Finding your circle of competence

If you've been trying to grow your audience, your content, or your business for any amount of time, you've heard this stuff a thousand times:

"Just pick a niche."
"You should niche down."
"The riches are in the niches."

These feel cliche at this point, but the idea behind them is still right.

You should narrow your focus. Otherwise your audience, your content, and your business will be stuck in a slog of randomness.

But I've always had a problem with "just pick a niche" as advice. It only tells half the story. It tells you that you should narrow your focus without ever explaining how to narrow it.

So I want to make this overused advice actually useful. Let's talk about how to find what most people call a "niche," which I think is better described as finding your circle of competence.

Before we get into it

To find your circle of competence (aka your niche), you need to look at where your interests, skills, and market needs overlap.

Sounds simple, right? It can be, but it's not always easy.

You have to be brutally honest about your talents, your abilities, and the market you want to serve.

Let's start with the first part of the Venn diagram: your interests.

1. Defining your interests

To write interesting content, you have to be interested. And if you're going to spend a lot of time focused on a particular topic, you damn sure better enjoy it.

It can be hard to commit to an interest once you realize how much time and attention it's going to take.

Before you let the ink dry on choosing an interest, ask yourself these questions:

Would I feel passionate about this topic on both my best and worst days?
Can I see myself exploring this topic without any incentives (money, audience, fame, etc.)?
How does this interest align with my long-term business goals and/or lifestyle?

How you answer these will tell you whether you're on the right track or not.

Once you settle on an interest, the next step is figuring out what skills you actually bring.

2. Taking stock of your skills

The second part of finding your circle of competence is taking an honest inventory of your skills.

It might go without saying, but you need to be brutally honest with yourself here.

It's one thing to find an interest to pursue. It's another to identify skills you can bring to the table that actually set you apart from everyone else.

Like the last section, there are a few questions you should ask yourself. And again, you're not doing yourself any favors if you aren't being 100% honest.

What am I qualified to do better than 99% of people?
How do my strengths enhance my perspective? And how do they cover for weaknesses that might slip through?
Which of my skills has been validated by the market through achievement, recognition, or payment?
Can I combine both soft and hard skills to create a skill set that's genuinely unique?

Make a list of things you're uniquely qualified to do. Then move on to the most important part of this whole process: figuring out what the market actually needs.

3. Finding product-market fit

By now, you've looked inward and should feel confident in your interests and skills.

Now it's time to look outward. What does the market need, and how do you position yourself as the solution?

The number one question you should ask yourself here is: "What specific problems does my audience have that I'm uniquely qualified to solve?"

If you can answer that with absolute clarity, you're doing better than almost every creator on earth.

But if you need more data points, there are a couple more things worth thinking about.

How large is the potential audience in your circle of competence? Selling wetsuits to underwater basket weavers might be where your interests and skills overlap. But something tells me that market will be a little... minnow-scule (see what I did there?). Knowing the TAM (Total Addressable Market) matters. You need to know how much market share is out there and how much you can realistically expect to capture.

How competitive is the market? If it's wide open, that could be a huge advantage. First-mover advantage has made a lot of people a lot of money. But if you're in a more crowded space, you'll need to figure out how to differentiate your offering from your competitors. This is Business 101, but it's worth repeating so you go into either scenario with your eyes open.

Circle of Competence

Putting it all together

Ok, you've done the work.

You're interested in a topic you could write about on good days and bad. You've identified your skills with brutal honesty and know what sets you apart. You've found your market, you know its needs, and you know what makes you uniquely qualified to solve them.

The circle of competence Venn diagram is complete. This is your "niche" or "pocket." It's the sweet spot for personal fulfillment and content creation. It's also where you're most likely to find real audience engagement and actually make an impact on people.

But understand: once you find your circle of competence, the real work begins.

You'll have to create great content and experiences for your audience. It has to resonate and deliver on the promise of solving their specific problems. This is where trust gets built. And it's the first step toward convincing the audience to consider your offering.

It won't be easy, but that's the price of admission if you want to stand out.

It's true: "The riches are in the niches." But only for people willing to fully commit to their circle of competence.