A friend of mine runs a virtual assistant business.
For years, his pitch was: “I help entrepreneurs.”
It's a fine sentence. True. Professional. And completely forgettable.
Three weeks ago, Tim changed it. Now he says: “I help attorneys get their time back.” That's it. Same service. Same team. Different sentence.
The results? He told me referrals went up somewhere between 100x and 1000x. Those are his words, not mine. And having hosted hundreds of events and dinners in Austin over the years, I believe him completely.
The Problem With “Everyone”
Here's what happens when you tell someone you help entrepreneurs. They nod. They say “that's cool.” And then they move on, because their brain has nowhere to put you.
They know 200 entrepreneurs. Which ones do you help? With what, exactly?
Now here's what happens when you say “I help attorneys get their time back.” Suddenly their brain is running a very different program. They're scanning their contact list. They're thinking about their college friend who became a partner at a firm. They're remembering the attorney who was complaining about admin work at dinner last month.
Specific gives people something to do with your name.
Generic doesn't.
Why Niching Feels Scary
I get it. The instinct is to stay broad because broad feels safe. If you say “I help attorneys,” what about accountants? What about consultants? What about that dentist who keeps asking if you work with healthcare?
It feels like you're leaving money on the table.
But here's what I've seen over 50+ dinners and events: the people who get the most referrals in a room are never the ones with the broadest net. They're the ones who made it easy for someone else to think of them at exactly the right moment.
When Robbie first moved to Austin a few years ago, he watched me host Gary Vaynerchuk when he came to town. I introduced Gary to the right people, showed him the city, made sure the room was useful for him. That experience wasn't really about Gary. It was about clarity. I knew what I was good at: putting the right people in the right room. And because that was specific, people knew when to call me.
That's the whole game.
The Referral Test
Here's a simple way to know if your pitch is specific enough.
Imagine someone is having lunch with a friend and they think of you. Can they finish this sentence in under five seconds?
“You should talk to [your name] — they help [specific people] with [specific thing].”
If it takes longer than five seconds, your pitch is still too broad.
Tim's pitch passes the test easily. “You should talk to Tim — he helps attorneys get their time back.” Done. The person at lunch now knows exactly who in their network needs Tim's number.
How to Find Your Niche
You probably already have one. You just haven't named it yet.
Look at your last 10 clients. Is there a pattern? An industry that keeps showing up? A problem you solve better than anything else?
For Tim, it was attorneys. They have a specific pain point (insane admin load), a shared culture (time is literally billable), and they talk to each other constantly. Perfect niche.
Your niche might be:
- A specific industry (“I work with dental practices”)
- A specific stage (“I help founders who just closed their Series A”)
- A specific problem (“I help consultants stop losing clients to disorganized follow-up”)
Any of those beats “I help businesses grow.”
One Sentence Can Change Everything
I've been called the “human router” in Austin. It's not a title I gave myself… it's what people started calling me because I became associated with one specific thing: connecting high-level people to the right opportunities.
That specificity has been worth more than any marketing I've ever done.
Tim figured out the same thing in three weeks. You don't need a rebrand or a new website. You need one sentence that tells people exactly who you help and why.
Try changing your elevator pitch this week. Go narrower than feels comfortable. See what happens at your next networking event or dinner.
The referrals tend to follow.
Want more on positioning and building a business around your strengths? The Productivity Academy has a module on this. Or hit reply and tell me who your current pitch is targeting — I'll give you feedback.
