Why Niching Down Feels Like Shrinking Yourself

Niching feels like shrinking because when the product is your own judgement, narrowing the offer feels like narrowing yourself. The way through is to change the picture. Stop seeing a box you have to squeeze into, and start seeing a sign you put in the ground: if you've come from here and you want to get there, this is the way.

Why does niching down feel like I'm limiting myself?

Because you're not selling a widget. You're selling how you think, what you notice and what you'd do about it. Tell someone like that to niche and they hear "cut yourself down to one slice and pretend the rest isn't there". Nobody signs up for that happily. The discomfort is telling you something true. It's just pointing at the wrong fix.

It never sat right with me either

I give niching as advice. It still never sat right with me, and I couldn't work out why.

Part of it is human. In the words of Kierkegaard (or Wayne’s World depending on your preferred philosophy source): “When you label me, you negate me”. Niching reduces something that can't really be reduced. That's hard when the thing you're selling is you.

I hear the same resistance from clients constantly, dressed up as strategy. "I don't want to limit my market too much."

It sounds like a commercial decision. Most of the time it's the feeling of being put in a box.

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Why it feels so final

The other part took me longer to see. We mix up narrowing with finishing.

When something's finished, you don't get another crack at it. So putting a niche out into the world feels like signing off on a version of you that doesn't quite fit. A label on the lid, taped shut. You've got a thing out there that doesn't really represent you, and that's where the hesitation comes from.

But a niche is written in chalk. You can say what it is now and where it's heading, and you can go back and refine it.

And spreading wide first wasn't a mistake. Broadening feels like progress because it is. When you're building something that didn't exist, you have to throw some shit at the wall before you can narrow it into a thing. Narrowing is what comes next, because it puts something on the hook that the world can pick up and hold.

A sign in the ground

Here's the visual that changed it for me.

Think of the signs on the highway out of town. Sydney 1000km. Brisbane 1800km. Wagga Wagga off to the left. Nobody reads those and thinks less of the road. They tell you where each one leads so you can pick.

A niche works the same way. You put your sign in the ground and say: if you've come from here and you want to get there, this is the way.

It still narrows and defines. That's why the advice works. The sign points down one road, not all of them. But it doesn't reduce you, and nobody's forced down it. You're marking the path for the people who want to walk it.

Skipping the sign doesn't keep your options open either. If you don't sign anything, you're just sending people out.

Two things happen once the sign is up.

You become infinitely more buyable, because the right person can see themselves at the start of the road.

And the idea of you travels faster. Someone hears a mate describe the exact spot they're stuck in and says, "Oh, you want to get there? Go and see them." Nobody passes on "I help businesses grow."

You can have more than one sign. Roads fork all the time. But finish one first, or at least get it good enough to be useful.

What goes on the sign

This is where people slip, even after they've made peace with narrowing.

A consultant I work with told me he was already niched because he works with Xero clients. That's a sign telling people what car you drive. It says nothing about where the road goes. The software is how you do the work. Nobody's trying to get to it.

Signs like that get read at surface level, and as I told him at the time, "If you stay at that top level, you'll pretty much just sell hours of service."

A useful sign names two places. Where your client is standing right now, and where they want to end up. From where, to where. Get those right and the industry, the software and the job title start to matter a lot less.

Put one sign up this week

The sign can be simple: I'm great at helping ___ when ___ so that ___.

The first blank is who. The second is the moment they're standing in, your "from where". The third is where they want to get to.

Then you’ve just gotta say it out loud and listen for one thing. Does anyone say "oh, you should talk to..."? That's the sign working. If nobody does, you haven't failed. Rub out the chalk and write it again.

Hold it lightly. It's a sign, and if you don’t get the language right the first time, you change it. Just don't leave the road unmarked.

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