I’ve written before about picking a niche. It’s bringing focus to your work.
There are 4 parts of entrepreneurship I mainly consider when I’m talking about focusing:
The market: Who your clients are.
The product: What you help your clients with.
The packaging: How you show up and the way you help solve your client's challenge.
The strategy: The plan you make to build your business.
It can be very beneficial to focus you work. You get to make high-value solutions, become thé person to call. It allows for a clearer brand and specificity in your communication. And you free up mental capacity and get to see a clear path to making your business succeed.
Read here if you want a deep dive into the benefits.
However, even though there are benefits, it’s incredibly unpopular advice.
Many people really resist the idea and throw up objections.
I want to describe the 9 main objections I hear to the advice to focus.
My hope is that it helps you understand better what’s going on and why you’re objecting.
Because you might be right, but it helps to unpack it to see whether your resistance is based on solid ideas. Or is it reactive and based on fear?
For each of these 9 objections, I’ll give a reframe or a different way of looking at it.
For some, I try to lay bare what might be going on underneath for you.
Meet the resistance
I’ve grouped these into 3 layers, based on what part of you is resisting.
SMART → “Dumb idea. Let’s think up a smarter alternative!”
SOCIAL → “I won’t be a part of the group!”
SAFE → “This could go horribly wrong!”
I’ve called them layers because they go from superficial to existential.
Perhaps you recognize the similarities to the three Voices coined by Otto Scharmer in Theory U: The Voices of Judgment, Cynicism, and Fear. You could also describe them as objections of the Head, Heart, and Hands.
Layer 1: Is it SMART?
In all of these, the mind gets to work to come up with clever reasons why you shouldn’t pick a niche.
Being smart as a protection mechanism.
Let’s take a look at 4 common objections that attack the idea on its merits.
1. “A smaller pond”
The clearest resistance is over that picking a niche means making the pond you fish in smaller.
Excluding the potential amount of customers you could help or skillsets you could bring to the table means indeed that there are fewer different things you are going to take on.
Why would you want to decrease the potential market right at the start?
Limiting your options sounds unwise.
You won’t change the world and that goes against all the popular stories of rockstar entrepreneurs.
It feels wrong because it seems more doable to get a minuscule fraction of a big pie than to gain a meaningful percentage of a smaller pie.
But does it hold up?
Is it possible to succeed when you try to be great at everything for everyone?
Maybe. But it doesn’t seem likely.
Let’s flip it around. Which ones would you guess to succeed? Which one would you trust enough to hire?
The ones who have dedicated themselves to the specific problem you have? Or, the ones who say they do a lot of different things and this is also something they could do?
Clear right?
So, the question is “What is the most specific type of client that I know I can serve well and do enough work for to run a business?”
Or what Seth Godin calls “The Smallest Viable Audience”.
Now, it won’t work if you simply stay the same, but work for a smaller set of clients. That ignores the opportunity it gives.
That is that you’ve decreased the size of the pond by only allowing a specific type of client, with specific problems who want to be helped in a certain way.
For them, it becomes much easier to figure out how to be of real value.
You become much better equipped to solve their problem really well. This means sales become easier and the rates higher.
It’s better to be king of a small estate than to live in flee-bottom in the biggest kingdom.
And remember it is not a limit you put on yourself forever and you can always expand later. But you’ll do so from a better position.
2. “It’ll be boring”
The idea that you’ll have to do the same work for the rest of your life is dreadful.
You might get your creativity from doing many different things.
You want to be able to do everything (or at least enough variation of things) in your life.
Focus can limit the variety of your work. You fear you’ll get stuck with one thing that will become repetitive and boring.
While that indeed isn’t an appealing idea, it never pans out this way.
Because you don’t have to focus on all of the areas I mentioned above.
It’s not focusing on ánd a specific client group, ánd on what you help them with, ánd the format or packaging of that work.
And, once you’ve done a type of work well for a group of clients, they’ll trust you more to do something else.
So narrowing down on the type of clients might make the number of different things you can do bigger. Resulting in more variety down the line.
Plus, once you’re so good at that specific skill of clientele that they can’t ignore you, you’ll be able to set the terms for how you work. You’ll include the things that keep it interesting.
And, mastering a craft always deepens your interest in it.
It’s actually more boring to (even if the environment is always different) always only take on the first superficial layer of a problem.
What you plan to take on now is not set in stone. You’ll be able to redirect later. But now with the added capital (network, skills, money) you’ve built up.
3. “But the problem is much bigger”
The world seems on fire. We need sweeping change. Given that, how does focusing to take on this tiny bit of it make sense?
It hurts to not take on parts of the problem that are clearly bad.
But you’re not alone in this. Others can take on the other parts.
Plus, we need to actually commit and take on problems.
We don’t need everyone being ‘involved a little’ and then leaving when it gets interesting to go to the next problem.
I don’t want your two cents. I want your full contribution.
Plus, it’s not about the number of problems you take on or the size of the problem. It’s about the dent you can make in it.
And, once you’ve solved that part, you can go to the next.
4. “But but but, some say you don’t have to pick.”
Here your mind is clearly clinging. Convinced it’s smart enough to find a way, to get you out of this pickle.
“I can solve this.” “I’ll show you!”
But, of course, when there are others who succeed without seeming to focus, then there is clearly a possibility.
And there are. Some people make it work while doing lots of different things. Who are not outspoken in their opinions. Or specific in who they work for.
However, what is most often at the core of their success is:
they’ve built up a network and reputation in previous work, that was specific.
their network is clear about it, even if they don’t know it.
they’re very good at something human. Enthusiasm, empathy. People don’t know what they need to ask them for, but they know that they want to.
So, even if it’s true that these people haven’t picked a niche proactively or consciously, in reality, they’ve had one.
Now, there is one way where you can succeed while not doing one thing extremely well. By which I mean top 1%. Which takes a lot of work.
That is when you combine two skills that you are quite good at (top 10%, which is much more doable).
Becoming top 10% in a given field is much more doable and you can accomplish much faster than top 1%.
But, when you combine two top 10%, you’re top 1% in that specific combination.
(Or, a slight variation, you are top 5% in your main skill, but you enhance this with your interests, wherein you’re top 20%).
Then, even though you do two different things, you have still picked a niche in that combination.
Nobody is saying you “have to”. But, even the best counterexamples out there have done so.
It’s not mandatory, but it makes life much easier.
Layer 2: Is it Socially acceptable?
Now, after reading the first four objections and my reframes, you might think the idea is smart.
But that doesn’t necessarily make it more appealing or a no-brainer.
Let’s dive into the second cluster: What picking a niche does for your place in the group?
Your heart wants to be seen, loved, and belong. So it’s perfectly normal to worry about the opinion of others, your status, and whether or not people will have your back.
5. “I hate disappointing people”
You don’t want to disappoint people. Nobody does.
And picking a niche seems like exactly that: Making your products for some, and not for others.
“Sorry, I could do that work but have decided not to.” “Sorry, I’ve shifted my focus to only work in sector X.”
That might feel shitty to tell someone. However, you wouldn’t get mad at the baker for not having vegetables in the store.
Now, for some, it’s extremely hard not to please everyone around them.
It’s too big a topic to take on here. But what I would ask is this: Is their opinion the basis of your worth?
I think we can at least mentally agree to it that that’s not the case.
I don’t mean you can be a jerk to everyone and that wouldn’t matter. But if we’re talking about pleasing, we’re far removed from that other end of the spectrum.
Hopefully, besides agreeing, you can embody that idea as well.
1.
Don’t forget, if you don’t focus or you overcommit, you will deliver mediocre work. Saying yes, but doing no. That’s a surefire way to disappoint everyone involved.
Focusing means that you can tell the one who you’ve picked: “Great, I’ve got just the thing for you and will make sure I deliver!”.
It’s not about disappointing the others, it’s about delighting the ones you pick.
2.
Plus, it’s freeing. Because, when you show your product to people, you don’t have to take everyone’s feedback seriously. Just the ones who you made it for.
You can say “I’m sorry you don’t like it, but I didn’t make it for you”.
3.
You have to remember that, no matter what you do, you’ll sell ‘no’.
You were never going to be able to help everyone. Not even small percentages of the population.
The best-read authors are still only reaching 0,1% of the population and that’s ok!
By niching down, you’re really only going from 0,01% of the population to 0,001%.
But you’re doubling your chances along the way.
You’re excluding plenty of people in any case. What’s the problem with a few more?
6. “But if I send them away, they won’t come back when I need them”
Say you could use the revenue, but the client that calls you is really not the niche you’ve committed to.
You feel the pull to say yes, even though you decided not to do that work anymore.
It pulls on you because, when you say no, you fear that the option won’t present itself in the case you’d need it in the future.
That the potential client will then think you don’t want to do that work anymore and you’ll be cut from the speed dial.
Here you fear being pigeonholed. But you’re playing not to lose, rather than to win.
“The person of that (and only that) kind of work”. Rather than “the person of that kind of work”.
You should be thinking about how to get on the speed dial of so many of the right clients, you’ll forget all about the old clients that had you on speed dial!
Some actively “burn their bridges” just to be rid of the options.
Not having the option clears up mental capacity. That clarity is freeing.
When you say yes to this project, you will gain some temporary revenue. But, you’ll also postpone the moment that you become able to support yourself fully on your dream work.
To be clear, perhaps you really need the revenue. And then, if you have no other options, take the project. And, please combine that with developing a strategy and a roadmap on how to develop the right clientele over time to be able to do the work you want to!
Entrepreneurs who want to do right, and don’t want to take the shortcuts that their competitors are used to making, mostly, incur more costs.
To then make a profit, they have to increase their price.
But, when you simply prevent externalities that didn’t affect them before, you still sell to the same buying reasons.
Clients most often aren’t inclined to be willing to pay more for, what is for them, the same.
You have to bridge why how you improve the product is also better for them.
In Niels’ case, a higher investment in getting to know the potential applicants results in better matches and thus in employees who stick around longer.
That saves them money in the long run.
All you need then is to find clients who understand that it’s a bargain and are willing to pay upfront for that.
Layer 3: Is it SAFE?
Now, we’ve covered the merits of the idea of focusing your work and how it can affect your place in the group. But, the clingiest resistance is at the last layer.
Here we arrive at variations of the question: Is it safe?
This speaks to your need for predictability and control. To be certain enough that you can take care of yourself. That you’ll be alright.
And it appeals to an existential need: To have mattered.
7. Craving certainty
It’s true. You could pick the wrong area of focus.
A wrong choice could mean you’ll waste your time and reputation. It might not work. Or another option might have been easier, more fun, or given more rewards.
Naturally, you want to know the outcome before you make the decision.
The question to ask yourself is: What information would you like to have before you’re able to make a decision? And mean it!
Can you get this information by gathering expert wisdom or by doing experiments?
If so, do that. If not, you need to make a decision now.
Because, when you can’t know it from this position, you’ll need to move to look over the horizon.
Another certainty is that when you don’t move, you throw away time.
Staying still is costing you time. That's time you could have spent building skills or your network. Or time you could have used to be of service.
You’ll learn or create a lot either way. And that will put you in a better position.
You might also notice that the mindset of experimentation is much more fun than the mindset of clinging to make sure your decision is the best one.
Can you untangle that need? Is there actually a problem, when everything in your life wasn’t maximized?
It is ok to not optimize everything all the time!
The system needs slack. If everything has to be perfect, you can’t do anything at all.
A little trick to break the impasse. When both options feel equally ‘pleasant’ to take on, pick the one that scares you the most!
Because to still feel like these two options are ‘just as appealing’, the scary one must have enormously more potential!
Make the decision and then really go for it.
8. Cozy Harbor
Not picking has a giant benefit. Before picking, your business can still be anything for anyone.
Even more, your entrepreneurial life can still become anything.
But, you are tricking yourself by thinking that the current state is good.
It feels good. Because, before you pick a path, it feels like you still possess a little of all the potential revenue you could make in all the different options.
In reality, you have none of it. And have low chances of getting it this way.
You’re overvaluing the potential of the many littles, and undervaluing a much more certain path to getting the big few.
It’s a cozy harbor. But you need to set sail.
9. Shit got real
“Oh shit. I set sail. Now I really need to do it!”
What if we encounter a storm? What if my maps turn out to be inaccurate?
Rest assured. There will be storms. Maps will be thrown overboard. That’s par for the course.
But that’s not what’s really keeping you.
You know you’re able to do things that are hard or deal with curveballs.
What’s really scary here is the idea that you might learn that you’re not able to do it.
I remember, years ago, sending out my resume and cover letter to the consultancy company I really wanted to work for. Fear rushed through me when trying to press the send button.
Because, before I had sent it I could comfortably hold onto that dream. But once I send it, my identity of being smart enough to get that job was out of my hands.
I didn’t get the job. Looking back on it, I’m glad of it now.
The reason it’s scary is because I had linked my identity with being able to get that job.
“I’ll be successful, if I get that job”
It's great to be motivated to accomplish something. But, it’s unhealthy to link your identity and self-worth to the success of your business idea!
You can’t control the outcome. And, you are not your results!
It’s hard to describe what it is that you actually are. But, I like it better to identify with how I live according to my values and the intention as to how I show up.
This might sound weird. But, if the dream is going to shatter, you want to know as quickly as possible. Then you can still adjust the course.
And, success or not, you are still good and equally deserving of love and belonging.
So do your planning. But set sail.
Now you’ve got a chance.
So, here we are. The choice is yours. Hopefully, this has helped to untangle your resistance to it and look at the idea of focusing in your work in a pure way.
These are the 9 I encounter most often, with the many entrepreneurs I talk to and of course in myself. But, if I missed the one that’s going on for you, let me know by leaving a message through the contact form. I’d love to hear it and perhaps we can jam on that together to help you out.
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