Cold feet about niching? You’re not alone.

I work with solo consultants every day, most of whom have found that after a year or two in, they’ve hit a plateau.

Their warm network produced a good amount of early work, but now inbounds are either drying up, or fanning out in multiple directions.

When this happens, you have two choices:

• Accept what comes your way, prioritizing short-term conversion at the expense of focus and client quality
• Or define a strategic niche and become known for it, driving consistent inbounds, boosting your profile and elevating your achievable rates

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When put like that, it sounds like an easy decision…

But it can still be a scary one:

• What if I choose the wrong niche?
• What if there’s not enough business?
• What if I get bored?

All of these are risks, of course…

But so is playing it “safe” in the generalist track and inadvertently ending up blended into the sea of other “yeah, I can do that” consultants.

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But get this - niching isn’t some hard left-turn taking you into a new abyss.

Your corporate expertise is already much more unique than you think.

And the singular way you share and apply it in new contexts rarifies it even more.

What this means is the hard part is already done.

Turns out you’ve been specializing your craft for decades before going solo.

Job to job. Company to company. Each transition adding a new layer to your deepening expertise.

When you look at it that way, it's your recent generalization as a soloist that's been the deviation from your trajectory.

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Now, you can decide to continue off course: pursuing a broad approach, pitching your expertise to the masses and crossing your fingers for some takers.

Or, you can accelerate your organic trajectory of specialization by:

• Selecting a narrow set of buyers for whom your expertise is highly relevant
• Building audience-specific IP and offers that demonstrate how intimately you understand their needs and pain points
• And becoming known as the obvious expert they’d want to work with to solve their specific problem

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Niching down shouldn’t be so scary.

You’ve been working towards it all along.

And the payoff is just ahead.

💡

-Wes

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P.S. May slots for the NicheFinder sprint are open!

​Book a free consult to see if it's a good fit.

Or, feeling good about your niche, but struggling to convey your expertise to that niche? It might be time to build your Insights Portfolio of visual assets.

The IP Builder pilot is currently underway - join the list for more details and priority access as capacity gets added.