Finding Your Niche

A week or so ago, I did an ‘Ask Me Anything on Stories,’ and a question that came up more than once was, “how do you find your niche?”. I found I couldn’t quite put into a couple of paragraphs what I think about niching, and as a few people had asked, I thought it might be worth doing a podcast episode on niching — so here we are. I think niching is something that comes up over and over again in your business — it’s often something we want to get ‘right’ at the start, but it continues to rear its head as we keep developing our work. I have a mixed relationship with the niche. I change between thinking it’s a good and a bad thing, so today I thought I’d explore the why’s and wherefore’s of niching and start thinking about your niche.

First of all, I can understand why a niche is something you might want and how it can help. It feels like certainty amidst a whole lot of uncertainty — even if you’re flying by the seat of your pants and your self-doubt is off the charts, at least you know what your niche is. A niche can give you focus, both in terms of your activity and your marketing. It gives you something to build upon, know what will work, and not have that blank page syndrome when you sit down to create something. It’s easier to write captions and blog posts when you have your niche providing the topic.

In this way, a niche also really helps to establish what you’re known for. You can become the person that ___ — the lady that makes chutney, the coach that builds community, the designer that’s all about flowers. Again, because you have this certainty because you’re able to create all your marketing around that thing you do, it feels like a safe place to nestle down in.

However, my problem with the concept of niching has always been that it backs you into a corner. At first, it feels comforting and secure, like you’ve got everything together, but the price of that security is that you’re stuck with it. You might be ok with that! Plenty of businesses are, but it cannot be easy to transition out of it if you go all-in on a niche. What if the lady who makes chutney wants to start making jam? Who wants to buy jam from the person who makes the best chutney? If you’re known for one thing, it’s hard to change people’s opinions of you. And let’s face it, chutney to jam isn’t a giant leap. Imagine if the designer that’s all about flowers wants to start business coaching.

It might be that all you want for the rest of your life is to make chutney and all power to you. But if you choose a niche because you want to get your foot on the first rung of the ladder, you will likely quickly outgrow that first niche and then not know how to get to the next rung. The thing with niches is that for them to work and get the benefit, you have to be all in with them, not hedge your bets — but when you’re all in, it’s hard to back yourself out.

If you do not want to make chutney for the rest of your life, the benefits of finding a niche are short term. You feel comfort and security for the first few months and then slowly start to outgrow the niche and feel stuck. You don’t feel able to evolve your work and develop within it, because you’re a designer, people come to for flowers and nothing else. I think part of the reason we want to have a niche in that we see people with niches growing faster, so we believe that’s how to do it. That coach who has the ‘thing’ and all the graphics are getting so many new followers, the podcast on a kooky niche topic is everywhere. But this is the thing with niches: you may see steep initial growth, but it isn’t sustained over time. That growth eventually plateaus and drops off partly because if you have a tiny niche, you can run out of new things to say, and audiences will get their fill. Say you’re a coach who specialises in community building — once your audience has built a community, they’ve no reason to stay hanging around. As trends move on, so does the audience.

All of this happens because we define a niche as a what, not a why. All the downsides I’ve been describing are the downsides of defining your business by WHAT you do, rather than WHY you do it.

Let’s use me as an example. My what is marketing, and when I was starting, coaching. I could have gone all-in on being The Marketing Coach, and I think I occasionally dip my toe in those waters. Just think of the snazzy branding and Instagram graphics I could have had as The Marketing Coach! All my content would be super focussed on marketing tips, and it would be easy for people to see that Instagram handle and get what I did. But I would have felt trapped in that within about six months.

I have documented heavily over the last few months, my transitioning away from providing 121 coaching — imagine how much harder that would have been if I was known as The Marketing Coach. As The Marketing Coach, I wouldn’t have been able to explore new areas of my work and writing, like my blog posts about productivity and experiencing business rather than just marketing tips. These are some of my favourite things to write, and I know if I had to be The Marketing Coach, I wouldn’t feel the freedom to create these things this way. And much of your favourite content, the personal insights, the far-reaching coaching episodes, probably wouldn’t exist either. I wouldn’t feel I had the flexibility and scope to experiment.

But instead of niching around a What, I focused on a Why. My Why is that everyone deserves to find their version of freedom in their life, to feel like they’re the architect of it rather than an intern — and right now, I can help people who want to achieve that by running their own business. So rather than centre my business around marketing, marketing became how I delivered the Why. And over time, that leaked out to not just be marketing, but also productivity and mindset too — and it will likely continue to evolve as I do. I still have focus. Everything I create and the market is about finding freedom and control. I also have options.

So, by thinking of your niche as a Why not a What, it might just be possible to get the niche’s benefits without the downsides. Get that certainty and focus, be known for something, and have room to grow and pivot with ease. THIS is why always bang on about the why.

Now you’re thinking, ok, so how do I work out the why then?! I can’t tell you there’s a simple hop, skip, and a jump to get there. A Why isn’t something you can pick, it’s already within you — but that also means you have agency in this. We often approach things like purpose and our ideal customer with thinking we have to find the right answer — when it’s all up to you. The only person who decides it’s right is you.

Here are some questions to help you get into it, but The Purpose Kit goes into much more depth if you want more.

What’s the one thing you wish you could tell everyone in the world?

How do you enact this belief in your life?

What are your strengths and skills that can bring it to life for others?

It’s important to remember that we’re not going for a perfect, final, complete thing here — anything too rigid, and you get backed into that corner again. We need something that’s enough for you to organise your thoughts around, which is recognisable to someone else. The point here is that it will evolve as you do so that you can leave some room.

So how do you use your niche if it’s a Why not a What? In precisely the same way. You still focus your content around it, focus your products and offerings around it, use it as the basis for your messaging — it’s just a bit broader. Let’s take our chutney lady. Rather than niche around chutney, she niches around her Why, that food is the way to connect with others. For now, she’s creating chutney, but she does some sharing packs and “buy one, send one to a friend” offers because that’s her niche, her Why. She creates blog posts about conversation-starting cheese boards and her memories of connecting with her grandmother over a jam pot. Over time, she begins to add new things to her range, some jams, some biscuits, all that have an origin based on her core belief that food is the way to connect with others. She maybe gets a food magazine column or a book deal based on this. Niching with your why adds depth.

I hope this episode has been food for thought and given you a new way to think about niching. As I said in the intro, I vacillate between thinking they’re a good and a bad thing — and as my Why is about freedom and being in control, I guess my issues with niching run deeper because those downsides are in direct opposition to one of my core values. Ultimately, only you can decide what is right for you and your business, and as long as you feel you’re making decisions based on truthful reasons, you can stand by yourself.

Check out this content through my podcast episode!
Grow With Soul: Ep. 82 A New Way To Think About Niching