143. How do you define your niche?
How specific should you get with targeting your audience? 🎯 In the world of personal branding, brand strategists Phil and Lauren have a controversial opinion. In this no-nonsense episode of Brand Therapy, your hosts get real about the sweet spot of niching down. From procrastinating through strategizing to trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll be inspired to combat your niching demons to get your business growing.
Episode transcription
Phil
Well, hello there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build, and promote your brand. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're happy you’re here. We're talking about a topic today that I think is relevant even if you already know the answer to this question. I think this is a question you should be revisiting often revisited often because this stuff is not static, your brand should be evolving. I often say you in real life are evolving and therefore so should your brand online. I also think the topic of today's podcast is something people get stuck on, and they shouldn't. And I get why they get stuck on it, but we'll talk through this today. You and I have a very practical approach to this topic, which is of course, determining your niche, finding your niche, niche, nitch. I don't say nitch because it sounds like a bug in your hair. I say niche.
Lauren
Yeah. Well, that's the Canadian in us, right. Oh, me.
Phil
Is it?
Lauren
Yeah. It's Americans who say nitch.
Phil
I can't say that it sounds like something that's uninvited in your hair sitting on your scalp like no.
Lauren
And then the E in the word is just useless. So anyway, I digress.
Phil
Let's talk about this. So I got a question from where did this come in? I think he came into my email. It was from Jeremiah. Jeremiah said, hello, sir. Which by the way, was sweet but you don't need to call me sir. I have been following and watching your videos on YouTube. I've learned a lot from it, sir. He says again, you definitely don't need to say twice. You don't even need to say at once. But I still find it difficult to find my niche. Can you provide further information on this as I make my way through my writing journey? So okay, so writer, I don't know much about your brand, Jeremiah. But the topic you bring to us today, this idea of a niche is so important. It's so important, and people stress over this.
Like, as if you were sitting staring at your brand or your future or your career, however you want to describe it, you're sitting there staring at it, trying to figure out what it's supposed to be. And you could sit there all day, you could actually sit there for a decade without actually doing anything about it. And I think that's the wrong approach. If you want to think about this great, and if you want to think about this when you're positioning your brand in the early days, I think it's important. But it's not something you should stumble on. I think you have to start working right away. You have thoughts on this?
Lauren
Yeah, I feel like there's this, there are these two common responses when you ask someone to think about their niche, one of them is, like you said, where someone needs to perfect and refine and figure out their niche, and it stops them from actually doing anything, which is not good. And the other one, which we've dealt with a lot is people who are scared to get specific with their audience, because they're worried about missing out on a potential opportunity. And they don't want to leave anyone out. With both situations it's understandable why someone would be in either situation, but both are not good. In my opinion, they're not good at all, particularly the latter,
Phil
We do encounter both of those.
Lauren
Yeah, a lot, especially for new businesses that are, you know, nervous and don't want to leave anyone out or don't want to leave money on the table. So it's just kind of interesting.
Phil
Do you want to know how I know my niche?
Lauren
How?
Phil
Because I've worked for 10 years to figure out what it is. Do you want to know who my first client was?
Lauren
Tell me? Tell me who your first client was.
Phil
A wholesale candle and fragrance company. Was that in my niche or the niche that I have today?
Lauren
No.
Phil
Does that matter?
Lauren
No, doesn't matter.
Phil
Do you think that maybe the fact that my first few clients were not in my niche helped me determine who my niche is today? Probably.
Lauren
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Phil
The point I'm trying to make is hit the ground running and work. And don't be so worried about people fitting into your perfect idea of who falls in your niche, especially in the early days. Again, great to think about it and think about what you want to do. But really what you learn most from is hitting the ground, running, working, satisfying a need.
Lauren
Yeah, and seeing who says yes. And who says no to your business, who is happy with what they got from you and who is unhappy with what they got from you.
I think about us a few years ago, with the old website. We broke out your website in two different groups. We did one Phil Pallen Collective and another which was Phil Pallen Speaking,
Phil
I can't remember what it was no, it was something else Phil Pallen dot dot speak me or something.
Lauren
But it was because we could not figure out we were scared to determine a niche. We had some corporate clients at that time, and we were thinking well, maybe maybe we'll be going down more of the corporate route. Maybe that's like more, you know where the business will be going because there's a lot more money often in that area.
And so we did collective so that the tone of voice could be like, we are Phil Pallen Collective, we do this, we do that. And then we did the speaking site, which was you catering to whoever the audience would be for your speaking engagements, and then used I language. And it ended up being really frustrating and really confusing. And went back to merging your sites together into one, and embracing the personal brand.
And most importantly, embracing a very specific audience type. We've worked with corporations, we've had some good experiences, we've had some not so good experiences, because the layers and layers of approval inside for no reason really drive us mental.
Phil
Not my jam, not my jam.
Lauren
Not our jam. Everything takes forever, people just have opinions that aren't grounded in anything. Anyway. So we realized that we really, really needed to get specific about who's the type of person we want to be working with. There's a fantastic book, listeners have probably read this, but Start with Why by Simon Sinek, he gives a whole bunch of questions about that you can ask yourself about how to figure out what problem you're solving what's driving your business, and then your niche will naturally come when you answer those questions. If you're mission driven, instead of audience driven.
Phil
Also, I think finding or identifying a need in the marketplace just comes from some common sense and some curiosity. So my example of this was me fresh out of university trying to get a job applied at agencies, marketing agencies, thinking that I had to go work for someone else. Fresh out of school, no one wanted to hire me, I did not have experience but then I still had to pay my rent in LA. And I also had to find a job to stay in the country or they send me back to Canada. So I met some people a real real estate agent, a makeup artist, and a jewelry designer that all needed websites. A few of them needed logos, few of them had logos already, but they needed social media help, etc.
So these were things that I kind of knew how to do. Even if I kind of knew how to do to them, I said yes to the projects and figured it out. And that was how Phil Pallen Collective started, it was just me doing a little bit of everything.
And the more you do it, the successes you have reinforce what you should be doing. The failures, you have almost even more so reinforced what you should and should not be doing. They suck in the moment, but oh, boy, aren't we happy when we have those under our belt, very valuable. When things go wrong, they're very valuable. And as much as we want to be like, oh, that was not the perfect client, they weren't in my niche. Or oh that project went sour, I really regret taking them on as a client. I don't think you should regret any of those moments, because that is how we can stand so confidently today and say, this is who we are, this is who we help.
I don't care if you're a corporation with millions of dollars to spend with us, if you don't fall within our audience, our niche who we know, we can target and satisfy and make a very happy client, pack your bags. See you later, no problem saying that. And that feels nice to be able to stand in that position. I think it's intimidating for someone just getting started because they're not there yet.
Lauren
And when you speak about the beginning of your career when you were basically trying to find work wherever you could get it, what's fascinating about that, is that you were listening. I think if we're going to move on to like the tools part of our format. I think the greatest tool that you can have when you're trying to figure out your niche are your eyes and your ears. Look at the challenges you're seeing people go through, listen to where they're experiencing hardship, listen for opportunities, and then plug yourself in. As soon as you can figure out how to be a problem solver for someone else, your niche will reveal itself.
Phil
I love that. That's so true. I love that we don't let's not even give any other tools. I think the tools you need for this are built into your human body and maybe read a book by Simon Sinek. I think that's it because I honestly don't want people fussing over this longer than they already have. I am just not a big believer in this nonsense this extra nonsense archetypes. Although you know we've created a cool freebie with archetypes just to give people a little flavor but people fuss about this dumb stuff. Like not identifying your niche and knowing your brand archetype and like you know these like wide ranging demographics all this nonsense. Just start working. Go to work, find a need.
Lauren
Are you making money or aren't you? Let your bank account tell you where your niche is. How about that?
Phil
All too often people spend too much time in strategy land in idea land and not worky worky. I wish that real life and actions would determine more the direction you go. It's turned into a bit of a rant, but I think it's useful.
Lauren
I think it's necessary because I've seen so many people, some who have hired us for a brand audit, some who have even hired us for work beyond the brand audit. And I've seen them basically, put themselves at a straitjacket of their own making, because they can't make a decision about what to do next. And instead, they just fiddle around in dreamland, as you said, making their niche more and more and more specific. And meanwhile, the only thing they should really be worrying about is the fact that there's a clock that's counting down. Their focus on strategy is actually stopping them from moving forward, which is the most important thing with business anyway. I feel like it's like more important to jump in with both feet and then figure out how to swim than to just stand on the side of the pool thing.
Phil
Exactly, yes. Our best work is when someone comes to us and they're working and they're doing everything themselves and they're ready for some help. Because they're in it, they proven that they're willing to do the work. And I think, yeah, not fussing about this overly in the early stages. I think we've made that point quite clear. We're not going to go into what are you going to say?
Lauren
I was gonna say, sorry, Jeremiah. I hope this is helpful.
Phil
I think it will be helpful. I think it's encouraging for anyone who gets stuck in this territory, this way of thinking.
Another quick little episode, but we'd love to hear what you think. Do you agree with us? You're allowed to disagree? Let's continue the conversation on social media. I’m @philpallen.
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil
#brandtherapy. Let's keep the conversation going on. By the way, when you drop us a DM or you tag us when you're listening to the podcast, or on Instagram. We love that. If you're listening and you love it, you know where to go iTunes leave us a review five star five star that helps other people discover this podcast that we work very hard to create for you.
Well, it was a bit of a rant but it was still fun and we think it was a useful discussion on how to find your niche. You know how this works. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode and a guest We'll see you then right here on Brand Therapy.
Lauren
Bye, bye.
