Everyone tells you to niche down. So you do. Then you niche down again, and again, until there is nobody left to sell to.
I’ve watched founders do this for years. They think a smaller audience means a better business. Usually it just means a smaller business.
Here is how I think about niche, mission, identity and brand in 2025, and why you can grow wide with purpose instead of shrinking yourself out of the market.
The over niching trap
Here is how it usually goes. You start with moms. Then moms aged 30 to 35. Then moms with dogs. Then moms with dogs and Crohn’s disease. Then moms with two kids on top of all that.
By the end, there is nobody left.
The lesson is simple. Be specific in your offer, but don’t get so narrow with your audience that you exclude yourself from the market.
When I ran my fitness business, the offer was “eat whatever you want without sabotaging your results.” The ads and content went to men and women 35 and up who were tired of yo yo dieting. That was broad enough that someone with two kids, or no dog, could still buy. The offer did the narrowing, not a long list of demographics.
Specific offer beats specific audience
Two of my clients show this well.
- Grant is a former physical therapist who helps physical therapists build in person businesses. He did $600,000 last month. His background builds instant trust with the exact people he serves.
- Cynthia earns over $100,000 a month helping kids get into Ivy League colleges. Her niche is unique by the offer alone.
If you are in a crowded market like fitness or business consulting, you can still get specific without pricing yourself out. Serve only trainers. Or only people who want to eat a vegan style diet. One clean cut is enough.
Build around a mission
My first company, the fitness business, wasn’t mission driven. I was mainly trying to make money. That’s normal, but it has a ceiling.
I grew up in a family of seven kids. My dad was a teacher and earned just enough to get by. That drove me to change my own life.
Today my mission is to help people make more money so they can leave the rat race and do what they want, when they want, with who they want. I call that true freedom.
Why money? Because extra income pays for the things that fix everything else. Therapy, nutrition, a trainer, a business consultant. I can’t personally help everyone, but I can give people the means to help themselves.
Give your brand an identity and an enemy
Once you have a niche and a mission, step three is building an identity. People will react to it, positively or negatively. Your job is to make as much of that reaction positive as you can.
An identity works best with an enemy to push against:
- Fitness business: the identity was flexible eating, enjoying life and staying in shape. The enemy was rigid, overly structured diets.
- Business consulting: the enemy is “the matrix,” the 9 to 5 job and the ordinary life. It isn’t bad. It’s just the thing we push against.
In college I set a goal of $100,000 a month. A mentor told me that wasn’t a lot of money. After more than seven years in business, I now earn hundreds of thousands a month.
The identity I project is hard work, discipline, family, never giving up, and valuing experiences over Lamborghinis, cars and houses. The people who share those values become clients I enjoy working with, and they are the ones most likely to succeed.
Why brand is the play in 2025
Building a brand is probably the most important thing you can do this year.
I’ve spent over $30 million on ads, and they drove a lot of my growth. But ads are a roller coaster. Organic content works the same way, except for most people it just stays low.
Free views are equivalent to money. I believe the next wave of billionaires will be people who combine a strong brand with a good business strategy. That’s why I post consistently, test new formats, hire staff for content and ideation, and pay consultants to get better.
Map your content into buckets
Pick two to four content buckets that reflect what your audience responds to. That gives people predictable content, with variety inside it.
- One on one breakdowns with business owners. These may get fewer views, but they show expertise. I want to do more of them.
- Digital products. These go more viral and appeal to a broad audience. One of my digital product videos has 132,000 views. I shot it five months ago and it keeps pulling views.
- A third bucket I’m still testing. One on one consulting videos filmed at my home have also done well.
Tell your founder story
People respect founders who share their struggles and how they got through them. Without an origin story, people may not respect what you’ve accomplished.
My story points are simple. Humble beginnings. Dad was a teacher, mom stayed home. Six siblings. I earned scholarships for college and bought my own car. That no BS background attracts a certain kind of person.
Compare that to a billionaire’s son. No matter what he builds, people give the credit to his father.
Don’t make your life harder on purpose. But if you’ve overcome something real, that story builds your brand and pulls in your ideal customers.
Pick two platforms and win them
LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. You can’t post everywhere at once and do it well.
My focus is YouTube for long form and Instagram Reels. We repurpose that content to the other platforms. Native content for LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter would perform better, but I haven’t mastered YouTube and Instagram yet, so I’m not spreading thin.
Focus on two platforms or fewer until they grow. Trying to run seven or eight on your own gets you minimal progress everywhere.
The takeaway
- Get specific with the offer, not with an endless list of audience traits.
- Build around a mission that means something to you.
- Create an identity with a clear enemy so the right people lean in.
- Treat your brand as an asset, organize content into buckets, and tell your founder story.
- Win two platforms before you add more.
Want to know what’s capping your business right now? Take my free 90 Day Ceiling Plan. Answer 18 questions and get a written plan, built on your own numbers, that names the one thing holding you back and what to fix first.
