“Dont make me niche slap you”
These words jumped off the page at me as I was reading an eye opening book on marketing by Alex Hormozi called $100M Offers. They were at once familiar and at the same time shocking. It was like I finally got the message that I had been told multiple times.
You see I am a builder by trade, not a marketer. So when I get an idea I build it. However, my ideas hadn’t been too successful.
In my moonlighting hours over the past 3 years I had tried and failed to build multiple businesses. The common characteristic? No niche. I went after the construction software market, the self help market, and the outdoor apparel market. Each one struggled because I didn’t narrow my audience, I didn’t have what they call in marketing speak, my avatar.
What does that have to do with forged managers?
Well while I was building all of these I was actually succeeding as a software manager during the daylight hours. I had also done something that I wished I had done as a software developer, I had been taking notes.
I knew that the lessons I was learning needed to be captured at the time, that looking back would only present a shadow of what I was experiencing. So I wrote the experiences down. My only regret is that I didn’t write more and that I wasn’t brave enough to make them public at the time.
Ok that explains the manager part but what about “forged”?
My first foray into online teaching was a course called forged humans. The premise is sound even if my marketing was not. I looked around and found that real changed happened because of stress not in the absence of it. So like a forge I wanted to help people embrace their stress and learn from it rather than avoid it.
I still feel like that is core to life so I wanted to bring a piece of that into my management lessons, so I named it forged managers.
That brings me to you. I realize I cant please everyone. If I am going to create a product that is amazing it has to match exactly with a certain group of people. If I can make bring quality content to that small number of people I will be happy.
So what’s my niche?
I believe The people who will get the most out of what I am writing are software development managers who have just made the transition to management or developers who are thinking about making the transition. I believe that is the group of people I have the most value to offer and if you are in that group then lets begin.