The Anti-Niche Guide

The hot new topic that continues to pop up on my feed.

FUCK NICHING DOWN!

This ain’t new to me. I’ve been working on it for over 2 years and 572 Instagram posts.

I love the idea that we can fully express our multi-passionate selves.

But it’s not so simple about talking about whatever you want.

I’ve made many mistakes over the last 2 years.

Let me share those with you and how to effectively not niche down.

The Anti-Niche

In order to break the rules, you must know the rules.

So what is a Niche?

A niche is a specialized segment of the market for a particular product or service.

Examples of niches are:

• A [service] for [specialized segment]
• Personal Trainer for CEOs
• Podcasting for Single Moms
• Business Coach for Photographers

The way marketing to a niche has been taught is to now position yourself as the expert in this field with the strict rule of: ONLY ever talk about your expertise as it relates to that segment.

For example: The personal trainer for CEOs can only ever talk about fitness and nutrition as it relates to running a company.

Here’s the problem and why people hate niching down so much:

1. The personal trainer wants to become a chess coach, but feels trapped with the audience they built based on the topics they discuss in their content. They feel like and have been taught they can’t talk about what they really want to talk about (chess) because the audience they built (CEOs) won’t care. So they continue only talking about fitness and nutrition and eventually burn out because they’re not passionate about those topics anymore.
2. A personal trainer is not and has never been a CEO. It becomes incredible difficult to relate to other CEOs and continually think of content. This also leads to frustration and burn out.
3. Finally, the personal trainer may have once been a CEO but, since growing their business, hasn’t been one for several years. This also leads to a disconnection to their audience and potential disinterest in the niche. They either have to start from scratch or burn out.

Now, people think the solution is to say, “fuck niching down!” because they want the freedom to talk about anything.

But that isn’t quite right, is it?

The Anti-Niche

I don’t play video games. I have no interest in talking about them. Therefore, it’s not that I want to talk about anything. I actually want the freedom to talk about the things I love.

This is a big difference and a beautiful realization.

We are all different. That’s what makes the world we live in so fun.

We all have different preferences, types, tastes, beliefs and world-views.

This is why you have best friends and fall in love with certain people.

Being your most authentic self online and attracting an audience who loves you is about letting those differences shine.

It’s about not letting the “rules” of social media dictate how you get to show up.

It’s the personal trainer who loves chess and played in a tournament last weekend who thinks he has to keep that a secret from the world because their CEO ideal client wouldn’t care about chess.

Fuck the “ideal client” CEO!

I want you to drop this idea of a niche and learn how speak about chess and fitness (whatever are the things you love) in the same breath because those two things create the most energized, authentic, fun and loving version of you.

Building an Effective Personal Brand

I’d like to be sure you learn from the mistakes I’ve made so you don’t make them for yourself.

I quit corporate because I wanted to spend more of my days doing the things I love.

I cannot live that life for free. I want to make money. In fact, I’d love to make millions from work that I love AND have the freedom to do more of the other things I love (multi-passionate beings, amirite?)

Over the last 2 years and 572 Instagram posts I have been attempting to build this anti-niche personal brand. Some would say I have effectively done it because I surpassed 40,000 followers this summer.

However, that actually screwed me.

Before I get into that, if you want to make money as the anti-niche, you must first understand how money is made.

Every business exists because it solves a problem.

People buy things because it solves a problem.

It’s really as simple as that.

The problem I solve is to help people create consistent authentic content that grows their brand.

Part of my work is that I love to help people through their own mental and emotional blocks. I have found that people aren’t actually struggling writing great hooks or that they don’t know how to tell stories. The real problem is that they don’t trust themselves to speak their full truth and be vulnerable on the internet. Sometimes their blocks stop them from understanding what their full truth even is.

Because I love talking about the inner work I really leaned into making content about my internal blocks in all areas of life because hey, I’m the anti-niche and I’m gonna talk about anything.

Then a few of those reels blew up.

I gained 38,000 followers in one summer.

The problem is that these reels weren’t about creating content. They were just about my own personal growth.

One of the reels I made specifically had the call to action, “Follow me (a guy learning to trust himself)”

As a rough estimate, I’d say 80% of these people are following me to learn to trust themselves, but have no intention to ever make content… ya know… the thing I love helping people do AND how I make money.

I got myself more known for personal growth than I did for being a content creator. That was a big mistake.

The truth is, my income has increased a bit since going viral, but nowhere near what you or I would expect from a 10x increase in followers.

It actually caused bigger problems than I had before at only 4,300 followers.

Blowing up can be great, but not if you blow up for the wrong thing.

The anti-niche understands that every business exists to solve a problem and people buy things that solve their problem. I don’t care if you’re rich or poor, black or white, 18 years old or 90 years old, male or female, CEO or fresh out of college… if you suffer from the problem I solve, I can help you.

The anti-niche also understand that buying is emotional. People will buy YOUR THING instead of your competitors because of an emotional connection to YOU!

At this point we all have emotional gut feelings about brands like Apple, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Disney, Coke, Starbucks and McDonalds. We will buy (or not buy) specific things from them because we trust them and know what they stand for. For some of the most loyal fans, it doesn’t matter what Apple makes, they’ll buy it. Ultimately, that’s the goal.

What I want to teach you is how to be fully, authentically you—to have the freedom to talk about the things you love—so you can build a deep emotional connection with your audience and then when you launch an aligned product—whatever it is—they’ll be excited to buy it.

That is what it means to build an Effective Personal Brand.

The Complete Guide

What you just read is the intro to the brand new Anti-Niche Guide.

In here I break down the 5 steps to build an effective personal brand without having to niche down.

I finished this on Sunday night and was literally dancing in the living room with excitement to share this with you. You are going to love how I walk you through step by step exactly how this is done and how to avoid my own mistakes over the last 2 years.

In this FREE guide you will get…

• A Content Idea Bank that you will fill with hundreds of content ideas
• How to create the 3 best types of content for growth
• Examples of how I implement this strategy in my content
• Each lesson in the guide comes in audio format so you can listen on the go

Click the button and it’s all yours!

Enjoy!

Matt

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review at the end of the guide. Each month I will be doing a social media audit giveaway for one of the reviews to help you create your best content ever!