How to break out of a niche
Sujal Kumar
March 23, 2024
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A “Niche” Is A Worldview or Perspective
Let’s break down what a niche actually is.
When you are the niche, and who you are is constantly changing, you are niche-less.
You don’t box yourself into skills or interests that you will outgrow because you are human.
Why are you told to niche down in the first place?
So you can understand the mind of your readers and customers.
You’re told to create a customer avatar, identify a burning problem they face, and position a solution toward them. (This solution is often the same as any other product with small changes. The point is to make it perceived as valuable to a specific person by understanding them. Hack: recreate what already exists, but better, and don’t overcomplicate it).
So, why don’t we skip all of that and treat ourselves as the customer avatar, solve problems that we’ve actually experienced, and build a solution that actually benefits our lives.
This eliminates 99% of the guesswork with making money.
And, you don’t end up working with people you don’t like.
In essence, a customer avatar is the mind, worldview, or perspective of someone you are creating for or marketing toward.
From a structural standpoint, a worldview or perspective is composed of:
1) Goals
The conscious or unconscious goals that influence every single action you take, like taking one step forward or going to the gym.
Goals frame how you interpret situations. A person with the assigned goal of society to retire at 60 years old will see fewer business opportunities as opportunities than the person with a self-generated goal of financial freedom by 25 years old.
Goals also frame how you (or your readers) interpret books and content. Two people with different goals will have radically different highlights of the books and content. They will notice the things that aid in their goals – whether they are aware of it or not.
2) Problems
The conscious or unconscious problems that prevent you from reaching your goals or ideal lifestyle.
The foundation of marketing is to raise your readers’ level of awareness surrounding their problems over time.
If you’ve solved your own problems and are helping your audience do the same, you are in a great position.
The 5 levels of awareness are:
Unaware – unaware of their problem and how it is hurting their quality of life.
Problem aware – aware of their problem but don’t know how to solve it.
Solution aware – aware of their problem and know there is a solution, education, or knowledge to solve it.
Product aware – aware of their problem and know there is a streamlined path or system to solve it.
Most aware – they are ready to change, they just need the right “why” that changes behaviour instantly. Like when you read an idea in the book and it changes you entire outlook on life.
When your worldview is your niche, your job is to write in a creative fashion that increases people’s awareness of their problems. That way, they act on a solution toward reaching their goals.
3) Potential paths
The last piece of the worldview puzzle is clarity.
When people don’t have clarity on their next steps, they feel anxious, overwhelmed, or bored.
This is what causes arguments in relationships, dissonance in business, and battles between political parties.
People who don’t share the same worldview are missing pieces of the other party’s path, narrative, or system that allows them to make sense of that situation.
So, when you are the niche, your job is to create a holistic, step-by-step path that you can share with readers who have your same worldview, usually in the form of a product or service that you can be paid for.
That way they are more likely to get results and understand you.
There’s a reason why my philosophical musings bring a load of new people into business. Because I make it make more sense than the shallow business gurus you see everywhere.
Beyond goals, problems, and potential paths there are multiple aspects of the human psyche that influence how people perceive and act on goals and problems:
Prior experiences
Firm and loose beliefs
Skill level across all domains of life
All of the above can be conscious, unconscious, known, or unknown.
Your entire job as an education brand is to raise the consciousness of your audience.
Make them conscious of their goals and problems.
Expose them to unknown potentials of their life and educate them to the point of it being known.
Your niche is the frame of big goals and burning problems that compose your worldview.
Your job is to program the minds of your audience to adopt this frame (or worldview), pursue those goals, and solve those problems.
This is a massive yet fulfilling undertaking to live a life of purpose.
It demands that you develop yourself for life and evolve with the responsibility of guiding a community under you.
Niches are supposed to be specific, and what is more specific than this?
A desirable goal that will change your life (and your readers).
A burning problem that will ease your suffering (and your readers).
A clear path, system, or solution to bring you clarity (and your readers).
The goals and problems will almost always be similar to someone else’s.
Everyone has the same goals and problems in the eternal markets: health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.
But the path…
The path is singular to you.
Everyone wants financial freedom, but two people have to take different paths.
You may go the social media and online business route with e-commerce and the unique skills, mindset, and experience associated with that.
Another may go the investing and real estate route with another unique combination of skills and interests.
Remember that every other interest you learn also plays a role in how you perceive situations.
If journaling, going on a walk, or playing video games were included on that path, no matter how direct to achieving your goal, still played a role in your achieving your goal.
The path is what creates who you are.
All of the beliefs, skills, and billions of bits of information you process along the way toward achieving your goals is the most unique niche in the world.
If you can illustrate your path across your hundreds of posts, newsletters, products, and interactions – that is how you create a niche of one.
Your job is to document your life on the internet and let the rewards of authenticity work their magic.
Your job is to attract a specific group of people. You do this by writing ideas in a way that makes sense to you. From your worldview. From your point of view. The specific group of people are those with your same personality. That’s how you set yourself up to create a product for yourself that sells without market research.
The Book Of Your Life – How To Create Your Niche Of One
When you document your life on the internet, you create your niche of one.
The mindset & skillset of your past, present, and future self should be illustrated in a persuasive manner to attract those with a similar personality, but are a few steps behind you so you can actually help them.
You are going to outline the structure of a book you would write about your life.
This will be used for pattern recognition and content creation.
Use this outline to notice ideas as you consume information.
Also use it as a content plan to write newsletters, threads / carousels, and short form posts over the course of 6-12 months (that is how long it will take to get your audience truly familiar with you).
With that, fill out the book structure below as if you were writing to those 1-3 steps behind you.
That’s it for this one, I’ll go more in-depth on this soon.
Hope it helped