It’s a familiar place for most entrepreneurs – the point where the existential crisis kicks in. “Do I really want to keep doing this?” “Am I missing out on other opportunities for growth?” “Have I niched down too far?”
At it’s core, this crisis of faith in your brand – that nagging feeling that you need to pivot your brand – usually stems from a place of fear: the fear of limiting yourself, and your growth. It’s the fear of pigeon-holing your career. It’s an understandable fear, but it’s missing perspective.
Because your niche isn’t your ceiling. It’s your foundation for future success.
Say goodbye to shiny object syndrome
When you live with a limitation mindset, you’ll always think that the grass is greener on the other side. It makes you distracted, because you’re unable to focus on building a long-term, sustainable business model. If you want to build something that lasts, you can’t spend all your time and resources chasing the next big thing.
So let’s flip the narrative. Successful, sustainable brands are built from the ground up.
It takes time to build momentum, and niching down is how you gain an engaged audience. If you’re too broad, then your engagement will be inconsistent and limited. By starting out with a narrower service or product, you engage with a specific community through commonalities and consistent brand messaging. At first, your audience will be tenuous. But over time, your brand’s foundation becomes stronger and stronger as you cement your services and build a recognizable business.
The goal is sustainable growth. You want a business that builds an empire, and that starts with maximizing the potential of your first niche. And remember that your niche is not a limitation – it’s your starting point.
Build up and out, not side by side.
It takes considerable time, money, and resources, and staff to build two lines of business simultaneously. Anything less is a recipe for business burnout.
We have a limited bandwidth for problem solving, and it’s important to stay focused on one problem at a time. After all, the essential core of business is solving problems for your consumer. By niching down at first, you become more capable of solving the problem for your client avatar, better than anyone else.
Your niche isn’t your ceiling. It’s your foundation for future success.
So instead of attacking multiple consumer needs, focus on building one line of business until it’s stable and successful. Once you believe that you’ve maximized your potential in a given niche, then you can move on. Eventually, when you have the operational infrastructure in place, then you can look at building two brands or products simultaneously.
In the meantime, consider building up and out. Once you’re well-established in your niche, create a holding company. Through the holding company, you can branch out, break off, replicate your process, and rebrand for a different offer by leveraging your existing audience, platform, and revenue streams that you already have.
By building up and out, you create a system of brand integration and sustainable growth. By building up, you get to keep your core values and objectives in-tact. You don’t have to sacrifice one business in favor of the other. You create an integrated ecosystem of growth.
The Bottom Line
Building a community takes time. It takes a lot of time and energy. Niching down is how you build your foundation for sustainable growth, and you’re not limiting yourself by maximizing and capitalizing on your existing investment. Once you do reach the ceiling and want to expand, then you’ll have the resources to help you succeed.
Your niche was never your limitation – it’s your starting point. And when you start small and build strong, then there’s nowhere to go but up.