Jul

Matt’s Niche Is “Bad Dancing”

After you ask yourself, “What makes you and your products and services different?” and “What do you do that you are most proud of?”, marketing guru Tom Peters in his article called The Brand Called You suggests that to find your niche then ask yourself, “What do you want to be famous for?”

In his wildest dreams, Matt Harding never thought he would be famous for “dancing badly.” He just went over to a coworker’s desk and did this stupid dance to annoy his friend and say, “It’s time to go to lunch.”

One day, his friend said, “Why don’t you go and do that stupid dance you used to do and record it.” Matt did. He videotaped himself dancing badly on a street in Hanoi, then decided to keep taping his crazy dance in various places he went on a trip he was on.

In June 2005, Matt put a video of his bad dancing around the world on his website. Through people seeing it, emailing and putting it on their blogs, it snowballed to over a million downloads, even before YouTube was popular.

Stride Gum was coming out with a new gum and offered to sponsor Matt on another trip. This time, they paid for him to travel “any where on the planet I wanted to go,” says Matt.

When he started dancing, kids nearby would watch. They thought it looked like fun and started dancing, too. When other kids saw this happening, they said, “Well, I want to be part of that, too,” according to Matt. “They started flooding in from all directions. In 5-10 minutes, there was literally every kid in town dancing. There was this moment when there was this immediate access to joy.”

Your niche is your immediate access to joy … even if it is “bad dancing”!

Check out Matt’s niche …