Sheryl is a serial category designer.
She was also behind Plum Organics (now owned by Campbell’s Soup), which pioneered the healthy baby-food category in convenient, squeezable containers; and REBBL, a line of beverages made from “super herbs” that boost human immune systems.
She’s niched down several times as a serial entrepreneur in the food business, making Sheryl a seriously successful niche downer!
“You’re doing something that no one else has ever tried before and you need to believe in it in your heart and soul or else you’re never going to get anyone to come on this epic adventure…” Sheryl shared during a Legends & Losers conversation.33 “However, that has to be placed in concert with humility, because humility is about learning. And, the best startups are companies that learn.”
Design The Perfect Fit
Some people seem to naturally find their place in the world. As kids, their “talents” become apparent, and they get really good at those talents. They study, train and ultimately get a great job or start a company doing their thing. If this is you, congratulations, you don’t really need to read the rest of this chapter.
But if you grew up on the island of misfit toys, you should stick with us.
Those of us who can’t find our place in the world must make our place in the world.
Meet Christopher’s friend Dushka Zapata. She is a successful marketing-and-public-relations executive, a communications coach and a frequent public speaker. For years, she flirted with the idea of writing books, and eventually she quit her job to indulge that fantasy. Courageous!
Soon, Dushka found herself drowning in a sea of relative obscurity with thousands of other writers yearning to be published.
Now, she’s surfing a wave of bestsellers written almost entirely as responses to questions from her readers.
That’s because Dushka imagined a new place for herself on the digital bookshelf.
She designed a new category of writer by combining her unique POV with a new platform: Quora, a website where questions are asked, edited, answered and organized by a self-selecting community of users. Ask and ye shall receive.
Today, Dushka is a self-dubbed “amateur social writer.” A category of her own design.
That word amateur was a very deliberate choice on her part: by definition, it’s someone who does something for love rather than money. She created her own niche as an author by responding directly to people’s questions on Quora…for free.
Yes, free.
Dushka would be the first to declare that she does not offer advice. She shares what has worked for her personally, with the hope that it will work for other people. Her books include How to Be Ferociously Happy and Amateur: An inexpert, inexperienced, unauthoritative view of life.
Traditional writers hide from their readers behind keyboards while getting paid to publish books. Dushka is the opposite.
“I love writing so much that I could do it without anyone ever seeing it because that’s what I love,” she told Christopher in the first-ever episode34 of the Legends & Losers podcast. “But, I think that what happened in the course of me writing and getting a reaction from it is that I realized that I also lived for connection.”
Almost everything Dushka writes is in direct response to a question from Quora — something someone cares about. And, she makes herself available to her readers almost daily.
Dushka’s work has been viewed over 104 million times on Quora alone. And, she’s a bestselling essay author because of that notoriety.
By way of comparison, Hillary Clinton’s official Quora posts have roughly 32 million views.
Dushka made a difference to millions by parlaying what she loves to do into a new category she created. (Experience more of her personal journey in Legends & Losers Episode 96.35)
Be Driven By A Higher Purpose
As he wrote in the “Foreword” to Niche Down, motivational speaker Hal Elrod’s life and career were transformed when he decided to be different — to craft his message around a philosophy that was so personal that no one else could copy it directly.
His best-selling book, The Miracle Morning, built on what Hal learned coming back from a horrific car accident that literally (albeit briefly) claimed his life in 1999 and chronicled how he lifted himself out of the deep depression he suffered a decade later during the Great Recession.
Hal’s epiphany came while listening to a speech by the late entrepreneur and business coach Jim Rohn, who once said:
“Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become.”
With the help of his mentor, Hal realized he wasn’t dedicating enough time in his life to become the person he aspired to be.
And that provided the framework for the unique philosophy he advocates in his book.
As Hal related in a November 2017 episode of Legends & Losers36:
“If we’re measuring success on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the success that we want – and I don’t mean just business or professional success, I mean our level of success in our relationships, in our health, in our fitness, [and in] our energy levels, right. If we’re measuring on a scale of one to 10, we all want level 10 success.
“Nobody’s like, ‘I don’t want to be too happy. I’ll be like a level 7. That’s good for me. I don’t want too much money, or all my relatives coming out of the woodwork. I’ll do like a level 8. Don’t be too rich.’ No, we all want level 10 success. But what I realized is we want level 10 success, but our level of personal development is typically very short of that.”
Hal’s idea was different than what other motivational experts were espousing — in large part because it was so personal. He evangelized this philosophy everywhere because he believed in it and lived it himself.
Today, Hal’s book is an international bestseller available in 27 languages. More than 500,000 people in 70 countries practice his suggestions.
Now, he’s no longer just a good generic motivational speaker, author and podcaster.
He’s The Miracle-Morning guy.
Hal niched down, and his business scaled up into a category of one that he has scaled into a legendary business through relationships and partnerships.
Allow us to tug at your heartstrings with another example that speaks to our souls, a father-and-son e-commerce operation founded in the fall of 2016 and based out of Melville, New York, called John’s Crazy Socks.
This is a classic, niche business: Don’t visit if you’re expecting to replenish your boring, white gym socks.
But, it’s also a cause. The company donates 5 percent of its earnings to Special Olympics.
That’s because John Lee Cronin (the son part of this start-up duo) is a young man with Down Syndrome, who has loved colorful footwear his entire life. The company was his idea; he suggested it to his father, Mark, after taking a class in retailing at his local high school. It just so happened that Dad specializes in marketing and business plans for niche online stores. After some back-and-forth, John’s Crazy Socks was born.
“Every day, we’re out showing what people can achieve when you give them a chance,” Mark told a Canadian news organization37.
John’s Crazy Socks38 now sells more than 1,200 different designs — including flying pigs, an homage to grilled cheese, and Donald-Trump socks with hair you can style. Its products have their way onto the feet of some pretty famous folk, including Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and President George H.W. Bush.
In just two short years, it became a multimillion-dollar business: in 2018, it easily donated more than $100,000 to various charities. (By the way, for a lesson in how to be transparent, check out the John’s Crazy Socks monthly “giving” report.) The company has also inserted itself into national policy discussions about wages and labor conditions for disabled people.
>
You’ll hear more about John and Mark in our next chapter about how to reveal your super powers. Don’t worry, you’re almost there.
Paint a World View That Others Can See, Too
How do you want people to see you? How do you want to describe the problem you solve?
This is where a point-of-view exercise can be incredibly clarifying, helping you to figure out who you are and to develop the story you tell about your personal category.
Start with your story. Write it down and hone it until it sounds like a tight, conversational, presentation.
Focus on articulating the problem in a super-compelling way.
Refine and perfect your story to the point where if you had just two minutes to position yourself, you could go through your POV and anyone would “get” you.
When Spanx founder Sarah Blakely scored her first big sales-pitch opportunity at Neiman Marcus, she had just 10 minutes to make her case. Shen practiced long and hard to take all the doubt words — especially “I think” rather than “I believe”— out of her presentation.
Even then, she had to resort to her impromptu demonstration in the restroom, slipping in and out of her prototype in the stall to win the buyer over and to seal the deal.
The art of Sarah’s pitch was also instrumental in winning over her first business partner, the mill owner who helped fulfill her first orders. Even though he scoffed initially, when he later repeated the idea at the dinner table, his daughters urged him to reconsider.
“If you’ve got an idea, or you’re trying to mobilize other people to help you, you have got to be extremely passionate and have energy when you’re talking to them,” she recalled in her podcast interview with James Altucher.39 “And, smile and be infectious with how enthusiastic you are.”
Next, set the ideal vision of what you think the market category you represent should look like.
Why would you accept the state of your chosen category as it looks now? Instead, why wouldn’t you envision the category the way that you want it to look?
Assuming you achieve what you set out to do, and you actually serve the people you want to serve in the way you want to serve them, wouldn’t the category look different?
After GOJO Industries designed the new category of liquid soap, they made it “gross” to pick up “hand soap” in a public bathroom. POW.
The entire category changes its mind. And moves from hand soap to liquid soap. GOJO didn’t compete with traditional soap makers. It reimagined the problem. Designed a new category and changed the definition of what soap is.
Hint: If it doesn’t look different, you’re delivering the same solution that everybody else already is offering. You’re not really designing a new category.
Finally, name the category you want to dominate.
Language changes how we think about things, so it’s incredibly important. Ideally, you want to create a completely different bucket that isn’t already filled with other brands or service providers.
There are millions of bars in the world. There’s only one “original arcade bar”.
Let’s reconsider Picasso, the legendary designer of the cubist movement.
There’s one interpretation that suggests his art was crazy, and there’s another interpretation that says it was absolutely genius and the future of art. As one of the pseudo-musicians in the greatest, fake rock band in the world, Spinal Tap, proclaims for posterity, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
The difference between those interpretations was Pablo Picasso’s ability to position his work in an entirely new and modern category of art.
Picasso designed, and then dominated, the category of cubism.
He endures as a personal brand because cubism made him a brand. His type of art required a whole new set of lenses to look at it and was completely different from what came before. By design, not by accident.
In a similar way, reggae was a different category of music created by the musicians affiliated with the late Bob Marley.
He’s the category designer and still the king, years after his death. Punk rock was a new niche in rock & roll pioneered by The Ramones in the United States and the Sex Pistols in England. And what’s rock & roll itself? A category of music that went mainstream courtesy of Elvis Presley, who embraced and co-opted a breakthrough style originally pioneered by African American artists. Technically, early rock & roll was a mélange of gospel, jump blues, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues.)
But over time, Elvis Presley literally became known as the King of Rock & Roll, because of his role in defining and designing the category.
People in art or music refer to these music types as genres, but you can also think of them as new categories — niches that these artists came to embody.
Designing a personal category means distinguishing yourself as the leading king or queen of that niche. It means positioning yourself before you’re positioned.
Here’s a rhetorical question: Would you rather have people think of you as just another painter, or would you like them to remember you as the inventor of cubism?
Whether you’re a CEO, accountant, inventor, developer, entrepreneur, athlete, author or speaker, the need for a strong and thoughtful POV about a category of your making — one that is part of your ethos — applies to you.
For ideas about how to become a category evangelist who could rival the late co-founder Steve Jobs when it comes to converting an audience, turn the page.
* * *
28Harvard Business Review, “Category Creation is the Ultimate Growth Strategy,” Sept. 26, 2011.
29YouTube, “Pleasant Rowland speaks at American Girl 25th anniversary tribute,” Nov. 29, 2011.
30Mattel web site, Results for fiscal year 2017, Feb. 1, 2018.
31Forbes, “How the Founder of GoldieBlox Is Creating The Next Generation Of Women In STEM,” Oct. 11, 2017.
32Fortune, “Female Founders Got 2% of Venture Capital Dollars in 2017,” Jan. 31, 2018.
33Legends & Losers, “One CEO’s Journey From The Dark Side To Killing It, With Sheryl O’Loughlin,” Sept. 7, 2017.
34Legends & Losers, “Getting in the Game & Achieving Ferocious Happiness with Dushka Zapata,” Feb. 21, 2017.
35Legends & Losers, “Dushka Zapata on Happiness and Comfort,” Nov. 23, 2017.
36Legends & Losers, “Hal Elrod on Overcoming Cancer, the 5-Minute Rule & Achieving Level 10 Success,” Nov. 9, 2017.
37CTV News Channel, “Man with Down Syndrome owns multi-million-dollar sock business,” April 12, 2018.
38Legends & Losers, “John’s Crazy Socks,” May 21, 2018.
39James Altucher, “How To Get a Billion-Dollar Idea,” February 2017.
4.
GO FORTH AND NICHE DOWN
“Don’t strike while the iron is hot, make the iron hot by striking.”
— W.B. Yeats, legendary Irish poet and Nobel Prize laureate
Don’t Keep Your Superpower Hidden
If you really and truly solve a problem in a new way or you solve a problem that people didn’t even know needed to be solved, then by definition the market is not ready for you.
The market must be taught to accept you, and it’s your responsibility to be that teacher.
After all, you’re trying to reswizzle people’s brains to see the problem you’ve defined through your eyes, and then to look to you and your company for the solution.
Christopher’s previous career as a public tech company Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) — in the early days of the digital everything evolution — offers a great illustration of how this process of market conditioning looks for youpreneurs or for those of you niching down on your own.
He made sure the world understood that he was a different kind of CMO, not just
another pushy pitch person with insights about how to create great messaging or to reinforce a company’s relevance within an established market. Christopher’s POV was: “I don’t solve the problem that most marketing executives solve. I help design and dominate categories.”
By adopting that mantra, Christopher distinguished himself as unique.
He went from being one of thousands of tech-marketing people scrambling to influence sales in the rapidly expanding information-technology industry to being one of the world’s first technology category designers.
Here’s how a typical conversation between Christopher and a CEO considering his skills would go. (We know, because he was there.) “Look, Mr. CEO. If you’re lucky, you can find a good CMO who keeps the trains running on time, fills the sales pipeline with qualified prospects, builds your brand and works well with customers and analysts. And if that’s what you’re looking for, you should go hire that person. Not me.”
By now, that chief something-or-other would be intrigued or at least incredulous. We can hear the inner dialogue: “A marketing executive telling me to hire someone else? Aren’t those sorts of things table stakes for what I need? Hell, I’ve got to hear more. This guy could solve a problem I didn’t even realize I had… until now.”
Exactly!
And Christopher would continue with this argument: “I know how to do all that, but that’s not where I add value. As you know, in every company’s life, particularly in the tech business, there’s often a 24-month window where it’s going to get into a very serious category battle — who’s gonna dominate this emerging space? I have a black belt in that. I know how to design and dominate categories, and I know how to take existing categories and redesign them to tilt the market agenda to our advantage. That’s my superpower.”
Niche Down Page 6