Hey {{first_name}},
A few years back, I was watching other people win online and I could not figure out why it was not happening for me.
I kept seeing creators on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X building real credibility, attracting opportunities, and growing their influence just by showing up consistently. Some of them were inexperienced. But they were the most visible. And visibility was changing everything for them.
Their rates went up. Brands came to them. Speaking gigs landed in their inbox. People trusted them before ever meeting them.
I watched this long enough that something clicked. It was not that these people had a secret formula. It was that they had made a decision I had not made yet. They decided to become visible with intention.
So I decided too.
But here is what I did not know at the time: deciding to be visible is only the first step. The real work is figuring out what you want to be visible for. Not just a topic. A perspective. A specific way of seeing the world that only you have.
That is what this edition is about. Last week, we talked about the difference between niching into a topic and niching into a perspective. A lot of you responded to that. So this week, let's go deeper and actually figure out what your perspective is.
Let's get into it.
Why "Pick a Niche" Is Only Half the Advice
When most people hear "pick a niche," they pick a topic.
Marketing. Leadership. Productivity. Fitness. Finance.
Then they wonder why they blend in with thousands of others talking about the same thing.
Here is the truth: a topic is a category. A perspective is a point of view. And in a world where content is infinite, categories are crowded and points of view are rare.
"I talk about leadership" puts you in a room with 100,000 other people.
"I help first-generation professionals lead without losing who they are" puts you in a room where you are the only one.
The goal is not to find a topic nobody else covers. That is nearly impossible. The goal is to find an angle so specific to your experience, beliefs, and story that no one else can replicate it.
Step 1: Start With What Made You
Your perspective is shaped by your history. So start there.
Ask yourself these questions and write the answers down without editing yourself:
What experiences have shaped how I see my industry?
What did I have to figure out the difficult way that nobody taught me?
What do I believe about my field that most people in it would push back on?
Who was I prior to arriving at my current position, and how has that influenced my thinking?
The answers to these questions are not your content topics. They are the lens through which all your content should be filtered. They are what makes your take on any topic different from everyone else's take on the same topic.
Step 2: Find Your Contrarian Edge
Every strong personal brand has at least one thing it believes that the mainstream does not.
Not contrarian for the sake of being difficult. Contrarian because you have actually lived through something or seen something that changed your view.
Here is a useful exercise. Write down five things that people in your industry commonly say that you either disagree with or think are incomplete. Then write down what you actually believe instead.
For example, a common piece of advice in personal branding is "post every day." Maybe your lived experience tells you that consistency of quality beats consistency of quantity. That is a perspective. That is something worth saying out loud.
The things you quietly disagree with are often where your most powerful content lives.
Step 3: Look at Who You Are Talking To When Nobody Is Watching
This one is underrated.
Think about the conversations you naturally have at events, in DMs, in comment sections, on calls. What do people come to you for? What do you find yourself explaining over and over? What questions do people ask you that they do not seem to be asking anyone else?
Your natural conversations are telling you something about your perspective. The stuff that flows out of you without effort, the advice you give without thinking, the problems you immediately understand when someone describes them—that is your zone.
Your perspective is rarely something you have to invent. It is usually something you have to notice.
Step 4: Test It With a Simple Statement
Once you have done the work above, try to complete this sentence:
"I help [specific person] do [specific thing] without [specific pain or trade-off]."
If your answer sounds like it could describe 500 other people, go deeper. Keep narrowing until it sounds like only you could have written it.
Then test it. Put it in your bio. Lead a piece of content with it. See how people respond. The right perspective will attract the right people immediately and with almost no resistance.
The Comparison Trap That Slows Everything Down
Here is something I want to address directly because it is something I experienced personally.
When you are watching other creators and thinking "I want what they have," it is easy to start copying their angle instead of developing your own.
I did this. I watched people who were winning and tried to reverse-engineer their approach. It felt efficient. It was not. Because what they had built was not a strategy. It was a reflection of who they were. And I could not replicate that because I am not them.
The moment things shifted for me was when I stopped asking "what are they doing?" and started asking "what do I see that they are not saying?"
That is the question that unlocks your perspective. Not imitation. Observation followed by honest self-reflection.
Step 5: Commit and Repeat
The last step is the one most people skip.
Once you find your perspective, you have to commit to it long enough to let it work. Most people abandon their angle after a few weeks because it does not immediately explode. But perspectives build trust slowly and then all at once.
Think about the creators you trust most. You trust them because they have been consistent about how they see the world for long enough that you know what to expect from them. That consistency is not boring. It is the whole point.
Show up with your perspective. Repeat it in different ways across different formats. Let it get into people's heads. That is how you become the person who owns a point of view rather than just covering a topic.
Three Things to Do This Week
Answer the four questions in Step 1 and write them down. Do not skip this. The answers will surprise you.
Write down five things you disagree with in your industry. Pick the one you feel most strongly about and write a post around it this week.
Try to complete the "I help" statement. Share it with one person you trust and see if it instantly makes sense to them.
Finding your niche perspective is not a one-afternoon exercise. But it is the most important work you will do for your personal brand because everything else, your content, your positioning, your audience growth, flows from it.
You do not need a bigger audience. You need a clearer point of view.
Go find yours.
Until next time,
Jerry Jose
If this landed for you, forward it to someone who is trying to figure out their personal brand. And if someone sent this your way, subscribe here: https://socialjj.com
