Stop Overthinking Your Niche: 4 Steps To Finding Your Audience & Customers (with Darrell Vesterfelt)

This question of how creators commonly overthink— the biggest way that I often see this, and I know I've faced it in my own creator journey, is trying to decide which topic or niche you need to focus on, if you need to focus on one at all. And this is something that I commonly see creators struggle with, have a hard time with, especially if there's this like dangerous element of you have 3 or 4 things that are all working pretty well, but you feel like maybe there's something specific that I need to focus on. So I asked Darryl Vesterfeld this on a recent Hey Creator Founder Friday community call, and I was really inspired and informed by the way that he answered it because he brought up a question that I don't think often enough about when I'm making decisions like this, and I thought it brought a lot of clarity. So let's go to this clip from Darryl because I think it's really going to inform the way that you think about this decision.

The answer immediately is it depends. One thing that I care very, very deeply about is like, what is the goal that we're trying to accomplish? Because there's a different answer for every type of goal that somebody might have. Like, hey, if the goal is I'm trying to create a little bit of side hustle, I think you should write about whatever you want to write about and have 14 niches and you should just have fun and enjoy it. If that's the ultimate objective. The question here is like, what is the ultimate objective? What are you trying to accomplish? I think 9 times out of 10, people don't get where they want to go because they don't actually know very clearly where they're trying to go. Second, is I think a lot of times people end up at wrong destinations because they weren't clear about what the objective was from the start. That's happened to me so many times where I'll like put my head down and I'm running really fast and I'll wake up and like, I don't even like this. Why am I still here? And so getting really clear on objectives is number, number, number, number one. For example, with the School of Traditional Skills, before we even raised a single dollar, before we had a single minute of recorded content, before we even incorporated as a business, we knew what we were trying to accomplish. We knew what the end looked like. How clearly can you tell me the end? What is it that you're trying to get to? How clearly can you tell me that? Like, don't tell me that you want to make $10 million someday just because it's some big number that you heard someday. I think a lot of people create ideas or objectives in their minds that are other people's objectives that they're just trying to copy, or they think they should. Tell me why you want to make $10 million a year. I know why I want to, but it's also okay if you want to make $250,000 a year, because that's like, that would create a lifestyle for you that would make you and your family happy. To me, it's like objective is number one. So the, it depends is all about objective. That being said, let's assume the objective is to create a business that sustains us with some kind of regularity where we're not stressed about making money every month. Let's assume that it's kind of like maybe what more people are wanting is like, hey, I want to like have a life that gives me some freedom that I'm making money on a consistent basis, and I don't have to worry about making money. You've got to pick one niche. Doesn't mean you have to talk about one thing, but you have to pick a niche. More specifically than picking a niche is you have to create a customer avatar that needs what you have to offer. So to me, there's like a little bit of a quadrant here. You have to find a problem that needs to be solved. Let's find a problem. The scale of that problem will determine the scale at which people will pay for it. That problem has to be something that you have some level of competency solving. And if you don't have any competency in solving that problem, you're going to always feel like a fraud a little bit. So that's why it's like, you've got to have some level of competency in solving that. Cause this is where a lot of imposter syndrome comes in is people like see an opportunity and they're like, I'm going to go solve that problem for that person. But they don't actually know how very well. And so like imposter syndrome comes up. So it's like problem that I know how to solve that people are aware of. So this is another problem that I see often happen is that people solve problems that the people aren't actually aware of. And so a good example of this is like trying to talk people into losing weight who don't actually want to lose weight. So your avatar is not somebody who's sitting on the couch watching Netflix, eating Burger King. That's not the avatar because that person still wants to be eating Burger King. Your avatar, if you're fitness, your avatar is somebody who maybe has a gym membership and showed up 3 times but doesn't know what to do next. So it's like getting really clear about the avatar. It's like making sure they're aware of their problem. A lot of times people are like, well, I'll just teach them. I'll just like help them become aware. And it's like, well, then you're spending all of your money trying to talk somebody into solving a problem that they don't aren't like super aware that they have. And then the fourth quadrant is that they're willing and able to pay. Alex Hormozi talks a lot about this, and I love the way that he frames it. It's like, if you solve $2 problems, you're going to have $2 solutions. So like, is the solution to the problem that you're solving kind of making it full circle back to like the problem that you're solving? Is it something that people are willing and able to pay for? People may be willing to pay for it, but they're unable because of, you know, your avatar is a 13-year-old and your solution is $100. Well, they just don't have $100. You're going to have to ask their mom and dad. So I'm kind of making very simplistic things. You kind of understand it. But to To me, it's like picking a niche is actually just picking an avatar and a problem, and that's the niche, right? So what happens a lot of times is if you, if you have too many things that you're talking about, you're trying to talk to too many people about too many things. If people are confused about how you can help them solve a problem, they're going to go to somebody who is very clear how they can solve the problem.