March 29, 2025

How to Avoid Getting Burned by Platform Specialization

Yesterday, I described the cons of platform specialization. Today, I’ll discuss how to avoid getting burned by them.

How to Avoid Getting Burned by Platform Specialization

The cons of platform specialization are that the platform dies, or that it gets so successful that a bunch of n00bs jump on the bandwagon.

Either way, demand dries up, and your lead flow and pricing power dry up right along with it.

How do you avoid this fate?

By paying attention to the market.

This probably sounds blindingly obvious, BUT virtually all platform specialists fail to do it.

Why?

Two reasons:

1) Eternal Sunshine

When new leads are showing up in your inbox every day, week after week, month after month, it feels like you’ve “finally made it”. Like you’ll never have to worry about finding new clients again. Like clients will just flock to you from now on, forever and ever, amen.

Sorry, Charlie... it never works out like this.

2) True Love

Platform specialists are often in love with the platform. That’s probably why they specialized in it in the first place. They are the early adopters, the evangelists.

Watching for signs that the platform is becoming commoditized or is dying would be tantamount to heresy. So, they tend to blindly hang on even after everyone else has moved elsewhere.

Do NOT ignore the signs.

Three Signs That Your Platform Specialization Is Over

Okay, so what signs should you be watching for?

Here are three signs that indicate it might be time to pivot:

Periodically note the number of leads you get per month, even when you’re getting way more leads than you can accept as clients. If the overall number is decreasing steadily, your platform specialization has probably peaked.
Pay attention to the number of juniors in the community - e.g., the forums, the meetups, and the conferences. If you start to feel like the oldest person in the room, it might be time to start looking for the exit.
If you get bored with the platform, or get angry with the decisions the platform leadership makes, or if you’re hardly ever learning anything new, or if the platform is changing so fast you get sick of keeping up with it, your days are numbered.

Always Be Looking

I’ll close with two thoughts to keep in mind:

Recognize that your business will almost certainly outlast your platform specialization; therefore, you will eventually have to execute some sort of pivot.
Always be keeping an eye out for something you could pivot to. It could be a competing platform, an adjacent platform, a sub-specialization, or something completely different. Ideally, it will be something that excites you (i.e., the kind of thing you find yourself spending time researching in your free time).

I hope all this helps!

(Stay tuned for next time, when I’ll share some advice for folks who have stuck with their platform specialization for a little too long.)

Yours,

—J