A niche of one
I can't sustainably write about a single subject for a very long time - I figure out a topic, practice it, teach some people and need to move on.
It took me a long time to accept this about me, but that's why this newsletter (and now my Twitter account) is topic-less.
I write about the things that I care the most about at any given time with as much transparency and humility as I can harness. I also find my past writing often cringy and superficial, which is a sign of growth I suppose.
I am now far enough removed from actual indie hacking to not want to write about it that much (it's been about 3 years since I indied or hacked anything). I've also thought and written so much about business, marketing, finding product-market fit, niching down, and pivoting that I have very few new this left to say.
I'm still passionate about teaching what I discover and combining new things I figure out with old things I've figured out before, but that's not a very repeatable business model for a content creator. It does all somehow compound in a slow and very interdisciplinary way. Non-fiction authors do that when they write a book every year or two on a completely different topic.
My future bits of teaching are likely going to be around doing small workshops, recording them, and then turning them into recorded courses and written guides or books. This is what I currently find easiest and most gratifying to do, and now that I discovered (doh!) that I can hire someone to edit my videos and don't need to do it myself, there's likely going to be more of that.
This may eventually eventually compound into some sort of very niche thought leadership with a small number of people following me and enjoying a large percentage of what I put out. I think there are half a dozen of those already, but definitely not as many as my follower count on Twitter would indicate.
But I won't be trying to make a living off this any time soon - that was my mistake with the GrowthLab venture (and I should have seen it coming!)
This is the 8th (I think, I should make a list) time that I've tried to turn something magical I've discovered in my intellectual travels and was very passionate about into a significant source of revenue. I'm getting better at this, but I never sell something that's been tried and true for a long time which makes it difficult.
I actually managed to more or less live off GrowthLab for a couple of years. But it wasn't the courses that pulled me through. It was individual coaching and consulting that paid most of the bills. So really the only thing I was selling was the totality of my understanding about people, the world, business, psychology, technology, marketing, and how to lead a good life. The GrowthLab brand is actually quite fitting for that because that's what I am - a laboratory of my personal growth.
So I'm going to lean even more into it. I'm going to coach and consult people who have way more money than I do to make a living, and teach everyone else what I'm discovering mostly for free or nearly free.
I've been roughly following this "barbell" strategy for a while, I just haven't pushed it far enough.
The consulting needs to get progressively more exclusive and expensive. The teaching needs to become progressively cheaper and more accessible. And in the middle there should be tremendous amounts of space and time for unstructured exploration that feeds into everything.
I'm actually pretty happy with this strategy.
And amusingly enough, both sides of the barbell serve as a source of credibility and insights for the other. The fact that I have people willing to pay me $300 and more just to talk to me for an hour, increases the value of my generally available courses.
And the fact that I have many followers, readers, and students gives credibility to my consulting practice and allows me to keep moving further upmarket to help bigger firms and more successful individuals.
What I learn working with bigger businesses I can teach to my solopreneur students. And what I learn about teaching and working with large audiences of solopreneurs gives me insights I can share when consulting.
This is the ultimate niching down for me - it's a niche only I can occupy.
And therefore, by definition, I dominate it.