Accidental niche

Not sure how strongly I agree with the well-worn advice that everyone must find a niche, but I agree that if you do, it can be a really helpful start.

Lots of people, myself included, admit to literally sitting down and trying to come up with a “niche” to serve, then wondering what to offer that particular group of people.

Throughout 2024, I’ve been running the One Shiny Object training program both as a 1-1 program, plus as the first group cohort which is about to wrap up. One of the primary aims of the program is to wade through the countless services you offer, pluck out one that has potential to be profitable and repeatable, build a simple system around it, and turn it into a product.

For folks who identify as generalists, the process of whittling the multitude of services they offer down to just one creates this happy side effect:

Almost every time, they accidentally find themselves looking at a very well-defined and useful niche.

Below are points plucked from conversations over a few sessions with a Branding and UX designer earlier in the year:

• I design interfaces for apps, websites, create data visualisations, detailed and complex infographics, design brand identities, layout magazines, and heaps of other design stuff.
• I enjoy the variety, but if I had to choose my favourite, I really love designing user interfaces for mobile apps.
• I’ve created a pretty good library of shortcuts, and I’ve gotten better at building my own starting points so that I can get rolling with new projects more quickly.
• I wouldn’t productise designing the whole UX interface, there’s too much variation that can happen – but I can productise a component of it.
• I always get signoff on a concept design before designing the whole rest of the app, so I could offer just the concept design for a new app as a service of it’s own.
• Actually, if the app already exists and simply needs a redesign that’s better still, as I’m not having to scope out something from scratch, it’s just freshening up an existing skeleton and making it more usable.
• And in fact, the difference between the two is quite big time-wise. With the right info I can create a redesign concept in as little as a few hours.
• I’ve done this for games, finance, hotels, schools and a few others. The games are pretty complex because of all the variations, but the finance ones are surprisingly fun. It’s not super hard to improve finance apps because it seems like a lot of them were built in a rush and have a poor user experience.
• I did one for a small bank but there wasn’t much room for creativity, it was pretty stock. But I did two others, one for a wealth management firm and one for some specialised accounting software. I really enjoyed those and got great feedback for them.
• I’d could offer a 5-screen concept design service for finance apps. I could easily do that in a day but I’d probably only commit to delivering it within 3 business days. The price could be a great day for me and a pretty easy win for my client.

Listicles online will tell you do draw a venn diagram: One circle is stuff you enjoy, the other is what you’re good at, and the middle is your niche. One of my early, extremely naive attempts at this years ago ended with me thinking I would specialise in brand design for motorcycles.

Sure – lemme get Harley on the phone for you 🤪

I know (because I asked her) that if this designer did the venn diagram exercise, “finance” would not have even made a shortlist of things she enjoys.

The process of whittling down and reflecting back on work you’ve done before, helps you identify things you have enjoyed for reasons that are different to things you enjoy in your day-to-day life.

She found there was a group of people in a stereotypically “boring” market who she enjoyed working with, and decided to go find more of them.

When you know that, it helps with everything – marketing, planning future products, knowing what to say on sales calls.

And guess what? It’s just one product. She can talk about that all day in her marketing and socials to attract more clients… and doesn’t have to stop doing the rest of the stuff she also enjoys.