Niche Down Read online

  Niche Down.

  Copyright 2018

  By Christopher Lochhead and Heather Clancy.

  All Rights Reserved.

  These rights are reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to read this text. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled or reverse-engineered without express permission of the authors. This book is intended for educational and informational purposes only. The examples cited within are for illustrative purposes only. Thank you for your support of our intellectual property. If you would like to reprint or use material from this book, please contact [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-0-692-15679-7

  STRAP YOURSELVES IN!

  Hello to our legendary friends near and far! The philosophy behind this book was a catalyst for legendary innovators, entrepreneurs, marketers, athletes, investors and other large-than-life visionaries who have designed legendary lives and businesses.

  As a grateful thank you for supporting our work, we invite you to download free transcripts of two mind-bending conversations.

  The inspirational technologist Shaku Atre rose from second-class citizen in an Indian village to prominent posts at IBM, the FBI and AT&T. She’s an internationally renowned software expert, and she’s a force for good in microlending — empowering thousands of women around the world to follow in her footsteps.

  The legendary Hal Elrod is creator of one of the fastest growing communities in existence — one surrounding his bestseller Miracle Morning, a system for starting your day to center and ground yourself, setting the tone for your next 24 hours. Hal is host and creator of Achieve Your Goals, one of the top podcasts in the world.

  But there’s more to his journey. This extraordinary author, thinker, motivational speaker and cancer survivor has thrived against incredible odds. His story will inspire you and hopefully serve as a guidepost pointing toward your own path into a legendary future.

  http://nichedownbook.com/thankyou

  YOU ROCK!

  Christopher:

  To my mum and dad, Jacqueline (Leeke) Lochhead and Bruce Lochhead,

  I love you.

  Heather:

  To my mother, who defied convention to make her mark in the world; my father, who taught me the value of standing up for my convictions; and my husband Joe, the non-conformist to whom I have entrusted my heart. Love you with all my soul.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Strap Yourselves In!

  Dedication (a.k.a. You Rock!)

  Foreword

  Introduction The Odd Couple

  1: Be Different, Become Legendary

  2: Fall In Love With The Problem

  3: Be Known For One Thing You Can Own

  4: Go Forth And Niche Down

  5: It Takes Courage To Be Legendary

  Meet Legends & Losers

  Acknowledgements (a.k.a. Thank You For Letting Us Be Us)

  About The Authors

  FOREWORD

  My life was transformed when I niched down.

  After a successful career in sales with the biggest cutlery company in the United States and Canada (Cutco), I decided to reinvent myself as an author, speaker, and life coach.

  Once I got started, I did pretty well.

  But, I had a problem. In a sea of thousands of authors, speakers and life coaches, I didn’t stand out.

  I was one of many ex-sales folk serving up tips for how to achieve more, win more deals, and generate more qualified leads. Blah, blah, blah.

  I didn’t let it get me down. My rule, which I learned during my knife-wielding Cutco career: “When things don’t go your way, you can feel bad about it, but for five minutes. If you can’t change it, move on.”

  So I wrote my book, The Miracle Morning, inspired by what I learned from the horrific car accident that literally (albeit briefly) claimed my life in 1999 and the profoundly difficult financial crisis I suffered a decade later during the Great Recession.

  Here’s my idea: I believe that what we do first thing in our day affects the whole day. If you can change your morning by getting up an hour earlier, you can profoundly affect the next 23 hours. And if you can change your days, you can change your entire life.

  It was a different idea than what other motivational experts were espousing, and I evangelized this philosophy everywhere I could. Because I believe in it and live it myself. Once a few thousand people understood The Miracle Morning mantra, the idea tipped — it became the sort of touchstone belief system that can guide people through all manner of life phases and choices.

  Today, The Miracle Morning is an international bestseller that has been translated in 27 languages and that more than 500,000 people, in 70 countries, practice daily.

  The philosophy behind it has also become a franchise that I’ve been able to help apply to all sorts of different social and business communities. There are close to a dozen specialized versions that I’ve co-authored with friends and colleagues, such as The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs, The Miracle Morning for Salespeople, The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families, The Miracle Morning for College Students, and many others.

  Now, I’m no longer just a good generic motivational speaker, author and coach.

  I’m known as The Miracle Morning guy.

  Be known for a niche that you own.

  This is a powerful idea. One that transforms how people think about their lives, careers and business ventures.

  Niche Down is a “life hack” of life hacks.

  Here’s why.

  Most of the people we admire the most were different in some tangible way.

  Think about the entrepreneurs, scientists, executives, explorers, musicians, athletes, teachers, artists, parents, political leaders, authors, speakers, actors and creators that you most love.

  They broke new ground.

  They were original.

  Unique.

  They stood out because of the path they chose, deliberately.

  They did not find their place in the world, they made their place in the world. They told the world how to think about them. They figured out how to stand out in a world that teaches us to color inside the lines and fit in. And as a result, they made a big impact.

  My story speaks truth to the thesis underlying Niche Down, the idea that being different is the best way to become legendary. I have become known because of the niche that I own. And that has made all the difference in both my life and career.

  This is the rare book that describes a life-changing idea and prescribes the practical steps required to implement the idea.

  More than just a book, you’re holding a guide to a legendary life and business.

  Hal Elrod

  International best-selling author of The Miracle Morning series of motivational books and host of the “Achieve Your Goals” podcast

  INTRODUCTION

  THE ODD COUPLE

  “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

  — Hunter S. Thompson, legendary counterculture novelist

  My name is Christopher Lochhead, and I was thrown out of school at 18 for being stupid.

  For me, entrepreneurship was a way out, not a way up.

  That is to say, starting a business was a way out of a life of struggle.

  At 21, I found out I was dyslexic.

  They never caught it in school.

  And it seems, like a lot of entrepreneurs I know, I have shades of bipolar disorder and a handful o
f other learning differences. I call it “dysfucklia.”

  So at 18, my options were:

  Shave guys’ balls for a living. (My mum had gotten me a job at the Montreal General Hospital as an orderly.)

  Or start a company.

  So, I started a company.

  My friend Jack Hughes was working for a small software company at the dawn of the personal computer age. He convinced me to join him in cofounding a training and consulting company focused on helping corporations embrace this exciting new platform.

  Like so many “small e” entrepreneurs1, I had no money, no experience and no relationships.

  I did have a big dream and massive drive to — as my mother says — “make something of yourself.”

  For me, entrepreneurship was a way out, not a way up.

  Growing up in a working-class family, raised by a single mother, my early life was a mix of struggle and lots of love. My mother, Jackie, worked her tail off. She always made sure we were taken care of. While my parents were not together in the traditional sense, my dad Bruce, was, and is, a big part of my life. I grew up surrounded by two loving parents and three loving grandparents.

  After thrashing around in Canada’s personal-computer, software startup world, I sold my small consulting business to a Silicon Valley software company. There I was, a lucky 28-year-old bastard working as head of marketing for a publicly-traded technology business in the Mecca of Northern California.

  I was living a dream.

  I did two more public-company chief-marketing-officer gigs, served on a few boards. And after Mercury Interactive, an enterprise software company, was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $4.5 billion in 2006, I retired as an operating executive. I was 38.

  The next 10 years I spent as an advisor, investor type. And with three very smart guys, I co-wrote Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets, published by Harper Collins.

  Now I’m having a blast as a podcaster and writer. As someone with disfucklia, writing and reading don’t come easily for me. And I’ve always preferred to collaborate with amazing people versus being a lone ranger.

  Heather Clancy is a person and journalist I have admired and respected for years. When I was young, coming up in the tech world, I read her columns and commentary religiously. As a kid with no education, I had to find non-traditional ways to learn. She was one of a handful of journalists who literately taught me the business.

  To say that working with Heather Clancy is a life thrill is an understatement.

  My motivation for wanting to do this with her is simple. To help people design a legendary business and a legendary life.

  In 2016, as Play Bigger was coming out, I read a story in The Wall Street Journal that knocked me on my ass. The headline screamed, “The Crisis in American Entrepreneurship.” I thought everyone and their dog were starting a business.

  It turns out that’s not true.

  The data says, we are at the one of the lowest levels of entrepreneurship in American history.

  Being an entrepreneur or being entrepreneurial in your career is a very powerful thing. This mindset puts you in the driver seat of the bus of life vs. feeling like you’re under the bus.

  My deep-seated wish is that this book makes a difference to you. I hope it helps you make a unique and powerful place in the world. I hope it makes some of the “losery” you experience along the way a little easier to take. Because there truly is no such thing as a legend who isn’t also a loser.

  And most importantly, my desire is that this book enables you to focus your life on the exponential value of what makes you different versus the incremental value of what makes you better.

  And I hope you have as much fun reading this as we did writing it for you.

  Christopher Lochhead

  June 2018

  Santa Cruz, CA

  My name is Heather Clancy, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I found my niche in the field of journalism by accident. Twice.

  I always knew I wanted to be a writer. That was a given from the time I used to huddle under the covers with a flashlight, devouring fantasy fiction after I was supposed to be asleep.

  Back when I started my career in New York City with a newswire service, hacks who specialized in writing about businesses — rather than celebrities or city hall — were uncommon. People thought the beat was boring. No one wanted to cover IBM’s new computers (yawnsville!) or a socially awkward, young software geek named Bill Gates (a flash in the pan!)

  But because I survived an internship in the marketing department of another kinda-cool tech startup, Apple Computer, during the summer it very publicly fired cofounder Steve Jobs, the editors sent the cub reporter to do the deed whenever the nerds stormed Manhattan. That would be me.

  I spent the next 20 years at the epicenter of the information-technology revolution, chronicling standards fights and takeovers and stock options, oh my! On the side, I took freelance assignments to write about all manner of entrepreneurs — from toymakers to dinnerware designers. Because, they were fascinating and independent and creative and far more daring than I was. You could say I lived their lives vicariously.

  When the print media world contracted, and my position at one of the tech industry’s biggest trade publications went poof in 2007, I niched down again.

  That’s when I made a conscious decision to seek out and chronicle companies that treat natural resources like fresh water, the oceans, soil and the air we breathe as something precious, something worth conserving for future generations.

  My thesis: you don’t have to pillage or pollute to be profitable.

  And I’m gratified to say that some of the world’s largest companies — including the likes of Apple, General Motors, Procter & Gamble and Unilever — are embracing that idea by embracing business practices shaped less by short-term financial interests and more by the desire to create an enterprise that will be sustainable over the long term. Let’s just say, that I have no shortage of material.

  Somewhere in the middle of all this, I met Christopher. He’d probably be my polar opposite if you made us take side-by-side personality tests. I shy away from chaos, he thrives on its energy. I pick my words pretty deliberately, while he’s not afraid to blurt out what’s on his mind. But from the first time I interviewed him, probably 20 years ago, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

  So, when Christopher asked me to co-author this book, I was simultaneously terrified, intrigued and excited as fuck. (Sorry, mom, he’s wearing off on me.) Over the years, at least a half-dozen other people that I respect and admire have asked me to tell their stories. And I’ve said “No” every single time because the topic didn’t speak to my heart. But I found myself galvanized by Christopher’s straightforward thesis: that becoming legendary — either in life or in business — was a function of declaring and defining a unique niche. And that this applied not just for massive technology companies that professors love writing about, but for the small businesses that live down the street from you and me. The more I looked for evidence, the more I found it. I became compelled to help him tell that story.

  OK, enough about us.

  If you have read Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (Harper Collins, 2016) some of the ideas on the following pages will sound familiar. For Christopher, Play Bigger and the concept of “category design” are a big part of his life’s work.

  A columnist for the business magazine, Forbes, says about Play Bigger: “If there’s a playbook for building the next Google, Facebook or Amazon — this is it.”

  Niche Down exists for a different purpose — to explore how individuals, solopreneurs and small, entrepreneurial businesses can use category design to create their own niche and create a legendary career or business … or both.

  If Play Bigger is for “Big E” entrepreneurs trying to invent
the next Google, Niche Down is dedicated to “small e” entrepreneurs who want to create massively successful smaller, independent businesses.

  And now, without further ado, in the words of the legendary punk rocker Joey Ramone, “Hey ho, let’s go!”

  Heather Clancy

  June 2018

  From a small-ish hamlet in Northern New Jersey

  * * *

  1I made up the terms “small e” and “Big E” entrepreneurs to distinguish between founders who start with nothing and founders who are able to raise venture-capital money and have the backing of experienced investors and company builders.

  1.

  BE DIFFERENT, BECOME LEGENDARY

  “Most people and most companies are living inside someone else’s thinking.”

  — Bix Bickson2, aka the “Future Hacker,”legendary executive mentor

  Entrepreneurs Build Our World

  For some people, entrepreneurship is a way up in life.

  And for others, it’s a way out.

  No matter the motivation, new and small business ventures are the lifeblood of the U.S economy.3

  That is not fake news.

  Entrepreneurs built your hometown and family-owned ventures — the most successful of which have probably been around for multiple generations.

  These enterprises are the heart of your community. They are where you gather with friends and neighbors over a meal or a milkshake or a mojito. Or three.

  These outfits are the donors supporting local schools and sports teams with coaches, equipment and new uniforms. They are the angels stepping up in times of crisis with food, water, blankets and shoulders to lean on.

  We’ll bet you vividly remember the local merchants who shaped your childhood.

  For Heather, it’s Jimmy the Fish, the quiet African-American solopreneur who made weekly, door-to-door deliveries of fresh flounder and cod in rural New Jersey. Jimmy was non-denominational, but he recognized the value of making extra trips to New York’s legendary Fulton Fish Market during the Lenten season to keep Friday-fish-eating Catholics out in the suburbs well-fed and sharing his name with enthusiasm.