By: Stefan Aarnio

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If you are in business you need to have a niche.

 

A niche is defined as: a specialized but profitable corner of the market.

 

And if you want to make profit, a niche is the best way to capture specialized customers and specialized profits.

 

As doctors, general practitioners make far less money than specialists. The same applies in the real world. Specialized lawyers make more money than general lawyers.

 

The same is with coaches, investment advisors, actors, athletes etc.

 

If you want to make specialized profits and big profits, you must have a niche.

 

Typically, the more narrow the niche, the more a company can charge for its products and services.

 

Marble Slab Creamery is an ice cream shop that charges $8 for an ice cream cone because they make you feel like a kid again while they fold your favorite candies and syrups into gourmet ice cream. The same ice cream cone at another store would be $2, but because of the specialty experience, they can charge 4x more than the market would generally pay for an ice cream cone at McDonalds.

 

Starbucks coffee is another specialty retailer that has been cynically named “Fivebucks” because every time you buy a coffee at the store, it’s likely $5 or more. Thirty years ago, the idea of paying $5 for coffee was obscene, coffee was a $0.50 item. But today, $5 coffee is acceptable because Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee, they sell Italian coffee culture to the customers and they pay premiums for the niche.

 

Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer and can potentially be the first Trillion dollar company in history. Wal-Mart’s niche is simple, take great household brands and sell them for less. The general population loves to save money and consequently shops at Wal-Mart. In today’s economy, consumers either shop at Wal-Mart (who put the other retailers out of business) or they shop at specialty retailers for premium specialty niche products. Niches don’t always have to be the top of the market, but they can be the bottom as well.

 

But niches aren’t always profitable, there is a dark side to niches as well.

 

In 2015 a young woman named Alexis Frulling had a threesome in public with two men at the Calgary stampede.

 

(see link below for reference)

 

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/catching-up-with-the-woman-from-the-calgary-stampede-threesome-as-her-strip-club-debut?utm_source=vicefbca

 

Alexis enjoyed a huge boost to publicity for a few days, was the talk of the Internet, started a YouTube channel to share her infinite wisdom with the world, was on TV and radio… plus she was one of the most Googled names on the internet.

 

Typically a publicity spike for most people or businesses is a good thing, after all, there is no such thing as bad press.

 

However, very quickly Alexis found herself to be unemployed and unemployable – her actions cornered her in a very small niche and suddenly she couldn’t get a normal job.

 

Unable to find real work, she is touring Alberta’s strip joints as a dancer to make a living.

 

Sometimes you can be so good at your niche that you can’t expand or ever leave. Think of actors who play roles so well that they can never get another gig (aka Macaulay Caulkin from Home Alone)

 

Choose your niche carefully; it could be one of the biggest sources of profit in your business or your biggest downfall if you fail to define a niche or choose the wrong niche all together.

 

Choose wisely.

 

Respect The Grind,

Stefan Aarnio

 

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