Most people trying to grow a business are working too broadly. They’re chasing every opportunity, saying yes to every type of client, and wondering why nothing is gaining real traction.
The answer is almost always the same: they haven’t committed to a niche.
I sat down recently with Joshua Jahani, head of Jahani and Associates, a global professional services firm with deep connections in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Joshua has built his firm from zero into an operation with over 150 people by doing something that sounds simple but is harder than it looks: finding an underserved market, going all in, and repeating what works until it compounds.
What he shared applies to any business, in any industry.
How to Find Your Niche: Look for What’s Underserved
Joshua didn’t set out to become an expert in cross-border investment banking between the United States and the Middle East. He found himself doing business there, saw that the demand was real, and noticed that the major players weren’t focused on it. Goldman Sachs and its peers were busy competing for the largest deals in the most established markets. The GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council nations, had capital, had appetite for American innovation, and had very few firms willing to put in the work to serve them well.
So he went there. Repeatedly. Built relationships. Became the person those clients called.
I did something similar in New York City real estate, just on a much smaller scale. Battery Park City was a neighborhood that lacked a dominant agent. Nobody had planted a flag there and built real expertise. So I moved there, learned everything about the buildings, sat on a condo board, and just kept showing up until the market recognized me as the person who knew it best. A hundred and ten deals in a single year didn’t happen because I outspent anyone on marketing. It happened because I picked a niche and went deeper than anyone else was willing to go.
The question worth asking about your own business is: where is there real demand that isn’t being served well? Not where is it crowded, not where is it comfortable, where is there a genuine gap that you could fill if you committed to it?
When You Find What Works, Quadruple Down
Joshua made a point that I want to stay with for a moment because it’s genuinely different from how most people think about business growth.
He said when he finds something working, he doesn’t double down. He quadruples down.
Most entrepreneurs hedge. Something starts to gain traction and instead of pressing the advantage, they start looking for the next thing, adding new services, chasing new markets, diversifying before they’ve actually dominated anything. They dilute the momentum before it compounds.
Joshua’s logic is simple: most things don’t work. When you find something that a client finds genuinely valuable and is willing to pay for, that’s rare. Treat it accordingly. Put everything behind it. The time to expand is after you’ve built something that’s already working at a high level, not before.
I have lived this in real estate. The years I tried to be everywhere, Battery Park City and Long Island City and the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side all at once, were not my best years. The years I went deep in Battery Park City and became the person everyone there associated with real estate were the years that built the foundation everything else sits on now. Depth before breadth. Every time.
Repetition Is the Unglamorous Core of Every Successful Business
Here is something Joshua said that I think most entrepreneurs don’t want to hear: if you build something that works, you are going to be saying the same thing for decades.
The same pitch. The same explanation of what you do and why it matters. The same process, executed the same way, across hundreds or thousands of clients. Nike does the same thing. Insurance companies do the same thing. The largest, most successful companies in the world found a niche big enough to matter and then did the same thing over and over until they owned it.
That sounds boring. It is boring, sometimes. But boredom at scale is what a successful business feels like from the inside.
The challenge isn’t finding something new to say. The challenge is bringing the same energy to the thousandth client that you brought to the first. I know this from coaching Orange Theory fitness classes. Jesse Milleson, who owns the number one OrangeTheory studio in the world, made a promise to himself early in his career that if one person showed up, he would coach like there were 45. Seven thousand classes later, that standard hasn’t changed.
That’s what repetition at a high level actually looks like. Not going through the motions. Showing up the same way every time because the person in front of you deserves the same experience as the person who came before them.
Overcommunication Is a Competitive Advantage
Joshua runs a firm that operates as an intermediary, sitting between clients and investors, between companies looking to expand and the markets they want to enter. His job, like mine, is to manage expectations, deliver information, and keep everyone moving toward the same outcome even when things don’t go according to plan.
His answer to how you do that well is overcommunication.
Not the social kind. Not checking in about someone’s weekend or making pleasantries. Business communication: specific, honest, and consistent even when there’s nothing good to report.
This is something I’ve come to understand deeply in real estate. Some of the most consistent feedback in my reviews is that I’m almost too honest. I tell sellers what their apartment is actually worth, not what they want to hear, because if I over-promise in the listing meeting and the property sits for three months, I’ve done both of us a disservice. When I tell a seller the market hasn’t moved this week, that’s the update. No news is still news. It tells them I’m watching, I’m present, and when something changes they’ll hear from me immediately.
The agents and business owners who struggle with client relationships almost always trace it back to the same place: they went quiet when things got uncomfortable. They waited until there was something good to say. By then, the client had already lost confidence.
Send the update. Say there’s nothing to report. Make sure the person paying you always knows you’re working.
Hire Slow, Fire Fast
Joshua has built a team of over 150 people. He was candid about how he got there, including the part where he wasn’t great at it early on.
He burned people out. He recognized it in hindsight. The people on his team were failing to meet performance requirements, but looking back, the workload was probably part of the problem. Growing companies make this mistake constantly. They hire quickly to fill gaps, push people hard, and lose good employees who might have thrived with better structure around them.
His framework now: hire slowly, fire fast.
Slow hiring means taking the time to find people who are genuinely bought into the mission, not just filling a seat. Fast firing means not waiting months after you’ve identified that someone isn’t the right fit, which costs both of you time and momentum. It sounds harder than it is once you accept that keeping the wrong person in a role doesn’t help anyone.
The other piece Joshua added is worth noting separately: know which decisions are actually yours to make. As a business grows, there are entire categories of decisions that your team can make better than you can, because they’re closer to the work and not running at the same pace as a hundred other things. Delegating those decisions isn’t weakness. Holding onto them when someone else would make better calls costs the business real money.
The Gilded Cage
Joshua said something near the end of our conversation that landed hard enough that I want to repeat it here.
He talked about entrepreneurs who reach a certain level of success and realize they’ve built a gilded cage. The business is thriving. The money is real. The brand is established. And they can’t leave, because it all runs through them.
I’ve said some version of this to my wife in our living room. The business you build owns you as much as you own it. That’s not a reason not to build it. But it’s worth knowing going in.
The answer, as far as I can tell, is to build the systems and the team that let the business run without you being the bottleneck on every decision. Joshua is working toward that. I’m working toward it. It’s a process, not a destination.
If you’re building something in New York City real estate and want to work with someone who has been going deep in this market for over a decade, let’s talk.