The Niche Is You

Choosing a niche feels like life or death until you realize the niche is you...

Last week I launched my new Substack Weekly Letter, The Niche is You™, after taking a small sabbatical from writing directly to my community… I decided I wanted to find a new simplistic way to create more consumable value.

If you’re new here or I imported you from my old email list, please click:
HERE - For why I’m doing this, and
HERE - For Letter #1 - Simplify, Multiply, Diversify

Back in April I was reading a great piece of writing on Substack and came across this quote by author, Tim Denning and then I proceeded to share it on my Instagram.

Denning said,

“Writers told me the first time I researched Substack that I had to pick a niche. Writers told me choosing a niche was a must. I write about personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, entrepreneurship and Lambo shaming.

Choosing a niche feels like life or death. I can’t do it. I won’t. This one decision held me back from starting a Substack newsletter. Then a friendly person at Substack said, “The niche is you.”

And there it is… the niche is always you.

You like to write, work and play in art, marketing, music and business… go for it.

You like to write, work and play in spirituality, real estate, finance and fitness… go for it.

As we move further into a greater, freer, decentralized Internet (or what some are calling Blockchain & Web 3.0, which I’ll talk about later on), people will follow the individual expressing themselves through a variety of disciplines as each of us will become our own platform.

We are the platform… or a “permissionless economy” that is bringing autonomy back to the individual and allowing us to redefine a path that is most in alignment with our soul rather than mythical blueprints copy and pasted for all… but more on that in Letter 3

Read this week’s Simplify, Multiply, Diversify below…👇🏼

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SIMPLIFY…

Just start. Most things are not as bad or hard as your brain thinks they are… start and you’ll see what I mean.

One of the greatest, most simple lessons I learned about productivity, creativity and time came from Steve Chandler’s book, Time Warrior: How to Defeat Procrastination, People-Pleasing, Self-Doubt, Over-Commitment, Broken Promises and Chaos.

Long title, great read. In short, an instant lesson I learned is this…

When we “plan” to do things that we don’t know how to do, we make up a narrative in our head as to the level of difficulty it will be to get it done… and the longer we wait to do the “thing”, the more difficult we make it out to be so we basically procrastinate on A LOT of things in our lives.

Need an example?

Early on with my podcast, The Hustle Sold Separately, I learned that our show feed was not yet in the Google Play Store. Overwhelmed by the countless things I was doing in my life at the time, I decided I’ll get to it when I have time… the usual narrative we all have in our mind.

Six months goes by… yes, six months… and I finally decide to do something about it.

I go to the studio’s head engineer and ask him if we can schedule implementing the show for Google Play. That’s right, I didn’t even ask if we could do it right then and there. I scheduled it.🤦🏻‍♂️

After about 10 minutes of he and I going back and forth to schedule a time a week from that point, I started walking out of the studio when I suddenly turn to him and asked, “Out of curiosity, what does it take to input our show’s feed into the Google Play store?”

Since he didn’t know, he quickly Googled it, was instructed to take the show’s feed link and input it into another page that Google directed him to and voila, it was done.

Six months, 3 days and 12 hours later, I implemented something that could have been done in literally 5 seconds… and for as important of a task as my podcast which has subscribers all over the world.

My friends, most of the time we do not know what to do when we want to do something new. That’s the purpose of being new… that’s life in general.

Quick thinking about doing something you don’t know how to do and go figure it out by doing it. The difficulty in doing it is all in your head; it’s a made up narrative that I assure you is blocking your blessings.

Most things are simpler and we’re likely to get a lot more done by injecting ourselves right into the work of it. Take months, even years, off of your work load simply from acting on tasks much faster.

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MULTIPLY…

Delegating is a game of trust.

There’s an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

We can do many things on our own, but we are not meant to do all of the things on our own.

About two years ago, going into the season of my father’s passing, I had contemplated my approach to many things in my life… including business.

I decided that time was the greatest gift and I would begin to treat it with way more respect than I had previously.

I rethought my daily schedule, my activities, my work, my health and what kind of life would I be heading towards if I didn’t have a better relationship with time.

One of the primary things I learned during this moment was that I needed systems, processes and people if I was to have a life.

I audited my daily schedule, learned in-depth automation, turned my digital strategy consultancy into an agency that leveraged other talent and I vowed that any activity we do in the business must be done with a system and process or it will not be considered. Welcome to accountability my friends.

Now, here’s where I began to learn that delegation is a game of trust… trust in yourself and trust in others.

To go far, you have to let go… period.

You have to delegate the work that can easily be done by others thereby freeing you up time for more important activities.

You have to trust everything will be fine without you doing the work.

You have to trust that you will show someone else how you’d like the work to be done now that you’ve spent time on those tasks previously.

You have to trust that other people will not do it exactly how you do it, but they will want to learn from you.

You have to trust in creating systems and processes that produce higher outputs in fractions of the time you would have spent doing the tasks.

You have to trust in your worth and your value if you’re going to invest in your expansion of life.

In the Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Naval said the following

“Set an hourly rate for yourself… something that may be absurdly high.

Always factor your time into every decision. How much time does it take? It’s going to take you an hour to get across town to get something. If you value yourself at one hundred dollars an hour, that’s basically throwing one hundred dollars out of your pocket. Are you going to do that? 

Another way of thinking about something is, if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it. If you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate, hire them.”

In a Joe Rogan podcast episode, Naval also mentioned the importance of living in a time where we can find others to help us do the work in nearly every part of the world. If one resource doesn’t work out, we have the insane flexibility to simply go to another resource until we find ones that work well for us.

In this freer, independent, more decentralized Internet world we’re moving deeper into, don’t be afraid to delegate your way to a more productive, happier life.

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DIVERSIFY…

Net…working.

The Oxford dictionary defines networking as, “the action or process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts.”

In the physical world, we’ve experienced this for decades, often delivered via events in the late hours of the day after leaving the office or as part of an industry meetup.

However, I urge you to rethink networking in the day and age of the Internet.

What is the “net gain” of using the web.

What is the “net gain” of connecting with people globally for co-creation and productivity.

What is the “net gain” of meeting like-minded individuals for wealth building.

What is the “net gain” of building a presence online that provides information, resources and community.

What is the “net gain” of outsourcing.

What is the “net gain” of distribution of products and services.

In the Information age, we all have the ability to build sustainable happiness, a database of knowledge, several schools of thought, lifelong friendships and an abundance of wealth.

Don’t believe me?

I have communities and apps dedicated to meditation, prayer groups, retreats and daily practices.

I have communities and apps dedicated to crypto, assets and real estate.

I DM and text daily with a friend of mine I’ve never met in person who owns an agency just like me, got into Crypto in 2017 and we keep each other informed and accountable daily.

I have an exceptional team in the Southeast Asia who produce great work for our clients.

I DM and text with healers, holistic nutritionists and fitness specialists all over the world. My trainer produces videos and content for the web and social media.

I read in an article earlier this year, which I’ll share with you in the future, whereby the author noted,

The pace of change of the world has never been faster. One year of current Internet time is equal to 5+ years of pre-Internet time… You cannot afford to be offline. You simply can’t.

Online is the future and you need to build a presence online, I don’t care what profession you’re in. It’s not an option, it’s non-negotiable. Additionally, you need to be a part of an online community to keep up to date with all of the rapid changes.

The Internet is currently the best networking tool in existence… It’s nearly impossible to not become happy, healthy and wealthy when you’re in the right online circles and communities and you’re not busy simply scrolling Instagram and TikTok.

So, what is the “net gain” of networking in the digital age? Well, a lot if you leverage it right.

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