Niche Down!

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Category : The Overworked Geek

The first thing you have to do is to find your Niche, or the specific field you want to engage in. You are going to dive into this world and swim there for a long time, many hours a day. You better make sure the water temperature is to your liking.
Niche is not demographics. You are not looking for an age group, you are not looking for ethnicity, what you are looking for is the group of people who have the same want or need, regardless of their demographic statistics.

Pick up an industry that excites you, something that you’d like to understand and be a part of.
When you find your niche, select one market and become an expert in it.

“Why should I do that?” You ask, “The bigger the better, isn’t it?”

Not necessarily.

- When you niche down, you can concentrate on systems used by that industry. You can spend hours and days diagnosing an issue in some proprietary CRM system for an insurance broker that may only be used by 5% of your client base.

- When you specialize in a specific industry, you can invest your time in learning their systems inside and out, writing scripts and programs to automate certain tasks and become an expert in their industry.

- You can take time to find the best suppliers for the equipment you need.

- Marketing becomes a lot easier and cheaper because you can advertise in industry publications and know the client’s exact pain point.

Let’s look for example at the hospitality industry. We chose that niche because:

- The Hospitality Industry is an extremely competitive business that is influenced by trends. Owners have to constantly upgrade to stay current and hip.

- The hospitality industry has many branches: hotels, resorts, casinos, conference centers, clubs, spas and restaurants. There is much room to grow.

- There is limited desktop support issues.

- A lot of integration between systems (liquor inventory systems, pos systems, pms systems, a/v systems, security systems, key card systems), which is what my partners and I enjoy doing the most.

I want to show you my ways of saving time and aggravation. Ways to increase your income and make your life a little easier and more enjoyable. I saved my sanity and well-being. What you do with yours if up to you.

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Comments (2)

[...] restarted? Write a script to do it. You need to automate everything you can. If you specialize in a niche market, this becomes easier as you [...]

[...] Do you think you may be a commodity IT professional?  Want to stop it?  Try to Niche Down! [...]

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