Creating a Category of One With Your Message

You've heard the saying, "The riches are in the niches!"

(Sidebar: Is it pronounced 'nitch' or 'neesh'? However you pronounce it, just don't be a 'Dutchbag' about how you treat people. Capisce?)

There's wisdom in niching your message, business focus, and offer suite to fit a specific group of people.

The question is how to niche yourself to better position your expertise in the marketplace.

If you want to stand out more as an expert in your space, create your Category of One.

This packages all your brilliance, street cred, and abilities into a hyper-specific expert 'sub-niche'.

Creating a Category of One means you differentiate yourself so uniquely that nobody else in the world fits that category.

That gives you a grand total of (drumroll, please...) zero competitors!

Sounds incredible, right?

Yes, it is possible and worth the work, but like folding a fitted sheet, you may wonder, "How in the world do I do this?!"

If you want to create an expert 'sub-niche,' a Category of One, where your ideal prospect is mentally salivating over the chance to work with you, here's how to do it...

First, start with your Expertise Differentiation.

This is your unique blend of your personal story, values, purpose paradigm, and expertise:

• Why you? Why not you?
• What do you stand for? What do you stand against?
• What's an injustice want to right with your work? What's an opportunity you want to pioneer?

The next variable is your Audience Differentiation.

This is all about the group of people you want to serve:

• Why matters to your target Market?
• What are the most vital shared characteristics in that group?
• What is the greatest felt need that you know you want to meet for their benefit?

The third variable is your Process Differentiation.

What you do is the least differentiating thing about your business.

How you do what you do is where we store the magic:

• What's your unique methodology, your step-by-step process for getting your clients consistent, sustainable results?
• What do you do that's different from others in your space?

The fourth and final variable to add while creating your Category of One is the Proof Differentiation.

As much as I love frameworks, it's not exactly rocket surgery to create your own Signature Process.

However, it's a goldmine of differentiation if you can show your Signature Proof:

• What's your street cred of getting the same or similar people great results that your prospects can expect from you?
• Testimonials are great, but what is the lowest bar of metric-specific benefit your clients get working with you? Example: "My average client grows their revenue by 21% within our first six months working together."

By combining these four variables of differentiation, you can stop competing in obscenely broad categories like "business coach," "marketing strategist," or "corporate consultant."

Instead, you position yourself as the one and only authority in a highly specialized field, making your differentiation undeniable.

And it works in every expert-driven industry, including coaching, consulting, advisory businesses, training, and communicators.

Exhibit A: How many high-performance coaches have you met? Eleventy billion?

This Category of One approach takes you from being a "High-Performance Coach" to "High-Performance Coach for Burned-Out Fortune 100 Executives Looking to Exit and Reinvent Their Careers".

That type of positioning takes you from, "Oh, that's nice," to "How can I work with you?"

It's the messaging equivalent of "I'll have what she's having."

Focus on those four variables, and I guarantee that more people will turn their heads when you talk about what you do.