After I posted last week about niche marketing and niche product development, I had some really interesting conversations with a few people. These discussions were with some relatively new entrepreneurs.

There were several questions that came up – including one that I’m going to discuss here.

The question is “Which niche strategy do I choose?”

I think it’s an important question because I really think it depends on where someone is in life on what kind of advice you can give them.

 

Getting to Know You:

So let’s say that we were meeting up, and you asked me how you could become an entrepreneur.

I would first ask you how imperative it is that you have money right away. I’d also check to see how you felt about your sales skills.

Because, let’s face it, if you have need money yesterday, and you have great sales skills, I’m going to have a much different answer for you than if you had your finances covered for a bit and you didn’t have the best sales skills.

The next question I’d ask is about your Why. Why do you want to become an entrepreneur?

If you’re reasoning is because you feel having a job that you need to report to on a daily basis isn’t for you, then I would agree that you might need to be your own boss. If you had a compelling mission that you felt that only you could achieve – then I would definitely agree that you should start your own business that could support that mission.

 

Scenario A:

But let’s look at this a bit closer. Here are two cases that many folks might find themselves in.

I find this traits with millennials quite a bit. Especially with those straight out of school – high school or college.

Does this describe you?

1. You need money asap.
2. No sales skills.
3. It’s hard for you to tolerate having a regular day job.
4. And you don’t know what your life purpose is.
   

That’s totally fine to be there. I’ve been there myself.

What I’d recommend is following the niche product development method. See if there’s some industry that you would like to get involved with and help them find a solution to a big pain.

But I’d also see if you couldn’t find some online work to utilize any skills you currently have.

Now, a couple of things on this. One – don’t confuse doing odd jobs here and there as working on your figuring out what your own mission is. Being a remote worker is a form of a job. But at least this way, you have some money coming in for part time work.

Another thing –  If you opt to do online work – do it in something you have at least an interest in developing as a craft. That way you can get paid to learn something you can use in your own business.

As to where to find this work, Fiverr is a great place to start. Then, if you feel like you might want to pursue some bigger freelance work, you can move over to sites like Upwork or Thumbtack.

If freelancing isn’t your thing, there are other places where you can find online work. Here’s a good write up by Katelyn Smith over at The Remote Nomad of sites that offer longer term work.

Whether you go long term or short term, again, the reason I suggest looking for online/remote work is because you need to still be making an income. Wherever you have a computer and broadband internet access, then you can work remotely as a VA.

 

Scenario B:

Another scenario I hear about fairly often are those who have had a job for awhile, but they know they want more.

Does this describe you?

1. You have a bit of savings (or some other runway) available to be put towards a new business.
2. You have ok to great sales skills.
3. You’re ok with a day job, but it still leaves a void in you.
4. You have or haven’t found your life purpose and/or mission.

 

Well, I’d also say to use the niche product development here as well. BUT, I might suggest that this is a great time to look at MLM’s as well.

As I previously covered in the last post, this is pretty much one of the few times where you should be using niche marketing right out of the box.

The deal with an MLM or “Multi-Level Marketing” opportunity is that it takes a certain level of sales awareness to not completely alienate yourself from people you already know. If you’ve never done sales (or know how to generate leads), then your experience might end up as more a social club for you more-so than a profitable opportunity.

This is what happened to me with LTD.

I loved the knowledge I got from the group and the relationships I built, but I never came to actually bringing in more money than I put in.

This was totally my fault. I wasn’t aware at how bad I was at sales when I first started. And those folks that I tried selling the idea to at the time… well the word “manipulation” is a bit closer to describing what I was actually doing.

That said, if you don’t know if you want to commit to starting your own business from scratch, then an MLM might be the right thing to do. They’re great training and a great network.

Or, if you think you are ready to start your own business, then you could potentially weave an MLM in there as well – if it aligns with what you’re looking to do.

 

Any Scenario:

Regardless of the direction you’re wanting to go, my main suggestion is this. Don’t feel like you don’t deserve success in your life – even if you feel like you’ve wasted precious hours of your life to this point.

Dane Maxwell put it like this once:

“Most of us need to deal with our personal feelings of inadequacy. The greatest killer from our research at The Foundation is people dealing with the feeling of inadequacy.

You have always been fully adequate to do what you want to do. You just need the right path. Your feelings have nothing to do with you being successful or not. You just need the right path to follow. Trust this path, NOT your feeling.

If you can cut out all the noise and focus on building your business, you will absolutely excel fast and change your life. No longer do you need to be intimidated.”

In short, we’re all our worst critics. If you can learn to control those emotions or negative gut reactions, then you’re finally giving yourself the freedom to achieve something great in your life.

 

Action Steps:

I hope this gives you a bit more insight into answering this question of which strategy to use and when.

Please note that these are only two possible scenarios. Everyone has a unique situation. My goal was to look at two separate extremes.

If you’ve already started a business, I’d love to hear from you below in how you got started. Did you start first for the money or did you rock the passion perspective?

If you need help thinking about this further, shoot us an email through the contact tab above. Let’s get this figured out!

 

BONUS:

I thought I’d share this recent favorite of the #AskGaryVee show. Gary shares lots of of parallel thoughts throughout this one!