How To Own A Category But Scale With Sub-Niches

A couple weeks ago we talked about niching down but branding wide for growth.

In this deep dive I want to discuss how to use sub-niches that correlate with your main niche as a way to reach more people, while also leaving the door open for future growth.

This works hand-in-hand with what I mean by “Branding Wide” in Niche Down X Brand Wide, but it also goes a bit further than that for our organic reach.

Here are a few deep dives that are great to pair with this one:

1. How To Niche Down But Brand Wide For Growth
2. How Your Niche Affects Your Newsletter Monetization

At the end of our Niche Down X Brand Wide deep dive I shared a bit more insight into some examples of how I could build out my personal brand as I continue scaling.

In this one I will be showing you how even though my niche itself is specific, I still have overlapping sub-niches that allow me to go a bit more broad (when relevant) and also leverage more topics in my organic growth content (on social platforms).

I like to think of my category/main niche of Creator Newsletters (hence "The Creator Newsletter Guy" branding) as an umbrella niche that all my sub-niches fall under.

We’ll be taking a look at how I do this, but also how larger creators do this, potentially without you even realizing.

Creators like:

• Dan Koe
• Matt Gray
• Justin Welsh
• Alex Hormozi
• Codie Sanchez

You'll notice most of these creators own their own category, which is exactly where I want to start here...!

📬 Owning Your Own Category / Word Association

Creators teach this in a handful of different ways, but I really like the way Nicolas Cole and Jay Clouse teach it.

Nicolas Cole calls this your Personal Category. 

He references people like Ryan Holiday with Stoicism. 

In this case, Stoicism is Holiday's Personal Category, and any time stoicism is written or talked about, it essentially just builds on his growth potential.

Jay Clouse refers to this as "The Power Of Association" and teaches people to become associated with a specific word or phrase.

In my case I branded as "The Creator Newsletter Guy", but I really love some of the examples that Jay gives:

• James Clear: Habits
• Brené Brown: Vulnerability
• Ryan Holiday: Stoicism
• Codie Sanchez: Boring businesses
• Nick Huber: Sweaty startups
• David Perell: Personal Monopoly
• Wes Kao: Spiky Point Of View
• Justin Welsh: Solopreneurship
• Rosie Sherry: Community
• Daniel Vassallo: Small bets
• Jack Butcher: Build once, sell twice

I build on both of these lessons in my own way inside my course The Creator Newsletter Blueprint - but for now I want to start with these examples and tie it back to what I referenced in our intro section.

Think of each of these "Personal Categories" or words that these creators have become associated with are their umbrella niche.

It is the category they are dominating, their main niche, and the thing people think of whenever they hear their name.

But they can also talk about far more than just these categories, and have sub-niches that tie directly back to them.

This will be the premise and starting point for what we're going to be dissecting in the coming sections of this deep dive.

📬 You Are NOT The Niche

Not too long ago Alex Hormozi came out and discussed some massive changes that he is bringing to his content system.

For reference: In my deep dive where I discussed my methodology to Niche Down X Brand Wide I also talked about how confusing the phrase "You are the niche" is and why I think big creators need to stop saying it.

(And also smaller creators that are just regurgitating it without even know what it means. I unfortunately get a different definition from each one that says it.)

And the reason I preface with this is because creators like:

• Dan Koe
• Alex Hormozi
• Gary Vaynerchuk

Are three of the most prominent creators that were using the term.

But oddly enough they all started with a very specific niche, and even to this day Dan Koe is in a hyper specific niche and personal category of "One Person Business" - which makes the phrase that much more confusing.

To expand on that, Hormozi was teaching "You are the niche" with the context of how big creators like Dwayne Johnson, Joe Rogan and himself can discuss tons of different side topics and still explode their personal brand.

But now he seems to have changed his mind...

In the video/announcement (shown in the image above, and linked to below) he talks about 6 changes he is making in his content:

• Shift from Edutainment to Education
• Audience Focus Shift
• Narrowed Content Focus
• Metric Shift from Views to Revenue
• Content Format Shift from Shorts to Long Form
• Volume and Iteration
• Content Production Insights
• Unique Value Proposition
• Strategic Use of Shorts

He goes into much more depth for each category in the video, but essentially he is back to a hyper-specific niche with sub categories under it that actually stem from the main niche category.

For example: Instead of posting videos about his everyday life, marriage with Leila, different dietary concoctions he has, fitness and gym sessions, and other random things that fall under his entire personal brand (ALL the things he likes)...

He is shifting back to his focus on dominating the category of BUSINESS OWNERS and then will continue to have his sub-categories and niches that stem from that.

So he will still post tons of content, but it will all be related to BUSINESS, and ultimately drive far more business owners through his overall funnel.

Quick Timeout: Jumping back to how Nicolas Cole discusses a "Personal Category", he says this when comparing it to a personal brand:

“A personal brand is a personality. It’s a flavor. It’s a style. Just like how a company’s “brand” is a logo, a font type, a color palette, a specific voice, etc. A “brand” is made up of the symbols you use to represent who you are and what you do. But let’s be clear: your “brand” or your “personal brand” is not your value, and it’s certainly not your niche.”

Which also ties back to our "Niche Down X Brand Wide" discussion as well.

I highly recommend watching the full video of Hormozi breaking this down here.

📬 Umbrella Niche -> Sub-Niches for Growth

Let's say you know what word you want to be associated with and/or what personal category you'd like to build.

How do you know what sub-niches fit under your umbrella niche?

Ironically enough, your sub-niches can actually have a wider net than your main niche [if you want them to].

For this one we'll focus on a couple creators and then I'll dive into how I do this with my own personal brand as well.

Let's start here:

• Ben Meer: Systems
• Justin Welsh: Solopreneurship

Fun Note: Yes, I am purposely using Ben Meer as my example for "The Systems Guy" in this section even though I mentioned Matt Gray above because I love noting that they're both striving to be "The Systems Guy".

In the first image above this section you can see Justin Welsh's recent newsletters on the left and Ben Meer's newsletters on the right.

And I want to analyze both of them to show different approaches to using your Umbrella Niche and Sub-Niches.

You'll want to refresh on how your niche affects your newsletter monetization if you're not familiar with this concept.

Firstly: "Solopreneurship" as a category is WAYYYYY more niche than "Systems".

Which is one of the reasons Ben Meer found himself on Justin Welsh's "Size To Niche Axis" in our Niche Down X Brand Wide deep dive as someone who has a harder time monetizing within his niche.

The reason I want to point this out right away is because:

1. Justin Welsh's sub-niches can be found in ALL of his content, ranging from his social media content all the way into his newsletter content.
2. Ben Meer has extremely broad sub-niches on social media, but then gets hyper-specific inside his newsletter to help him try to own "The Systems Guy" category.

Let's discuss Justin Welsh first:

• Umbrella Niche: Justin Welsh's umbrella niche (his personal category/word association) is "Solopreneurship".
  • This means a minimalistic one person business model that strives for freedom over scale and trading dollars for hours.
• Sub-Niches: But, his sub-niches include tons of different ways to grow and monetize your business online.
  • Some of his newsletter landing page copy even includes "Every Saturday morning, you'll get 1 actionable tip to launch, grow, and monetize your internet business in less than 4 minutes." That's why when you take a look at his newsletter topics they don't have to all be specifically tied back to Solopreneurship, but can still fit into his overall brand.

Ben Meer takes the opposite approach...

Here's what I mean:

• Umbrella Niche: Ben Meer's umbrella niche (his personal category/word association) is "The Systems Guy".
  • Every week Ben sends out a newsletter that is hyper-specific to a "System" we can use in our life.
• Sub-Niches: Ben posts a WIDE range of topics ranging from systems to productivity, health, wealth, and more. 
  • Ben's discovery content is great for growth, but it also brings his already wide net even wider, making his niche much less effective for a Creator Newsletter business model (and a reason why he needs to sell products on how to grow online rather than products specific to his niche).

Bonus Note: When you find your Umbrella Niche (Personal Category / Word Association) you should still be aiming to Niche Down X Brand Wide. You can dominate a hyper-specific niche while leaving room for growth in the future. This gives you sub-niches for growth on social platforms NOW, and opens the door for even more growth as you continue to build your brand. I will be breaking down my approach a bit more next.

📬 A Look Into My Own Category & Sub-Niches

I think this section should help bring it all together for us.

Here's a look at how I think about my branding:

• Personal Category: The Creator Newsletter Guy
• Word Association: Creator Newsletters
• Umbrella Niche: Newsletter businesses for creators

This should hopefully all seem pretty obvious.

And a couple weeks ago I discussed how I also love to talk about minimalistic business models (I have had 0 employees for 10 years, made 7+ figures online, and work 10-20 hours a week earning multiple six figures a year) and digital writing in general (everything I do stems from my newsletter, but I have also grown other newsletters and gained over 1 MILLION subscribers organically, had millions and millions of hits to my website, and so much more).

So I'm leaving the door open for growth in my personal brand by "branding wide", but staying extremely niche (niching down) to help build authority, stand out, charge more and specialize.

That said, my sub-niches help me with these two things:

1. Branding Wide: My sub-niches leave the door open to discuss more in the future and for my overall brand to develop into more down the road.
2. Overall Growth: My sub-niches are also therefore more broad, so it helps me reach more people and bring them into my ecosystem.

Let's discuss some of those sub-niches...

My Sub-Niches under Creator Newsletters:

1. Creator Business Overall: Email/Newsletters are typically the highest ROI piece of any online business, but there is a lot more to building a creator business - which is ultimately what I teach (just with the unique mechanism of everything stemming directly from the newsletter). This allows me to discuss things like value ladders, different kinds of offers, copywriting, and so much more.
2. Digital Writing: Speaking of copywriting, digital writing is another big sub-niche I discuss. I have written over 2500 articles, thousands and thousands of emails, and believe that everything we do online stems directly from our writing (which is how I have developed the 2-Hour Newsletter System).
3. Marketing Psychology: Psychology, copywriting, persuasion; we need all of it in our creator businesses, and it's just another layer I love to discuss to help creators grow their newsletter businesses.
4. Minimalistic Business: Similar to Justin Welsh with his solopreneurship, I have been a full time creator for over 10 years with no employees, and work 10-20 hours a week. I have also done this while prioritizing digital products to be able to say no to things like sales calls and trading dollars for hours.
5. Passion First Niche Mindset: I believe everyone needs to find their obsession, preferred media type, and best form of monetization [specifically for them]. So the way I teach people to choose their newsletter niche (and business model) speaks directly to that approach.

All of these things fall under my umbrella niche.

My personal category, and the word I'm looking to be associated with.

But they are not the only things that make up ME and my personal brand.

They're all much more broad than my main [umbrella] niche of Creator Newsletters.

So yes, I get to discuss a wide array of my obsessions like Alex Hormozi used to imply, BUT those sub-niches I decide to discuss can be tied back nicely to my main niche.

Let's take that a bit deeper to finish this off:

• I AM writing content about all the specific things I like in the creator/online business world that relate back to my main niche.
• I am NOT writing lots of content [and growth Threads] on video games, dogs, Disney, craft beers, fitness, and other hobbies; though I may mention them from time to time to add a small personal touch to my brand.