Tasneem Damji is a career and education coach who believed the students she most wanted to serve could never fund a business, and that her work was seasonal. Inside Legacy Builders she claimed her Category of One, narrowed to one offer and one program, rebuilt the model year round, and got clear enough on her numbers to know exactly what it costs to serve one student. She now coaches scholarship students across the Global South from her living room, and the business pays for it.
Tasneem Damji is a career and education coach who helps students get into university.
Tasneem came into Legacy Builders having already worked with Kristin one-to-one but the conversation she had around what her Category of One work was is what shifted the gear.
This inquiry surfaced a skill set she had never fully named and made her want to play a bigger game. What stood in the way was a set of assumptions she had stopped noticing were assumptions.
Tasneem did not need more ideas. She needed to claim the space that was hers, build an offer ecosystem around that that allowed her to position herself and her work as the premium offer in her space.
Key Steps Taken:
In roughly a year, Tasneem went from a seasonal practice she struggled to describe to a clearly positioned, year-round business that now funds the work she most wanted to be doing.
Tasneem Damji is a career and education coach who helps students get into university.
Tasneem came into Legacy Builders having already worked with Kristin one-to-one but the conversation she had around what her Category of One work was is what shifted the gear.
This inquiry surfaced a skill set she had never fully named and made her want to play a bigger game. What stood in the way was a set of assumptions she had stopped noticing were assumptions.
- She believed the people she most wanted to serve could never fund a business, so the work that mattered most to her stayed a side project.
- She believed her income was capped by a four-month college/university application season.
- She couldn’t yet clearly articulate why the way she worked with students was so different than the experience they would get with other providers offering university application support.
- Her process was currently all in her head and required 1:1 touch to facilitate the results she promised.
Tasneem did not need more ideas. She needed to claim the space that was hers, build an offer ecosystem around that that allowed her to position herself and her work as the premium offer in her space.
Key Steps Taken:
- We used the Category of One work to identify the specific skill set underneath twenty years of expertise, and narrowed her focus so she could focus on the one offer she was uniquely positioned to be the only real option in her space - UBC University applications.
- We iterated her positioning repeatedly, often refining it live against conversations she was having with ideal clients, until she could articulate it in language that made sense to them.
- We tested the seasonal assumption. It did not hold, and the model was rebuilt around serving her ideal client year-round.
In roughly a year, Tasneem went from a seasonal practice she struggled to describe to a clearly positioned, year-round business that now funds the work she most wanted to be doing.
- Claimed her Category of One and narrowed to one offer and one program she can articulate clearly
- Rebuilt the business from a September to December season into year round work, which she names as the biggest shift of the year
- Brought the purpose work inside the business, supporting scholarship students and alumni across the Global South with the Spark of Hope Foundation
- Ran a fully funded workshop for a room of Afghan girls in Canada, every one of whom left with the first lines of her scholarship essay on the page
Summary
The Client
The Challenge
The Solution
The Results
The Client's Perspective
Let's Build Yours
"It was really highlighting some things that I never thought about. That I have a real skill set, that I have a quality in my gifts that I didn't necessarily know that I had, that was so related to the work that I do. Now I feel so much better because I'm so niched. It's very clear what I can offer."
Connect with Tasneem Here
There is a version of your work you have been putting off until the business could afford it. A room you would run. A group you would serve. A thing you would build if there were ever enough margin and enough time.
That order is backward, and it is the reason it has stayed a someday for years. Your business is what makes the work possible, and it only becomes capable of carrying it once you claim the one thing you are positioned to own outright.
Category of One is where established experts do exactly that. We name your Category of One, narrow it to a signature offer ecosystem that makes you the only real option in your space, and take every limit you have accepted as fact and test it to see if it’s even true.
Stop playing to be the best of many. Become the only.
That order is backward, and it is the reason it has stayed a someday for years. Your business is what makes the work possible, and it only becomes capable of carrying it once you claim the one thing you are positioned to own outright.
Category of One is where established experts do exactly that. We name your Category of One, narrow it to a signature offer ecosystem that makes you the only real option in your space, and take every limit you have accepted as fact and test it to see if it’s even true.
Stop playing to be the best of many. Become the only.