The Riches Are in the Niches

I have been thinking a lot about why niche work seems to be thriving right now. Not just surviving, but quietly outperforming the old “go big or go home” model.

The short answer is technology.

The longer answer is craft, passion, and the power of small, devoted audiences.

Author Seth Godin touches on this in his talk about how ideas spread in the digital age. In a world of infinite choice, it is not volume that cuts through. It is work that is so well crafted and so genuinely shared that a specific group cannot help but talk about it.

Running reminded me of this. I have been a casual long-distance runner for over two decades, more for meditation than performance and the place when I think through many of these blog musings. The routines, pacing, and mental tricks feel automatic. When I recently shared a few things that seemed obvious to me with a colleague training for her second marathon, I was struck by how helpful she found them. What fades into the background through repetition is often exactly what someone else is searching for.

That is the instinct behind coaching: the quiet satisfaction of helping someone see a little farther down the road because you have already walked it. It is the same reason people love trading travel stories, fashion advice, or even something as specific as how to align a record needle. Experience turns into a gift once you realize it no longer lives only for you.

Scenario planning works the same way for me. I have been doing it for about twenty-five years. Long enough to see patterns repeat, to recognize where people get surprised, and to understand why certain decisions feel hard in the moment and obvious in hindsight. At some point, that experience stops being just personal interest and starts feeling like something worth passing on.

That said, not everything I love needs to cross that line. Vinyl record collecting is a good example for me. I enjoy the ritual, the sound, the history. I like learning just enough to appreciate it more. But I am not trying to become an authority on rare pressings. It feeds me; it does not need to become a platform.

This connects to the idea of flow. When you spend enough time in a craft, you stop consciously thinking about every move. Action and awareness merge. What looks like ease is really thousands of small repetitions.

There is a reason the “10,000-Hour Rule” resonates with people. Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the concept suggests one needs around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice leads to expertise. Mastery is not a lightning strike; it is sediment.

One of the benefits of getting older is that you get to build that sediment in more than one domain. You start to resemble, in a small way, a Renaissance generalist. The Founding Fathers were like this; philosophers, engineers, diplomats, farmers, writers. Not because they were superhuman, but because they lived long enough and were curious enough to accumulate multiple crafts.

What fascinates me about the current moment is that scale is no longer the starting point. It is the byproduct.

When you create deeply for a specific group, the work takes on a clarity that cannot be faked. And then, almost as a side effect, others begin to lean in. Not because the work was made for them, but because watching someone operate at the edge of their craft is inherently compelling, sometimes especially when it is not your field. I feel this when song lyrics lock perfectly into rhythm, when athletes perform on the Olympic stage, or when designers on Project Runway turn raw fabric into fashion. You do not need to be a musician, an Olympian, or a tailor to recognize mastery when you see it.

The internet, streaming, and global distribution make this possible. You no longer need a mass audience in one place. You need a connected tribe, scattered around the world, who recognize the value of what you are building.

When you combine mastery, visible passion, and worldwide reach, you get an economy that rewards resonance over reach.

Small groups, deeply served, can now support work that once would have been impossible to sustain. Expertise that would have stayed local can now travel. Wisdom that once took decades to find a platform can now find its people.

The technology made it feasible. The craft makes it valuable. The passion makes it human.

And the rest tends to follow.