The Problem With Nicheing down

You Will Feel It When You Accept This Fact

And the problem, plain and simple, is that it requires self-division.

Nicheing down means to neglect other parts of the whole.

We're holistic beings.

Your style, or your Self, is made up of a number of things, not all of them connected to your particular Thing, be it art, business, mental health, fitness.

Each one of these I mentioned above, and others, combine with your influences in a complex web of emotion, energy, desire, and projection to create the totality of Who We Are.

Nicheing down says you have to favor one thing at the exclusion of everything else.

To cut a part of yourself off in a wilful, deliberate way.

Akin to slicing one arm off an octopus in a deliberate way, because the octopus is not giving his all to an audience when it shows up with eight arms, because it’s too difficult to understand his message.

An octopus is not sending a message. An octopus just is.

Are you being authentic to you, or are you projecting a composite made of trends and rehearsed gestures and statements?

Everything influences your Thing to a smaller or lesser degree.

We are made up of a number of things, big and small.

We are the sum total of our passions, interests, curiosities, and skills, both natural and acquired through practice and learning. And while some of these aren’t as evident to us, or don’t command as much of our daily attention as others, they make up a part of the total.

Much in the same way the human body is 70-percent water, but the remaining 30-percent works in harmony with the 70 for optimal health.

When you niche down you are presenting yourself at less than your total.

You are a fraction of a missing whole.

That missing whole is what we need.

The totality.

You're not in your totality when you niche down, so we don't benefit from what you have to offer because we're only getting a fraction.

And you did this because of external factors.

Someone on social media said this is the way.

Someone who may have been repeating someone else’s advice, which may have started as lie spread by someone further back the timeline who wanted to appear knowledgeable.

We're holistic beings and we have to learn to harmonize all the aspects that make up the total of Who We Are or we suffer, and in turn the people that we are for suffer.

Instead of nicheing down let's consider simply a way to create an intersection of the skills, curiosities and passions that makes us unique in a way that is relatable.

Connective tissue is the way.

There is the main Thing, the dominant aspect of your brand, and then there's the things adjacent to that Thing.

• A way you merged art and business through an unexpected insight that came to you when watching a video on making bonsai trees.

• A method you learned of addressing grief that you “discovered” from watching a music video with a sci-fi theme.

• How you learned to manage your finances after reading an interview from a filmmaker.

The connective tissue.

The dominant aspect of your brand might be a little too eccentric for most people to “get it”, but connective tissue is the bridge that gets you there.

Connective tissue is the aspect of relatability.

It's the anecdote.

The story.

Your origin story.

The origin story of how not only you came to be the best at what you do, but how you arrived at the mindset that brought you to this unique place.

That story is the connective tissue.

It’s the story that takes your reader from where they are to where you are.

The story that creates a psychic link from where you to were to they want to be.

A psychic link that doesn’t tell them to imitate what you did, but encourages them to find a way to think that leads to rheir “a-ha’ moment.

You were once where they are now.

The connective tissue is the narrative that motivates your reader to do the things that will get him to where you are now.

You are an amazing, interlocking complex, like an octopus. Don’t tie your arms down to niche because we need all of you. Photo courtesy of Getty Images