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Niche Within a Niche: The Wet-Dog-Food Agency

The Story

The story Nathan uses to make the niche-down argument concrete: “I was scrolling Instagram 3 months ago and I saw this ad for a paid ads agency that worked with dog e-commerce brands. I clicked through because I like to look at people’s funnels, but in my head I was like, ‘Dude, this is terrible. This has got to be the tiniest business.’ And then I go to LinkedIn, and it was like 25 employees, up and to the right” (Source 1).

His takeaway: “If you think you are niched down enough, you’re probably wrong” (Source 1).

Why it works: “If you’re a designer, do you want somebody who just does all general DTC Facebook ads, or do you want the guy who wakes up every single day and all he thinks about is how do I get people to buy wet dog food for $30 a month? You want that guy” (Source 1).

He applies the same logic to his own agency: “We’ve chosen really two specific ICPs or ideal customer profiles. One are like big personal brands, that’s like Schwarzenegger or Tyler Denk or Jesse Pucci, and we’ve chosen more like newsletter native media companies like the Neuron and the Rundown. And then we specifically help them with mainly one thing which is growing with paid ads on Facebook. So that’s a lot of like niche down decisions right in there. We don’t do growth operating for creators where we take 20% of their revenue… We don’t do Google ads. We don’t do Reddit ads. We don’t do TikTok. We don’t do Twitter” (Source 2).

Other niche-within-a-niche examples he cites:

  • The Ankler: news for Hollywood executives (talent agency owners, production companies) — “five and $10 million a year” via subscriptions and events. Their portfolio includes AI Real, “specifically for how you can use AI in the production process, in the scriptwriting process, in the post-production process, within film and television” (Source 2).
  • A friend’s $1M/year solo Instagram ($9K followers): healthcare billing between hospitals and insurance companies (Source 1).

The new playbook Nathan articulates: “The old way was to build a massive audience, then figure out how to monetize. The new way is to figure out exactly who you need to reach and what they’ll pay for, then build the smallest possible audience that can sustain your business” (Source 1).

Lesson for Creators

The intuition that “this niche is too small” is the strongest signal that you’ve found the right one. Specialists outearn generalists in services and information products because the buyer is paying for the absence of context-switching — they want the operator who only thinks about wet dog food. The 25-employee dog-food agency exists because every DTC dog brand calls them first; the 25-employee general DTC agency has to compete on price for every project. When in doubt, niche one level deeper than feels comfortable. You can always broaden once you’re known.

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