Business Owners - Should you Niche?

When people ask who your target market is, do you find it hard to be specific?

Of course you can serve many different kinds of customers. Your product or service can probably be applied to a variety of situations very effectively, and once you understand the need, in most cases you can create a perfect solution.

I know that. You know that. But that doesn’t grow your business.

If you are like most small business owners, one of the easiest ways for you to grow your business is to build a referral network. And people only refer when they easily see a “match” between someone with a specific problem and another person who provides that exact solution.

If you are willing to declare a niche for yourself, you are allowing other people to categorize you. That means two things: (1) you have to give up all the potential referrals who don’t fit into your category, and (2) you will begin to get a lot more referrals than you’ve ever had before.

I believe that most small business owners never make it to step two because they can’t get past step one. At least I know that’s why I haven’t gotten to step two. However, recently, I had two experiences that enabled me to clearly envision myself moving to step two:

(1) I realized that I am not my business, so it became “OK” to have “a business” that doesn’t necessarily express all of me.
(2) I met someone who categorized me, and this person sends me more referrals than anyone I’ve ever known. I realized all these referrals are a good fit, and I wonder why I didn’t allow myself to be categorized earlier.

I still resist niching, but not because I don’t think it’s a smart and effective thing to do. It’s because I’m having a hard time choosing one thing and letting go of everything else. But sometimes the most powerful lessons in life come as a paradox, requiring you to give up something you are clinging to, in order to allow in something even more abundant than you ever could imagine.

Are you ready to let go and choose?