Pick a niche and stick with it

Have you ever watched the show, “The Profit” with Marcus Lemonis? If you’ve never seen it, Marcus Lemonis, who is an entrepreneur and CEO of Camping World, helps struggling businesses in exchange for equity.

In the beginning of the show, it all seemed random, just businesses that seemed like good opportunities but as more deals go through, you see he builds a circle of businesses that can use each other.

It’s been years since I’ve seen the show so I can’t remember specific examples but the concept has always stuck with me.

Since one of the popular methods of solopreneurship today is to build things quickly and either move onto the next project or add it to your arsenal, it helps to build within a single niche.

You could build a candle business, and then a kids book business, and then a Twitter marketing tool and find success but you make it harder for yourself this way. If one fails, you’re starting back at zero with the next.

Why?

There isn’t much overlap between them. Yes, business basics will be the same, but not niche information and learning. If you stick to businesses in the same niche, you can market to the same people who already know what they want and thus save time and money testing.

For example, let’s say you have an AI writing tool. It helps create all kinds of text and copy for small businesses, indie hackers, etc. You want to start another business and pick a social media scheduling tool. You already know those same people will use it. You know what they want, and what they don’t want, you can even go as far as directly marketing to them.

Your niche for this example may be small business owners or indie hackers. You offer a few cheaper solutions, maybe $20 or $30 per month but if you have 2 or 3 and they use all of them, now the same customer is paying you $100 a month.

While you can’t just transfer email lists to the new business, you can email all of your current customers and tell them about the new product. If they are interested, they can buy or sign up for that email list. You’ve already built trust with them so they are more likely to become customers.

This is a strategy that I have tried to build myself. For example, I created Boss Personal Planner which is a personal planner business and then I saw a need for something more app like. So, I created Last Plannr which is a project/goal management software that I direct marketed to my existing customer business.

First, I was able to ask for feedback before it was built. I used my existing knowledge of what customers wanted and then ask specific questions to get a general idea of what to build.

Then, I used my current customers to get presales and early adopters, which amounted to about $7,000. I spent $0 getting feedback and preorder sales, zero…

So now I have 2 businesses that are actually separate but share customers.

I have another business that I created before really sticking to this plan but even it offers overlap. It’s a motivational canvas art business and I see my biggest customers are typically small business owners.

I’ve gone as far as creating audience segments to run ads for my other customers. I actually remember my Facebook rep got super excited when I told him about the other business when he figured out the audiences are so closely related.

I also applied this strategy to my mobile app business to a degree. I tried to keep apps in similar niches and genres. I didn’t have the same marketing benefit as much but I did have the knowledge benefit.

For example, when I created fitness apps, I would add a screen that shared my similar apps. They could view all of my fitness apps and download whichever ones they wanted.

So as you can see, there are multiple pros to running this strategy. Unless I was in a niche that had no potential or I was extremely bored or unpassionate about the niche, I'd pick one and stick with it.

Next week, I’m going to talk a little bit more about methods like the “12 businesses in 12 months” and how it ties into this more.