I used to own a tiny niche
The code is a commodity. The decisions around it are not.
Hey friends,
A few weeks ago I wrote about how the hard part of my job moved. Less typing, more judgment. The work changed.
Here’s the part I didn’t say in that one: once the work changed, I had to change how I introduce myself.
The tiny niche
For years, my pitch was “I’m the Hotwire Native guy.” It was honest. I’d shipped 25+ apps on the framework. I wrote the book. I trained hundreds of developers. If you needed someone who knew Hotwire Native, it was me.
Owning a niche that small has a funny effect on your business. The leads are perfectly qualified. The conversion rate is high. Nobody else shows up in your inbox talking about the same thing. You feel like you have a moat.
You don’t.
The moat fills in
I published a book. That was good for readers and great for anyone who wanted to learn what I knew without hiring me. Fair trade. That’s the job.
I published free tutorials. Same deal.
Then AI showed up, and anyone could feed my content into Claude and generate 80% of what I used to deliver in a project. Not 100%. But 80% is enough for a lot of teams.
Turns out that moat was a puddle.
Jumping to a bigger pond
I had two options. Defend the niche by getting narrower (the Hotwire Native in-app purchases guy, the Hotwire Native push notifications guy), or expand what I sell.
I picked the second option.
I’m not the Hotwire Native guy anymore. I’m the person you call when your Rails business needs a mobile app.
That shift is small on the page and enormous in practice. Hotwire Native is how I do the work. It’s not what I sell. What I sell is everything around the code: deciding whether you even need a mobile app, choosing the right framework, mapping the App Store landmines, and knowing which tradeoffs will matter a year from now.
The code is a commodity. The decisions around the code are not.
What this looks like on a call
Last month a founder asked me for a mobile build. I told him he didn’t need a mobile app yet. He needed a mobile-friendly website, a working checkout, and six more months of product-market fit before he spent a dollar on anything native.
He didn’t hire me. He also didn’t spend $40k building the wrong thing.
That conversation isn’t one I could have had as “the Hotwire Native guy.” If your whole pitch is a framework and someone asks for an app, you say yes. If your pitch is “I help Rails businesses ship mobile apps,” sometimes the right answer is “not yet.” The clients I do take end up trusting me more because of it.
And that’s the work I actually want to be doing. A decade of pattern recognition, applied before a single line gets written.
For example, the engagement I’m most energized by right now is collaborating with a team on a hybrid mobile app that isn’t Hotwire Native. A year ago I’d have passed. Wrong framework? No thanks! Today it’s the most fun I’ve had on a client project in a long time. They aren’t paying me for Hotwire Native. They’re paying me for the 25+ apps that came before theirs, and the judgment of which decisions matter at their stage.
Why I’m telling you this
Two reasons.
First, if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, the shift will show up in what I write. Honestly, it probably already has. It means more business context, more strategy, and more “should you build this.” But a little less “here’s the Hotwire Native gotcha I hit on Tuesday.” Both still matter. The mix is different now.
Second, if you run a Rails business and you’ve been putting off mobile because you’re not sure what to build, that’s the conversation I’d love to have with you. Not a code review. The one before that.
If that sounds like the conversation you need, book a call. We’ll talk through what you’re building, what’s blocking it, and what the right next step actually is. No proposal slides, no fixed agenda. Just the conversation before the code.
And if you’re going through your own positioning shift, I’d love to hear where yours landed. Leave a comment and tell me what pond you jumped into.