How to Find the Right Balance Between "Niching Down" and "Maximizing Value"

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, Episode 314

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income.

If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place.

The riches are in the niches, or if you're a British, the riches are in the niches, something like that. You've heard us talk about this podcast before if you've been following us for any number of episodes, that we talk about niching down.

And that is something that is easier said than done for most people. And so we got a question recently in our community that someone asked, how do you balance niching down, but still offering enough to actually help your clients achieve their dream outcome? How do you find this balance? Because there's two extremes, two ways you can go about this. One is you refuse to niche down at all because you are either afraid of losing work, or you are trying to appeal to everyone. And because of that, we've talked about this on the podcast plenty of times, no one wants to hire you because if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. You can't gain really any traction in any specific area because you don't become known for anything.

People struggle to refer you to other people because they can't place you in a box in their head and think, oh, this specific problem, I know someone with that. I can refer you to that person. Instead, you offer everything to everyone. And if you offered every possible service to every type of potential client, it's just hard for people to even know how to categorize you in their head for referrals. And so you end up making little bits of money in lots of different areas, and it really doesn't add up to much. The extreme opposite of that is people who niche down too narrowly. You heard the advice that the riches are in the niches, and you took it to the extreme, where you did something so narrow, so specific that it actually limited you. This is very rare, but I've seen it happen. You can be limited in a number of ways. One is just like being so specific that the market's not large enough to support your business. That's pretty rare, but it does happen. The other side of things is you're trying to specialize in something that's so specifically niche and narrow. It's too much of a button seat. You're not really adding enough value to somebody in order to actually help them achieve the outcome that they're going for. And then another kind of challenge around this too narrow thing is that you struggle to get timing right. So for example, the window of them needing your service is so small, it's so narrow, that if you are not at the right place at the right exact time, you missed the gig because they went with someone else. And in every niche, there's examples of this. In audio, there's mastering. Mastering's like the last little final piece. And if you aren't top of mind, when they're ready to choose a mastering engineer, you lose the gig. There's lots of little, like, tiny, specific services in video, in photo, that if you are not the person, this top of mind, right then and there, when they're ready to hire for that thing, you miss out. So how do we find this balance between the two extremes of trying to be everything to everyone or trying to be so uber specific that your business is struggling? We're going to talk about finding the go-to-the-lack zone in this episode, finding a balance where you're narrow enough to build a name for yourself, narrow enough to be known for something, narrow enough to be able to actually build the skillset required to really add value to your clients, which leads to more referrals, usually more success with your clients. We're going to find that balance between that, but also broad enough to where you can actually offer a transformation to your clients.

You can actually keep it interesting for yourself because love it or hate it, we are creatives. We have to be fulfilled by what we do. It's not just a business for us. That's why this podcast is different than other people, because we don't just talk about just dollars and cents, we have to also be creatively fulfilled here. So if you're a freelancer, you offer creative services, you don't want to sell your soul, meaning just making dollars at all costs.