With the arrival of Labor Day, it’s true: the summer movie season has once again come to an end. What does this cinematic climax mean to Nichepreneurs?

It means there’s information out there we can learn from, data we can consider when approaching our own customers. In this AMCTV.cm article by John Scalzi you can see lots of information Nichepreneurs and would-be Nicheprenuers can draw upon.

Particularly this paragraph:

1. Smart is in: What do The Dark Knight and Iron Man have in common, aside from each being based on comic books and each grossing north of $300 million? The answer I’m looking for was that they were both critically lauded for being exceptionally smart films — an accolade unusual enough for summer blockbusters but pretty much unheard of for films in which the hero spends much of his time behind a mask. Both these films had action, adventure and effects up the wazoo, but then, so did Speed Racer, and look where that ended up (on second thought, don’t. It’s too gruesome). Add Wall*E — the best reviewed and most clever major film of the year so far — and its $200 million-plus box office to the mix, and you come to a tantalizing conclusion that yes, actually, intelligence is a value-add to summer sf/f blockbusters. Will Hollywood take this lesson to heart? Almost certainly not. But when three films add up to a billion dollars in domestic box office and the only connecting thread between them is intelligence, it’s more than a sign.

Extrapolate that the trend toward favoring intelligence goes beyond the movies, and you’ve got good news! No longer do you have to promote your products and services by catering to the lowest common denominator: the public is developing a taste for quality, and as ticket sales have shown, they’re willing to pay for it, even in tight economic times!

Understanding demographic
data is the key to targeting the best niche for your products and
services. As this recent article in DM
News illustrates a sociological trend can have a real, powerful impact on the business
world. 

The question then becomes,
where do you find demographic data? Identifying trends can come about by reading the paper — this article
in the NY Times is a fascinating look at how seniors are exploring franchising
as a way to jumpstart second careers — or by searching online. 

The US Census Bureau has a
great searchable site to help you find
all kinds of demograhic information. Other countries have similar resources, although they’re not all online. If you haven’t yet decided on a niche, or
aren’t sure where you’d like to locate, this information can prove to be an
invaluable guide. 

Happy researching!

Seth Godin noted in this post that this is the slow time of year, when everyone’s on vacation and pondering the Olympics, and doing a whole lot of nothing.

He recommends using this time to complete a project.

I thought this is the perfect opportunity to crystallize your vision for your business. Bring together your Mastermind group, brainstorm with buddies, try out ideas, do research, and draw on the people you know for insight and advice. Go through the GEL Formula, time and time again, until you find the perfect niche.

99% of success is doing something while others are doing nothing. THIS is the time when that happens!

Put up a hook and start hanging your keys there — that way you’ll always know where they are and you won’t have to waste time looking for them.

Give away clothes you never wear. Someone else will appreciate them, and you’ll free up closet space.

When you move, label the boxes with the following information: what’s inside, and where it belongs.

These tips and thousands of others, just like them, have made Donna Smallin-Kuper’s career. The author of Unclutter Your Home and six other books on organizing your home and life, Smallin-Kuper is what I call a Nichepreneur: someone who has made it big in a small market.

That wasn’t Smallin-Kuper’s original intention. A professional writer, she’d been working on a wide variety of projects when a publisher approached her and asked her to write a book about organization.

Unclutter Your Home was the result — and an expert was born. “My publisher put me on the radio, promoting the book, and suddenly I was being introduced as an organizing expert.”

Being an Expert is the most efficient, effective way women can transform their careers. There are a number of reasons for this, and they all have to do with the changing way the world does business. We’ve become a culture that values the personalized, the expert, the best — and we’re willing to pay high prices to get it.

Being a Nichepreneur has clear benefits. The four main advantages Nichepreneurs have over their peers are:

Fewer competitors

The smaller a market segment you seek out, the less competition you encounter. The vast majority of business owners try to be all things to all people, concentrating on the marketplace as a whole.

By focusing on a small, select segment of the market, you bypass all of that competition. It is possible that some of your colleagues and peers will offer similar services, but the odds that someone will specialize in your area of Expertise drop dramatically as your Niche becomes more and more defined. It’s far easier to be the best — and occupy the advantageous Expert position — when fewer people are vying for the honor.

Ability to be more efficient

A Nichepreneur focuses her efforts and practice on one narrow area. This creates an efficiency: no longer does a professional have to kept abreast of each and every development in their field on the off chance that they may someday need to be aware of the topic — they can, instead, delve more completely into their chosen field of study.

At the same time, becoming a Nichepreneur virtually eliminates the learning curve. Because all of your efforts and energy are devoted to one particular area of practice, there’s no need to ‘come up to speed’ when someone comes to you with a difficult problem. You’ll already be well versed in the field — and if you don’t know the answer yourself, chances are you’ll be connected to someone who does.

Become more profitable

Expert advice carries premium prices. The public, well trained by the media to value the expert, fully expects to pay top dollar for their services. This is a very lucrative position: while the services and counsel you offer your clients may be very similar to those your peers and colleagues offer, you’ll realize greater profit.

Additionally, being the Expert allows Nichepreneurs to explore secondary and tertiary revenue streams that aren’t generally available to the generalist service provider. From book deals to speaking engagements, coaching and consulting to creating informational products, there’s an entire spectrum of opportunities to create additional income.

Increased visibility

A serious problem exists out there in the marketplace - professionals from every discipline face the unending challenge of sameness - a sea of providers offering identical services. This creates confusion in the customer. They have no way to differentiate between this attorney and that one, nor select between counselors.

Positioning yourself as the Expert sets you apart from the crowd. You’re cutting yourself out of the herd and putting yourself in a position of prominence. It’s a very tangible way to say if you want the best, you want me.

The question then becomes clear. How do you differentiate yourself from the crowd? How do you stand out? What do you have to do to become a Nichepreneur — to be the Expert?

It may seem mysterious. Where do all these experts come from? What determines which investment banker winds up quoted in Barron’s while another labors in obscurity? How does one realtor show up on the local news week after week after week?

Why are they in this position, enjoying the heightened visibility, greater profitability, and enhanced reputation, when you’re not?

It’s not mere chance. It’s not good fortune, a lucky roll of the dice, or being born into a family of media moguls — although all of those help! Experts aren’t born…they’re made.

It’s the type of transformation women excel at. Reinventing ourselves is almost a national pasttime: how many marketing campaigns have you seen urging you to “Celebrate a New You?”

The logic might appeal when you’re considering a new wardrobe — but it gets even better when you consider what that re-invention could mean for your career!

Just as Smallin-Kuper transformed a chance assignment into a lucrative career, each and every woman reading this article has the potential to find a Niche, position themselves as the Expert within it, and create a lucrative career for themselves.

This can require a major shift in your thinking. For too long, we’ve been told to be all things to all people, and that we had an obligation to serve a customer’s every need. Breaking out of that restrictive mindset to concentrate on the type of work you want to do — work that couples your personal passion with your professional prowess, work that matches your vision for yourself and helps you achieve your purpose in life — takes courage, but it is well worth the risk.

The choice is yours. You can take charge of your destiny and forge your own entrepreneurial path to success. Choose to step out and couple your personal passion to your professional prowess, and success as a Nichepreneur awaits.

Unless you’re incredibly unlucky (in which case I apologize!) chances are you weren’t even thinking about your teeth before you read this headline.

There’s a lesson in that, one that’s brilliantly articulated in Seth Godin’s blog posting, My Tooth Doesn’t Hurt It’s a bit of wisdom that’s particularly applicable to service providers — after all, our customers don’t think about us until they need us!

That’s why establishing your Expert Identity is so very, very important. Consistently keeping yourself as a knowledgeable resource, prominently in the public eye, means that when our customer’s tooth does hurt — or their finances are in a mess — or their party needs planning or dog needs therapy — you’ll be the first name that springs to mind!

If you’re going to succeed in a niche market, you need two essential elements: passion and skills.  A lot of time I’m asked, “Which is more important?  I’ve got all this passion, but I don’t have the skills.” or conversely, “I have the skills, but I have to admit, I’m not particularly passionate about what I do.”

 Today I’m going to look at the first scenario.  When you have a passion for something, but you don’t know what you’re doing professionally, you’re setting yourself up for a steep learning curve.  Now, I firmly believe that passion and motivation can overcome almost anything: if you’re driven to learn how to run and market your business effectively, you can overcome almost any obstacle.

 It’s imperative that you’re realistic about this.  In this story On the Bus and Off It, The Initiation of a Young Rock Impresario Sean Carlson’s encounter with the learning curve is outlined in sometimes painful detail. With great ambition, Carlson set out to create a concert tour without corporate sponsorship.

Great ambition, and perhaps not all the skills he might have wanted. However, passion kept him preservering, and although he’s had some expensive life lessons along the way, it seems pretty clear that he’s committed to making his dream a reality.

The question is clear: Do you have enough passion to sustain you through the learning curve?

This morning’s entry comes to you courtesy of Seth Godin’s blog. In an entry entitled the Long Tail and the Dip there’s a veritable ton of information that would be of interest to any small business owner considering Riches in Niches.

Godin points out that there are three pockets of profitability on the Long Tail: the mass market hit, the profitable niche product, and a third position, where profitablity is to be found acting as a distributor or sales force for any number of itty-bitty, teeny-tiny manufacturers or producers.

Let’s take a look at what Godin has to say about the profitable niche product: This is the profitable, successful niche product. Roger Corman’s horror movies, say, or Vandersteen’s $3,000 stereo speakers. Not a product for everyone, certainly, but among those that care and are choosing to pay attention, a fantastic choice.

The reason you can make money in the niche pocket is that it costs far less to compete here. First, because there’s less competition and the competition is less fierce, and second because it’s cheaper and easier to reach your target market because they’re choosing to pay attention.

According to Godin, the point where entrepreneurs go wrong is when they get caught in the Dip: rather than concentrating on the lucrative niche market, business owners try, against all odds, to create the big, mass market hit. The extra expense associated with creating the mass market hit pretty much erases the profitability inherent in the niche market position, and no body comes out happy.

Something to consider: is it better to wear the crown in a small kingdom OR attempt to tie your destiny to a far distant star only a very few can reach?

Today’s entry has been inspired by a story on NPR, Knit 1, Purl 2, Point and Click At first glance, the story appears to detail a downward trend in the craft world: there are less knitters than there used to be and stores catering the new crowd of knitters are failing.

However, if one reads beyond the story into the comments, one discovers that perhaps the trend is not faltering but changing: there may be less knitters than before, but apparently they’re buying just as much as they ever did: the buying is taking place online rather than in local yarn shops.

Add to that commentary about the popularity of social networking sites for knitters Ravelry is perhaps the best known site, and the lesson becomes clear:

No Nichepreneur should base their thoughts about a market’s strengths or weaknesses upon a single news source. You need to dig a little deeper, go further into the story, and actually talk with the people who you want as your target audience!

We all like life to be easy. We also all like nice things. Unfortunately, the two things we like aren’t necessarily comparable: having nice things often requires some work that isn’t easy, not easy at all.

This creates opportunity for the Nichepreneur. If you’re willing to do the not-easy part, you can then offer the results to people who want what you’ve created at a premium price.

With that in mind, I’d like you to look at this article in the New York Times Entitled A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss But No Muss, the story details how a number of small businesses are catering to the growing number of people who want to eat locally without actually doing any of the work involved in doing so.

Consider what other opportunities exist. Success begins when you start doing the work no one else wants to do! Find out what your customer base really values — and what they’re not willing to do to get it. There’s your niche, just waiting for you.

In this brilliant post from Seth Godin an interesting question is raised: should small businesses whine about being small businesses — or should they celebrate the competitive advantage being a small organization offers?

Being a small company does have some distinct advantages. These include the ability to be more responsive to one’s customers: bear in mind that’s why a not-small portion of customers seek out Nichepreneurs. They’re tired of being treated like an impersonal number by a behemoth corporation. They want to be people — dealing with real people, not computerized call centers half way around the world!

Listen to Seth. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot! Put some positive energy into your business, and celebrate what’s GREAT about being small: you’ll be glad you did.