In thought leadership, sometimes you succeed by going big—Robert Cialdini cracking the code of influence and persuasion, or Rita McGrath explaining how businesses can thrive amid the end of competitive advantage. But other times, depending on your passions and goals, it’s better to narrowcast. Instead of developing a broad theory about how the world works or the direction of the future, you can become the go-to authority on a particular slice that has been overlooked, an area where your extensive knowledge, and ability to communicate it, shines. Once you’ve established yourself there, you can often expand your influence to other realms.
Building a base of knowledge in a narrow subject area may seem like a career-limiting move, but sometimes it’s the only way to get past the competition. If your field already contains multiple thought leaders, it will be hard for you to gain recognition. Readers will trust the established experts and have no reason to turn to you—unless your expertise in a subsection of the field surpasses that of the general experts.
Take the world of technology. “If you want to be known as a tech blogger, you’re competing with TechCrunch, and Gigaom, and The Verge,” says Robert Scoble. “That’s almost 150 people at three blogs. Are you really going to be able to rise above the noise level, with one person? I don’t think so.”
Fortunately, there’s a solution. Scoble suggests choosing one segment to specialize in so that your coverage can be much deeper than that of even the better-funded establishment players. TechCrunch may cover nanotechnology, for instance, but if you write exclusively about that subject, you’re going to rapidly outstrip them and become the definitive source on the subject. In this chapter, we’ll cover how to find the niche you want to own, distinguish yourself from others in the field, develop your skills so you’re regarded as an unparalleled authority, and, finally, how to expand your reputation so you’re ultimately able to move far beyond your initial specialty.
FINDING YOUR NICHE
The first step is finding your niche. What are you qualified—and sufficiently interested in—to talk about? Perhaps it’s a hobby you’ve been pursuing since childhood. Maybe you’ve been researching one topic for years, or have an advanced degree in a particular subject. It could be the result of extensive personal study, as was the case with Ramit Sethi, creator of the popular blog (and later New York Times bestseller) I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He wasn’t a CPA or financial planner. Instead, he learned about personal finance in the trenches. “We didn’t have a lot of money and my parents said, ‘If you want to go to college, you have to get scholarships,’” he told me. “And so I built a system to apply to about sixty-five or seventy of them, and I ended up paying my way through college.” That was a win—but he learned even more from an early loss. He decided to invest his first scholarship check in the stock market, hoping to grow its value. He lost half of it. “I was like, ‘Oh, I better learn how money works,’” he recalls, which led him to his new career. Sometimes, in situations like this, the path is obvious.
But what if you’re not sure where to start? A good first step is to follow your passions and see where they lead. For four years, Nate Silver was a bored accounting firm employee. He tried to entertain himself with a mix of activities blending the Internet, statistics, and ratings—first, by creating a Web site called Burrito Bracket that rated Mexican restaurants in Chicago, and then by playing Internet poker.1 He’d picked up basic statistics in college as an economics major. And in his spare time, like many Americans, he followed baseball. But instead of simply watching games and rooting for his favorite team, he decided to create a tool for ranking players’ performance—one that turned out to be remarkably accurate.
After it was acquired by the Web site Baseball Prospectus, Silver managed the system for several years until his interest was piqued by another complex and misunderstood phenomenon he loved: politics. Pollsters released innumerable public opinion surveys, but their findings were all over the map. Was there a way, he wondered, to make better predictions? During the 2008 campaign season, he created the FiveThirtyEight blog to answer the question, wielding statistical analysis in a far more sophisticated way than most reporters. (The name refers to the number of votes in the electoral college.) In the process, Nate Silver built a devoted following and called the election with stunning accuracy.
When Silver ran into the editor of The New York Times Magazine on an Amtrak platform in Boston in the spring of 2010, a deal was struck. At first, he agreed to contribute a few pieces to the magazine. But soon, the courtship bloomed, and the Times licensed his blog for a three-year period, through the 2012 elections (which Silver predicted perfectly).2 He wrote a best-selling book and built a massive fan base. The day before the election, his blog accounted for 20 percent of The New York Times’s entire online traffic. In 2013, he moved FiveThirtyEight to ESPN, where he presided over a newsroom of sports, politics, and economics reporters—all immersed in his statistics-driven approach to news coverage.
Silver wasn’t a professional statistician; he doesn’t even have a master’s degree. But, thanks to his college studies, he knew enough. He didn’t know right away that he wanted to transform baseball or politics. He experimented first with burritos and poker. But he followed his passions and eventually found ways to apply his expertise in unusual places where it was truly valued. Baseball and politics are vastly different. But Silver’s ability to translate complex numbers into a meaningful narrative transcended those boundaries and made him a household name.
FOCUSING YOUR NICHE
You may find that you have so many passions, it’s hard to focus on one. That was the problem I faced a number of years ago. I’d been working as a self-employed marketing consultant, and wanted to write a book—both to fulfill a long-standing personal goal, and also as a means of attracting new business. But the question of what to write about was tricky. In my consulting work, I was a generalist. I helped clients create marketing plans and social media strategies, not to mention working with them on messaging and media relations. I used to work as a presidential campaign spokesperson and as a journalist, plus I’d run a nonprofit, directed a documentary film, and had been a theology student. It was hard to figure out what facet of my experience I should write about, and—critically—what would actually interest other people.
It was only when I started blogging for Harvard Business Review in 2010 that my focus clarified. The second post I ever wrote for them was called “How to Reinvent Your Personal Brand”—a topic that interested me because of my numerous career changes. It wasn’t necessarily meant to be my definitive statement to the world; it was one seven-hundred-word blog post, out of dozens I’d done before, and hundreds I’d do subsequently. But for some reason, this one caught on. It received tons of comments on the Web site, and the editors asked me to write an expanded version for the Harvard Business Review magazine. Within a week of its publication, three different literary agents had reached out to me, asking if I’d be interested in representation. Two years later, my book Reinventing You was released, and I’ve subsequently lectured around the world about personal branding and professional reinvention.
Sometimes you have to experiment with a lot of ideas and see which one sticks. If you’re unsure, let the market decide. Which posts receive the most comments, or retweets, or e-mail inquiries? What seems to capture people’s imagination? Finding your niche is not an exact science, and you often won’t know in advance what will work. If I had waited for the right idea, I’d probably still be waiting. Instead, I tried out a variety and, in the process, learned which one people cared about.
CREATING YOUR NICHE
My challenge was having too many ideas to pursue, but some people have the opposite problem, and worry they don’t have any areas of expertise. If that’s you, don’t be too sure. Expertise takes many forms, and almost anyone can become an expert at something, if they’re strategic about how and where they can add value. You don’t have to be the number-one expert in your field; context matters. It’s not necessary to be Shakespeare to be known around the office as a good writer, and you don’t need to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a successful fitness coach.
Michael Leckie, a regional vice president at the research firm Gartner, developed a reputation in his company for being an expert on coaching and talent development, even though—by his own admission—he certainly didn’t start out as one. Compared with worldwide authorities, he was a novice, but he knew more than others at the firm, put in the effort to expand his knowledge, and was willing to share what he learned. “When you start building your brand in a corporation, it’s a confined space,” he says. “You don’t need to be the best in the world; you just need to be the best one there. You can be a big fish in a little pond, and if you’re the biggest fish in that environment, you get bigger and can then start to do things outside the organization.” That’s enabled him to propel his career forward. Similarly, if you’re a reasonably good writer, you could start coaching your colleagues (with their permission, of course) on how to write better business memos or e-mails. If you’re interested in health, you could lead a running group, which may generate client leads for a new fitness coaching business. If you’re passionate about mindfulness, you could start a class at your office (that worked for Chade-Meng Tan, a Google engineer whose “Search Inside Yourself” classes at the Googleplex led to international recognition and a book deal).
Finally, how do you avoid choosing a niche that’s too narrow? Ask yourself whether your subject has enough material to stay interesting over time. That strategy worked well for Brian Stelter, a young journalist whose detailed blog covering the television news industry caught the attention of The New York Times, which eventually hired him (he later moved on to CNN). He chose a subject narrow enough that he could cover it far better than the mainstream media, which would write about it only if something major happened, but also broad enough that there’s always material (which wouldn’t be the case if his blog was entirely devoted to one newscaster).
Many people hesitate to “niche down.” The overly modest are concerned that they’re not really experts, and the renaissance people don’t want to feel trapped. But remember: Finding and embracing a niche can be powerful because, first, as long as you know more than the people around you, you’re making a real contribution. And second, as we’ll discuss later in the chapter, developing one niche is often the fastest ticket to expanding into adjacent areas. For now, let’s turn to a critical element that aspiring thinkers can’t afford to overlook: distinguishing yourself in your niche.
ASK YOURSELF:
DISTINGUISHING YOURSELF IN YOUR NICHE
If you’re specializing in an emerging area like nanotechnology, staking out new turf isn’t that hard. No one has written about your topic extensively before, and with enough effort, you can become the leading authority. But what about areas that are more well trod? How can you distinguish yourself enough to get noticed? That was the problem facing Rachael Ray, and as her example shows, it’s often a matter of reframing your expertise so that what’s banal in one setting becomes revelatory in another.
In her world—the world of cooking—it’s pretty clear what “expert” means: you run a high-end restaurant, or you’ve been trained at elite cooking schools. Rachael Ray did neither. She started out as the food buyer for a gourmet market in Albany, New York, and began doing “thirty-minute meal” cooking demonstrations at the store to showcase ingredients.3 The store didn’t choose her for the role because of her prodigious talents; it was because no chef in the area would accept the store’s low rates. When her boss was fired, she quit out of loyalty and landed another job doing cooking demos around the region for the Price Chopper grocery store chain.
Her traveling demonstrations eventually led to a weekly cooking show on a local Albany TV station, and in 1999, she wrote her first cookbook (published by a tiny, one-woman press). The story could have ended there, but in 2001, Ray had a stroke of luck: a Today show producer had been given her cookbook as a gift. When a snowstorm brought a rash of guest cancellations, the producer decided to give Ray a try. Ray drove nine hours through the snow to make it into New York City. She aced the show and the next morning, the Food Network offered her a $360,000 contract, launching her career. It’s a fairy-tale story so incredible, she became a Harvard Business School case study.4 But why was she chosen?
Compared with Emeril Lagasse or Mario Batali, decorated chefs and James Beard award winners, her credentials were woefully insufficient. As she recalled in a Vanity Fair interview, “I said, ‘Listen, you’re champagne, I’m beer out of the bottle. I clearly don’t belong here. I’m not a chef, you’ve been duped.’ And I got up.”5 But the Food Network executives were looking for something different. “They said, ‘No, no, no, stop. That’s what we like. We don’t want you to be a chef.’”
We don’t want you to be a chef. Those are bizarre words coming from the leaders of a network dedicated to food, but they’re telling. By the traditional standards of expertise, Ray is—as she freely admits—“grossly under-qualified.”6 But she’s an expert in something different, not high-end French cuisine or molecular gastronomy, but the art of making food easy and accessible to regular people. Some wouldn’t even call that expertise; plenty of people complain that their mom/wife/friend can cook as well as Rachael Ray can, so why is she on TV? But that’s missing the point.
If Rachael Ray were just another neighbor on your block, her ability to make tasty thirty-minute meals would be nice, but not earth-shattering. But in the context of the Food Network—which had built a brand around celebrity chefs like Emeril Lagasse—she was a revelation. They needed someone whose spunky, regular-gal charm could offset the potentially alienating expertise of someone who had been named the best restaurateur in America. Lagasse may be great to watch, but viewers could rightly ask: Can I even hope for my meals to turn out like his? With Rachael Ray, they didn’t have to wonder.
Your expertise doesn’t have to include the most prestigious diplomas or accolades; sometimes you just have to know how to do something different in a given context, and do it well. Think about who needs your skills or approach, but doesn’t typically have access to them. There are plenty of people who speak Spanish in the world, but if you’re the only bilingual financial planner in your office, that gives you a competitive advantage and makes you the go-to person for an entire group of potential customers. If you have great communication skills and work at a software company, you could be an invaluable bridge between engineers (who often struggle to avoid tech jargon) and customers. If you’re a corporate executive with a passion for environmental issues, you may be uniquely valuable to the cause because of your knowledge of how the business world operates and how to influence corporate policy.
Becoming recognized in your niche is a pitched battle when you’re up against others who have the exact same credentials you do. If they have better connections or even just a sliver more talent, your chances are slim. If you change the context and compete in a space where you’re unique, as Rachael Ray did, you may find yourself a hot commodity. You’re injecting fresh ideas and energy into the discussion; you’re offering something genuinely different, and that gives you a competitive advantage.
ASK YOURSELF:
DEVELOPING YOUR NICHE
At this point, you’ve identified your niche and determined how to distinguish yourself in the marketplace. Now you need to develop your niche so that you’re moving from an expert to the expert—taking your knowledge to the next level, and creating an insurmountable barrier between you and the competition. You can do this through formal study, but it’s not strictly necessary. In fact, one of the best ways to develop your niche is through creating your own personal curriculum. Identify the skills you’d like to learn, and think through how you can best obtain them. Sometimes it’s a paid degree program, but it could also be through à la carte classes at local adult education centers or university extension schools. You could do an internship or part-time apprenticeship with someone you admire.
You could identify free information sources you like and binge on them. On my Web site, I’ve compiled more than four hundred free articles that I’ve written for sites such as Forbes and Harvard Business Review, covering marketing, branding, message development, leadership, personal branding, and more. Many authors offer similar archives. Personally, one of my goals this past year was to learn more about online marketing, so I’ve made a point of listening regularly to a number of excellent free podcasts like Smart Passive Income, EntrepreneurOnFire, and more. Once you find sites or podcasts you enjoy, you can listen almost endlessly; as of this writing, EntrepreneurOnFire alone has well over three hundred hours of free audio content.
If you’d prefer a structured course, you could learn online via a MOOC—or make your own reading list. Josh Kaufman essentially earned his own “degree” by reading the top business books on his own. He chronicled his efforts in the popular book The Personal MBA. You could do the same with your chosen field, and in the process become vastly more knowledgeable than most people who simply read what others tell them to or assume they’ll pick up what they need to know by osmosis.
Finally, you can learn simply through doing. “I think the best training is almost always going to be hands-on training,” Nate Silver told Harvard Business Review.7 “Getting your hands dirty with the data set is, I think, far and away better than spending too much time doing reading and so forth.” He didn’t start out as an expert statistician; he knew just enough to get started, and in the process of mucking around with burrito rankings, he became an expert. If you’re curious and willing to work hard, you can teach yourself what you need to develop your niche and get to the next level.
ASK YOURSELF:
EXPANDING YOUR NICHE
Finally, it’s time to expand your niche. Once you’ve become a recognized expert in one area, it’s infinitely easier to move into new realms. One reason is a phenomenon in psychology known as the “halo effect,” in which—because you’re already perceived as good at one thing—people generalize and think you’re brilliant overall. That means if you’re the authority on Google Glass, you’re likely to be called for comment about Google’s self-driving cars. (It’s important to be honest about the limits of your expertise here: some people might actually buy a brand of toothpaste if Dr. Phil recommended it, but he probably shouldn’t make the endorsement unless he’s been moonlighting in dental school.) Second, in a very tactical sense, the connections you make through your initial expertise can help you as you diversify. (If you’ve written an op-ed for a newspaper on a given topic, the editor—who now knows you and your writing style—may be more receptive to your pitch on a different theme.)
One master of niche expansion is Sophal Ear. When he was a baby, his mother fled the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal rulers of Cambodia, and saved her five children. Nearly thirty years later, when he grew up and began studying for his Ph.D. in political economy at the University of California at Berkeley, he wondered about the homeland he’d fled and decided to study it. “It fuels those late nights, that drive to do as much as possible because I feel a sense of responsibility,” he says. “I’ve been fortunate: I got out of Cambodia alive.”
On the surface, choosing to become an expert on Cambodia might not look like a good career move for an aspiring academic. Scholars are evaluated on how many times their work is cited, and compared with the intense geopolitical interest in China or India, Cambodia is an afterthought in the academic world. Ear recognized that concentrating his studies on Cambodia decreased his chances of recognition, but he wasn’t deterred: “I’d rather do what I’m passionate about.”
His dissertation focused on foreign aid in Cambodia. That deep dive into a narrow topic allowed him to accelerate his mastery of the field, and when opportunities to pivot came along, he took them. His dissertation chair took on a project with the UN agricultural commission and needed someone to write a paper on livestock in Cambodia; Ear agreed to do it as long as it could fit in with his dissertation.
You never know where your breaks will come from: when the avian flu broke out, Ear’s knowledge of Asian livestock made him a sought-after expert. Indeed, it turned out that his specialty could serve as an entry point into many topics. “I’m not the kind of professor who stays in my lane when it comes to research,” he says. “One door is Cambodia and it leads to all kinds of possibilities.” He’s even given a popular TED talk about criminal tribunals and justice, stemming from his family’s experience with the Khmer Rouge.
Despite his focus on a country that doesn’t get much press, Ear has found a way to extend his expertise into the most disparate realms imaginable. He recently became a tenured professor at Occidental College, and emphatically plans to keep his research focused outside the ivory tower: “I’m going to write and . . . it’s not to create ideas that are going to be collecting dust on a bookshelf, but to have an impact on the world.”
If you’re strategic, like Ear, you can leverage your niche expertise into a broader role as a thought leader. The secret is thinking through related areas where you can add value. He wasn’t moving from Cambodian politics into football or ballet or Hollywood movies. Instead, he leveraged his core knowledge and expanded steadily into adjacent fields, where the connection made sense. Over time, as his expertise and reputation in those areas grow, he can move farther afield. (For instance, an expertise in Cambodia leads to an expertise in avian flu, which—if he pursues it—could lead to an expertise in the spread of other infectious diseases that have nothing to do with Cambodia.) Once you’ve gotten a toehold, you can rapidly expand your brand and the realms in which you’re considered an expert.
ASK YOURSELF: