain part of it.

That creates an important lesson for any founder thinking about scaling through partners, licences, franchises or certification:

Don't just create a method people can buy. Create an ecosystem they don't want to leave.

Removing the founder bottleneck

Janet is now tackling another familiar ScaleUp challenge: removing herself from the centre of the business.

At one stage she found herself facing 18 meetings in a single day, a pretty clear indication that the founder had become a bottleneck.

Her longer-term ambition is to exit the business within the next few years, but she wants an exit that protects the purpose, vision and values she has created.

That means systemising now.

She is looking at bringing in operational leadership and strengthening areas including CRM, IT and marketing so the business can operate successfully without depending on Janet for everyday delivery.

There's a valuable distinction here. Building a business that generates income for its founder isn't necessarily the same thing as building a business that somebody else could own.

Word of mouth isn't necessarily accidental

We also discuss Janet's approach to marketing.

Much of her growth comes through referrals and word of mouth, but Janet doesn't simply wait for recommendations to happen. She deliberately brings well-connected people into events and experiences, knowing that if they see the value first-hand they're likely to talk about it.

It's a useful reminder that word of mouth can be cultivated.

We also hear the story behind Janet's book, Hammock Way of Life: Leaping Toward Joy, including an unexpected appearance on a Times Square billboard and how that visibility itself created another potential business opportunity.

The standout message

Perhaps the strongest ScaleUp lesson from Janet's journey is:

Growth accelerated when she became clearer about what the business was going to do and, just as importantly, what it wasn't going to do.

Choosing a niche meant turning down work. Scaling the niche meant turning her knowledge into a repeatable methodology. And building something that can ultimately exist without her means deliberately removing herself as the bottleneck.

Those are three very different stages of the same journey from founder-led business to scalable organisation.

In this episode, we explore

• Why customer demand prompted Janet to pivot from general consulting into a specialist niche
• Why saying no to a large opportunity helped rather than hindered growth
• How certification can turn founder expertise into a scalable model
• Why community can become a competitive advantage
• How Janet is building an international network without creating a large employee base
• The importance of systems when you're trying to remove founder dependency
• Why Janet is thinking about her eventual exit years in advance
• How to cultivate word-of-mouth marketing rather than simply hoping for referrals
• What a Times Square billboard taught Janet about unexpected opportunities

The one key thing

Scaling often starts with choosing less.

Janet's experience demonstrates that focus isn't simply about becoming more efficient. It means having the confidence to decide where the greatest opportunity lies and saying no to work that distracts from it.

Once you've made that choice, the next question is how you build systems, people and a community that allow the idea to grow without everything continuing to depend on you.

Feeling busy but stuck?

Most founders I speak to feel busy but stuck. Plenty happening, but no real clarity on what matters most this quarter.

Here's what more than 500 interviews on this show have taught me: the founders who scale choose less, and deliver all of it.

That's what the G90 Summit is for.

It's a structured half-day where we cut through everything competing for your attention, agree the three to five things that must happen in the next 90 days, and build the rhythm to make sure they do.

Quarterly. Virtual. £97 a seat.

Find out more at Smart90.co.uk/summit.

And if you know somebody with an interesting ScaleUp story who would make a great guest for ScaleUp Radio, you can nominate them for a future episode.

Recommended Resources

Books
Made To Stick – Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Good to Great – Jim Collins

Let Them – Mel Robbins

Tech

Go High Level
Quickbooks

Suno

Claude

ChatGPT

Contact

 

LinkedIn: Janet Tanguay
Web: The Hammock Way of Life
Insta: The Hammock Way of Life