Niching Up by Chris Dreyer — A Summary

2 min readAug 13, 2023

How to Niche-up

Niching up doesn’t work with all businesses. It may or may not be the strategy for you.
Take a broad view, explore all avenues and then niche up.
Learn from experts or find a mentor.
Focus and spend 10,000 hours on only one skill.
As soon as you find success in your niche competitors will follow. They can take a share of your business but will also force you to improve.
Raise your prices after you develop expertise. You build expertise through knowledge and application. Both need to go hand in hand.
As you're finding success, keep raising your prices until you hit your price-to-value radio ceiling and then raise your value.
You're not a jack of all trades, you are a master of one.

When starting out, give services for free if you have to.
Ask for testimonials and feature them on your portfolio or website.
Build trust and a good reputation. This is an ongoing and neverending effort.
Go to conferences and meetups.
Build relationships but don’t take more than you give.
Be a fan, not a creep or a stalker.
Don’t be a snake oil salesman and don’t work with one.
Make content. Whatever works for your niche, podcasts, tutorials, social media posts, talks, articles etc.
Be efficient. As you spend thousands of hours on your niche, check for areas that can be outsourced to save you time.