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Welcome to the first episode of season 4 of the Simplify & Multiply show. This entire season is dedicated to niching your business and every episode will have a guest sharing their tricks and insights regarding niche, business and marketing, and I’ll squeeze in between their wise advice to proffer additional tactics and thinking that has worked for me and my clients.

Let’s start by clarifying niche and how it relates to you growing your solopreneur business. In marketing 101, we are taught that niche marketing is when a business strategically targets a segment of the population with a specific need and fulfills that need. By design, this process of “niching” creates more demand because of focus and specialty.

On a large scale, many mainstream consumer brands excel at this: think Apple, Starbucks, Dollar Shave Club, Netflix, even Walmart. You’d think that Walmart is not niched because they are an omnipresent retailer, however they are niched because of the very specific problem they solve: affordability. However, there is an additional distinction around niche that ties directly to profitability. A “broad brand” such as Walmart may have wider interest due to the specific problem of affordability that they solve, however, their profitability is created primarily through volume and market saturation because of their reduced margins. The niche we’ll be focusing on in this season is about increasing profitability through personalization, aka niche brands, with larger profit margins because of the niche.

If you are solving a very specific problem, are able to find a segment of the population with that problem and can reach them without a huge expense, your niche can generate higher profitability. You can also create a new niche by identifying a problem before the people with that problem realize it’s a problem or something they wanted. Think: Uber, Bluetooth, Alexa, Air B&B, and other innovative brands which are changing the way we do business. We will continue to see these category-busting trends grow as people come to demand more control, access and lower costs to those things.

Niche brands are also referred to as “lifestyle brands,” meaning they provide access or confirmation of a specific lifestyle state or activity. In other words, being a consumer of a niche brand creates a lifestyle experience that the consumer uses to express who they are. This is also why successful niche brands, or lifestyle brands, spend much of their focus on experience and creating an intimate relationship with their target market. They know everything about them, and in many cases have even helped define who their target market is through the use and commitment to the niche brand’s product or service.

But let’s get this out of the stands and onto the court for you: the solopreneur. I have a cool exercise I want you to try out after I sort this out a bit more.

In my experience working with big companies and solopreneurs and everything in between, by far, I love working with solopreneurs the most. There are a lot of reasons why that’s so, but I believe the one I’m most aware of is my ability to help my solopreneur clients realize how awesome they are. Much of the work I do is with the thinking around my client’s businesses, which is necessary because we delve pretty deep into niche and what makes them unique. And not in the way you may be thinking, such as target market, problem you solve, etc., which yes, are all important, but what I like to discover when building a niche brand, or niche expert if you will, is deeper.

See, to me, niche is much more multi-dimensional, which seems counterintuitive, I know. Think of it this way. When you think of the clients you already have—what do they love about working with you? What is it about each conversation you have that has a positive, enjoyable and satisfying takeaway? For both of you? How do you inspire, relieve or serve your clients? If I was talking with them right now, and asked them these questions about working with you, what would they say?

I’ve done this inquiry with my clients. It was quite an eye opener when I did, too. Kinda blew my mind, and it gave me a new direction in how I positioned the work I do. See, most of my career has been about solving a tactical marketing problem. Improving sales, Building creative assets such as websites, brochures, branding, etc. Managing projects and getting stuff to printers and distributed. Social media campaigns running, opt-ins, webinars, funnels, etc. yadda yadda yadda. So of course I related my value to the thing I delivered, which was a tangible asset of some sort that drove an outcome for the business.

When I went out on my own, I got closer to understanding what my clients needed and started evolving how I helped them. As more underlying problems became apparent, like their lack of understanding of their ideal customer or that they were in a relationship business, not a “service” business, or that their “confidence” muscle was weak. These problems sharpened my coaching confidence, and I found that because I believed in my clients the way I did, I was able to coach them along to believing in themselves and understanding their customers better. This all evolved into designing relationship-based strategies for their business, not market-based strategies which can be misdirecting. That’s a fast and easy way to become commoditized, too, by the way.

This is where niche came in. I realized that niche was more than demographics and target market and all of that. It was much more. And in the case of working with solopreneurs with expertise in a specific area, it went well beyond their expertise. So if you think of me and my creative skills, what I discovered as my secret weapon, if you will, was my ability to counsel and strategically envision for my clients in such a way that they could realize the outcomes they wanted more enjoyably. Of course the tangible assets were still needed, and they likely always will be because of the way we market and sell our work, however, what my clients found was my biggest value—and niche—was my ability to own their possible future and boost their confidence that they could achieve it.

Here’s the tricky part: my clients are not openly seeking that type of person—they’re seeking a tangible, tactical thing. But when they work with me, as you’ll find in your own business, they realize the experience of working with me has so much value. And it is incumbent upon me to familiarize them with these unknown gaps and blindspots. It’s often an after-the-fact realization when our clients discover the real reason they love working with us.

So I know that’s a lot of commentary about niche and how I have evolved my business over the years to focus more on what my clients are really seeking and appreciating that they get when they work with me, and it was just an example from my own experience. Now let’s focus on you. Here’s a few things you can think about to help clarify the niche you may already be in, or create for yourself. One side note, there’s no permanence to niching. What I mean by that is your niche can evolve as you uncover more about your value perception by asking people you work with what you bring to the table, and also as YOU evolve as a solopreneur. So these practices should become a strategic exercise you do regularly.

This will be easier for you if you already have clients, but you can adapt these if you’re just starting out, too.

First of all, spend a few minutes searching articles on niche brands. Most of the content out there is geared toward consumer brands, but you can still extract value from what they have to say about niche brands. You don’t have to become a marketing expert to have a general understanding of marketing niche.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself and in some cases, of your clients:

What did your clients initially come to you for? What problem did they need solving?
What result did you provide as an outcome? The result could be something tangible or something that they experienced or shifted in their way of being, such as they gained greater insight into their business strategy or customer experience or they feel better about their health and vitality.
What changed in their world as a result of working with you? Was this something they could have gotten somewhere else?
How are you distinguishing your work from other competitors who your target clients may consider instead of you? Why would they choose you over a similar provider?
What are you providing your clients in working with them that you’re not distinguishing or charging for? This was a BIG red flag in my business that I realized I was doing and I was losing so much income as a result. But I didn’t know that I was doing it until I asked my clients what their biggest value was in working with me. And that was my consulting and strategic guidance. I would provide it as I worked with clients on their tactical projects, not as a standalone product. That is totally a different story in my business today and not only can I serve more clients now without killing myself, but I am getting them even BETTER results and they have so much more confidence and control. Pretty amazing.
Here’s the biggest one yet: In the work you’re currently doing (or will be doing if you’re just starting out), how much can you eliminate so you can focus on one aspect or one element of the larger scope of what you’re offering? Sometimes because we can do more, we end up offering more than our clients really want. We do that to be perceived as valuable, when in fact it dilutes our potency and expertise. So what can you pick or siphon from your services and narrow what you do to a very specific thing? Do it as a fun exercise. Start with something broad and break it down into the smallest elements and see if any of those can become a niche offering. It can be quite eye opening.

As a solopreneur, it’s hard to take the time to be strategic with your business and look at it from the perspective of niche. We’re myopic in how we view our business and clients, and struggle with the right visibility into our work to see where the opportunities are. This is why it’s great to have an objective perspective to help you see where your blindspots are.

Have fun with this exercise and you can even test out some of the niches you discover on a small segment of clients or prospects. I’m doing this with podcasting. Clients who want to get into podcasting or rebrand their show I offer them a great solution for their podcast that enables them to tie it to a revenue stream and know exactly how they produce it, market it, and make money from it.

If you want help with discovering your niche, reach out to me at PappyChat.com. It can be a lot of fun and also you may surprise yourself at how much simpler you can make your business by creating a new niche you never noticed was available.

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401: Introducing Season 4: Niche, Niche, Niche for Strength

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