Most People Niche Wrong: 7 Fixes for 2026

We are live. Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what is happening in the world of entrepreneurship? Let me start with something blunt. Niche down, niching down is some of the most repeated advice in entrepreneurship. But it's incomplete because most founders, when they try to niche, they still sound generic. And I speak to anywhere from 2 to 4 founders every week, but what I hear is something like this: I serve in healthcare, or I serve health— I serve healthcare, I work with SaaS, I help small businesses. That's not a niche. That is a category. Niching isn't about choosing an industry. It's about making someone— the lead you're talking to, that potential client— making them, when they hear you, making them say, that's exactly the consultant I've been looking for. Whatever you're saying, whatever you're describing they feel it resonates with them. So today I'm breaking down the 7 ways most people, most entrepreneurs niche wrong, and then how to fix it this year. So I'll be, I'll be covering 7, 7 easy ways to niche down. One is on skills and looking for the skills that are rising. 2 is on vertical knowledge. 3, about segment precision. 4, on company size and working with small businesses versus medium-sized versus large businesses, the enterprise, and then applied AI, and then human differentiation, and last but not least, speed to first dollar. So before we step on the mat, thank you for those who are joining us live. And for those of you who are listening later or watching later, I have these live streams every Tuesday and I cover a business topic and then I answer all the questions I get from the community. So if you have a question about a challenge you're facing, you have an idea, you're not sure how to get started, you started and you're struggling, you're strong in your technical area, your skills, but you don't have any marketing and any sales, and you're not sure what that first step is. Whatever the case might be, send me your questions. Leave me a comment on my YouTube channel, anywhere you watch or you hear or you see my content. If it's something very personal, something that's maybe a bit— you don't want to share with the world yet, email me at Feras, F-E-R-A-S, at startupwithferas.com. I get— I read every email I get, and then I send you— I send replies, and I keep it all confidential. So make sure you tune in every Tuesday at 3 PM Eastern, 12 Pacific, and send me your questions live. And then if you can't make it, appreciate the, the like, I appreciate the share, and leave me— most importantly, send me your questions, your challenges as well as the wins, small wins, large wins. I want to hear from you on what is working well for you as well. It looks like we have some comments, so good. Yeah, so, so if you have, if you have, if you have any questions, um, I have this comment actually about where is it that you're stuck, um, picking a niche, uh, positioning. Is it about getting replies, pricing, or maybe other, other, other, other— as you're stuck, I'd love to hear from you. And then we have Saeed, thank you for joining. It says, I'd like to validate my niche or know how to do so. Well, thank you for the question, for the comment. Let me just put it here on the screen. Uh, that's what I'm covering today, so we're going to jump right into it. And if I still don't answer the question about validating your niche, uh, I'll be more than happy I'll be more than happy to address it before we wrap it up today. So let's step on the mat. Let's get going here. All right. So one thing to keep in mind, if you pitch to everyone, you're pitching to no one. If you're trying to sell to everyone, you're selling to no one. And a lot of us, when we start, we're thinking that if we niche, we're shrinking the opportunity. But it's not about that. It's about increasing precision. And I want to use an archery analogy with my archery background and my love for archery and for hunting with a bow. I want to use some archery examples today. Maybe some of you will get into archery. Maybe we can talk about archery offline, but today we're talking about business. So when we think of hitting a target, we don't need a whole lot more arrows, but what we need is we need the right bow. So we start with having the right bow. And in this case, in the case of a business, it's the skills on the rise. If your equipment is outdated, no amount of practice will help. And the same thing if your skills are outdated and you're not learning and you're not in different businesses, they have continuous education— teachers, doctors. So if you're not picking up new skills, then you are going to be outdated. The competitor who is picking up new skills will outpace you. And I want to share with you an example here of a new report by LinkedIn. LinkedIn does a good job in producing these reports about new opportunities, cities that are hiring more different verticals and what's hot in those verticals. And let me share this screen here with this report from LinkedIn. This is pretty recent, and here you should be able to see it. And it shows, of course, AI is top of the list, AI engineering and implementation. But then even if you're not technical, there are things around operational efficiency, AI business strategy, AI workflows automation. A side note, I have a video on the channel on 26 ideas for this year, and a couple of them have to do with AI, not from a technical and an engineering perspective, but also from a consulting, from a training, from an implementation, from setting up processes. So you can look here at communication is a thing. Financial operations and reporting, leadership, people management. These skills are on the rise, and I'll keep the link. I'll put the link in the description after after the the live stream so you have access to it. But that is what I want you to focus on: is start with the skills that the market is already moving toward. So anything that is If you're, if you're a great strategy, if you're a great strategist and you're really awful at details and tactical tactics, and then, then from a niching perspective, when you start up your consulting business, focus on strategy. That is your strength. You still have to do certain things at the tactical level as you gain experience, as you gain momentum, as you have revenue. You can hire someone who will help you with the tactics, but initially, if you are— if you have certain skills in, for example, process automation, and you pick up, let's say in healthcare, or let's say in HR, so you can come into a business and set up, you can assess their HR, their hiring practices, and come in and and it's all over the place and they have issues with employee retention because they don't have any onboarding and all sorts of issues. So you can come in as a consultant with your knowledge of the domain and with your process skills, come in and help them leverage AI better in their interviewing process, in their collecting feedback from employees, in whatever is taking them time today and they're not very effective at it. So, so that is the number one thing. It is picking the right bow, picking the right skills, and keeping your skills fresh and updated. And, and look at domain-specific expertise. Of course, it's good to learn and read about, about many things— fiction, nonfiction, understand the world. That's all important. That will make you a better person. That will make make you more well-rounded. But initially, from a business perspective, look for areas where AI, applied AI, intersects with real-world work. So that's number one in terms of skills, focusing on skills on the rise and upskilling, upskilling yourself. And as Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, said, think of yourself as a startup. His book is startup of you, and you always, you're always in beta, you're never a final product. I guess when we die, we're final products, but at least in this physical world, but think of always learning, you're in beta, you're not in this complete product, so you're always learning, we're always not just actually learning, also skills, networking, and being aware of our domain and our our area of expertise and our area, the market we go after, which brings me to the second area here. The second point is, again, we're using the archery analogy here, understanding the wind, okay? In the business context, the vertical knowledge. So every industry has its own wind conditions. Healthcare isn't fintech. Manufacturing isn't SaaS. So if you are working in healthcare, you have to understand there are regulations. If you're going to provide any sort of implementation in healthcare, they'll ask you— they'll be asking you about HIPAA, about data privacy. They'll ask you about certain, uh, maybe certifications, depending on the services that you're offering, but they'll ask you for certain things that are specific to this vertical. So that is important. The second thing is also in industries, there are different, potentially different buying cycles. There are also specific language that a vertical uses. So the more you use that language, the more you understand the regulations, the more you know how people buy in this vertical, The straighter the arrow will be and the faster to revenue you'll have in your business. So understanding the vertical that you're in, and again, if you are, if you've been in corporate for a long time and now you want to start your own business, and let's say you want to do it in something different than where you have experience. So in terms of skills and experience, they're different things. Yeah. For example, the technical, the IT aspect or the HR aspect or finance or automation, that is something very specific, the skills that you have, but also there are things that are specific to the vertical. So for example, and I sold to healthcare for a long time, and I remember, and this mistake I mentioned it in a recent video, when I went, I think it was Blue Cross Blue Shield here in San Francisco, And I went and I'm speaking with this manager, very nice guy. We impressed them with our implementation, with our approach to implementation. We were in the analytics space at the time. We were in terms of data collection and helping customers make better use of their data and understand, better understand the performance of their marketing campaigns. That was the space I was in. So we impressed the manager. And then in my conversation, I said, so when your clients are coming to your website, and he was a very nice guy, and I think we had established rapport and he appreciated a lot of the work we've done, all the mini audit and all the work we did ahead of the presale. So he said, hey, Feras, when you meet my manager, if you say the word clients, Basically, he said they'll show you the door because in healthcare, if you're speaking to an insurance carrier, they think of patients, their clients are patients, they think of service providers, doctors and others, right? So they don't use the word clients. So if you want to niche down, one of the things you want to do is look at a specific vertical and then understand the wind conditions and learn the regulations, learn about the buying cycles, learn about the language of that vertical. This way, as I said earlier, your arrow will travel straighter. Okay? So that's the second point. The third one is you have to pick a specific target in the business sense. Again, this is in archery. In the business sense, you have to define your segment. So we used the example of healthcare, so I'll build on that. I work in healthcare. Okay, that's great. But in terms of picking a target, think of maybe private clinics with 5 to 20 locations. Now that is very niche. That's very narrow. I want to look, if you're working, let's say, for startups, let's say you are a CFO, you are a fractional CFO, and you started your own practice. So maybe one thing you can look at is pre-Series B or pre-Series B fintech startups, pre-Series B tech startups, pre- or Series C companies, or I only work with public companies. If you have experience in taking companies public, you're looking for startups that are going public. If you have experience in international trade, Look for companies that are expanding their market. So if it's something that is geography-based, so you can say Midwestern manufacturers with 50 to 200 employees. So this is now being specific. You're not just, as they say, you spray and pray. You picked a specific target, you defined your segment, and then you're going after them. So the way you sell to a 20% company is completely different than the way you sell to a 2,000— to 200-person company or to a 2,000-person company. And I have the ultimate guide to winning proposals this year. It's an hour and 4-minute video, the longest video I've ever made, on all the things you got to do right to win proposals. And I have a section in there on the difference between selling to small businesses versus the enterprise. So when you pick a target, including again the company size, which I'll talk about a bit in a second, but also in terms of private clinics, smaller businesses, geography-based, more than just healthcare or marketing or finance, you will have a higher likelihood of hitting something that will— of hitting something and getting your pitch be better received and getting your proposals reviewed and getting those contracts signed. So specific targets, picking a target is really important. And again, for those of you who are just joining, uh, we are go— I'm going through, um, the 7 ways that you can niche down your business this year. We covered 3 so far, and I'm using an archery analogy. If you want to talk about archery or hunting, message me separately. But the first one is picking the right bow or the, the right skills, and look for the skills on the rise. There's a LinkedIn report that was just published that you can find. Just search Skills on the Rise LinkedIn, you'll find that report. Also, we talked about understanding the wind, the vertical knowledge, and then the third one is about picking a specific target, which is defining your segment, not just healthcare, but smaller clinics, maybe solo practitioners, maybe hospitals, depending again on your skills and depending on the type of service that you offer. So those are the first 3. Now the fourth one is know the distance. In archery, if you're shooting at 20 yards, different than 50 yards, different than 100 yards, so know the distance, know the company size. Startups, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, enterprise, they are not just different in size, they're different games altogether because when you sell to a small business owner, he or she are the decision maker. That's it. They might speak with one of their colleagues, they might speak with one of their family members, but you're talking to the person who controls the outcome. When you're pitching an enterprise, there's a buying committee. You have the person who is the business owner. Let's say you sell marketing services and you are selling, you are engaging with this marketing manager and they love you and they say, yes, we're ready to buy. That's one decision, that's one node in the system. They still have to speak with procurement, they have to speak with finance, they have to speak with their bosses, they have to speak with other departments that are impacted by the decision of whatever service that you are implementing in that space. So when we were in analytics, our work included— there were various aspects. One was code that we would customize and would have to go— the code would have to go on the website or in a mobile app, and then we have data, so we would have to do some work and dashboarding and analysis with the data for the marketing people, and then you'd have to have some— after all of that, there are insights and analyses and insights and business impact, which you would communicate to the executives. So we had to work with IT, marketing, sometimes there's an executive sponsor. So these different folks are impacted by the decision of selecting a vendor. In our case, it was, we were the analytics vendor. So the same thing for you. So knowing, again, knowing the distance in archery, that's knowing the company size, will help you set the right expectations in terms of the timeline, the way that you pitch, the sort of buy-in you have to work on getting from the different departments, and also understanding politics and all these decision cycles. So when you are working with a larger company, you have to map the committee, and you have to work with your champion, the person who trusts you, who wants you in. They'll guide you, or you ask them questions about You know, who else is involved in this decision? Is finance? Is budget? Is the budget approved for this quarter? What does procurement and legal, what do they say about this contract? What do they expect from vendors? So if you do all of that, you'll be set up to sell to the enterprise. If you're just starting out and you're not ready to sell to the enterprise, Start with selling to small businesses, get some traction. That's when, you know, the rubber hits the road, and you'll learn how to pitch to small businesses. On the average, according to many, many, many statistics, an SMB-type sale, it'll take 2 to 8 weeks to close. An enterprise, you're talking about 3 to 9 months, right? So understanding where you want to aim, knowing the distance. You don't shoot a 20-yard arrow the same way you shoot an 80-yard arrow. Same thing, you don't pitch and sell and work with a 20-person company the way you sell and implement and work with a 2,000-person company. All right. Uh, again, for those of you who are live with us, if you have a question, don't, don't hesitate to to let me know. I'll be more than happy to address it, to answer it. Moving on, number 5, upgrade your equipment. So we talked a little bit about skills on the rise, and I touched on this idea, but here I want to emphasize AI specifically, applied AI, the way we use AI. You know, I'm not a developer. I don't code, develop AI solutions, but I use AI software. I use AI applications. So upgrade your equipment, applied AI, that is. So this is not a headline anymore. AI is not a headline, is not a buzzword. It could be the stabilizer. So check out your workflow, whatever you do, whatever business you're in, the way you do research for your clients, the way you do competitive research, the way you analyze data, anything that you do manually today, can it be automated? The way you deliver to clients, can you have templates? Can you have your custom GPTs or you can use Google's NotebookLM to where you feed it your own sources, your own ways of— your own way of thinking, your own way of packaging things, and then you can ask those custom GPTs or NotebookLM to give you the output in the format and the style that you like. So this is where a lot of people are complaining about AI, and AI is going to take over, and AI is going to replace humanity. These are serious questions that we can discuss and debate and listen to thought leaders and participate in those discussions on Twitter, right, on X. But for your business, between now And when AI replaces us, if that's the case, you still have to survive, you still have to make money, you still have to support your family, so what I'm telling you, what I mentioned this to all founders, and I was speaking to 2 founders yesterday, and I said, you have to audit every process, every workflow you have in your business, and see how you can leverage AI to make it more efficient, to make it more effective. So that is where you as a consultant have to upgrade your equipment, have to learn about applied AI in your space. So if you are, again, automation, if you are in automation, if you are in finance, if you are in IT, what AI solutions exist that I can use? I'm not just talking about going on ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and just prompting, asking questions. Of course, we all do that, but I'm referring to using software that can plug in a manual process, something that's very hard to do and that requires a lot of number crunching and a lot of curation of data. Can that be automated? So instead of it's taking 2 days, it'll take an hour, or the way you produce documents. If you deliver a document with every, deliverable, if in the services that you offer, if you deliver a document summarizing what you found and then proposing solutions, you have a specific branded formatting and styling, you can feed all of that to these tools and have them, for example, give you an output, a document that is ready to go to the client. Of course, always, always, always watch for AI hallucination and make sure you do a full thorough QA on anything you send to clients. Don't rely blindly on AI. But my point here is that if you are, and this applies to people who are looking for a job as well. If you've been, unfortunately, if you've been laid off, impacted by recent waves of layoffs, or if you want to move on to something else or have a pivot in your career, look at all the skills that you have. Look at your hard skills, soft skills, the resources, your network, all of these are important. And then can I add 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 certificates in this, in my area of expertise? You will stand out because you have 5, 10, 20 years of experience that's there. You have certifications in your space, that's great. Now look for areas where AI intersects with your own business, with your own vertical, with your own segment, and learn all of these tools. So when you are applying for a job, if that's the case for you, if you're not going the entrepreneurial route, or if you are starting a business, or if you already have a consulting business, look at where AI is intersecting with what you do every day and learn those tools, master those tools, those tools, and then talk about it, that you are an AI-enabled company consultancy. When you are— when a customer hears— when, when a customer is evaluating 2 vendors, one with outdated skills and tools and one that is AI-enabled, and they have case studies about it and they have shown how they've increased efficiencies using AI, guess which one the client is going to pick? The one with AI-enabled examples and case studies and knowledge, because you can get stuff done faster, you can get stuff done more economically, and you— clients want that. They want to do things with less money. They want to— I mean, clients want to increase revenue save cost, or increase client satisfaction and their employee happiness. So, so that's the 4th one, is for most cases, in most cases. All right, so, so we're talking about applied technology, applied AI, not theoretical. Okay, so that is number 5. Now moving on to number 6, but we have a question. So thank you, Syed, for the question. So I use all of All of this benchmark templates creation, content improving, and much more. AI was a game changer for me since I started working with it. So yes, let me just make sure I show this comment aside. Thank you so much for, for your comment. Yes, if— I mean, some of us again hesitate. You don't want to put, you don't want to put, uh, like client information in AI. You have to, you know, read about practices and best practices and, and guardrails and and, and, and, and make a decision on what you want to use AI for. But if you're not using AI today, I can guarantee you that the person or the competitor who is using AI is the person or the company that will replace you. Whether AI will replace us or not, that's a different question. That's a philosophical question. That is quite question to again follow the thought leader that, that you love and respect the most and follow what they say on this. But technology always changes, and, and people, some of us can ride that wave of the technology, the technological changes, and get— can improve, um, their, their livelihood. They can improve, um, their business. They can help the people who are part of their business. their team, they can all work on something that's cutting edge, something new, not outdated, they're helping clients more efficiently, all these are good things of using new tech. Again, there are side effects to technology, it has been the case, right? We have to be aware of the societal impact of technology on all of us, all of that still holds, but from a technical perspective, from a business perspective, use it, apply it, and use it for your own business, and also use it in your delivery of client— of, of work for your clients. All right, we have a couple more and then we'll be wrapping this up. So we covered 5, now number 6. So again, we're using— I'm using the archery example, steady your hands, and in this case here, in the business context, human capabilities. So to be precise in archery, there has to be some control, you have to be also relaxed, you can't be very stiff, right, when you pull and when you're aiming. So in The context of business, technology is great. I just talked about it. I spent 10 minutes talking about it, but we want to look for distinctly human capabilities. That will be an edge. As we all use AI more, as we use technology more, there will be more higher needs for things like empathy, judgment, Timing, communication—all of that will be in hot demand. And again, in the Skills on the Rise report I showed I showed earlier from LinkedIn, they they mentioned leadership, communication. Those skills are still in are in hot demand at all. Those skills are are in hot demand and are on the rise. So. If you lack in this area, it's not too late. We're not born with amazing communication skills. We learn that. And with some of us might be, but we train, we practice. Every pitch you make, you're, you're building that muscle. That's one rep. Every phone call you make, every follow-up meeting you have, every Zoom presentation you have, you're, you're doing the reps. You're getting better at it. You're getting better at it. You're getting better at it. So these distinctly human skills and capabilities will become our edge because AI and tech in general will lower the cost of information. So just sending a proposal without connecting with a client, without understanding their pain points, without understanding the emotional and the psychological and the peace of mind that they are looking for, from hiring you, that is— that's what's needed. It's not about a proposal and technology and, and here's, here's the price and I can do this in 3 weeks. Buyers are looking for someone who, who will help them sleep better at night, who will give them peace of mind, especially, especially if you're selling to small business owners. They don't have a lot of cash at times, they don't have a lot of money, they can't afford to, to experiment, so they want to make sure Not just that the time and the price, the timeline and the price fit well in their business, but they also want to make sure they trust the person that they are working with and this person can help them have some peace of mind about whatever that issue that you're solving for them. Good. And then the last one, so we covered 6 so far, the 7th point here, at one point you have to Let go of the arrow. You have to really— you have to release the arrow. So in the context of business, that's the speed to first dollar. A lot of times new consultants, they just keep planning and writing business plan and putting together a financial plan and revisiting their pricing, revisiting their offer, rebuilding their website. We keep on overtraining and never take that shot. And my friend, you don't build confidence by studying the target. You want to know where the target is, how big the target is, how far you are from the target, you want to have the bow, we talked about all this. Everything to that point is training and getting ready and researching your segment, your vertical, your market, Geography, all of that is important. Spend a week on it, 2 weeks on it, but at one point you have to let go of the, of the arrow. You have to let go of the arrow and you have to start building that confidence. And you cannot build confidence by studying the target. You build confidence by doing the reps. You build confidence by releasing the arrow. Some arrows will miss. That's, that's life. So optimize. At one point, you have to be out there knocking on doors, hitting the pavement, getting rejections. Rejections are redirections. So, so you have to optimize this speed to first dollar because without you being out there, without you being listening and getting input and feedback from your target audience, from your potential clients, you'll be off maybe in what you're pitching, you'll be off in what— how you're pricing, you'll be off in, in understanding the pain points. So I— if you want, if you get one thing out of today's live stream, one thing is that this week, if you haven't started yet, This week, identify 10 people who are likely to buy from you, or they know people that are likely to need your service, and start having conversations. And if you're not sure how to do any of this, I want to share, I want to share a specific video on my channel where I talk about this. And if you go to @StartupWithFeras, @Startup— on YouTube @StartupWithFeras and go to this very specific video right here. Scroll down and go to the video section. Oh, by the way, this is the proposal video that I mentioned earlier, The Ultimate Guide to Writing Proposals as a Consultant, but the one I mentioned earlier, if you're just not sure how to start and what to do and how to identify your target audience and how to package your offer, I have this ultimate guide to starting a consulting business this year. It's a 53, 51-minute video, but I break it down into a step-by-step process for you to launch your consulting business. So we covered a whole lot today. Let me go back and wrap it up. There you go. I covered seven ways that you can niche down. Don't worry about shrinking the market; you're just being more precise. And as we say in archery, in archery, archers don't complain about the target. You don't like don't complain about the target. That's outside of your control. But you can adjust your stance. You can adjust your angle, your focus. You can learn how to be more natural. You can do how to be— you can learn how to be more relaxed. That comes from practice. But then that practice, stepping out and talking to clients, talking to people, having conversations, is what will clarify things for you. And when you have clarity, you get hired. That's it for today. Again, if you have any questions, about entrepreneurship, leave me a comment, and if it's something private, you don't want to put it out there in the world, to the world, send me an email at feras@startupwithferas.com. I read all the emails I get, and I keep them confidential, and I will reply to you, and if you're finding this material helpful, I'd appreciate a subscription, and hitting the like button, and sharing this video with other founders. Thank you, Feras. Folks who might benefit. See you next time.