Okay, I first want to share that the more niche you can be in your business, the better. I know there are some folks who may be questioning if they should niche down the problem their business is solving or how niche they should go because they want to serve everybody. I totally hear that and fully understand it, but when you attempt to speak to everyone, you speak to no one. So if you’re sitting on the fence wondering if you should niche down, I would say yes! There is no such thing as too niche, because when you find your people and they realize that you’re their people…the possibilities are endless! 

So I want to give you an example on how niching down can be a great thing. Take for instance, a child that has exceptional learning needs, is in pre-K and is navigating the complexities of their own racial identity. The child and their parts are probably wondering if they have the option to work with someone who specializes in serving students with learning differences. 

Say you’re someone who specializes in just that. That’s great! But if you niche down, and specialize in serving pre-k students from marginalized backgrounds with learning differences you’re way more likely to get that child’s and their parent’s attention and they’d be more willing to work with you because…well, you’d be a very specific, perfect fit. 

Alright so I want to dig into the three strategies you can use to niche down the problem your business is solving.

Strategy #1 - Who Do You Serve? 

Who is your target client? There are plenty of ways to think about this, but I find that determining the identity markers of your target audience can be super helpful. Identity markers could be age, race, geographical location, gender (identity and/or expression), language and tons more. If you Google ‘The Identity Wheel’, that'll pull up plenty of resources that outline all of the different identity markers you can use to determine your target client. 

This is also a great way to think through whether or not the identity markers you chose for your target client are actually the identity markers you’re passionate about. You can always ask yourself “Is there a particular identity marker that I'm really passionate about, and get lots of energy from serving?” If that identity marker is a part of your target client, great! If not, you may want to go back to the drawing board to ensure your consulting business doesn’t drain you! 

So here’s an example for utilizing this strategy. You can serve all school principals, or you can serve school principals that identify as black women in their years 1-3 of principalship. You might even decide to niche down even more and say school principals that identify as black women in their years 1-3 of principalship in rural areas, right? That's just a quick example of how you might use identity markers to determine your target client and niche down the problem your business is solving accordingly.

Strategy #2 - Clarify the problem Your Business is Solving 

Getting crystal clear on the problem that you’re solving in your business can be a great help in niching down your business. Look, we hear this all the time when people mention that they do DEI work (DEI stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Okay, glad to hear that you do DEI work, but what is the specific problem you’re solving? Everybody has a DEI problem, but what part of that is your business going to tackle? An example of this could be someone saying they do DEI work and niche that down to creating a sense of belonging in classroom environments. They could go even further by focusing on creating a sense of belonging in classroom environments, for students with learning differences or students from backgrounds that have historically been oppressed in this country.

So I want to share an example of how niching down can mean that your business is helping solve parts of a larger problem. I recall an entrepreneurship class I took for my degree, and they shared an example of this within the criminal justice system. Now, there are so many different branches to that system that thinking about solving just one problem within it can seem impossible. Still, they mapped out the criminal justice system like a tree with a bunch of different branches. Each branch was an entry point into the criminal justice system and the entry point they zoomed in on was the entry point of being charged and assigned a court date. 

It turns out that this tiny branch of communication around being charged and assigned a court date created a huge ripple effect if someone missed their court date. So the organization that we studied in my class decided to solve that communication issue. That organization found that there were people who were having these court dates, but they either never received communication about the court date or never got clear communication around it which resulted in bigger problems.

The organization focused on building a communication app or system that would actually allow a clearer communication system for folks with court dates to clarify dates or notify the courts if there was an emergency preventing them from attending. 

Now if that ain’t niche…Seriously, solving a communication problem at just one entry point of the criminal justice system. It may not seem like much, but this one organization is solving a huge problem that can make a difference in the lives of so many people. Your business can do the same thing. Niching down doesn’t narrow your impact, it guarantees that you’ll impact the people you know need it. 

So let me give you a teacher example cause you know I love those! Think about Teacher Development as a tree. Some of the branches could be:

• Content

• Classroom culture

• Planning

• Relationships

There's so many different branches and each one of those branches has little mini-branches, and they have leaves. It is totally okay to pick a single branch or to pick a single leaf as the problem you solve in your business. Maybe you want to dive deep into assessment planning in middle school science classrooms. Great! That is a great mini-branch to be able to hone in on. 

Strategy #3 - Clarify Your Services to Niche Down

So this is also a great way to niche down because how you offer and deliver your services is going to change your niche as well. You might only want to offer professional development, or you may have already developed a learning experience for your clients that is actually a phased learning experience. And so if you chose a phased learning experience that takes you through phase one (discovery and assessment), phase two (rebuilding) and phase three (implementation and monitoring) your business offerings and therefore target audience are going to be different than someone solving a similar problem with PD. 

Now of course, I say all this to say that as you're niching down, you shouldn't niche down just for the sake of it. You need to be niching down in an area that you're really passionate about, that gives you energy, because you’ll be spending time there and you don’t always want work to feel like work especially in the business you created. You want to be able to find a healthy balance of the problem you niche down to solve, should still give you energy. 

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