Grow With Soul: Ep. 82 A New Way To Think About Niching
A week or so again 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 how to start thinking about your niche.
Here's what I talk about in this episode:
A niche can give you focus and establish what you are known for
Niching can also back you into a corner because if you are known for one thing, it is harder to change people’s opinion of you down the road
Niches give us steep initial growth but it is not sustainable growth
Niches often help us define “what” we do rather than “why” we do it
Focusing on the “why” instead of the "what" allows us to have flexibility with our business
Links I mention:
Questions
What’s the one thing you wish you could tell everyone in the world?
How do you enact this belief in your life at the moment?
What are your strengths and skills that can bring it to life for others?
Read the full episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to episode 82 of Grow With Soul. 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 how to start thinking about your niche.
First of all, I can understand why a niche is something you might want, and how it can be helpful. 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 own activity and your marketing. It gives you something to build upon, to know what will work, and to 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 if you go all in on a niche, then it can be really difficult to transition out of it. 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 big 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 are choosing a niche because you just 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, in order for them to work and for you to 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’re not wanting to make chutney for the rest of your life, the benefits of finding a niche are short term. You have the feeling of comfort and security for the first few months, and then slowly to 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 why we want to have a niche is that we see people with niches growing faster, so we think that’s the way to do it. That coach who has the ‘thing’ and all the graphics is 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 very small niche you really can run out of new things to say, and also 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 out, coaching. I could have gone all in on being The Marketing Coach, and I think I did 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 focused 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 6 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 in 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 the way in which 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 market is about finding freedom and control, I just also have options too.
So, by thinking of your niche as a Why not a What, it might just be possible to get the benefits of the niche without the downsides. Get that certainty and focus, be known for something, but also 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 just pick, it’s something that is already within you – but that also means you have agency in this. I think we often approach things like purpose and our ideal customer with thinking we have to find the right answer – when really 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 if you want more, The Purpose Kit goes into much more depth.
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 just need something that’s enough for you to organise your thoughts around and that is recognisable to someone else. The point here is that it will evolve as you do, so you can leave some room.
So how do you use your niche if it’s a Why not a What? In exactly 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 also 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 in 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.
