Take a Niche into Your Native Language & Local Area

I’ll get right to it…

Geolocational Niche Selection is Insanely Powerful

I was in Puerto Rico last week and it reminded me of an incredibly powerful business tactic…

Morning jungle view from my AirBnB

I see this almost every day:

Non-native English speakers making products for us Americanos.

America is indeed a huge consumer market. Boy, we sure do love to spend money.

But let me flip this around…

Would it make sense to you if I (a pale-skinned, uncultured, gringo) started making products in Spanish targeting individuals in Puerto Rico?

Well - I can speak a little Spanish, but it’s broken A.F.

Language barrier aside, I don’t know much about the culture in PR because I don’t live there.

The reality is - starting a local business is massively easier than starting a global business. In fact, even huge companies have trouble when expanding internationally.

BTW when I say ‘local’ business, I don’t mean a local (painting || cleaning || window washing) type business. I simply mean your target audience is local to you.

You 100% can have an online-only business that caters only locally - in fact, I’d recommend it!

Why?

People Buy From People They Trust

On a hike in P.R. I ran into someone wearing an A&M class ring (same school I went to). I asked him about it and found out he graduated the same year I did with an engineering degree. It was certainly weird to run into someone with so much in common in a vast jungle on a small island in the Caribbean.

But I also immediately felt like we were buds. We studied similar degrees and went to the same school. I innately trusted this stranger and we chatted for a while.

What does this have to do with Niche selection?

Easy - Your business will be far more successful if you have an easier time selling your product (duh).

One of the hardest barriers to overcome when selling a product is building trust with a prospect. No one will buy a product from a business they don’t trust.

Having a local, cultural connection with someone builds immediate trust and you can easily build a rapport on top of it.

Think about it - who would you rather buy from assuming everything else is the same:

1. Someone who speaks the same language, is from the same town, and goes to your favorite restaurant regularly.
2. Someone on the other side of the planet you have trouble communicating with and makes jokes you can’t even begin to understand.

It’s an obvious conclusion. If they were selling the same product - I’d go local.

Counter Arguments

• “My country is too small”
• “Not enough people speak my language”
• “My product doesn’t work for my local area”

There are attempts many people make to justify trying to sell to a foreign market through the Internet. And it’s tempting to do this.

Afterall, the Internet is The Great Marketplace. People from all over the globe can connect and communicate.

But it doesn’t change human psychology and biases. We still connect easier and have more trust in people similar to us.

I get a ton of DMs from other people that live in Texas. A lot of these people buy any product I put out there. Because they know I have similar values, beliefs, and morals that they do.

You can, of course, fight the impact of sociology, but it will just make running your online business that much harder. Why make it harder than it needs to be?

Here’s the LD:

If you want to make $1-3MM/yr you only need a couple thousand customers.

Do you think there are a few thousand people in your country/state that speak your language that would want the product you’re offering?

Yea - probably.

Puerto Rico has a population of over 3 million. That’s not much larger than Houston (where I live). Do you think you could find 0.05% of that amount of people that would want your product?

Cool - there’s a million-dollar business.

Cheat Code

Want to make it even easier? Find a business you like in another country/state/language and simply adapt it to your local area. Boom - there’s your niche, product, offer, marketing, etc all wrapped up for you.

Become ‘the go-to guy’ in your local area.

• The best koto teacher in Sapporo, Japan
• The top tax prepper in Casper, WY
• The highest ROI copywriter in Ballari, India

You can go even smaller than those if you wanted. And as I said, these can all still be online businesses.

Just look at the businesses and people you admire/follow and take what they are doing and adapt it to your culture.

Do you know how many people started teaching Amazon FBA in German after they saw my videos on YouTube? A lot. And they are killing it.