How to choose your topic/niche
Finding your Ikigai and Unfair Advantage.
Choosing a topic/niche that you’re:
Excited about
Really good at
Able to monetize
And will feel proud of
Is one of the hardest parts of building an audience:
It keeps most people from starting (← if this is you, read this.)
It prevents others from finding success from the effort they put in
It’s almost like you’re 18 years old again and trying to decide what you want to do with your life—intimidated by the endless options and not sure what you want, what you care about, or what the implications of your decision are.
There are a few things to consider. Let’s start with your ikigai.
Find your Ikigai
To find a topic you’ll be happy to dive deep into, you need to find your ikigai:
Let’s break that down, you need to find a topic that aligns with:
1. What you love.
This is the most important because, frankly if you don’t love it:
You won’t be able to write about it endlessly.
You won’t have strong opinions or create content that speaks to people.
Your content will feel lifeless because your heart is not in it.
Be honest with yourself.
Would you enjoy learning, thinking, and writing about this for years to come?
The three hardest parts of audience building (beyond topic selection) are:
Getting motivated at the beginning when it’s really hard.
Staying motivated for an extended period through life’s ups and downs.
Creating content that makes people stop, care, and feel something.
For those three things, you need to enjoy:
What you’re writing about. It has to be something you care to dive deep into.
The type of content you’re creating. If you hate sitting at a computer writing, then make videos. If you hate being on camera, write or design. If you hate short-form, do a newsletter or a podcast. If you hate long-form, then tweet.
The people you’re serving. You can create content for single moms, teenagers, high-performance CEOs, construction managers, and everything in between. You want to create content for people you want to be surrounded by.
Passion matters most
Go for the thing you won’t stop thinking about, regardless of experience.
Not only will you create better content, but you’ll feel more fulfilled. I like to use Bezos’ regret minimization framework to help me make tough life decisions like this:
In short: If you will regret not trying to create content about something, even if it’s a bit crazy or out there, do it anyway. The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure.
2. What the world needs.
This is the most philosophical of the four.
The first interpretation: “Is it something that positively impacts the world?”
I’ve known ~5 professional poker players. Every single one of them has said to me unprovoked, “I provide zero value to the world; I just siphon money from rich people who think they can play poker. I’ll do something else one day, I just don’t know what.”
You have to respect what you’re doing. It has to promote something positive that you believe in. Or you won’t be happy and proud to be doing it in the long term.
The second interpretation:
Is this a subject people value? i.e., does anyone care?
Are you solving a painful problem?
Is it helping people who need it?
Are there not currently hordes of people all doing the same thing?
Can I add unique value?
To have moderate success, you don’t need to be super innovative. You just need something good that solves a painful problem (see #3 and #4 below).
To succeed in a big way, you need to offer something different. Something people want but the market hasn’t given them yet.
We didn’t need another interview-style YouTube, but the Hot Ones format of getting famous people to eat intense hot sauces during the interview adds a layer of delight we didn’t know we needed.
3. What you can be paid for
This is the second most important.
You don’t want to write just for the joy of it, and you don’t want an audience purely to spread your important message or to educate the masses.
No, you want it because you’ll be able to make money.
Whether it’s:
Directly from selling the content (Substack)
To attract people to a product you sell (courses, software, etc)
To bring in more leads (consulting, agency)
To sell indirectly (sponsorships, affiliates)
To get paid to speak (conferences, workshops)
Deep down, that’s what motivates us to put in the effort.
So, you need a topic that you can monetize.
Note: If you’re a YouTuber, you can monetize just from people watching your videos, so it’s unique. You could make silly videos for kids and still make insane amounts of money if you get a lot of views. But that’s not what I’m focused on here.
What is a monetizable topic and audience?
Seven factors to find a great market you can monetize:
Pain: They must desperately want what you’re offering.
Purchasing power: They have money to pay to solve the pain. Students hate spending money. Venture capitalists will pay a lot if you can make them more.
Social presence: They exist on the channels you plan to target. For example, LinkedIn isn’t the right place if you talk about gardening.
Specific/niche: Leadership is a broadly appealing topic. It’s a problem for many, and it means a lot of different things. Don’t just talk about “leadership;” instead, focus on being a better startup CEO. It’s a specific buyer with specific problems.
It’s growing: The fastest-growing content creators in the past several years wrote about crypto and AI—two booming industries on an uptrend. Another example is someone scaling a pickleball newsletter to 150,000 subscribers in record time. Find the next trend, or at least one going in the right direction.
Matches what you sell: If you sell or want to sell SEO services, the buyers are anything from local stores, dentists, tiny startups, and massive companies. You need content that gets in front of your target buyer, like simple “how to” guides. If you talk about nitty gritty, nerdy SEO details, you’ll attract your peers, not buyers.
But if you sell advanced SEO training or are looking for a job as the Head of SEO, then nerdy talking about SEO details is perfect.
Infinite game: Your content cannot solve a finite discrete task. For example, fundraising for a startup. It’s a painful problem for someone who can pay a lot. But, once that person finishes raising money, they never want to think about it again. Your content will be interesting to them for that brief moment. Instead, you need a game that never ends. People never stop striving to be better CEOs, parents, creators, marketers, programmers, designers, storytellers, or product managers.
You want an increasingly painful, persistent problem for people with money.
4. What you’re good at (your unfair advantage)
The creators that grew fastest all had an unfair advantage in some way. The concept comes from the book Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba.
In other words, how can you cheat to make it easier?
You can have an unfair advantage in a variety of ways:
Valuable assets, such as money or businesses. If you have resources to spend on designers, editors, coaches, and assistants, you can outcompete someone doing it by themselves.
Knowledge & education, such as deep experience or expertise in a field. Or having copywriting, marketing video editing, or design skills to allow you to create great content from day 1.
Location and timing, such as being in San Francisco and writing about startups and tech. I’d also include being early to a channel, like growing on LinkedIn five years ago or being one of the first newsletters on Substack.
Interpersonal skills. Networking with would-be customers and other creators is a big part of building an audience. You'll have a big advantage if you’re skilled at meeting and befriending people.
Prestige and Social Connections. If you have awards, recognition, or achievements in a field, you’re more likely to succeed in creating content in that field. If you’re friends with big creators in a field, you’ll be more likely to succeed because they can amplify your content.
As you can see, being an expert in the topic is not mandatory to succeed. You can have an unfair advantage in other ways. You can become an expert just by writing about something every day for years. As I said, passion matters most.
Let’s illustrate how this can play out for audience building with some examples:
Examples of unfair advantages
Here are some examples of this playing out:
Eric Partaker
Eric is a CEO coach with 600k followers on LinkedIn. Here are his unfair advantages:
He was CEO for over a decade, was named CEO of the Year, and has coached 100+ CEOs. So, he’s highly credible when talking about business and leadership. He does not have that when talking about SEO or baking.
He has a high-value service (CEO coaching) to trade with big influencers for advice and engagement on his posts. He
He’s exceptionally good at networking and building a solid network for himself.
He worked only two days per week and could devote the rest to audience building.
He earns 7 figures (despite working two days per week) and can invest in a designer and a social media manager to make his content A+.
Before posting anything, he had 20,000 LinkedIn followers, just from being a CEO on the platform for 20 years and getting connection requests.
Neal O’Grady (your loveable author)
I started building my personal audience in August 2022. I was able to hit 50k followers in the first year. Here’s how:
I had been running a business for multiple years with a newsletter of 75k subscribers. People already knew my business; I just needed to start getting my name out there. I changed the emails to come from me, and our subscribers were more likely to engage and hit the follow button.
After sending connection requests to customers and fellow YC founders over the years, I had 11k followers on LinkedIn. Unlike many others, I didn’t start from 0.
I could re-use content we had previously created for our newsletter and Twitter.
I leveraged the notoriety of my business to create relationships with big creators.
I’ve been writing and studying marketing for many years. I’ve created multiple courses. And I’m a full-stack programmer with extensive experience using Figma to design websites. Creating educational carousels for LinkedIn came naturally to me.
Ali Abdaal (5M+ subscriber YouTuber)
He was in Cambridge Medical School (a very prestigious university) when he started a YouTube channel on getting accepted into medical school—something very few people could credibly discuss.
He’s quite likable, making him a great fit for video.
He’s incredibly smart and clearly has an insane work ethic, given he could grow a YouTube channel and tutoring business while going through medical school
Zain Kahn (founder of a 600k+ sub newsletter, Superhuman):
He worked in marketing for many years before starting.
He started posting on Twitter during the golden era. He got 50k followers from a single thread—that’s unheard of today.
He was among the first to post carousels to LinkedIn, kicking off the trend of sharing Twitter threads as carousels on LinkedIn.
He lived with his parents and could dedicate much time to audience growth.
He was early to the trend of AI. And already had a large following when he started scaling Superhuman through LinkedIn and Twitter.
Those are some unfair advantages that are completely unique to those 4 people. Now, let’s dive into other aspects of your uniqueness:
Your spiky point of view
On top of your ikigai and unfair advantage, you want to dive into your spiky point of view.
What the hell is a spiky point of view? Well, here it is from Wes Kao (the creator):
Here’s the full article about spiky points of view if you’re interested.
Essentially, it boils down to:
What do you believe differently than many others in your niche?
How do you see the world differently than your peers?
How have your experiences influenced you?
Document the values, viewpoints, and experiences that have shaped you.
How to find your ikigai, unfair advantage, and spiky point of view
Here are questions to ask yourself to drill in:
What you love:
What do you find yourself getting lost in?
What could you talk about for hours? Or do a presentation or fireside chat without any preparation?
What the world needs:
What causes do you care about?
What problems do you want to help people with?
Who do you care most about helping?
What you can sell:
What’s an increasingly painful, persistent problem for people with money?
What can I do to alleviate it?
What you’re good at (unique advantage)
What are you uniquely skilled or experienced at or positioned to do?
How can you cheat the system?
How can you massively increase your chance of success?
What you believe differently (spiky point of view)
What do others do that you don’t agree with?
How do you see the world differently than your peers?
Do you have unique life experiences relative to most people?
Jot some ideas down. Choose some possible candidates for topics.
Next, we niche down.
Why and how to niche down
Niching is important for two reasons:
It’s easier to be known for something. You want someone to associate your topic with you. Like
Habits for James Clear.
Solopreneurship for Justin Welsh.
Leadership for Simon Sinek.
Marketing for Seth Godin.
Product management for Lenny Rachitsky.
Easier to sell and charge more. If you solve a specific person’s problem better than a generic solution, those people will pay you more.
Now, let’s show how we can niche down.
You can always broaden the niche later. But for now, you want to find something you can own.
Three primary ways to niche
Subtopic: Not general copywriting, but writing ad copy.
Audience: Not “leaders” but CEOs of Fortune 500.
Outcome: Not “build an audience” but “make 5-figures a month from LinkedIn.”
Just remember, you really cannot go too niche. Particularly if you sell services that cost thousands of dollars or more. Going super niche means you can likely close customers more easily and charge more (because you’re solving their unique problems).
Examples of niching down
Let’s use leadership, copywriting, SEO, and building an audience as examples:
Leadership
Subtopic niches: storytelling, managing, building teams, culture
Audience niches:
CEOs: B2B, Agency, Fortune 500, early-stage.
Managers: Engineering, Business, Product.
Outcome niches: Get promoted, become CEO, grow company.
Copywriting
Subtopic niches: Hooks, email copywriting, ad copywriting, storytelling
Audience niches: marketers, authors, founders, email marketers, dental offices, or even other copywriters.
Outcome niches: Grow audience, sell more, more copywriting clients.
SEO
Subtopic niches: Local SEO, technical, link building, keyword research, etc.
Audience niches: dentists, founders, CMOs at big companies, advanced SEOs,
Outcome niches: More clients, more traffic, improve SEO skills.
Building an audience
Audience: coaches, agencies, founders, wantrepreneurs
Channel: LinkedIn Growth, Twitter Growth, newsletters, podcasts
Outcome niches: Grow audience, get leads, build media company.
Jot down some niches for your topics
For your topic ideas, find ways you can niche down.
Again, optimize both for your ikigai and unfair advantage and for the following:
Pain: They must be experiencing the pain your content will solve.
Infinite game: It must be a pain that never goes away for them. A CEO at a large company does not care to learn about nitty-gritty SEO. A dentist might constantly try to get more traffic for their practice.
Purchasing power: They must be able to afford to solve the pain. Productivity for CEOs is far better than productivity for students.
Matches what you sell: If you sell SEO services, don’t write for your peers. If you sell advanced SEO courses, write for your peers.
Social presence: They exist on the channels you plan to target. For example, dentists are harder to reach on social media than programmers.
What stands out?
Take some of your top picks and talk them through with a friend or loved one.
This will take some time, and you don’t need to figure this out on day 1.
This all requires a lot of soul-searching—a deep look at yourself, what you want, what you care about, and who you want to be surrounded by. It’s like finding a partner, picking a business idea, or choosing a career.
Just remember: The biggest reason people fail to build an audience is that they never start. They get stuck in analysis paralysis forever, unsure of what to write about.
Do not worry about finding the perfect topic/niche if you aren't writing and posting consistently.
It doesn’t have to be daily; it just needs to be regular:
It’s how you improve. Frequent practice is the only way we improve.
It’s how you discover what you love. It’s rare for someone to come up with the perfect idea out of the gate. Most people stumble upon it accidentally while creating.
It’s how you slowly pry out the knowledge from your head. “The Curse of Knowledge” means that experts often assume others know everything they do, making it hard to recognize all the valuable things they have to share.
If you haven’t started creating or posting, read this first:
Make sure to work on your copywriting too ;0
You must be a sharp copywriter for your content to perform.
Here are a few resources I’ve created to help:
10 Ways to Write Hooks. I’ve studied hundreds of viral hooks and found 10 fundamental ways to hook people.
The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.
10 Copywriting Tips. One of my top articles and LinkedIn posts.
7 Copywriting Frameworks (with cheatsheet). So you don’t have to start from scratch; these frameworks make “fill in the blanks.”
Breakdown of the top 30 hooks on LinkedIn. Each hook is color-coded to show the smart thing each creator did to hook you.
Breakdown of the top 26 hooks on Twitter.
An analysis of the top 20 female creator's hook. Due to the total lack of gender diversity of the top 100 creators, I created one for the top 20 women.
An analysis of 12 ways to hook with Thumbnails. A hook can be an image, too.
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– Neal