Stay in Your Lane, or Nah

“Stay in your lane.”

“Niche down.”

I hear these phrases so often, but is it necessary?

I’ve never wanted to stay in one lane.  It feels restrictive.  I’m not even good at staying still.  This is probably why I packed up everything in 2016 and traveled abroad with my daughter for a year.

If I stayed in my lane, I would never have accomplished so many of my goals.  I’ve accomplished goals I hadn’t even set and that’s because I didn’t stay in my lane.

 

As far as “niching down”, I can understand and appreciate the importance of finding one’s thing.  I am an amazing instructor.  I can teach topics I know little about because I know how to engage, but I choose to teach topics I love and enjoy.  The façade of teaching a topic I don’t enjoy won’t last long.

The Importance of Niching Down

At the start if any business, it is important to find what’s going to work.  The you want to grow that business.  If you have too much going on at once, it will be difficult to give your all to multiple projects.  So, by all means, niche down and hone in on that one topic you want to teach. From there, begin to expand.  Niching down doesn’t mean you are stuck with one topic.  I started with a middle school writing class, made a part II, added a variety of class offerings (live, pre-recorded, one-time, weekly, semester long, etc), and then added reading courses.  I then expanded to high school and upper elementary.  I made sure my first class offerings were perfected first.

Lessons Learned

After I perfected my class, I added more classes.  Then I started to add products.  My products were not directly related to the courses that I taught.  I had a different target audience, a different demographic I was creating my products for.  These products included workbooks, writing prompt packs, a children’s book series, and a board game.  I was working on all of this while providing coaching and growing my one teacher organization to five on Outschool and my website.  It was exhausting and I didn’t have a team in place.

So, I removed all my products, I dismantled my online school, and I put all my focus into growing my business.  I had already had huge success by myself, and I thought the transition to having more teachers would be seamless.  Instead, I had to refocus and put other projects to the side.  Once I feel comfortable with the level of growth my organization has, I will revisit and relaunch my products.

I also decided to reinvest in myself.  I have outsourced for marketing and designs.  I hired several social media management marketers.  But, this time, I have hired an entire team.  We will see how that goes.

 

What are your thoughts?

Do you think you have to stay in one lane?