How to Avoid the Niching Trap
Why chasing a niche keeps solopreneurs stuck—and how positioning sets you free.
CSA: Working hard but getting nowhere? You may be stuck in one of the three deadly sins of solopreneurship. I just broke them down (and the virtues that replace them) here.
Most solopreneurs start their business with the best of intentions. You want to do meaningful work, make a difference, and serve people you care about.
But the noise of the online world is deafening. And when you try to cut through it, you’re told—by digital marketers and online gurus—that the way forward is to:
Define a niche with an Ideal Customer Avatar.
Craft a Power Offer.
Build a Funnel.
Run a Launch.
And before long, you’re spending 80–90% of your time grinding out content, tweaking landing pages, writing endless nurture sequences, and chasing leads in DMs. The work you started your business to do gets whatever’s left over.
That’s the trap.
Niche vs. Positioning
A niche is external and market-facing: who you serve, what problem you solve, and what solution you offer.
Positioning, by contrast, is internal and principle-led: who you are, what you stand for, and the difference only you can make.
Here’s the distinction in plain terms:
Niching is about fitting into a market.
Positioning is about taking a stand in a market.
And here’s the kicker. Your niche doesn’t come first. It emerges from clear positioning. Once you know who you are, what you believe, and the difference you make, the right people recognize themselves in that clarity. The niche finds you—not the other way around.
Form Over Function (and Why It Fails)
Most solopreneurs invert the natural order. They start with tactics and tools—funnels, ads, lead magnets—and hope a sustainable business will follow.
But as architect Louis Sullivan said, “Form ever follows function.”
And Sullivan was riffing on Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman architect who insisted that any structure must be:
Solid (firmitas)
Useful (utilitas)
Beautiful (venustas)
In that order.
Business is no different. Without positioning (solid) and principles (useful), no amount of branding polish (beautiful) will hold it up. Start with the wrong end, and you’re building an upside-down pyramid.
The Clarity Hierarchy
This is where Lukas Fisher’s Clarity Hierarchy comes in—a simple but powerful inversion of the guru playbook.
It’s a pyramid built from the bottom up:
Philosophy — What do I believe?
Principles — What do I know to be true?
Strategy — Where am I?
Tactics — What am I doing?
Tools — How am I doing it?
The trap? Most start at the top—tools and tactics. Real clarity and lasting prosperity start at the bottom with philosophy and principles.
Here’s the full replay of my recent talk on How to Avoid the Niching Trap, where I unpack these ideas in more detail:
And for Circle and Inner Circle members: once you’ve watched and reflected, you’ll also get access to my presentation notes and a Cornerman GPT prompt designed to help you generate personalized insights and suggested next steps.
The Rest of This Post Is for Circle and Inner Circle Members
If you’re a free subscriber, this is where the trail ends. If you want the how-to, the behind-the-scenes example of how I applied the Clarity Hierarchy to my own business, and access to the presentation notes and Cornerman GPT prompt, upgrade now.
Applying the Clarity Hierarchy (Scott’s Example)
[Here’s where we walk through your applied example: philosophy → principles → strategy → tactics → tools. Presentation notes and Cornerman GPT prompt live here.]