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Writing, Marketing, Entrepreneurship

February 25, 2024

DON’T Write to Your Fans (Misconception of Niche)

One common problem when starting or running your own business is

“Understanding your niche.”

If you’re starting your own business, this is your first obstacle to overcome.

If you already have a business but don’t understand your client or customer, you’ll struggle to sell.

If you are a content creator but don’t know who you’re talking to, your content will likely receive less engagement.

But many people have misconceptions about niches, even big accounts in the market.

Before starting my business, I consulted with a friend on where to begin.
He advised me to start by finding my niche. But the problem is that I didn’t understand the market well enough, and I lacked experience in business. The concept of a niche wasn’t clear to me.

By the way, I learned from Dan Koe the GOAT.

“You are your niche.”

I came up with the idea of “Zen Bodybuilding” because I love working out and have an interest in spirituality. but my friends told me, “That’s not a niche.”

Although I didn’t fully grasp the concept, I started on my journey right away.

At one point, I realized that my content was merely filled with platitudes about self-improvement. I then attempted to shift my focus to writing, but I ended up receiving less engagement.

After much trial and error and a lot of experiments for months on the field, Here’s the value lesson that I’ve learned:

You DON’T Need Your Niche to Grow Your Audience

This is a title of Vanessa Lau’s video that caught my attention

And looking back at my past experience, I’ve already proven this concept: even though I didn’t fully understand the concept of a niche, I still managed to grow on social media.

Niche isn’t an industry.
Niche isn’t a target audience.
Niche isn’t an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Niche is a specific transformation to one specific problem.

To make it easy to understand, let’s imagine you have a friend named John:

Target audience: John is a 20-30-year-old man interested in business and self-improvement.

Ideal Customer: John wants to create a side hustle alongside his 9-5 job but doesn’t know where to start. He aspires to become a content creator but lacks time to learn about content creation. John struggles with time management due to his 9-5 job.

Niche: Your niche is to help John build his side hustle from scratch while managing his 9-5 job.

Niche is about helping your customer or client overcome their specific problem. You bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be with your offer.

The reason why you don’t need a niche to grow your audience:

Building personal branding as a creator is audience-first marketing.

Social media is about going broad (as I discussed in the previous letter). That’s why you should create content for your target audience, because 90% of people on platforms are beginners.

Niche Down Vs Going Board

The foundation of marketing is “Know who you are talking to,” but I misconceived it, and I’m sure many others face the same problem.

When you write content online for months, you may realize that your content gets different levels of engagement depending on the type of content.

If you tweet about platitudes, you will get higher engagement.
If you tweet about advice, your engagement will drop.

You may think that your advice is not good enough, but the truth is that you niche down your content.

If you write content targeted at those who are only 1-2 steps behind you (too close), you will attract the wrong audience, like a coach attracts a coach.

Content acts like a magnet.

When you create content, it attracts those who share similar interests with you.

When you niche down your content, you will attract approximately 10% of people on social media.

If your audience doesn’t resonate with your content, they won’t engage.

“If you don’t grow, you didn’t broaden enough. If you can’t sell, you didn’t specify enough.”

Most big creators don’t niche down their brand. They niche down their offer.

How to Find Your Interest

You don’t find your niche, you create it.

“If everyone talks about their interests, they will attract the right audience.” Dan Koe

That means how to find your niche is about how to find your interest.

It’s about self-evaluation.

Here’re 3 steps guide on how to identify your interests, based on what I’ve learned from the Digital Economy:

1. Find the problem you want to solve in your life.

It can be anything, but I suggest trying to pick those that relate to wealth, health, or relationships.These are eternal markets—no matter how much technology advances, people will always struggle with these problems.

2. List 20 interests you’re into.

Here are Dan Koe’s tips:

Ask yourself, if you had a whole month to do anything, what skill would you want to learn or what interest would you pursue?

If you have some experience, focus on specific areas you want to improve.

If you’re new, start with the basics and principles, especially if you’re going abroad.

3. Evaluate your interests.

You can’t pursue them all; filter out what truly interests you and what the market demands.

Ask yourself:

What activities bring joy daily?
Which interests are you committed to for the next month?
Do you already have expertise in any of them?
If not, which would you start learning now?
If experienced elsewhere, can this interest solve similar problems? Do they intersect?
Is anyone monetizing this interest? Does it offer real-world utility?

The concept is to identify enjoyable interests with potential for profit.

This relates to the Ikigai philosophy, which guides you towards life purpose. Don’t overcomplicate it. You can change interests if you don’t enjoy them.

It’s not a one-lifetime decision. It’s an experiment.

If you don’t have any idea what interest you are going to learn

There’s high return on investing skills on the market right now:

Sales
Coaching
Copywriting
Video Editing
Brand Design
Content Writing
Email Marketing
Social Media Growth
Lead Generation (Marketing)
Funnel Building (Landing Page)

Pick one

Learn it

Implement it

Then pick another.

Keep stacking your skills.

To recap:

Don’t niche down your content; niche down your offer.
You don’t need to find a niche to grow your audience.
Finding a niche is about finding your interest.

Thanks for reading!

Have a fantastic weekend.

See you next week!

Bell

My name is Natchapon Promprasert, and I’m a nuclear scientist.

I help 9-5ers to building a personal brand business alongside their main job so that they can quit their job and live their dream life

My expertise lies in building workflows, digital marketing funnels, and content marketing.

"To inspire people to design their lifestyle
So that they can achieve their goals as their best selves."

People have the potential to achieve any goal, as the universe is abundant.

But “you’re not reaching your goal. you fall into your routine.”

What really matters to us is “How You Live.”