Why Niching Down Can Be Bad for Business

Have you ever been told that the solution to your business struggles, is simple to niche down? Want more customers, clients, followers, fans... well, you have to niche down. Is that really a solution? If Amazon just stayed focused on that super small niche of people who like books, then it wouldn't be the behemoth that exists today. Maybe you don't run your own business but you are thinking about taking that side hustle to the next level. I've been seen and felt the effects of niching down, so let's talk about it.

Heads Up! This episode was originally released on YouTube December 16th, 2023

To watch the video visit Get Real Rae

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Music: One Fine Day by Keep Calm Podcast

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According to an article in Fast Company in December 2022, people were leaving their full-time six-figure income jobs to become full-time YouTubers. And with that being said, there are over 400,000 YouTubers worldwide. Now, we also looked at an article posted by CBS News. And according to CBS News, in March 2023, people were leaving YouTube. In fact, one YouTuber named Miss Rachel, who sang songs for the littles, found herself leaving due to mental health concerns. There were angry parents messaging her saying that how dare she post about pronouns or how dare she post about, I guess, her upcoming surgery. And they didn't even say like what surgery she was talking about. So, it could have literally been some typical kind of surgery that is just common for kids. I mean, having a tooth pulled is technically a surgery if you have to undergo anesthesia. And so, anyway, we have a grown woman being driven away from her full-time job as a YouTuber in order to protect her mental health. Yes, it's Ray from Get Real Ray, a place and space for life and business tips to hopefully inspire you on your journey or at the very least provide you with some laughs. Let's get real. Craving real advice? Tired of feeling like every other small business owner or solopreneur is raking in the dough while you just seem to be raking? Secretly looking for a is not as glamorous as others make it look. Whether you're looking to change the game in your relationships at home or at the workplace, you've come to the right place. My name is Ray. I went from corporate America to running my own small business to becoming a solopreneur. I'm a professional actor and dare we say a professional busybody because this body is about to be busy all up in your biz. So, let's get real. So, this actually is not a video about YouTube but what it is a video about it's about making sure that we don't niche down so much. We put ourselves in these boxes where we are at risk of hurting ourselves. What do I mean? Hear me out. Okay, so recently I was going through the YouTube. You guys, come on. I can't be going through Netflix all the time. I'm a busy girl. I ain't got time to watch a full movie. I got time for little shorts, little clips, little YouTube videos. And with that being said, I was surprised to see travel vlogger Allison Sharp back in her van. So, if you haven't checked out her channel, I came across it last, okay I guess earlier this year actually, scrolling the tubes and she had a van life video where she was interviewing another van lifer and I thought, oh that's really interesting. And then I just really appreciated her humor and candor. I thought I'm gonna go ahead and subscribe to this nice lady and I was actually happy that I did. And I'm still happy that I did. I don't watch a lot of YouTube videos. So, when she decided to stop living the van life and to actually buy a house or I think she bought a condo or something and take root in one spot, I thought, well that's interesting. How is her channel going to change? Now, being that I wasn't watching her content quite that frequently, it was just me kind of humming and hawing as a business person and as someone who's just curious about things in life, okay. I'm being nosy. How you gonna change? I'm curious. With that being said, her channel did transition into a lot of videos where she would sit at a desk and talk to a camera, you know, ding, sitting at a desk right now. And she seemed to be giving advice on van travel which makes perfect sense because that was the world she lived for quite some time. And she also gave her commentary on other life events. And to prepare for this video, I actually went through her channel just to see what are some of the other things that she talked about. She also did videos where she would purchase things and unpackage things. So, it looks like she's trying out a lot of different areas in order to find what's her niche, what's the thing that will allow her to still keep the channel going. Because you have to remember, for a lot of YouTubers, or for some YouTubers, when it comes to making YouTube your full-time job, you have, or I should say they have, thousands of followers. And in order to generate ad revenue, in order to generate sponsorships, in order to keep the money coming in, the creator has to keep creating content that's appealing to their audience. With that being said, Allison is not alone. There are many creators who have found themselves in this position where they wanted to do something different. When it came to Allison, I was really surprised in my subscribe feed when a video popped up showing her back and her van. I thought, whoa, this is not good. If we have niched down so much to create a world where people know and love us for, in this case, van life, and the desire to do something different is not accepted enough by our audience in order to allow us to continue to sustain our income, do we then have to go back to the thing that we said we needed a mental health break from and do that just to please the audience, just to keep the income coming in? Now, to be fair, I do not know Allison. She may have just been missing living in a van. I, myself, have had to take to sleeping in my car on occasion when I do long-distance trips for work. It is not fun. I tried to make it fun. I said, I'm going to pack this into, I'm going to pack this long-distance trip into stopping off at state parks. I'm going to live a car life for a hot minute. I am going to treat myself to a little takeout or I'm going to buy some yummies from the grocery store to save some money and, you know, eat my favorite cold foods crackers from a box as I take this trip. And I will tell you, when it is hot outside and you are trying to sleep in a car, it is really uncomfortable. Not only, and I'm talking a big car, I'm talking regular little four-door hatchback, actually, you guys, four-door hatchback. So, with that being said, trying to find the right comfortable position to sleep in and of itself is difficult. Purchase this inflatable mattress for the rear seat, which is generally supposed to be like to make your dog comfortable. So, yes, I'm sleeping like a dog. And while that was great to help keep my legs from kind of having to be tucked behind the driver's seat, I'm still like crouched up. And look, I'm 5'5", almost 5'6". So, I'm still curled up in the back seat laying across. And when it's hot, you have to try to figure out, can I crack the window enough to keep air circulating so that I'm not in here sweating? Because if it's too hot, you can't sleep well. And how do I crack the window so that people don't know that there's someone in this car? Because I don't want anyone coming to tap on my window. If the car looks completely abandoned, is it also at risk of being of interest to people who just want to create mischief? Finding places to park is also a thing. While I wound up taking to parking at state parks, which is the safest. If you can park in a state park and you've paid to park there, that is really the safest because people are camping, you're good to go. However, when you're doing things on the DL, I've also taken to parking at truck stops. And that's also fairly safe. I initially did not want to do truck stops. I thought, oh my gosh, what if there's some trucker out here who's going to attack me? And I have to say, trucking community did not care two cents about me. Mind you, I did have to do things in a very discreet manner in order to not be obvious to anyone. But a whole separate video, but depending on like when you're parking and stuff like that, chances are truckers are sleeping in a truck. And to be fair, there are other people doing the same thing you're doing. They are looking for a place to sleep and there's nothing wrong with truckers. Truckers are nice people. They're just like everyone else. It's just a job label. It's not like some special group of people or a special group of crazy people. Why do I say truckers? Because truck stops, rest stops are designed primarily to take care of them and they do need it. They need so much more. Can we please have like rest stops that have little hotels available so that these guys don't have to sleep in their trucks? I'm just saying that would be awesome. Sure they can go and park at a hotel, but that's also like a whole other huge thing. But I digress. Let's just get back to Allison. And so heat is an issue. Cold is an issue when you are sleeping in a vehicle and her van looks like it's really nicely, nicely tripped out. I think she mentioned that she had worked on it with a family member, maybe her dad or something. So, you know, insulation definitely can be kept in mind when someone is creating a van to be lived in for extended periods. However, with all this being said, she has the right to want to do something else. That's just like any job. The life of being a YouTuber is just like any job. I'm going to take it away from Allison. She seems like she's a very nice person and she can do whatever she wants with her channel. She can go back to van life if that's what she wants to do. And I hope that her decision to part -time van life, as she's stated on her channel, is a decision that she's doing for herself because she misses it and not from feeling pressure from viewers. With that being said, I did want to throw in just a few little notes from the video that I just mentioned. I will add that as someone who went from wanting to enjoy living in the car to really despising it and doing anything I could to get together the money for the hotel so I did not have to sleep in the car. I will say that if you've done that experience of sleeping in a vehicle more than a handful of times, you will find yourself or it is easy to find oneself conflicted and drawn to doing really strange things. So knowing that you don't really want to eat in your vehicle by yourself, facing your steering wheel, but then finding yourself looking for an excuse to go eat in your vehicle by yourself, I would eat like boxes of crackers or peanuts as I'm driving because I can't stop because it'll take me longer to get to wherever I'm going. And so finding myself in my home just shoving crackers in my mouth like I'm in a hurry, like I have to go somewhere and I can't which is not really the type of behavior that I want to maintain. Not feeling like my bed is too big and feeling like maybe it would be more comfortable to sleep on the floor or in my closet so that I feel like I can find space. This doesn't happen often and I admit that is weird but weird things happen when you've adjusted yourself to being very small in order to live life. So another YouTuber that I'm going to mention while I find this video because I I've lost the video because I'm sorry I was prepared and then I wasn't prepared. Another YouTuber I just want to mention real quick is Kali Mustafa. This guy he has these YouTube shorts about the dead herd case that I find hilarious. I know that case was what feels like ages ago. It's really like only a year ago guys. But he is a comedian and he was on YouTube before that case but he decided to take footage from the case and make little reaction shorts and he did a very nice job of it. I found myself binge watching some of his shorts and I was really happy. I was like oh my gosh I gotta follow this comedian. He's funny and I found it interesting when he actually made a post stating he also does this daily vlog and he stated in a video that he did not or he would not succumb to pressure from people commenting on his channel saying that he should go back to just making dead herd shorts and why doesn't he make more of those and he needs to make more of those. The man has the right to run a vlog if he wants to run a daily vlog and he has the right to show all his other comedy because he's a comedian right? So he hasn't built his life around making dead herd shorts. He built his life around the art form of comedy and he's created a space where those who have subscribed to his channel understand this is a comedy channel um this comedian does have a life and he will share real life stuff and so he is balancing mixing both of those things. But for someone to have to say oh this is really frustrating for me that people are pressuring me to do the specific kind of content they want that's that's a big deal. I'm gonna share with you some of these sharp comments I'm gonna also not play oh dear learning how to use a computer is super fun so um we have already 95 comments this video has only been up for a day let's see what the views are on this uh nope can't figure that out because it's stuck on a commercial so I will just I will just not worry about the views but I will say we have um posted one day ago yay I've been waiting patiently for you to find another van adventure in your heart another comment sir I'm excited for you glad you're back in the van even part time um it's nice to see you in this video uh so good to see you back in the van uh yes best wishes to the part-time van life oh gosh living vicariously through your van life I'm so glad you're getting back into your van if she don't want to be in the van she ain't gonna be in the van but this is the downside to when you um or when someone amasses a lot of their followers subscribers um around one small topic I do like that she's tried helping other van lifers um in terms of how to make their transition for their journey and like I said I I do hope that she's making her decision based on how she feels and what she wants and not pressure or need for income um this video is not designed to make any assumptions about her or her life um this video is designed to talk to you about your business yes so niching down niching down is something that I have had uh mentors or business coaches whatever you want to call it uh comment to me about oh you have to niche down you have to niche down I swear when it comes to being a business mentor the advice of niching down is like a therapist saying you need boundaries like okay tell me why is everyone saying the kind of throwing out these phrases and can you tell me what it really means okay so what does it really mean to niche down well an example of the youtubers I mentioned niching down means being so narrow that while you may amass a group of people interested in your business or service or product um initially when interest service product changes or when interest changes in that service or products you may find yourself struggling to keep the income coming in I am someone who has multiple businesses and one of the things that my business did was have offered dance classes in person for young people once of course 2020's pandy hit I took those online well when the uh people's when the people's decided no more things are open we're running out the door I didn't really want to go out the door I could have and there were a lot of people who did they were like yeah we're back in the studio and I'm sure their classes were full and you know more power to them but I really liked delivering services online and I hung in there as long as I could to maintain full-time income delivering that service online with that being said full-time income doing that just for myself would have been difficult but in order to also keep our other contractors earning money it wasn't viable it wasn't sustainable and so I had to modify my business and I am so grateful that I wasn't so niched down that I couldn't immediately say oh we offer these other things or my other business offers this other thing and really be able to keep income being generated and sustain a lifestyle without having to resort to going to do things that I really did not want to do anymore I set myself up so that I could change what I wanted to do and how I want to generate my income without feeling pressure to do something that I didn't and that is really important it's not just the YouTube community at all by the way when we look at actors uh the award-winning Oscar award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey he has commented in several videos how it was a big leap for him a big decision for him to stop doing the rom-coms right because he was the attractive perfect dreamy boyfriend and every rom -com he's the you want to get and as much as I liked his acting rom -coms generally follow a formula and so I was like oh you know what why see another Matthew McConaughey in rom-com uh so I was certainly taken aback when he came out with Dallas Buyers Club and then I think that same year he also did um was it true true grit the true crime no true detective oh my gosh I just mentioned a movie and I think a podcast okay um so he did true detective and these performances were nothing like what we had come to know him for at least what I had come to know him for and that decision to take a break to try something new allowed him the space to then try many other different types of films and be the actor he wanted to be so he had to move away from what he had niched down to do and refocus at just being a quality actor doing scripts that he wants to do now the man has a lot of money so he made a lot of money for the rom-coms before making that transition however how does this apply to you well first don't niche down so much that you pigeon yourself in a box if you have a business or you are starting a business maybe you have um a business where you do t-shirts and you love doing t-shirts and you your most popular t-shirts are these t-shirts with cartoon figures on them don't be afraid while you're still making the t-shirt various sizes and maybe you do the little baby onesie with those cartoon figures don't be afraid to look at whether or not you can get your customer to also be interested in having um leggings or pants or baseball cap with the same cartoon figures don't just stick to the t-shirt also look at maybe you can set up some sort of um blog or course or workshop or book instructing others on how to create a business similar to yours or just maybe you don't even want people to copy your formula you're like i worked hard for this you can't copy my formula so maybe instead you offer um a book about your experience creating your business you ain't gotta give the inside business secrets but what you want to do is set up something else that you feel good about that you can be known for that doesn't feel like a departure from your um the other part of your business that you love or just what you love in general and that you can also continue to have your lifestyle sustained because things change all the time even if you are a farmer and you aren't necessarily depending on the immediate reaction or feelings from the consumer your crop could be wiped out your crop infestation or maybe companies are saying actually we don't want to buy almonds anymore it looks like um there are so many nut allergies out there that the demand for almond milk has declined well if you gotta kill the almonds what are you gonna do okay so yes you can take those almonds use them to make other products you'll have to look at other vendors to purchase those almonds you're gonna have to be looking at a lot of different ways in order to take that crop and still generate income from it but then what's next yeah so maybe what's next is then you could teach others what to do after um their crop is no longer in demand now i i don't know how many farmers are taking my advice right now but i just use as example of what could be extreme for form of providing a specific item and working with a specific group so being very niche now with that being said if you are not starting a business you don't have a business you have no care for business you don't have a farm you don't have a nut allergy then does any of this apply to you well yeah i think it does because if you look at your relationships in life are you only spending your time with those co-workers who work at clearly you work together but who work in a specific department and you guys go out after work together um you hate eat lunch together at work if you're only spending your time with that group of people if you no longer have that job maybe one of those friends leave so maybe you leave um maybe you don't leave voluntarily maybe the company closes then what do you feel that you'll still spend as much time with those people well clearly if you're not having lunch together all the time then maybe not but how many people do you feel that you can truly call on after the work relationship has ended and have something in common with do you guys also have kids do you guys also do a lot of the same hobbies i mean if you were on the company sports team on the weekend then you no longer got the company sports team to talk about or do together so make sure that you have relationships in your life or even relationships with those co-workers structuring those relationships so that way it's not just about the company it's not so niched down that if anything changed you would be struggling to find yourself your identity and in this case of the friendships we're not talking about money coming in we're talking about our value and ourself and being comfortable with being able to express ourselves in ways that we choose without feeling forced to stay with the company that maybe we no longer want to be at or ready to grow away from because we have other skills or just have an interest in doing different type of work or in the case of you being removed from the company per se you want to be able to feel like you have friends that will support you emotionally upon that departure i know that i was heartbroken when i left a job that i enjoyed and i felt that i was forced to leave and the people that i thought were my friends from that job stopped talking to me one friend in particular we held i think one or two conversations post my departure from the company and i explained to her my side of things i'm pretty sure management told her other things and that is understood and expected they're not going to tell the employees the private conversations that i had with them and it was agreed upon um i i said you don't have to tell them all the details tell them what you want right so maybe the company told her something post my departure that made her think oh my gosh i can't believe that ray would do that or is that kind of person but given that we had a friendship and i had private conversations with her i thought our friendship would extend beyond my time with the company also we did have interactions and things in common outside that company but when she no longer responded to messages and when i saw her again she acted like she didn't know me uh when i called the company again it was very um very official and professional i thought wow i never expected this especially given the fact that um the higher-ups of the company weren't so kind about her when she first started and um didn't think she was the smartest and or the brightest bulb in the lampshade um and i was i was happy for her to see that her career had changed where she was given lots of responsibility and treated with lots of respect but i thought wow that's so sad that in order to feel good here you felt like you could no longer maintain a friendship with me and um there's that right so i learned from that experience that i really want to make sure that i am always looking for ways to create relationships that are deeper than whatever it is that initially brought us together now it's not always possible to expand those relationships let's be honest everyone has acquaintances friends and then we have deep meaningful relationships i am all about having more deep meaningful relationships in my life