to narrow your target market segment

Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different - Christopher Lochhead, Heather Clancy

Partial Excerpts (antilibrary)

2018

Introduction: The Odd Couple

If Play Bigger is for “Big E” entrepreneurs trying to invent the next Google, Niche Down is dedicated to “small e” entrepreneurs who want to create massively successful smaller, independent businesses. (indie)

Heather Clancy June 2018

1: Be Different, Become Legendary

In any given year, roughly 8% of all the small businesses considered in SBA’s annual census are startups

startups and solopreneurs accounted for 12% of all U.S. companies in 1980. Fact: We’re starting considerably fewer startups on an annual basis than 25 years ago

root cause.

Perhaps they’re shackled by the heavy weight of student loans.8

Maybe they just have a smaller appetite for risk than their parents.

Outside of Silicon Valley, it’s criminal how difficult it is for entrepreneurs and small businesses to raise outside funding — the most common model is “bootstrapping” with personal or family savings.

rate of business failures — it’s tough to keep a company afloat, let alone profitable over the long term.

ultimately, a category that matters and product or service that someone is actually willing to buy.

We’d argue that the single most important secret to successful entrepreneurship starts with this simple, profound decision: Am I going to find my place in the world or make my place in the world?