Dear Friend & Subscriber,
Your goal is to create a Category of 1 for yourself.
What does that mean?
I started learning about the art of Category Creation a few years ago, when I began working on a co-authored book project with the two GOATs of Category Design: Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger & Niche Down) and Eddie Yoon (author of Superconsumers).
They are now my fellow collaborators in our other weekly newsletter, called Category Pirates.
Category Creation and Category Design is how you achieve true differentiation.
None of this “hey-I’m-slightly-cheaper-slightly-faster-slightly-cooler-slightly-more-refreshing” stuff. That’s a rat’s game, and forces you to live in a constant state of competition.
Christopher and Eddie were the ones who taught me the best way to grow is to CREATE a new category—not to compete within an existing one.
Aka: create a category of 1.
(Where you are the only option and there is no next-best alternative.)
The easiest way to achieve this is to do what Christopher calls Niching Down:
Let’s say you want to launch a website or blog or weekly article series where you interview high performers (isn’t everyone nowadays???).
The broad category you are starting in would be High Performance.
But that’s kinda vague. And chances are, someone else probably already owns that category (I can think of a handful of Category Kings within that space).
So, let’s make it more specific:
High Performance Habits.
OK, so now you’ve decided you are going to double-down on the habits people use to become high performers in the first place. (You’re not going to go on and on about their life stories, or their biggest moments of failure, etc. No, your writing is going to center 100% around habits.
But then you do some searching around, and god damn it, there’s already a king of that category (and he’s been doing this for a long time):
Now, what are the chances you’re going to be able to do High Performance Habits better than Brendon Burchard? (For context: he’s one of the most successful online marketers out there, and does $10M/yr+ off his high performance habits courses, in addition to all his other stuff).
…to be blunt, you’re probably not going to beat him at his own game.
Right?
Here’s where 99% of people go wrong.
They’re so attached to the idea of following someone (or a category) that has already proven to be successful, that they would rather spend 5+ years competing in someone else’s category than creating their own.
And that’s a mistake.
At best, you might capture 1-3% of the market Brendon Burchard holds in the palm of his hand. And for some aspiring writers, entrepreneurs, and so on, 1-3% of a market is enough to make a decent living and be happy. But if you have BIG aspirations, “competing” isn’t going to get you there.
The only way to own 75%+ of a market is to create it—and declare yourself King or Queen.
Here’s Step 2:
The advice I notice that other content creators give at this point in the Category Creation journey (except, they don’t call it that—they call it “building an authentic brand,” which is the complete opposite of what we’re talking about here but, I digress), is they encourage creators to bring more of themselves into the equation.
“You, as a human being, are unique,” they say (waving their arms in the air and using their faux-spirituality-guide voice. I can’t stand it.).
So let’s play that out.
High Performance Habits + Your “Authentic” Self.
And let’s say your authentic self, and your domain expertise, is you are a high school gym teacher.
If we combine the two, then your category (and niche) looks like this:
High Performance Habits, As Told By A High School Gym Teacher.
If you can’t see the problem here, then I don’t know what to tell you.
(Here’s a hint: That’s not a very big category!)
You see, while you might have achieved “differentiation” by bringing more of “who you are” into the equation, you aren’t really setting yourself up for long-term success—because now your category is YOU.
And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless you’re Kim Kardashian or Elon Musk, nobody really cares about you.
What people care about is the CATEGORY OF INFORMATION they are searching for. THEN, once they’re INSIDE that category of information, they will go on their search to find the best source of that information (brand). And if you were the one who CREATED that category, guess who they’re going to see as the BEST option?
That’s right: You.
Following me so far?
OK, so let’s ditch this “just be authentic and pixie dust will fly from your fingertips and you will embrace your best life” strategy, and move on to something more productive.
How you actually create “thought differentiation” in someone’s mind is you have to be very deliberate about the words you use to describe your category.
For example, let’s go back to High Performance Habits.
There are 2 puzzle pieces to this category:
High Performance (subject)
Habits (aim)
If we change either one of these pieces, we find ourselves in a different category.
Category 1:
High Performance (same subject)
Success Stories (new aim)
Category 2:
Mental Clarity (new subject)
Habits (same aim)
All we did was change 1-2 words, and suddenly we’re nowhere NEAR the category of High Performance Habits. Either, as a reader, you’re interested in reading about High Performance Success Stories, or Mental Clarity Habits, or High Performance Habits. These are 3 fundamentally different subjects, with different aims and benefits for the reader.
If you set yourself down the road of COMPETING within High Performance Habits, you’re going to forever live in Brendan Burchard’s shadow.
But, after a few hours of research online, you might find there’s no real authority yet established in the Mental Clarity Habits arena. (Note: no category is completely empty, and you’ll probably find an assortment of content already created there. The question though is whether or not someone has staked their claim and successfully defined the category.)
The goal here is to change the aim so that you are not staring down the barrel of someone else’s gun. Which means, if for some reason you are obsessed with interviewing high performers, and you really can’t let that piece of the puzzle go (subject), I encourage you to tweak the second half of the equation (aim):
High Performance Mistakes
High Performance Life Lessons
High Performance Relationships
High Performance XYZ
By changing the “aim” of the category (Brendan is focused on Habits, so what’s a different aim you can focus on?), now you are no longer competing with him.
You’re creating a different option for readers entirely.
Step 3:
The above Step 2 is how to think about category differentiation without niching yourself into oblivion (big categories are great because they have the widest reach).
However…
There’s a 3rd piece of the puzzle here that can make things interesting—and really set you apart from everyone else.
Instead of thinking about yourself, think about what sort of audience you really believe your content will resonate with AND THEN NAME THAT AUDIENCE IN THE CATEGORY.
For example:
High Performance Habits For Musicians
High Performance Habits For Writers
High Performance Habits For Teachers
High Performance Habits For Therapists
Etc. etc. etc.
There is no faster way to resonate with a niche than to call them out by name.
Again, you are not the main character here.
The reader is.
Your domain expertise might give you a sense of which direction you want to go (if you’re a music producer, you’ll naturally speak better to other music producers, etc.), but that’s not really the line of thinking I encourage you to go down. The truth is, you could have zero domain expertise at all and create a Category of 1 by curating all the experts within a certain space/industry.
Personally, I think creating a category around a certain individual is a good place to start if you’re just beginning your journey. But eventually you learn that it’s better to widen the category and then speak to different niches in different pieces of content.
For example: I created the category of Online Writing.
I pioneered it. In 2013, 2014, 2015, there were plenty of writers on the internet writing about other subjects—but nobody was really “writing online about online writing.”
Niching down here, for me, would have looked like this:
Online Writing Principles For Self-Published Authors
Online Writing Hacks For First-Year Digital Writers
Online Writing Habits For Columnists
For example, one of my favorite education sites for writers is called Kindlepreneur.
His category?
He says it right there in the Google search result:
“Book Marketing for Self-Published Authors.”
He’s naming the target audience, and using the target reader to define the category.
A lot of writers are interested in Book Marketing.
But you’re either interested in Book Marketing as a Self-Published Author, or you’re not (and you’re a writer who wants to learn about Book Marketing while being signed to a major publishing house, etc.).
Again, I want to note here: this has nothing to do with “YOU” as a human being.
If you’re going to niche down, NAME THE TARGET AUDIENCE.
And they, in combination with the subject matter you plan on covering, become your category:
Book Marketing (subject) for Self-Published Authors (audience).
Opinion Article Writing (subject) for Celebrities (audience).
Whitepaper Formatting (subject) for Startups (audience).
These are your levers—and you can push and pull them as far as you want in either direction.
Let’s niche the above down further:
eBook Marketing (which is more specific than Book Marketing) for Profitable Self-Published Authors (which is one audience within the larger group of self-published authors).
Viral Opinion Article Writing (which is more specific than all the Opinion articles, whether they go viral or not) for Professional Athletes (one type of celebrity).
Proven Whitepaper Formatting (proven implies a different outcome than just “doing the task” of formatting a whitepaper) for Fundraising Startups (not just any startup, but startups that are actively trying to raise money and want a “proven” way of doing so).
We could go on and on.
So, to recap How To Create A Category Of 1:
You can either change the subject of the category (“High Performance”)
You can change the aim/goal of the category (“Habits”)
You can change the audience of the category (“For Professional Athletes”)
If you want to start small, I encourage you to push and pull all 3 levers, and name your audience.
This will start you in a smaller category (simply because High Performance Habits For Professional Athletes is more specific than High Performance Habits For Anyone), but in the beginning, I believe this is a good thing. You want to start ultra-specific because it gives you a chance to really learn what’s working and what’s not.
Once you:
Develop your Daily Writing Habit
Find, nurture, and refine your voice
Learn (through data) which topics resonate MOST with your target readers
Start building your Library of Content
THEN…
You’ll end up broadening the category by clarifying your Subject x Aim.
You’ll learn whether or not you are the right person to create, dominate, and grow your broader category.
And you’ll eventually “drop” naming the audience specifically in the way you describe the CATEGORY, and instead you’ll only name them in content that is relevant.
Sincerely,
Nicolas “I Meant For This To Be Shorter But Just Picked My Head Up And 2 Hours Has Flown By So Thx For Coming To My TedTalk” Cole
PS - Here are two new categories I just discovered on Twitter just WAITING to be claimed:
“Content Diet”
“Digital Hygiene.”
Who is the Personal Trainer for Digital Health going to be???
PPS - Forward this email to someone who you believe would get a lot out of this (and encourage them to subscribe!).
I am new to you Nicolas and quickly becoming a big fan. I learned and laughed out loud in the same article. Look forward to learning and laughing a lot more ...
Excellence personified.