Struggling to Niche Down? Try Niching Wide.

Do you really have to pick a niche? Not if you're an Octopus person.

“You need to pick a niche!” an advisor barked as I was preparing to fire up my new business. I’ve worked in marketing for twenty years and have enthusiastically given this same advice to many people. You can’t be everything to everyone! You’ve got to focus! It’s good advice. But this time, I wasn’t going to listen.

When I was a kid, I was fortunate to be able to try all kinds of different things. My parents and teachers gave me opportunities to explore a wide variety of activities, to broaden my knowledge, improve skills, and maybe even find something I enjoyed. I took swimming lessons so I wouldn’t drown. Music lessons so I could march with the school band. Vacations so I could see how other people live. If you’re a parent you are probably doing the same with your kids. You want them to be broadly competent and learn as many new things as possible.

Those were the days, weren’t they? Sure some activities were not to my liking, but some made me giddy with delight, like getting a chameleon as a pet. There is nothing like a giddy, giggling child discovering something new.

So why is it that around age 18 all explorative giggling comes to an end, and you must now get serious and pick one thing? Every college freshman hates the “What are you going to study?” question posed by well meaning adults.

That narrow forced specialization continues through college and gets even worse during your career. Maybe for a year or two, employers will forgive you for switching jobs, but you soon discover that you can’t jump around any more. You need to find a career track, and get on it. 

You need to pick a niche.

If you’re writing a book, you need to pick a niche. If you want to get good at something, you need to pick a niche, then practice it for 10,000 hours. If you’re selling a product or service, you need to pick a niche.

The kind of business I am creating is impossible to niche down. It is intentionally designed to be un-nichedownable. In fact it will target not just one, but potentially up to eight niches. I’m trying to make a living doing up to eight completely different “jobs”. I call it my “Octopus Portfolio”. Octopuses do not niche down. They do eight things at once. They have a wide variety of skills, and use them. I do not want to live with seven tentacles tied behind my back. I am niching wide, and having childlike, giddy fun doing it.

Does eight jobs sound crazy? 

Not if you’re a generalist, polymath, multi-passionate, Jack/Jill of all trades kind of person, like I am. For people like us, the advice to “niche down” or “pick one thing” is terrible. It’s artificially restrictive. Maybe even suffocating. You are not a one dimensional person, so why does your life’s work have to be? Why can’t we continue our child-like curiosity as working adults?

Ever since the industrial age introduced the concept of division of labor, work has become more and more specialized. You do your job, someone else does theirs, and there is very little overlap. Organizations hire this way because it maximizes operational efficiency, and thus profitability. 

But what if you could break out of that system? What if you could live an “Octopus Life” and regain the giddy fun of doing a wide variety of things? That curiosity is still in you, isn’t it? Those dreams to try a new hobby, a new sport, a new art, or a new business, that periodically break through the iced-over responsibilities of adulthood. Those child-like impulses are still there. They’ve just been suppressed and tamped down by a century of forcing workers to niche down. They don’t have to stay buried. 

If you’re an “Octopus Person” at heart, maybe it’s time to let yourself niche wide again.