Size Doesn’t Matter: How SMALL NICHE BRANDS Are Making More $$$

In a world where everything needs to be big, every business needs to have thousands of followers and everybody is talking about subscriber numbers… there are simple business models that allow average Joes with virtually zero social media presence make their way to 5 figures a month and beyond. At the end of this article you’ll see exactly why a big social media brand is absolutely unnecessary to start making your first 5 figures a month.

You’ve Been Spoiled

Here’s a good example of a conversation I have literally every single day:

Random person via DM: “Hey Max, my name is xyz, I’ve been building my brand for about a year now, currently trying to get my funnel working, I love entrepreneurship, are there any tips you can give me?”

Max: “Sure, let’s see… how much are you making on average per month?”

Random person: “Uhm… I’m just getting started… you know… gotta get my funnel working and really warming up my audience…you know…”

Max: “Well, you said you’ve been doing entrepreneurship for about a year, so how much have you been making, just give me some numbers”

Random person: “Well… technically I haven’t really made anything yet.”

And that’s where the inherent problem lies. We’ve been spoiled. Spoiled with the opportunities that social media, funnels and facebook ads can provide. We’ve been spoiled to such a degree with these amazing tools that we simply lost track of what’s actually important to generate income: Sales.

Look, businesses have been making money for hundreds of years before there was the internet, ad funnels or social media. These new technological tools are nice to have and — by all means — I’m using all of them for any of my 6 and 7 figure businesses, BUT trying to use these tools to START is not only a bad idea, but also a complete waste of your time.

WAKE UP CALL: Most Influencers Are Broke

I know I know, we all have our favorite influencers that we love to follow on Instagram, Youtube and alike. We follow, we admire, we live vicariously through them. Their lives seem to be oh so perfect and flawless… but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Once you get to peek a bit behind the curtains you’ll be aware of the dirty dirty truth of what life as an influencer actually looks like. About 90% of them are broke, spending their valuable time rather carefully constructing their fake perfect world on social media than actually creating something of long-lasting value.

The epic vacations and business class flights you see are often just free promotional deals they’ve been getting from spending their days messaging hundreds of brands begging for… well… free stuff.

I’m not trying to call out anyone’s life choices here… in fact, some of my closest friends are influencers. HOWEVER, living a life asking companies for free stuff so you can build a shiny castle made of lies doesn’t really strike me as a valuable business model that can sustain ones future.

Money First, Then Brand

“But Max, if I build a big brand with thousands of followers, doesn’t that mean I can make a lot of money by selling to them?” Yes, that’s true. And eventually a relatively big brand is definitely a “nice to have”, but there’s several arguments on why that’s not a good idea to start with:

1. Building a big brand takes months, if not even years. That’s valuable time in which you’re NOT getting paid. You have very little incentive to plow through hard times and let’s be honest: you’re not helping anyone when you’re living in your mom’s basement being broke.
2. If you’re focussing on brand building only, your message can be corrupted. If the sole focus of your brand is to “get more followers” you’ll inevitably go down the very dark path of doing anything for views/likes/followers. Instead of posting quality content that actually helps people and is “monetizeable” you’ll eventually realize that just using clickbait, fake stories or shaking your bikini booty into the camera gets you far more followers than giving value. Slowly but steadily you’ll fall for the shiny object syndrome of rising follower numbers and your chances for building an actual business diminish by the day.
3. Even if you do manage to not go down this path and actually build a following: How do you know WHAT you could sell them once you’re big enough? You’ve never sold anything before, people only follow you to watch your content, nobody’s used to being sold by you. Congratulations, you’ve successfully built a brand of freeloaders who will be unlikely to ever buy anything from you.

…and this, my dear reader, is why we teach our beginner clients to focus on making money first, then building a brand. If you focus on generating money first you 1) get paid as you’re growing, 2) will always know what sells and what doesn’t (we call this “proof of concept”) and 3) will build a brand full of action takers with buying power who not only want to consume your content, but actually want to take action and get better at whatever it is you’re offering.

How To Make Your First 4–5 Figures A Month From Scratch

So far soo good. Starting with building a brand is bad, focus on sales, got it. But how do you actually do it? Here’s the 3 steps we teach in our beginner programs:

1. Position yourself in a niche market. Don’t go broad, don’t try to make content for everyone. Instead, focus on a small niche market of people that you can help specifically. Example: Don’t try to teach overall fitness to anyone of any age, any gender, any body shape. The more “general” you position yourself the less you’ll actually be able to help people. Instead, focus on, for example, helping skinny men who are too busy going to the gym 6 times a week build muscle. Makes sense? It’s a niched down audience with a clearly defined problem that YOU can help fixing.
2. Understand your target audience. Learn about the people you can help, talk to them in Facebook groups, internet forums, in real life. Really try to UNDERSTAND their problems, what keeps them from solving them, what are their goals, their fears, what keeps them awake at night. The better you understand that audience the better you can serve them, the better you can help them, the better you can (later on!) create content that appeals to them.
3. Apply basic level sales. Nobody needs to be a naturally born sales person. Apply basic level sales to get people from your target audience on a call, give them some value and offer them your help for whatever it is you deem to be a reasonable price. No, you do not need to use “high pressure sales tactics”, in fact we encourage our clients to be honest and transparent, which is a nicer way to sell and also ends up converting much better. That simple.

As you can see, NONE of the above points actually needs a big social media following, ad funnels or whatever other marketing gimmick some gurus are trying to sell you. All it needs to get started is a little bit of common sense and dedication.

Build A Small Niche Brand From There

At this point all you have to do is repeating the process of reaching out to people you can help and offering your expertise. This might sound a little “too simple” and quite honestly boring, but it works. It’s the exact process we teach our beginner clients that gets them to their first 10k+ months.

Once the ball is rolling, once you’re making money and are helping people you can THEN go ahead and build a small niche brand on top of that.

If done correctly, these small niche brands are highly lucrative, easy to build and most importantly: they’re focussed on a specific audience that is willing to execute and listen to your advice (instead of just liking your instagram posts living vicariously through you). Yes, yes, this may not sound as spectacular and perhaps your ego isn’t really too excited about it either, but… it makes money to you and a real difference to the world.

So all you have to ask yourself is what do you prefer: Ego gratification or actual real life results? The choice is yours.

I hope it could shed some light onto the truth for you. If you've read this far, feel free to leave a like or comment!

If you have any questions on how you can get started from scratch, send me a connection request and message!