Stop Trying to “Pick a Niche.” Do This Instead.
How to position your solo business around what clients actually buy.
Most solos get the same bad advice when they try to grow: “Just niche down.”
Pick an industry. Learn the lingo. Declare yourself the specialist.
It sounds smart. But it isn’t.
Industry niches are overcrowded. Arbitrary. And worst of all, they’re built around you, not the client. That was the core message Joe Daniels (Founder of Boxed) hammered home during our most recent 10x Solo Growth Workshop.
Clients don’t buy industry expertise. They buy someone who can help them solve a specific problem they already know they have.
That’s why Joe pushes the agencies and consultants he works with to position around use cases, not industries. A use case is the core job clients hire you to do. It’s the thing they wake up needing to fix. It’s the task they’re already actively trying to solve.
And it’s the one positioning angle that bigger agencies can’t easily copy.
According to Joe, “just niche down” fails for three reasons:
Niches are arbitrary
Niches are crowded
Niches are agency-centric
Use cases fix all three.
They’re more relevant to what you actually deliver.
They’re less crowded because larger shops can’t specialize that tightly.
And they’re deeply client-centric — rooted in the job they’re already trying to get done.
Joe walked through his Use Case Canvas to show how this works in practice. The canvas forces you to be specific:
Who you help
What triggers cause them to look for help
What job they know they need to get done
Their primary alternative
Competitor strengths
Competitor weaknesses
How your approach directly fixes those weaknesses
The features and benefits that fall out of your approach
Your one-sentence use case summary
His own example is simple:
Most positioning consultants run long, slow engagements filled with big decks and niche-picking exercises.
So he built the opposite: a fast, focused 2-week sprint that produces real messaging, a real offer, and real clarity.
That’s differentiation.
Not louder claims.
Not clever copy.
A fundamentally different approach anchored in a specific use case.
A few points that matter if you’re a solo consultant or fractional:
One use case can support your whole business
If you have multiple, choose the one that generates most of your revenue
Your biggest competitor may simply be “doing it themselves”
Depth vs breadth is just math — too narrow only matters if the market can’t support your price
Re-evaluate your use case every six months as triggers, markets, and alternatives shift
The shift to use-case positioning simplifies everything: your offers, your messaging, your content, and your pitch. And if you want to grow income without hiring a team, focus is leverage.
Final Thoughts
If you’re building a solo business, you don’t get many chances to be remembered. Most prospects won’t recall your industry focus, but they’ll remember the one thing you’re the go-to person for. That’s the power of a clear use case. It cuts through the noise and anchors your entire commercial engine around something buyers already care about. When your positioning lines up with the job they’re trying to get done, selling gets easier, content lands harder, and your offer becomes the obvious choice.
About 10x Solo Growth Workshops
Inside the 10x Solo community, we run Monthly Growth Workshops. These are expert-led, hands-on sessions that teach one core solo growth skill at a time. Topics include use-case positioning, scalable offer design, pricing, LinkedIn outbound, and content strategy. They’re practical, fast-moving, and immediately applicable. Recordings are always available for members.
If you want access to sessions like this every month — plus a private community of serious service solos leveling up together — apply to join 10x Solo.
About Joe Daniels and Boxed
Joe Daniels runs Boxed, a positioning and offer-design consultancy built for agencies and service firms that need sharper focus and a clearer commercial engine. He’s worked with dozens of shops to tighten their positioning, define a strong use case, and build offers that sell without relying on endless custom work. If you want deeper help applying the Use Case Canvas or reshaping your own positioning, Joe’s a solid person to talk to.