How to Find Your Niche 2024
No matter if you want to become a creator or start an online business. Both require you to find your niche. And that can be a stressful, tedious, and stupid thing to try. I started my solopreneur business in 2016. My knowledge of Facebook ads proved to be a viable source of income back then. So, I started to position myself as an expert in digital marketing.
Times were good.
I created my first online course. It was terrible because I understood nothing about it. My second course focused on “Facebook Messenger Marketing”.
Something that came up in 2017.
This course made me 10k EUR in 2 weeks. Online courses started to catch me:
“Damn, I can make money without working,” I thought. My mind started spinning:
What if I start to sell the knowledge of how to sell online courses?
That was like the ultimate masterplan.
The problem?
My niche was already set → Facebook ads.
The traditional niche advice back then was:
- Find one ideal customer
- Niche down on this customer
- Post and write only about that topic
So I started to rebrand everything.
People were confused: “Dennis, what about ads?”
I did this for around one year and earned good money. But it stressed me, I wanted to keep writing about ads.
The “Niche down” advice crippled my thoughts.
Fun fact:
I could have easily written about selling courses through ads. (Didn’t occur to me back then, lol.)
So, I started to use Instagram and was fairly good at it in 2018. A publisher approached me: “Want to write a book about that?”
My head starts spinning:
Re-niching. AGAIN!?
But writing a book sounded too good.
So I re-niched. Again.
People were confused:
“Dennis, what about online courses?”.
Rebranded everything.
Became Mr. Instagram.
I published my book.
Had a 1,000-person Facebook Group.
Had a 1,000-person YouTube Channel.
But there I was:
Stressed and unhappy.
Couldn’t write about ads anymore.
Couldn’t write about online courses anymore.
The virus of “niching down” infected me so strongly… In 2019 I was well paid and unhappy. A customer booked me for a workshop.
I didn’t want to do it.
Even though they were willing to pay 2,900 EUR for 4 hours.
Don’t want to brag.
I just want to tell you: Money didn’t make me happy back then.
I felt like sitting between chairs.
I stopped being a solopreneur in 2019.
Got a job in 2020.
Fast forward.
2023 I quit my job to become a creator. Throughout 2023 I tried to find my niche.
At one point, my head said:
“Fck this sht”.
I realized:
- I refuse to limit myself.
- I don’t want to be boxed in.
- I want to help others overcome this.
No matter how old, what their hobbies are, and where they are from.
So I decided against niching down.
Instead, I understand that some people can’t niche down.
We are generalists.
This prismatic niche defines your personal brand. We should not put ourselves into a box.
We are supposed to shine in all our multipassionate colors.
That’s where you come into play:
Don’t niche down.
Instead, find your prismatic niche.
You are like white light that hits a prism:
All colors define who you are.
Not all of them are meant to be part of your personal brand.
How can you decide on what parts of you should be part of your brand?
Through the guidance of your inner voice.
And that’s no woo-woo.
Your inner voice
I wanted to be as successful as Bill Gates.
Have a big international company.
Be a CEO.
It is recognized as a successful Entrepreneur.
Instead of going that path…
I sabotaged myself.
Through that time, a big and loud voice was yelling: “You want to become a CEO, and if you aren’t, you are a failure”.
It wanted to convince me that this is who I am. This situation stressed me. For over 20 years, I was unhappy.
Until I finally decided to step back.
To try another approach: Listen more.
Listen closer.
I started to do simple things:
- Meditating
- Going for hiking
- Playing the piano
- Doing more workouts
- Taking walks with music
- And that’s what it needed.
- Making small pauses during the day
The Discovery
Over time, my mind calmed down.
And one day I realized:
There is another voice.
More subtle.
More like a whisper.
It doesn’t want to send me to war.
But instead, it felt like pure kindness.
This voice doesn’t talk to us.
It speaks to us in the form of bodily sensations. This was the compass I wanted my whole life. The whole time it was there. Hidden behind all the yelling and emotions.
This is the ultimate compass and Decision Force. I believe that everybody has a true inner nature. And this inner nature connects to our conscious mind through intuition.
Let me explain this a bit more:
Our inner nature is
It’s subconscious and we can’t access it directly.
But it’s there and wants to help us.
How can you use it?
( I can recommend you do this exercise to find your core values.)
Body Sensations and Intuition
To find your prismatic niche you can access your inner nature.
How?
(to get better access to your intuition, try these 6 tools)
Now it’s time to make use of AI.
When I say AI I am talking about tools like ChatGPT or Claude2.
In the end, it doesn’t matter.
Both are great.
Dennis, how can an AI help me to find my prismatic niche?
“I hope it’s tails. I want pizza.”
Let me describe the principle that guides us here:
- You can feed data into ChatGPT.
- By feeding it, we can do brainstorming.
Have you ever experienced a situation like this:
There was option A (Pizza) and option B (Pasta).
You flip a coin to decide what to pick.
During the second flip you hear a voice:
That’s when your mind didn’t know the answer, but your inner nature did. I use this effect to choose headlines for my posts. And today, you will use it to get insights into your prismatic niche.
These are the steps:
- We will ask it to interview us.
- You will feed ChatGPT with some information.
And here we will use the same effect:
You get a list.
Your intuition will send you signals.
And you will know what to choose.
It’s your compass
I have prepared some inputs for ChatGPT for you.
The more detailed you are the better.
Step 1: Preparation for ChatGPT
First, you will make a list.
I recommend writing into a text editor.
Not directly into ChatGPT in that case.
The list contains:
Skills you have:
Write down skills you already learned
Or skills you are going to learn in the next month
Skills I have
Topics you like:
In order to find a modern niche, ChatGPT needs some topics you are personally interested in.
This gives ChatGPT the necessary context.
Topics I like People I want to work with
People you want to work with:
What type of people do you want to work with?
Growth-mindset people?
Travelers?
Who I want to be? Obstacles I had
Last but not least:
Write down the past obstacles you had and overcame.
It is vital to add later to your backstory and make it easier to connect with you.
Alright, now we feed this into ChatGPT.
For the next step, just copy and paste:
I want you to be my business advisor.
I want to become a Solopreneur.
I will provide you with a list of skills I have,
topics I like, people i want to work with and Problems
I had and solved. Please give your best guess on what niche
I should focus. Please give your best guess on what niche I
should focus and provide a brief explanation. Please provide
also the description of a person who might book my services.
Ask me 5 questions, one at a time, to clarify on my list.
Output as a table. + Step 1 OutputNow you should get a table like this:
Now read item after item.
You will feel in your gut what resonates with you.
And what resonates with you:
Mark it, copy it, save it.
If you are unhappy with the results:
Ask ChatGPT to interview more.
Or get back to step 1 and add some specifics to it.
Keep in mind:
You won’t find your perfect niche today.
This is the start of a journey.
Alright.
You took the first step to finding your niche.
The topics you can potentially write about.
If a topic is missing: Add it.
You are a niche.
Everything depends on you and your inner nature.
In the next tutorial, I will show you how to test properly.
Ready?
I will publish the next step at the end of Dec 2024.
Be prepared.
Originally published at https://www.dennistroeger.com on December 8, 2023.
