3.1 Specialist Domination (Niche Selection)

Specialist Domination (Niche Selection)
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Introduction
Welcome to Specialist Domination. In this video we’re going to explore niches, taking some
action to help you find, define and research a profitable niche.
If you do not have a niche, you need one. If you currently are generalised and want to niche
down but not fire your existing clients, just pick a niche and grow your business in that direction.
“It doesn't matter how hard you row, it matters what boat you’re in” - Warren Buffett
Functional Roles 🐍🐁
In a natural ecosystem, all species play a functional role that contributes to the ecosystem as
a whole. Without a functional role, the species is rendered useless to the ecosystem and is
typically eradicated.
The same is true in business, but the market is the ecosystem and your business is an organism
within a species. If you don’t play a specific role in the market, the market will render you as
useless, chewing you up and spitting you out.
In your market:
- Focus is power
- Specialists have authority
- Depth of expertise is everything
- Functionality is leverage
Without a niche you are aimless and cannot align your growth efforts in a tangible direction.
Operational Drag Multipliers 🧹📈

A niche brings order to your business and gives you ‘operational drag multiplier’ of 1.
Operational drag multipliers: this is the term I’ve coined to explain the degree to which
certain variables of your business create operational complexity.
Operational complexity inhibits profitability, scale and focus.
The two primary operational drag multipliers in your business are niche and product.
The key to getting to $100k/mo+ with 75%+ margins is to have one niche and one product.
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Let’s look at Imperium Acquisition to understand:
Niche: High ticket service & coaching businesses x1
Product: EasyGrow x1
1 Offer
1 Call to action
1 Funnel
1 Website
1 Calendly event
1 Contract
1 Product access gateway
1 Onboarding Process
1 Community
1 Outreach system
1 Evergreen video
1 Email account
1 Email list
1 Facebook group
1 Set of SOPs
1 Communication channel
1 Type of support ticket
1 YouTube Channel
1 YouTube thumbnail style
1 YouTube title style
1 YouTube video style
1 YouTube description
1 Cold email script
1 Cold email reply template
1 Followup process
1 CRM spreadsheet
1 Sales tracker
1 Sales line of questioning
1 Sales script
1 Sales Pitch
1 Pricing strategy
1 Payment plan
1 Sales rep onboarding process
1 Sales rep product training process
1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1
= operational drag multiplier of 1x1 (34 times) = 1.
There are 100+ more single-creation variables for our company to run successfully, but our
operational drag multiplier will always be 1 (or very low). Simple scales, complex fails.
Let’s look at another business that has two niches but one product.
2 Offers
2 Call to action
2 Funnel
2 Website
2 Calendly event
2 Contract
2 Community
2 Outreach system
2 Evergreen video
2 Email account
2 Email list
2 Facebook group
2 Set of SOPs
2 YouTube Channel
2 Cold email script
2 Followup process
2 CRM spreadsheet
2 Sales tracker
2 Sales script
2 Sales Pitch
2 Pricing strategy
2 Payment plan
2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2
= operational drag multiplier of 8,589,934,592 (that’s a lot of complexity for one extra niche)
** This is a simplified model of reality. Having an extra niche doesn’t make your biz 8 billion
times more complex than having one niche, but it makes the point clear.
Who’s more likely to scale, a company with an operational drag of 1…

…or a company with an operational drag multiplier of 8,589,934,592?
Let’s look at another business that has two niches and three products.
3 Offers
3 Call to action
2 Funnel
2 Website
6 Calendly event
6 Contract
6 Community
6 Outreach system
6 Evergreen video
2 Email account
2 Email list
2 Facebook group
6 Set of SOPs
2 YouTube Channel
2 Cold email script
2 Followup process
2 CRM spreadsheet
2 Sales tracker
6 Sales script
6 Sales Pitch
6 Pricing strategy
12 Payment plan
3x3x2x2x6x6x3x6x6x6x2x2x2x6x2x6x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x6x6x6x6x12x2x2 = a LOT!
= operational drag multiplier of 3.0814043e+16 (that’s a lot of complexity)
** Once again, this is a model - it simplifies reality and loses some objectivity in the process,
but it makes the point clear.
I promise you, as someone who’s done it twice in a high ticket coaching and DFY setting,
you only need 1 product and 1 niche to get to 7 multi seven figures & achieve an exit.
There is no point doing this Program & building a client acquisition system if you don’t have
the operational capacity to take full advantage of it. The easiest way to improve operational
capacity is to remove products and niches until you offer 1 thing to 1 type of person.
Example:
In the last 3 months, IA has taken on about 90 clients without me (all I’ve done is lock myself
in a room to make this Program). We haven’t even flinched operationally, and our profit
margin hasn’t suffered in the slightest. If we were a DFY business, it would’ve been harder,
but it would be way more manageable if all those clients are in the same niche, with the
same problem.
At our peak, Northflow Consulting (our old DFY gym agency) had 60-70 DFY clients (at a 7
figure run rate). We ran the same ads, funnels & processes for all of them, and we could
onboard and deliver for a new client in 2 days by copying and pasting.
For a DFY service, a single niche & product allows you to have 1 of everything:
1 set of ads
1 funnel
1 ad optimisation process
1 creative style
… and way more (with less)
For a coaching service, a single niche & product allows you to have 1 of everything:
1 program
1 field of expertise
1 type of problem
1 coaching style
… and way more (with less)
Always look to remove things from your business, not add them. Less is more.
Ask yourself: if I suddenly solved all your acquisition issues & gave you 20 high ticket clients
this month in different niches for a bunch of different products, could you service them all
within a week, keep them happy and retain them?
If the answer is no, how is this program going to help you?
Specialists’ Advantage 🎧💰
Final questions to ask if you’re on the fence about having a niche:
Who makes more money, a general doctor, or a heart surgeon?
Which athletes achieve greatness, generalist athletes or athletes who focus on one sport?
Is it better to solve your market's main, most painful problem 100% of the way, or 10 smaller
problems 10% of the way?
Are you going to make more money - being the best in one market, or being sub-par
average in all of them?
Key points:
- Generalists face chaos, specialists face order.

- Chaos inhibits growth, order facilitates it.
- Deep somewhere beats shallow everywhere.
- 100 km in one direction gets you further than 10 km in 10 directions.
- 10,000 hours in one area creates more authority than 1,000 hours in 10 areas.
There’s a caveat to this - after becoming the best in one area, you can branch out into others
(e.g. Kanye West moving from music to fashion, Schwarzenegger moving from bodybuilding
to politics, Amazon moving from books to other products).
Niche Selection Mistakes ❌🚫

Before we discuss how to select a profitable niche, let’s discuss the 3 main mistakes people
make when picking a niche.
1. Worrying about competition: you should not concern yourself with the size and
competence of your competitors. The market is big enough for you, if you’re talented
and can solve a problem for it. You have to also realise that only a small % of your
competitors are actually able to compete with you. There might be 2,000 people
competing with you for the same clients, but only 10% of them have more than 4-5
clients, and only 2.5% of them can actually solve the problems the market is facing.
I used to be terrified in the gym niche because of the competition, until I asked myself this -
“there are 60,000 gyms in my niche, all I need is 30 clients to get to $50k/mo. That’s 0.05%
of the market… provided I’m good at solving a problem for it, do I think it’s possible to claim
0.05% of the market?”
2. Worrying about saturation: you should also not concern yourself with saturation.
Niches don’t saturate, offers and client acquisition methods do. For as long as there
are people with problems, there are opportunities for you to get clients by solving
them. Saturation is only an issue when your business looks like all of your
competitors, or when you use the same methods as everyone else to try to get and
acquire clients. Positioning is power, and solves the problem of saturation.
I used to be terrified of the gym niche being saturated because everyone and their nan
seemed to run a gym marketing agency, until I realised that 99% of people are doing the
same thing, snowballing their saturation. So if I didn’t do what they do, I’d seem even more
different and able to get clients. If an offer or method saturates, it’s a good thing, because it
makes new offers and methods (that you can develop in this program) 10x better.
3. Copycatting: most people pick their niche based on monkey-see, monkey-do logic.
This means they look at which niche everyone else is in, and pick that. They look to
gurus and $997 course sellers, finding out what niche they are in, then picking that.
Wrong! You should select a niche based on whether or not you’re interested in it, and
whether or not it makes sense at the time.
A niche is like a stock, if everyone and some random dude in a discord server tells you to
buy, it’s time to sell.
An example is a client of mine, Luca. He scaled from $0 to $70,000 per month in 4-6 months
in the ‘land clearing’ niche (which I didn’t even know was a thing).
Another example: I once tried to start an ecom marketing agency because every guru had
an ecom agency. I soon realised that they started 3-5 years before me, when ecom was an
easier niche & wasn’t as punishing.
The Best Niche 🤑 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

What is ‘the best niche’? The one you stick to for 1-2 years. It takes time to understand the
intricacies and nuances of a niche. All niche-related problems can be solved with time.
What is ‘the worst niche’? The one you just hopped into.
- All of the problems in your business are created by your lack of knowledge or
experience, not your niche.
- The harder a niche is in the beginning, the less people will stick to it, the easier it is to
become the best.
- Know when it’s time to give up - if you’ve relentlessly tried to make a niche work for
1-2 yrs (doing the work every day) and it is still giving unsolvable pushback, switch.
Rowing The Boat 🚣🏼‍♀️ 🥵
“It doesn’t matter how hard you row, it matters what boat you’re in” - Warren Buffett
You can row as hard as you want, but if the boat you’re in was designed to sink from the get
go, there isn’t much point, so pick wisely.
Example: one of our reps/setters, Oscar, was in the lawyer niche for 2 years. He sent about
20,000 cold emails and sent an ungodly amount of cold messages to this niche, to no avail.
He didn’t have the money to run ads, nor did he have the understanding of the niche to
create an inbound system, so I told him to come work for us. 3 months in and he’s on track
to make multi-six figures as a setter & rep for IA, one of the best I’ve ever seen.
A great person in a bad niche will get bad results. Oscar was rowing as hard as he could in a
boat that was built to never move.
So it’s important to pick wisely, hence why I've got a checklist for you!
Niche Selection Checklist 📝✅

If you already have a niche (which is likely), move on to the niche market research resource.
I’m going to give you a checklist with a series of questions. I’m not here to tell you which
niche to pick - it has to be your idea and decision. This checklist serves as a framework to
test the strength of a niche. Think of a niche and run it through this checklist.
Keystone questions: must be tickable. If any are not tickable, the niche is unviable.
General questions: For a niche to be viable you want to tick all of the keystone questions
and at least 70% of the general questions.
Here’s a resource for the niche selection checklist: Imperium Niche Selection Checklist .
Follow the checklist to pick a niche.
Key points:
- You aren’t married to this niche forever (if you hate it)
- Do not pick two niches (it’s not smart)
- The more specific the niche the better
- Do not spend ages deciding, pick well and pick fast
Niche Market Research 🔍🕵🏼‍♀️
Once selected, it’s time to research your niche.
The better you understand your niche, the easier client acquisition will be. The deeper you
understand your niche, the better you are able to craft marketing stimuli that resonates with
them and encourages them to take action.
The better you understand your niche, the easier it will be for you to craft a winning offer
(next video). Offers account for 80% of client acquisition success, and I’m not even
exaggerating, so the truth is that niche market research drives 80% of your client acquisition
results.
I’ve compiled a list of questions to form a ‘client avatar’ for your business. The better you can
answer these questions, with more accuracy and detail, the better your niche understanding
(and therefore advantage) is going to be.
Imperium Client Avatar Worksheet: Imperium Client Avatar Worksheet
If new to your niche, you won’t have all the answers. Here’s how to get them:
- Call your niche and ask to interview them, pretending to a be a student at a local
university/college (or just be honest)
- Do sales calls, a lot of them
- Hang out where your niche hangs out, online forums, groups etc
Final Notes 📝
You need a niche if you want to win. It’s not about how hard you row, it’s about what boat
you’re in. Pick wisely! Markets are dominated by specialists.
Summary 📝
🐍🐁
🧹📈
Functional Roles
🎧💰
Operational Drag Multipliers
❌🚫
Specialists’ Advantage
🚣🏼‍♀️ 🥵
Niche Selection Mistakes
📝✅
Rowing The Boat
🔍🕵🏼‍♀️
Niche Selection Checklist
Niche Market Research

3.1 Specialist Domination (Niche Selection)

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Specialist Domination (Niche Selection)

Operational Drag Multipliers 🧹📈

Operational complexity inhibits profitability, scale and focus.

Niche: High ticket service & coaching businesses x1

= operational drag multiplier of 1x1 (34 times) = 1.

Who’s more likely to scale, a company with an operational drag of 1…

= operational drag multiplier of 3.0814043e+16 (that’s a lot of complexity)

If the answer is no, how is this program going to help you?

Who makes more money, a general doctor, or a heart surgeon?

- Generalists face chaos, specialists face order.

Niche Selection Mistakes ❌🚫

The Best Niche 🤑 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

Niche Selection Checklist 📝✅

Follow the checklist to pick a niche.

Imperium Client Avatar Worksheet: Imperium Client Avatar Worksheet

- Do sales calls, a lot of them

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