Love Your Niche

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute. This week coming to you from Cocoa Beach, Florida. We are big proponents at AMI of niching down. When I talk about it all the time, be a specialist, don't be a generalist. There's riches in the niches, all of those things. But there's something where as you're considering niching down or you're considering which niche to pursue, there's one thing that is absolutely paramount to being successful and that is whatever you choose to niche down into, you actually have to be interested in. You have to have a passion around it. It has to be something that you want to talk about, think about, write about for the next decade or longer. So it's absolutely an intellectual exercise in some ways. Is it recession proof? Do we have great case studies? And all the other things that we ask you, those questions in the niche criteria document where you can narrow down the niches that you want to choose. But probably the most important question on that criteria is, is this topic or is this niche, or is this industry, or audience something you would be passionate about thinking about and writing about and being an expert in for the next decade? Because that's what you're going to be doing. It's going to be all consuming to your agency, to you, to your team, and it's going to direct your content. It's going to direct what conferences you're going to go to. It's going to direct your prospect list. All of those things get driven by the niche. So if you choose a niche that seems very safe and it's a smart choice, but if there's nothing in it for you in your heart and you have no passion around it, it's going to be very difficult to maintain that focus for a decade or more. So understand that absolutely, there are important practical elements of choosing a niche. One of the things you have to be impractical about is your feelings about the niche. Is this something that excites you, that interests you, that you would be proud to be associated with? And if the answer to those questions is no, even if the answer to all the other questions is yes, you need to stop and think before you drive down to that niche, because you may be very unhappy in year two or three, or year four, right when it's taking hold. When it's driving revenue into the agency, but it's not driving any passion for you or your team. All right, hope that helps. See you next week.