You’ve never heard of Stuart Reid. But he’s the best in the world at what he does.
There’s almost no doubt about it.
In fact, he’s pretty much the only person in the world doing what he does.
Despite the lack of competition—and at least initially—the lack of demand for his expertise, he’s been able to turn one of the most impossibly niche hobbies into a very lucrative career.
And while his story has nothing to do with podcasting, his path to success is the perfect model of what’s required to succeed as a podcast creator today.
So what is it exactly that Stuart Reid does?
He watches, assesses, annotates, and painstakingly catalogues football (soccer) corner kicks.
In a given day, Reid analyzes hundreds of kicks from teams all around the world, in the process, building up the most extensive database of corner kick information in the world.
I told you it was niche.
And while the pursuit was initially simply a personal obsession, Reid has been able to turn his expertise into a career as a consultant for football clubs around the world.
Reid’s story sounds improbable, and in a way it is.
But not because he got lucky.
Instead, stories like his are uncommon only because so few people are willing to niche down so narrowly and pursue that narrow focus with single-minded obsession long enough for the rest of their niche, industry, or the world to catch up.
And yet, when you start to look closer, this is the path so many of the most successful creators and entrepreneurs follow.
In the process, they end up—often inadvertently—inventing new job descriptions, niches, categories, and more.
All because they had the patience to stick with some extremely narrow topic no one else thought was worth the time.
While this approach is a reliable path to creative success, there are a few things to note.
- You need to do the work upfront. Probably for years at a time.
- As such, you need to not only love, but obsess over your topic and the work involved.
- If you aren’t the single most passionate, obsessive person on the topic you’ve chosen, you probably need to narrow your focus further.
- If you want to build an audience, your niche topic needs to exist within a larger niche that a lot of people care about.
- If you want to make money, that larger niche has to have a significant amount of money to spend.
This approach isn’t the only path to creative or podcasting success, but it’s certainly one of the most reliable if you’re brave enough to narrow your focus further than feels comfortable.
Find the obscure thing you can become the best in the world at.
Then do the work to become it.
