If you're going to specialize, your demograpics must support it. I've worked in a variety of demographics, and you can't MAKE a demographic. Hope that makes sense...

What is your area known for? Where does the wealth come from?

My area is mid to hnw retirees. If I tried to go after retirement plans, business, stock options, I'd go broke.

Copy the success of others, find out what your area can support, then do what the big dogs are doing, just do it a little bit better.  

Good post...I concur Dr. Firepower

A guy I know quite well did what I described. He realized that another guy in the office was killing it, doing seminars on the benefits package of the State he worked in. He studied the guy, figured out what his spiel was, then copied it. He fine tuned it a bit, then went right after the same market. That created some serious friction obviously...

My buddy winds up growing like crazy, getting like 100-200 people to attend his seminars. He leaves that firm, goes to another firm. Keeps on growing, huge, nearly 1 m producer after only 5-6 yrs in the biz. Then, he does something quite stupid, caught red handed taking rival firm information. Big fine...

In the state he's in, nobody will hire him, so he moves thousands of miles away. Tries to restart the whole thing, literally does exactly the same thing. But, in the new state, the employees of the state don't nearly have as much money and for whatever reasons, it flat out flops. For whatever reasons, the demographics had changed enough to ruin the results.

He's pretty much struggled ever since, as far as I know, lost contact with him.