I had it hammered into my head for the last two or three months or so: be niche. Do one thing and one thing only. Be THE authority on that one little thing that you do, and you will not regret it.
And I would totally agree and would sniff at people who said they were doing “corporate, product, wedding, portrait and landscape photography” because they were totally missing the point, weren’t they?
And yet what did I do myself? I did exactly what they did, maybe on a slightly smaller scale.
I mean, I decided quite early on I won’t photograph weddings, because I don’t think I can handle them alone and produce results I’d be proud of every time. So I said I’m going to be a portrait photographer. And then I added headshots on top of that (because well, lets face it, headshots is something people need all the time and I’m good at headshots). And portrait photographer surely involves babies and children and couples and maternity and what not. And then maybe I’d do couple of weddings as well, but they’ll have to be small weddings. Because I mean people get married all the time, it’s so much easier to get people spend on their wedding photography than it is on their family photoraphy. And of course there’s Trash The Dress and Engagement Sessions opportunities that I will be missing by not doing weddings. So I said okay, I’ll say I’ll do small weddings and limited number of them per year.
And it’s like I do everything now.
Not good.
So… I’ve been listening to a couple of interviews from More Buyers Mastermind (which I bought when it first came out, but it kinda slipped my mind as I never received an email saying it’s now live, but luckily I was reminded of it yesterday) with Naomi Dunford and Pam Slim… And yeah, it’s all cool and again they were hammering their point home: you have got to be niche if you want to succeed.
But I heard it all before, so I was like “yes of course I need to do niche” but it hasn’t really clicked.
But you know what did it to me? Discovering – by pure accident – Kiss Books. Their simplicity and their philosophy has blown me away. They have shamelessly reproduced Apple’s website design, but I don’t care, because Apple is a good thing to copy. And they have this “Simple is hot” strapline which is just PERFECT. And I am yet to even come close to ordering one of their books, but I’m head over heels in love, and I have this amazing feeling about them that I would love my future clients to feel when they come across my website.
So I wrote on my brainstorming wall: SIMPLE in really big red letters and had listed lots of things that should be simple about my business. And then as I was cooking my soup, it suddenly hit me and rushed back to the room and wrote: “Simple = Do one thing” and kind of scribbled what could potentially become my niche.
Or I will freak out again and go back to being jack-of-all-trades.
But I hope I won’t.
So here it goes. Months of reading the same old advice and ignoring it. And then when you see a really good implementation of this advice in your industry it finally does the trick.
Oh, and if you’re celebrating today – Happy Christmas everyone!
P.S. My brilliant brainstorming wall is Magic Whiteboard if anyone’s wondering. Really brilliant thing and a great example of being VERY niche.
