Choose your niche… no… become the niche… no… niche down… no… be a generalist…

It’s common to feel stuck in the debate over specializing versus being a generalist.

In this newsletter I'll show you why the future favors those who can combine ideas, adapt with ease, and redefine the rules—and how you can seize the immense opportunities ahead.

The faster technology evolves, the more valuable one skill becomes: connecting the dots. The future doesn’t belong to the specialists boxed into one role; it belongs to the creators, the polymaths, the modern-day Renaissance thinkers who can blend ideas, pivot fast, and build something the world didn’t see coming.

In this age, adaptability isn’t just a skill, it’s survival.

To Niche Or Not To Niche, That Is The Question.

Most creators are still debating this topic and there’s no mutual consensus on what’s best when you’re starting out—because there is not one right answer, but one is more effective in the long term, especially today's world.

Take a look at these generalists:

• Benjamin Franklin
• Richard Branson
• Casey Neistat
• MrBeast
• Da Vinci
• Dan Koe
• [Your Name]

I'll show you the obvious choice to avoid becoming obsolete and replaceable, and how to make your broad topic pillars stand out to your audience and yourself, so you feel motivated to write content.

Imagine You Chose A Niche

You are a sales manager with 10+ years of experience who wants to start writing and creating content for your brand. You don't know what you want to write about yet, but you have many interests you could talk about for hours. You want to become a creator and make a living from your writing and content so you think you should choose a niche, instead of writing about your passion for writing, psychology, and nature. Since you want results you end up listening to the advice of choosing a niche.

Psychology is a topic you enjoy, so you pick mental health for sales managers as your niche.

You start creating content around their pain points and struggles and your niche audience starts to follow you because you have solutions they want and your former experience and professional background resonate with them.

Great. Now your followers are growing.

It’s going great but you start to feel you want to talk about different topics and to a broader audience, so you start writing more about your passion for writing and how it can benefit everyone in their daily lives. Most of the initial followers are starting to see the change in content and they aren’t interested in writing and think your content isn’t relevant to them anymore—it’s not speaking directly to them.

What’s happening?

You are starting to broaden your content and the audience is changing. The initial followers aren’t that interested anymore and stop engaging. A lot of them even unfollow you. You spent a lot of time writing about a niche topic and now, in a sense, you need to start over.

It was going so well… so what happened?

You started targeting a very specific audience, and as you evolved as a creator and wanted to include other interests and topics, the audience changed. Most of the followers you targeted weren’t that interested in what interested you and were more interested in solving their own problems.

Although this doesn’t mean going back to square one, it does mean you have to start reaching a new audience, making the initial time you put in growing your reach kind of wasted.

You started with the niche and as you evolved and wanted to include topics, you had to start over.

The Generalist's Approach

Now let’s look at the generalist approach or what some call ”becoming the niche”.

If you want to stay relevant in the future this is the way to go.

Here’s why.

Same example as before, but this time you start broad. This time sales is part of who you are, something you could use in your content and also create an offer around—it’s not what will determine your audience. You will still be writing about mental health, but you show how it applies to a broader audience, and how everyone can benefit from writing, no matter if they are a sales manager, a doctor, or a student.

This time the audience will take more time to build.

Why?

Because you are creating a niche, you’re creating a brand, you’re crafting an image associated with you.

People won’t exactly know what you are about in the beginning, because you’ve not created the identity yet, you are a mix of different topics, skills, and interests, but you haven’t discovered how all the pieces fit together—therefore neither does your audience.

Here’s the thing.

Not all people will be interested in everything you share, but more people will follow you because there’s something for them in it since you write about different topics and to a broader audience.

The Unique Opportunity

Having a broader audience creates a unique opportunity for your business:

To create multiple offers for different segments of your audience.

For example, you could create:

• A writing course for those who resonate with your writing style.
• A sales program for those who need help to sell their products or services.
• A content creation system for those who relate to your way of creating visuals.

This approach offers a flexible way for you to change your topics as the future evolves and the trends change—platform changes, format changes, new technology, less demand, etc. For example, if AI is making some skills you used to write about obsolete, you can transition to writing about how to implement AI to make them relevant again.

My point is that embracing a broader range of topics offers you the chance to adapt to the future without having to completely reinvent and rebrand yourself.

Not only that…

It also allows you to create new offers faster since you’re not limited to a fixed niche.

You have become the niche and can keep evolving it—as you grow. In other words, your interests, your skills, and the way you interact with people and the environment are what make you unique. The combination of them all is why you stand out and become the niche.

You can’t be copied.

Your style can be copied. The format you use can be copied. The imagery you use can be copied. Your lessons and teachings can be copied. But the essence and your creativity to solve problems can not be copied.

Your creativity eliminates your competition.

Your Broad Topic Pillars

I recommend 3 topic pillars (or at least 2) under which your sub-topics will fall under.

Start by exploring what you’ve done that interests you, what you want to learn, and what sparks your curiosity now.

If you have all that figured out, you can scroll down and skip this part.

If not, here’s what you can do:

Make a list of your past, present, and future: Note down interests, topics, skills, activities, places, accounts and channels you follow, books, movies, TV programs, and whatever comes to mind that feels relevant to figuring out your interests. Make different list categories if it helps with organizing. For example: what you love doing, what you are good at, and what you can get paid for doing.

Don’t overthink it for now. Chaos is necessary to create something new, just write what comes up.

Now you’ll most likely have a big list of things. See if you can find a connection between them—a common theme that ties them together.

For example, if you’ve written:

• Nature
• Road trips
• MMORPG games
• Travel
• Landscapes

One common theme could be exploration & adventure.

Try to find 3 common themes to give you some structure.

The list and topic pillars will evolve and need adjustments over time, that's natural since you will be growing.

Make Your Topics Spark Curiosity

How do you make your topics broad enough without being too generic?

Let’s make myself an example.

I write and create aesthetic content about:

• holistic psychology, well-being, life philosophy, personal development
• Innovation, new technology, the future of work, society
• Use of technology and digital tools for writing, content creation and entrepreneurship, holistic solutions to problems in life & business

These will evolve over time, but here’s how I could find a broad topic for each of them. The first one could fall under ”Growth”, the second could be ”Change”, and the third ”Tools & tips”.

"I write about growth, change, and tools and tips for business & life."

Fine, but too generic, right?

Let’s change that.

”I write about the human experience, evolution, and creative/unique/holistic problem-solving”

This sounds better, right? Less generic, yet broad.

This is what you can do:

When you’ve found your topic pillars find a common term that encompasses all the subtopics you want to write or create content about.

Write them down.

Now look at them and ask yourself if they’re broad enough for what you want to include in each.

If that’s alright, there’s one thing you need to do.

Make them sexy and unique, but not too vague so people don’t get it.

This isn’t easy, it requires creativity.

Take your time until you find the right terms that resonate with you and communicate your broad topics in a way that sparks curiosity for you and your audience.

Again, this will most likely evolve and you might be making changes, that’s normal.

Summary

In this newsletter, we explored:

• how creators struggle with the decision to niche down versus adopting a generalist approach.
• the importance of adaptability in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape.
• the challenges of niching down and its potential to limit audience engagement.
• the benefits of a generalist approach in attracting a wider audience and maintaining relevance.
• strategies for refining your topics to stand out and spark curiosity.

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Reply to this email if you have any questions about writing, content creation, and personal branding, I'm happy to help you gain clarity, no matter at what level you are.

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Have a nice day, and see you on the next one!

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