Episode #15
Stop Naming Your Niche Before You've Earned It
Your niche is not a decision you make on day one. It is a discovery that emerges from entities, time, client conversations, and data.
11 minUpdated:
Key takeaways
- Treat your niche as a discovery, not a decision. The Niche Chain produces it from real market data after entities, time, and client conversations have done their work.
- Record every client conversation with your best-performing clients. Transcribed recordings fed into an AI model are the most direct route to a defensible, evidence-based niche.
- Build your entities before anything else. Your values, concepts, frameworks, and personal identity are the first link in the chain and the foundation for AI visibility.
- Forcing a niche early creates short-term traction and long-term misalignment. It makes your business smaller than it needs to be and disconnected from what you actually deliver.
- Every business needs a person as its brand anchor. In the AI era, entity-level personal identity is what gets cited, recommended, and remembered.
Timestamps
00:00Opening analogy: naming a career before a child is born
00:58Why your business identity must reflect who you are
01:57Personal brand as the anchor: Musk vs. Tesla, Branson vs. Virgin
03:19Entities as the starting point of your niche
03:56Introducing the Niche Chain framework
06:06Why client conversations are the most important link
08:27Why experts resist choosing a niche and what that reveals
09:53The full sequence: how to run the Niche Chain in practice
Show notes
What this episode covers
Paul Veth walks through the Niche Chain of Identity First Marketing, a four-link framework for discovering your niche from evidence rather than inventing it from assumption.
The Niche Chain: four links in sequence
- Entities - Define who your business is: the people, locations, values, concepts, frameworks and methodologies that form your identity. Ask an AI model to surface your entities and publish them consistently on your own domain and channels.
- Time - Consistency over time is what gives your entities signal weight. Skipping this step produces data that is too shallow to act on.
- Client conversations - Record conversations with your best-performing clients, the ones who got the strongest results from your solution. Transcribe them. This is the most underused asset most experts hold.
- Data - Feed the transcripts to an AI model and ask it to identify your niche. The answer comes from the market, not from your assumptions.
Why forcing a niche early backfires
Picking a niche on day one generates early traction because focused messaging converts faster. But it builds a business that does not reflect who you are or what your clients actually need from you. Paul compares it to naming your child's career before they are born.
Key insight on personal brand and AI visibility
In the AI era, every business needs a person as its brand anchor. Paul points to Elon Musk being more widely recognised than Tesla, and Richard Branson carrying more authority than Virgin, as proof that entity-level personal identity drives recognition at scale. This is the foundation the Niche Chain is built on.
About Identity First Marketing
Identity First Marketing helps experts become visible to AI systems through entity building, structured identity signals, and the Rings of Entity framework. More at identityfirstmarketing.com.
Topics
niche strategyniche chainentity buildingAI visibilitypersonal brandclient conversationsIdentity First Marketingexpert positioningentity of onePaul Veth
Full transcript
View full transcript
0:00
0Choosing your niche is like naming a career of your son before he is born. Would you imagine? My son, Joah, he is now 20 and I'm like, okay, when he is 20 years old, he is going to have this business, or this is what he does for the living, or this is where he lives. No. It's crazy to do that.
0:26
0But thinking about niches, we try to do the same thing. And it's really not not normal to try to do that. I'm going to explain you in this video why it's the opposite almost like that. Because you have to choose who you are. Be so specific of who you are as a person, as a founder, as a business.
0:58
0When you're having a bigger business and you have a management team or a board of directors or co founder, you have to determine who the business is. Think about it as a person. You have to name it. You have to choose it. And of course you have to, if you're the founder or co founder, you have to understand who you are.
1:25
0Because if you build a business that's totally different than who you are, it's never going to work of course. So, and especially nowadays with AI findability, it's it's so important that your business connects with you as a person. You need every every business needs a person as a brand, as a personal brand. That's why Elon Musk is even bigger than Tesla. Most people know who Elon Musk is and less people know who Tesla is.
1:57
0A lot of people know who Richard Branson is, but to tell you that he has Virgin, the record label, you don't know the existence of Virgin, maybe. I don't know. But Richard Branson is bigger. That's why it's important. So for you as a founder or co founder or with the business, choose something that's suiting you, that's reflecting you and give your business their own identity entities.
2:28
0It's really like that. It's important. And to talk about it, just a moment I will come back to the entity part, but choose really careful about who you are. Choose wisely, I would say. So you have to think about your strategy, your vision, about your why, your values.
2:51
0And you have to embody this. Not only you, every person of your team needs to embody the business, the vision, the strategy, where you stand for and what you what you want to push away. That's very important. Who are your enemies, so to say. So, okay, entities, that's the beginning.
3:19
0Entities, that's the beginning of your niche, I want to say. Entities are like persons from your business, location, values, concepts, frameworks, mythologies and stuff like that. Ask AI what your entities are, have a conversation about your entities. I must say it in almost every video. Try it.
3:43
0Do it. Place it on your own domain, your website, on socials as well. It's important in this AI era. It's important to know your entities. So about your niche.
3:56
0I'm working with the framework, the niche chain. It's a chain. So every part follows up the next part. You start with entities, then you add time. Because when you are talking about your entities in a consistent way, you have to do it over time.
4:15
0So add time. And then you will find client conversations. Because when you start with your entities over time, you start to talk to your customer, to the conversations you have with them. And if you collect these conversations, that's very important even if you're talking in person to to your customers, please, please record it. Ask them, of course, but please record it because you want the feedback, you want the data, because that's the next step, data.
4:48
0And if you have that, you can discover your niche. You have to do all of these things. If you have your entities ready and you don't add time, you jump immediately to the client conversations. The data that comes out of there is not deep enough. It's not good enough.
5:12
0You have to add time. It depends on your category of business. Some businesses can already start discovering your niche from the data after three months. Other businesses can only do it after one year or two years. But that's something you have to know as a business So you have the entities, then the time, then the conversations you have with your clients, and then the data.
5:43
0Out of that data you discover your niche. Not before that, not after that. It's really at that moment you don't have to wait longer. If you have enough data you can find it. So what is the most important part of this chain, this niche chain?
6:06
0I would say client conversations. Because I know a lot of experts already have these client conversations. You have them. Like I said, recording them. Do it online.
6:17
0Use a microphone. Buy a simple microphone and place it somewhere or use your phone, your smartphone and place it between you. Ask it if it's okay, because you want to learn. You want to be eager to learn. Ask feedback of course, but within this client conversations there is so much data and nowadays it's so easy.
6:44
0You just record all the client conversations. Better your best clients. The clients who have the best results because of the solution you sold. Them. So the service or products you sold them, they have the best results.
7:01
0It doesn't matter what the results are because you've built a solution for something, so the results are a result of your solution. So that's amazing. So, if you do that and you talk to the best clients, then you transcribe these recordings and you ask an AI model to pick up the role of the niche finder. And then you ask, okay, what's what's my niche? And then you discover the niche.
7:30
0You don't give it upfront, just like you don't give your career for your son a name when he just is born. Like my son, Joah. Okay, Joah, you have to be a physician. No. It's crazy to do that, just like naming your niche.
7:50
0So stop naming your niche upfront. You just have to discover it through the client conversations after time and you have to be very strict about your entities, because that is how you choose to show up online. So resume. You have to think about it that you I know this. A lot of experts don't want to choose a niche because they are like, yeah, I want to help everyone.
8:27
0No, that's not true, but I know why you think it. You think, okay, first of all, a lot of marketers tell you to choose a niche because then it's more easy to talk to your ideal customer. Ideal customer is also a result. So that's what marketers do and I know why because it's working. When you pick a niche and you are starting to talk especially to that niche, you will have traction in the beginning.
8:59
0But you are building a business that's not working for you. So, that's not working for your clients and customers as well neither, because it's not what you thought of as the business. So yeah, you can generate traction by choosing a niche, but it's making you smaller than you are and you want to help more people. That's what you think and what you feel. In the end, you don't care because I know that it depends how how big you want to build your business.
9:33
0It really depends on it, but it's always smaller than everyone. I know, but you must have the feeling you can help everyone who wants your solution. That's why experts hate it to name a niche upfront. So, you have my permission. Stop trying to name your niche.
9:53
0You just have to tell yourself, okay, what are my entities? Choose who you are and frame it in the entities, your values, your concepts, you as a person, your team, your methods, everything. Ask AI for your entities. Then start to share it consistently online over time and then start your client conversations immediately when you are working with clients. After you worked with clients, ask them questions, ask them feedback.
10:29
0And then you have data transcribed the conversations and give it to AI and ask AI what is my niche? And it will give it to you. And then suddenly it starts to work because then you have the niche and then you can talk to your niche, even to your ideal customer and then suddenly everything you are sharing connected to your entities will hit. It will hit harder. But first you have to do the work.
10:59
0You have to use the niche chain to get your niche and when you have your niche, see see it as a result or or reaching of a level in a computer games, you are like, yeah, I finally discovered my niche. And then you start talking only to you to your niche. And that's working really well. Never do it the other way. That's not working because I promise you, you will walk in a destination that's not helping you and it's not helping your customers.
11:33
0So stop trying to name your niche. Use the niche chain. Discover your niche. Celebrate it. Celebrate your niche and then you will see your traction or your own website or your socials and inventions will rise.
11:55
0But see it as a level you have to reach.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Niche Chain?
The Niche Chain is a four-link framework from Identity First Marketing. It runs through entities, time, client conversations, and data. Each link must be completed in sequence before the next delivers useful signal. The niche emerges from the data at the end, not from a decision at the start.
Why is choosing a niche on day one a mistake?
Choosing a niche before you have client data forces you to guess. It can generate early traction because focused messaging converts, but it builds a business around an assumption rather than evidence. That misalignment compounds over time and limits how many people you can genuinely serve.
What are entities and why do they come first?
Entities are the identifiable components of your business: the people, locations, values, concepts, frameworks, and methodologies that define who you are. They come first because they are what AI systems recognise, index, and cite. Without clear entities, every other marketing effort lacks a foundation to build on.
How do client conversations help you find your niche?
Recording conversations with your best-performing clients and transcribing them gives you direct market evidence. When you feed those transcripts to an AI model and ask it to identify your niche, the answer comes from real outcomes, not from what you assumed your clients needed before you started.
How long does it take to discover your niche using this method?
It depends on your category. Some businesses have enough data to identify their niche within three months. Others need one to two years. The determining factor is time spent consistently communicating your entities combined with a sufficient volume of recorded client conversations to generate reliable patterns.
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