On face value, choosing a niche seems like a high-risk route.

You’re intentionally deprioritizing large swaths of the market who technically are perfectly servable.

It seems even more risky if you’re new, running against a short cash runway, and growing desperate for revenue quickly.

In financial markets, an investor or lender needs to be compensated for assuming risk — so, assuming that holds...

What’s the payoff for the ‘risk’ of niching down?

​

It’s a few things:

Concentrated pipeline

• As you narrow to a very specific ideal client profile (ICP), you can focus on activities that focus squarely on building one pipeline, not several simultaneously

Market affinity

• As you build authority serving a specific market segment, you’ll develop an organic reputation as an ‘insider’ that people in that market trust, and therefore recommend

Service refinement

• As you continue to provide specific services to the same type of client, you become better and better at them

Pricing power

• Plain and simple, specialized expertise commands higher rates, meaning a revenue boost and/or time dividend​

Expertise flywheel

• As you narrow, your expertise loop becomes tighter and faster; insights you learn from one client can be directly applied to the next

​

There are even more trickle effects of a pursuing a niche or specialized strategy, but let’s take even just these five.

Notice how each of them materialize repeatedly, and at growing magnitude over time.

These benefits are not one-time payouts, but rather core foundations of a sustainable business and defensible market position.

​

So the question at hand is not, “Is niching really worth shutting out all these other potential paths?”

Instead, you should ask yourself, “Is landing a few lower-value clients today, worth shutting out the long-tail return of specialization.”

​

💡

-Wes

​

P.S. Stuck on your niche, or mustering the courage to narrow down?
​If you'd like a hand sorting that out, book a free coaching exploration call to see if working together would be a good fit.

Even if not, we can lay out your next step together, live.