Chapter 02 / 8 min
Choosing a market you can actually reach
Reachability beats profitability. How to pick in an afternoon and stop rethinking it.
Most people choose a niche by searching for the most profitable industries and picking one they have no way into. Then they spend three weeks on positioning for an audience they cannot get on the phone.
The only question that matters at the start is whether you can get a decision maker to talk to you this week. Profit follows access, because access is what produces the twenty conversations, and the conversations are what produce the offer.
The five tests
Score any candidate market out of five on each. Anything under 18 out of 25 will cost you a month.
| Test | What you are checking |
|---|---|
| Can I list 200 of them? | If you cannot build the list, you cannot run outreach. Directories, maps, association members, LinkedIn filters. |
| Is the decision maker one hop away? | Owner operated businesses decide in one conversation. Enterprises take six months and a procurement process. |
| Do they already buy services? | Someone who already pays an agency, a bookkeeper or a consultant has a budget line and no philosophical objection. |
| Is there a repeating operational task? | You need a Monday morning ritual to remove, not a strategic ambition to support. |
| Can I see the money? | You should be able to estimate their revenue within an order of magnitude from public information. If you cannot, you cannot price. |
The advantage you already have
You have a job. That job sits inside an industry, and you know what wastes time there, what the software is called, who signs things off, and which complaints repeat in every meeting. That is market research most people would pay for, and you got it by turning up.
The industry you are trying to escape is usually the first one that will pay you.
This is not a rule you have to follow. It is the shortcut available to you specifically, and ignoring it because it feels too close to home is the most expensive kind of pride.
Markets that consistently work
- Dental and private medical clinics. High value per patient, phone driven, front desk permanently overloaded.
- Law firms and notaries. Document heavy, intake heavy, allergic to admin, comfortable with fees.
- Recruitment agencies. CV and pipeline volume, every hour of screening has a price attached.
- Trades with dispatch, such as HVAC, plumbing and electrical. Missed calls are lost jobs and everybody knows it.
- E-commerce brands between one and ten million. Support tickets, returns, supplier admin, and an owner who understands margins.
- Accounting and bookkeeping firms. Deadline driven, document driven, seasonal panic that repeats every year.
Markets that quietly waste your ninety days
- Startups. No budget, no processes worth automating, and they will build it themselves.
- Coaches and creators. They will ask you to do it for a revenue share.
- Restaurants and cafes. Thin margins, no operational budget, owner is on the floor.
- Anything where your buyer is a committee.
The common version
Choosing the niche with the highest ceiling.
Do this instead
Choosing the niche with the shortest distance to a real conversation. You can move up later, and you will, with proof in hand.
Before chapter three
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