The days of the generalist are long gone. Your niche is your key to better clients, better work, better business all around. Picking a specific niche, like Microblading Marketing, is the way forward if you want to thrive.
And yet, you’re afraid. You think: “Oh, I don’t want to limit myself or limit my prospects” or “I’m good at so many things.” No denying it, you’re a multi-talented and infinitely brilliant person. However. The challenge of carving out your niche isn’t about being smaller; it’s about being sharper and having the capacity to go deeper into what you do for more people.
I recently interviewed Ilise Benun of marketing-mentor.com, one of my fave experts in the world of solopreneurship, on my show Solopreneur. And she said, “If you don’t go looking for who you want to work with, you have to take what comes along.” She couldn’t be more right.
The solution? Pick a niche—which also happens to be the name of her new program (The Pick-a-Niche Kit, which is worth checking out). It’s not about limiting yourself or your business. Quite the opposite. It’s about driving your business in a direction, rather than standing on the side of the road with your thumb out, hoping someone, anyone, will pick you up.
I like to think of it not as limiting your scope, but deepening it—and at the same time, sharpening your edge. How can you get good when you’re being a jack of all trades? You can’t. You’re also a lot harder to market.
Start honing your niche
Think about the one thing you’d spend all your time doing if you could…that has payoff for the client. Say you’re in PR, and you don’t love booking media, but you do love—A LOT—reaching out to your network and seeing where promotional opportunities are. You haven’t found your niche yet, but take a look at where that network lives. Maybe it’s in health, wellness and medical. There’s your niche. It doesn’t make any sense to market yourself to anyone wanting publicity—you’r enot going to get many musicians. But doctors? Yeah. And there are a ton of them who need your skills.
You can find your sweet spot by thinking about the problems you love to solve, too. How do you like to solve them? What solutions make you pleased and happy? Your answers illuminate what you’re especially suited to do.
Get a second opinion
This is where your network is a huge asset. Your friends, colleagues, former coworkers and clients, and mentors can help you zero in on your sweet spot in a way you just can’t on your own; they see you without the limiting filters you put on yourself.
Check out my brand new FREE eBook, “Take the WORK Out of Networking”! It helps you turn network-building from total suck-fest into the best thing you do.
I find it works best to send out a survey (Survey Monkey or Google Forms are both fine) that people can respond to anonymously. These questions have served me well in the past
- What would you say are three of my greatest strengths?
- What kinds of issues/problems are you most likely to ask for my help with specifically?
- What’s one thing that you believe you can always count on me for?
- What do you think I do better than most other people you know?
- What’s one area I could stand to improve the most?
Give it time
It’s thrilling to tap into what you do well and want to do more of, so exciting that you might want to launch a new website in the next five minutes. Take a breath! Meaty creative change like this come from noodling around and trying things out. Start by revisiting and rethinking some of your marketing materials or website language. Maybe shift some of your messaging, or try prospecting with a different crowd. As you get clearer about your niche, you can do a few free sessions to get feedback or testimonials.
Not only will your niche be more robust, but by taking your foot off the gas a bit, you’ll get to see if there’s demonstrated interest in what you have to offer. The work and time will pay off, because once you have a good sense of what you’re selling and to whom, you’ll jump with confidence at the right opportunities and clients.