I Created A New Word Today: Nichify

My brother in law has a degree in agriculture, owns his own farm and has years of experience in supporting local farmers. All that to say, he's a genius when it comes to plants.

On his farm, First Fruits Orchards, they have tons of fruit trees, and every spring he'll go around and pull off about half of the newly forming buds from their peach trees. About half! When he first told me that I was shocked, but again, he's a plant genius. And it works. The more he removes and thins out the peach trees, the more they produce incredible peaches a month or so later.

If he wouldn't do that he'd end up with more peaches, sure. But they would be second class, small, and not very sweet. He's going for large, sweet first class peaches, so pruning is the means to getting there.

It's the same way with many businesses. The more you narrow your focus, do what you're really good at and stick to it, the more you're building a solid brand. You won't be the jack of all trades any more, but a specialist in what you do, and others will take notice.

The Process Of Nichifying

Because every small business and every industry is different, there is no clear cut process, just principles. In order to explain those principles I'm going to share the story of Oostas and how we've found our niche.

1. Casting Your Net Wide

The only way to find out your niche is to try a lot of things. Every business has done it to some degree. If you own a bakery, remember back to when you were trying recipes in your home kitchen, adjusting the muffin recipe about 50 times until you nailed it. Maybe you originally offered a breakfast menu, only to realize it was too much work and not enough profit so you decided to stick with just the lunch menu.

When we started Oostas we tried a lot of things. We knew our core services were websites, SEO and social media marketing, but we also dabbled in logo design, video work and had a wide variety of affiliates through which we offered other business services.

2. Seeing What Sticks

It didn't take us long to realize that offering business services through affiliate partners was just white noice for us. It distracted from our core services, so it was one of the first things to go.

Does your business have any services on the fringe that are distracting customers from your core services?

3. The Pruning Process

Just like my brother in law pulls off so many buds from his peach trees, that's also needed in business. Pruning takes time, can hurt a bit, and leaves your business feeling empty for while, but the growth that comes is worth every moment.

For Oostas, our pruning process happened in stages over about 2 years. First we removed our affiliate partners to get rid of white noise. Later realized that doing logos and other design work was hindering us from expanding into our true potential with websites  and SEO. Then finally, due to some staff changes internally, we recognized we weren’t setup as well as we could be to offer social media marketing, so we stopped advertising that as well.

Ask yourself those questions to see if there is any pruning you need to do in your business.

1. Is there anything in your business that is just white noise?
2. Anything that’s hindering you from expanding into your true potential?
3. Are you setup like you should be to fully offer what your main products and services?

4. Uber Nichifying

Once you've found your sweet spot in business then it's time to uber nichify and take it to another level. For us, that meant saying we're not just a website provider, but we specialize in designing Duda websites. Duda is the platform we build on (for a thousand reasons) so we decided to capitalize on that.

How can you take a specific brand or specialty that already exists in your business and capitalize on it?

• If you're a coffee shop can you capitalize on the brand of coffee you use, or a speciality item on your menu?
• If you're a CPA, do you use a specific software or have a service that sets you apart from other CPAs? Market that.

Are you ready to nichify your business in order to see growth?