Niching down is one of the most common pieces of advice entrepreneurs hear. The logic is simple: focus on one vertical, one problem, or one service, and you’ll grow faster. After 21 years of running a marketing agency, I’ve learned there’s a hidden trade-off most don’t talk about. One that could put your business at risk.
The debate between being a generalist or a specialist isn’t just a business strategy conversation. It’s a life philosophy. In the book Range, by David Epstein, he contrasts Tiger Woods, who specialized in golf from age three, with Roger Federer, who explored multiple sports before committing to tennis years later. Both reached the top, but by very different paths. Specialization creates sharp focus, while generalization builds adaptability.
For service-based businesses, the tension comes down to risk. A narrow niche can create explosive growth, but it also leaves you vulnerable when the market shifts. During economic downturns, industries rise and fall at different rates. If your entire client base lives in one vertical and that vertical stumbles, you will feel it. A broader focus creates resilience. Growth might be slow, but you’re less likely to hit rock bottom.
“Do everything for everyone” isn’t the solution. A balanced approach with focused offers grabs attention and resonates with clients, while a wider range of capabilities remains behind the scenes to reduce risk. Over time, the service mix can expand deliberately, adding new offerings in ways that feel integrated rather than diluted.
The question isn’t “Should I niche down?” It’s “How much risk am I comfortable with?” Your business strategy should match your long-term vision, not just your short-term goals.
In this conversation with Raul Hernandez Ochoa on the Do Good Work podcast, I share how Brolik has navigated this balance for over two decades and why the best answer often lives in the middle.
Video Transcript:
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Talking to the founder and CEO of Brolik, Jason Brewer. He's got 21 years under his belt at Brolik and their marketing agency focused on unlocking growth for service-based businesses, and he's on a mission to change how small businesses think about marketing. Dude, I'm so excited that you're finally on, Jason.
Jason Brewer:
Yeah, yeah, it's great to be here, Raul. And yeah, this is a topic I'm pretty fond of and I was excited when you sent the invite.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
We've been having this conversation in our private calls. I've been having this conversation about niching down in coffee chats in mastermind groups in my own one-on-ones. And there's no right answer, wrong answer to niche down or niche in any sort of sense. I'm going to set the seam here.
People tell you to niche down, but you can also niche horizontally depending on the skill sets that you have. You also can niche depending on the type of person that you sell into or the intelligence of your ideal client, because some industries have higher rigor, higher performance requirements, and it can be very difficult with working with those types of clients. I'm not saying that it is difficult, but it could be very difficult for some services or agencies to work with some clients versus another. That's another way to niche down. It could be by your services, it could be by your industry. There's a plethora of ways of niching down, and I would love your thoughts 21 years in the game. What is your current state of thought when it comes to niching and what's the tension behind it?
The Generalist vs. Specialist
Jason Brewer:
This is a business positioning conversation, but it's also like a life conversation because one of my favorite books I've ever read is Range. I don't know if you've heard of it before.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Yeah.
Jason Brewer:
It's all about the benefits of being a generalist in a specialized world. It certainly looks at both sides of it, but one of the great sort of examples is Roger Federer who did not start at three years old with a tennis racket in his hand. He actually played a lot of different sports and didn't even figure out that tennis was his thing until he was in his late teens. And they compare that to Tiger Woods, who you've seen clips maybe where he's out looking like a teenager or adult playing golf, scoring better than adults at three years old, four years old. So it's the idea of specializing from early on or starting as a generalist and what are the pros and cons to each, and it's been this thing where from being a parent and a coach, not just to sports, but in life in general, getting a diverse range of learnings across different areas versus pushing yourself or your child or someone into one specialty really early and just focusing on that forever.
And I think I've always been a big fan of that generalist curriculum or that expanding and having different pockets of knowledge that you can use and overlap nicely. So when it comes to business, I think a lot about positioning strategy, and as growth marketers, you think a lot about launching ad campaigns and optimizing and conversion rate optimization and the technical aspects of digital marketing. But a lot of our job is making sure the foundation's right, and that means making sure that the audience you want to reach connects with the value you provide and the proposition you have. And it's a lot about positioning and messaging. So a lot of our work starts there and having a range of skills that matches your potential client or customer's set of needs is more important than being that one-trick-pony, that one specialist that can only do one thing and not expand outside of that to meet the sometimes ranging needs of the customer. So anyway, that's a little bit of my background in terms of how I feel about the generalist versus specialist conversation. I think there definitely is an area for generalists and for more diverse or a range of skills in terms of business positioning, and I'm not one of those people that's going to force you into a very specific specialty in all cases.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Let me dissect a few thoughts there. As you were speaking, I was thinking maybe in two dimensions. So there's the business itself and this is your bigger picture positioning, and then there are the offers that you deliver to the marketplace via a service package, or it could be a product type service or it could be some sort of subscription or software. So let's just put offers below that. Then in the background, it's the types of clients you work with, and then the third is the types of projects you work on. So I'm almost thinking that as a team as a whole, you do have to have a wide range of skills and capability, but you would channel those or you could channel those to specific offerings. Because one of the things that I started questioning is what if the organization as a whole focuses primarily on a generalist skillset or I love Jim Collins' books about what's your flywheel effect?
Are you a product specific type of company or are you a process specific type of company? And a lot of my clients are process and even myself, it's more process. It's agnostic to the industry or to the, which is not good positioning sometimes who do you beauty up? But when you look at the process as a whole or you look at a team that has a diverse range of skills, great, you can tackle a wide array of problems. I think there should be experimentation or some sort of R&D or labs to tinker and figure out what else could we be solving and creating something new. But for the sole case of creating new offerings. But here's where I think we could actually differ is that the offers should be specialized to a specific outcome, but that doesn't mean that the company as a whole has to niche down just to that specific offering. So I think that's where there's an interplay of it and I'd love to know your thoughts on that. Does it create confusion for the organization? Does it create confusion for the marketplace?
Jason Brewer:
No, I think a very focused offer or even if you know you have a generalist skillset and there's a lot of problems you can solve, focusing on one that gets a particular audience member persona's attention and brings them in the door. And I think that that's really important because you can't go out with positioning that just says, we do everything for everyone. Obviously both of us would agree that that's not the way to go, but I think there is an approach where you focus your early conversations, like the audience instinctively connects with a specific service line or offer or productized service that you present you knowing behind the scenes that you can offer them a lot more as they develop and the relationship grows. But if you throw everything all at them at once, it's overwhelming and you're not going to get their attention. They're not going to convert. So I agree with you. I would agree with that.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
So where's the tension? Because a lot of our conversations, it's almost like a dance, right between commitment full on to one vertical or industry or problem to be solved, and then also now wanting to give up the, I don't know, the opportunities that could arise. Is there a tension that you're seeing or how are you walking that fine line?
Jason Brewer:
There's a way I could answer that for my clients. There's a way I can answer that for myself as an agency owner of 21 years. I think part of it is I've been in the business for a long time. My partner Matt and I, we've been a generalist agency focused. We haven't had a specific industry or vertical that we focused on. We certainly have more experience in say, home services, higher ed manufacturing. There's certain ones that stand out where we have a lot deeper experience in those areas. There are certain industries that we don't touch much — SaaS being one of them, for example. That's just the way it is. In terms of tension, I think it's all about risk aversion or risk management. Part of me says my role in the business, yes, it's business development, driving growth and sales for the organization and vision for the agency, but it's also mitigating risk.
And I think that one thing that often causes me to do this dance a little bit is we focus in, say it's an industry or a specialty area that we're really good at and we're really confident in and we niche down, like we're talking about here. In times of difficult economic cycles, for example, if we were talking about e-commerce, some smaller e-commerce brands are having a rough time right now. If I only had e-commerce clients or I was only focused on copywriting or paid search right now or SEO, the agency right now might be going through a much rougher patch. So I think a little bit of diversification mitigates risk, but it also limits growth over a shorter timeline.
So I think it's more of a “choose your path.” Do you have a longer timeline and are you willing to diversify and weather challenges and grow slower, potentially? Or do you niche down from the beginning and sort of grow quickly and aggressively, but then also have more of the risk of the rug being pulled out from under you, and what level of risk are you comfortable with? That's how I think about it sometimes.
Long-Term Growth vs. Short-Term Gains
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Yeah, and I haven't thought about it that way in terms of building for resiliency in relation to niching down or not niching down. I remember in 2021 of the agencies that I was serving, we had a plethora of industries and thankfully because some industries got affected harder like travel or luxury Airbnb definitely got affected, but as a whole it wasn't a huge dip. It was obviously busier, but because of the diverse approach, when you're talking to either younger agency owners or those in year three, four or five, what's the conversation around short-term versus 20 plus years in the agency. It's not a small feat, it's a real milestone in the cap there. But second, it's also a test that you built for long-term thinking, long-term growth. How are you balancing that out though? If there's a slower season or if you want to continue to grow? What's the overarching philosophy that you have as a business leader?
Jason Brewer:
I always have been more about the long game than the sprint. So that's just my mentality from when I was a kid. I just think I was always long-term focused. I was always thinking a year or two out. If I was starting a project, it wasn't always about how quickly is it going to grab attention or get me results within a couple months, it was years. I was always thinking that way for investing too. So my mindset is a little more over the longer term. So survival over a longer term and removing the really low points is more sort of like how I approach business and life.
I find myself when I'm talking to early stage companies, founders, people who are just starting out, that I think there is a place for finding a niche early and exploding forward with that niche and then trying to expand naturally into a slightly larger offering base later. I think there is a world where that makes sense. I think the danger is I've seen a lot of companies and even clients who have added additional services, almost like this really awkward addition to a house where you know It's not the original
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Monster house. That's what I was about to say. Yeah, the Frankensteins.
Jason Brewer:
It's just awful to the eyes and you just know that it's not connected, it's not smooth at all. It was just plopped on, it was the CEO's idea and they were just like, we need to offer this other service. Our competitors are doing it. Let's smack it on there. And you can always tell when that happens. And so I think it has to be gradual and smart in the way that you introduce it to your clients.
I have a client that, a great example for the last four or five years, they are leak remediation specialists. So they go into residential leaks, like really complex leaks where no one can figure it out. Someone's already hired a roofer or a plumber, they can't figure out what's going on. It's like a really complicated thing. It may be multiple issues within the house. They come in and diagnose and figure it out. And they came to us and said, look, we are really moisture specialists in a residential space. It's not just about leaks, like plumbing issues come into our purview, mold issues because of the moisture and leak. So we have to really understand how moisture impacts the home.
And so we help them over multiple years kind of find that moisture specialist positioning coming from a background of being the leak remediation experts and then also adding the mold into that whole story in the right way without slapping it on in an ugly fashion.
So I do feel like there is a way to be very focused at first and expand, but it can also be done in the wrong way and be a really ugly add-on too.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
I like how you mentioned: start, exploit the niche first, grow from that base and then from there identify either how you can go deeper in that industry with more service lines and/or take that to other industries. There are multiple ways to expand, but being strategic about it.
Jason Brewer:
For sure.
Don’t Let AI Dehumanize Your Brand
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Marketing's having a moment right now, I'm not sure if you're seeing it, but with every cycle there's lower costs or lower investments in marketing because they think that's the easiest way thing to cut, when in reality it's that pipeline generating things. How are you approaching that with the agency and your clients and as well as with generative AI, what are you seeing since you're helping businesses change how they think about marketing? How is your thinking changing alongside with what the macro approaches?
Jason Brewer:
We always see ourselves as an advisor to our clients. We're working with a lot of small business owners. They are not trying to be experts in technical marketing. They are hiring us because they want to do what they do and what they're good at. They're not trying to build an entire marketing and web department in house. They don't want to manage seven or eight different freelancers. So they come to us. We kind of centralize everything and help guide them. So if we're talking about AI and advancements in technology in the marketing space, we are trying to supplement and compliment what we're doing kind of in terms of those types of tools, make our team members more efficient and slowly bring those tools into the agency at a rate in which we can review and really manage quality assurance too. So these types of tools that have exploded in the greater marketing space over the last six to 12 months.
I mean we were tinkering and using a lot of them two years ago, and so it wasn't this big surprise, but communicating how we're using them and how our clients can use them in collaboration with us to be more efficient. So we all save time, but without lowering the value or the quality of the output, I think is still something that we're working hard on. We don't want everything to sort of be dehumanized and feel like the same note over and over again. And there is a concern there still, and I know that a lot of these tools are getting better by the day.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Let's lean into that. When you say dehumanize, what do you mean by that? This is a macro culture approach of human relationships being more transactional versus an actual relationship. So what do you mean by dehumanizing?
Jason Brewer:
There is a certain feeling you get when you interact with content that is: something's off. It feels robotic. And I think that sometimes you're not even sure why or what it is or maybe it's just that we all have our sort of feelers out. We're trying to figure out what is real and what isn't at this point. And so I think what it is is, just use the tools. Don't rely on them a hundred percent. Keep your voice and your style there and you'll stand out over the next couple of years while everyone else is going completely in one direction. If you are willing to talk and show your face and actually spend time to adjust the copy that is generated or the visuals to be like 15% more in your style, it goes a long way I think. So I think just not relying on the tools and the output a hundred percent, but make sure you put your stamp on it and keep to your style. That's what I mean.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Oh, okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. Since you think long term, it's 2030, what's Brolik doing?
Jason Brewer:
Brolik is providing services, growth marketing services to service-based organizations. I think we're focusing more on, not specifically just HVAC clients, but home services, family services, consumer services. So we're starting to realize we're really good in a certain space. I think we are also incubating some of our own products or businesses, which is something that we've been working on for the better part of 10 years. So joint ventures, we've invested in some of them, not so much our clients, but some of our own ideas and products off to the side. One thing that's really great about a growth marketing agency of 21 years is you have a team and processes and skills and experience to be able to really launch and grow businesses. So we just want to have some equity in those ventures as well. So I see us being a service-based agency with some of our own ventures on the side in 2030.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
Okay. Like a portfolio, like a studio portfolio studio. I like it.
Jason Brewer:
Yeah, exactly.
Why Brolik Looks Beyond the Client Pipeline
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
And taking equity with clients that you're working with or just building it on house or buying businesses and just do it yourself.
Jason Brewer:
Probably more the latter buying or starting businesses ourselves based on our experience. I think it's difficult when you mix the traditional agency model with a client who wants to pay for your services and wants. They’re not always interested in that type of relationship. You don't want to force it. So I think also not limiting our portfolio to something that's coming in the lead pipeline through our contact form on our website, but actually going out and looking for those businesses to either invest in, buy, or launch ourselves. Sort of like a separate R&D effort
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
With your own money. So that's the fun part too. I'll have to connect you with someone else on the pod who did that or who is doing that. But Jason, for everyone listening out here, where's the best place for people to go to thank you for being on and learn more about what you're up to.
Jason Brewer:
Definitely. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jason Brewer, Brolik, if you want to go to the site, that's a great way to connect brolik.com and that's B-R-O-L-I K.com.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
I never asked you what was the inspiration for that name.
Jason Brewer:
It means strength, it kind of means badass. It's a term that was just slang that the founders kind of used early on before we launched the company and just thought, this is a great term that just is unique and we're just going to go with it. And it stuck.
Raul Hernandez Ochoa:
There you go. I like it. Cool. We'll put those links in the show notes. Jason, thank you again.
Jason Brewer:
Yeah, thanks Raul.