“Millennials are pigeonholed with stereotypes, and it’s really not fair,” said Dorsainvil, “For one thing, there’s 74 million of them, so they’re not really a niche.”
Newton, on the other hand, had to carve out a niche from her existing client base.
“I enjoyed working with women, and I think women are underserved by our advisory community, but women are not a niche,” said Newton. “How can 54 percent of the population be a niche?”
Groups like women and millennials can’t be niches, said Newton, because they don’t necessarily share a common set of problems. They can’t be targeted with specific financial advice and services because their lifestyles and their needs are too diverse.
Dorsainvil was able to whittle down her niche by telling her own story. She realized that she wanted to work with motivated, entrepreneurial young people wherever they were.
“I wanted to make personal finance personal, so I named my firm Your Greatest Contribution,” said Dorsainvil. “I didn’t want it to be about me. It’s about my clients. I ask them ‘what is it that you want your greatest contribution to be,’ and they tell me their wildest dreams. It may be someone who is interested in transitioning from employee to entrepreneur. That’s characteristic of the type of client I want to work with. Climbing the corporate ladder is second nature to them.”
As a millennial herself, Dorsainvil found that clients in her niche felt an affinity for her and were eager to work with someone their own age. In many cases, her clients came to her or found her via word-of-mouth.
Newton, on the other hand, leveraged her connections to launch the RegentAtlantic Wall Street Women forum, something she said she would not have been able to do at her former employer.
“I realized that I had to go out and meet men and women on Wall Street,” said Newton. “If you’re going to develop a niche, you need to go out and physically penetrate that market and learn about its constituents.”
Working with Wall Street women meant that Newton was at times preaching to a choir of clients already well versed in theoretical financial knowledge and aware of current market conditions, but without the time or expertise to manage their personal finances.