There's a bit of classic advice that floats around in freelance circles, isn't there? You can feel it coming before someone says it, like when someone's about to suggest you really ought to try that new place everyone's been talking about.

"You've got to niche down."

It's well-meaning advice, and I've given it myself more than once in coaching calls with fellow freelancers. And it can be great advice, genuinely.

The idea makes perfect sense: if you specialise, it becomes so much easier for people to place you, to remember you, to recommend you when the right kind of work comes up. 

They know exactly what box you fit into.

It can make marketing feel more straightforward too. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you write a bio or pitch because you know your lane, you know your people, you know what you're about.

And for a while, I thought I'd found mine.

I'd had a few financial services gigs back-to-back. Not just scrappy fintech startups, but properly regulated financial services companies with all the compliance headaches that come with them. I thought, maybe this is it... maybe I've stumbled onto something here. A rich vein of work that I could really dig into. I'd done a bit of leadership work, helped with strategy, and it had all gone rather well.

So I rewrote my messaging, started talking more about regulated industries, doubled down on that particular niche like someone who'd finally found their calling.

And the leads came in, just like they said they would.

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But then I started having conversations, and some of them could've been genuinely lucrative. But the more we talked, the more I realised something that felt a bit uncomfortable to admit: I'd got lucky with those previous teams. It wasn't actually the industry that made those projects enjoyable — it was the people, the particular problem we were solving, the way we all worked together.

And these new ones? They just didn't light me up in the same way.

Thankfully I'd built a bit of a buffer by then, so I wasn't desperate to take whatever came through the door. I could step back and really think about what was going on here. What was it I actually enjoyed about those projects that had gone well? What made me want to show up, lean in, keep going even when things got tricky?

That's when I started paying more attention to the narrative: the thread that runs through all the stuff I actually like doing, rather than the stuff I thought I should be doing.

How I show up. How I help. How I leave people feeling.

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I have a content designer friend who's found his perfect niche working with local authorities, helping them improve digital services that don't have the polish of gov.uk but matter just as much.

His niche energises him. It shows in the way he works, the change he creates, how he helps people untangle complicated things and make them kinder somehow. It's made him valuable, hireable, and genuinely happy.

What a triple threat. I'm super jealous.

If, like my pal, you've found a niche that lights you up (where you feel competent and valued and decently paid and not emotionally drained by a 30-minute catch-up call) then brilliant, absolutely stick with it. Especially if it feels like it fits naturally with who you are and how you like to work.

But for me, it turns out the niche was never really the interesting bit.

I'm a generalist, always have been. And for a while that made me quite hard to place in people's minds. They weren't quite sure what bucket to put me in, which felt uncomfortable for everyone involved.

But these days, I think that's becoming more of a strength than a weakness. Because generalists who can help teams break through whatever's blocking them (calmly, clearly, without throwing a spanner in the Miro board or making everyone feel like they've been doing everything wrong) are exactly what a lot of teams need right now.

When I eventually looked back at the projects I'd actually enjoyed doing, they didn't have much in common on paper. Some were charities trying to make their services more accessible. Some were fintechs wrestling with regulatory requirements. One was a internal UI overhaul for a company whose previous system looked like it had been put together by someone who'd only ever heard web apps described over the phone.

But the thread that made them all satisfying was always the same, and it usually sounded something like this:

"We couldn't get this moving, and then you helped us figure it out."

"It finally started to make sense after you got involved."

"Things felt calm, fun, and more productive once you were part of the team."

And that felt... good. Like finding a pair of shoes that actually fit properly, the kind you might want to keep wearing.

So that's the stuff I've started paying attention to now. Not so much the what, but the how. Not the job title or the industry sector, but the effect I have when I'm doing work that energises me.

That's what I've been experimenting with on my website recently. No grand relaunch or anything dramatic, more of a minimum viable narrative. A basic reset that focuses less on what I've done and more on how I tend to work when things are going well.

Early signs are encouraging. Not a massive flood of new leads, but the right kind of conversations with people who seem to get what I'm about.

I'm also starting to rethink what case studies should look like, or whether they're even needed at all. Instead, I'm trying something different: short stories about very specific moments when something shifted. Breakthroughs. Unstuckness. Those moments when everyone in the room suddenly relaxes a bit.

Sometimes it might only be one day's work from a months-long project, but if it's the day that changed everything, maybe that's the story worth telling.

More on that in a future issue, once I've had a proper go at it.

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And full disclosure: my actual design skills are probably not the strongest bit of my toolkit. As someone who offers design work for a living, that might sound like a slightly mad thing to admit.

But I'm pretty good at the things I say I'm good at: helping people make progress when they're stuck, not adding to the noise when there's already too much going on.

I think that's why people recommend me to their colleagues, and that's the story I'm learning to tell better.

It's the story of helping people move forward when they can't see the way through. Making complicated things feel more doable somehow.

And I think that's why people come back.

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So if you've found a niche you love, if it makes you feel calm and helpful and well-paid and possibly even appreciated, then brilliant. Stick with it, especially if it aligns with your natural way of working.

But if the whole niching-down thing has felt like wearing a bad jumper (itchy, ill-fitting, or just a bit... not you) then maybe there's another route worth exploring.

Try asking yourself:

What kind of work makes you feel most like yourself?

What do people tend to say about you when you're not in the room?

What's the energy you bring to things, even when they're going a bit sideways?

Experiment with building around that. Because a niche might be tidy and marketable, but a narrative (whether it's wrapped up in a specific industry or spread across different kinds of work) is what makes you feel at home in your own freelance practice.

"If you're not sure what you're known for," the dog observed this morning while settling into his favourite sunny spot, "just keep showing up as yourself in the same way until someone notices."

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You don't have to throw everything out and start again. Just try threading a bit more of your actual narrative into the places where people first meet you:

Your LinkedIn headline: could it hint at what it's like to work with you, rather than just listing who you've worked for?

Your "about" section: less focus on industry types, more on the kind of work that genuinely energises you

Your website intro: what would happen if you started with a feeling or an outcome, rather than a job title?

A short post or two: not "I'm a [type of designer] for [type of client]" but maybe a story about a specific moment when you helped someone get unstuck

Because here's what I've noticed: clients pay attention to energy. And if something clearly energises you, you're probably going to be better at it than the thing that feels like a slog.

It's human. It makes you easier to remember and recommend.

And most of all, it's empowering in a way that feels sustainable.

Chasing a feeling rather than following a formula helps you build a freelance practice that actually feels good to run day after day. It doesn't have to be the most optimised or potentially lucrative version of your career, but it might just be the most sustainable, the most satisfying, the one with the most longevity in all the ways that actually matter.

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Thanks again for reading, especially if you're new here and still figuring out whether this is your kind of thing.

The kettle's always on.

— Tom