If you’ve been reading, listening, viewing – whatever – anything business, you’ve probably heard a million people telling you to NICHE. To really focus on one specific audience, one specific service area, and so on.
This can be a scary thing, and is something MANY entrepreneurs struggle with.
There are a lot of fears and limiting beliefs that underlie niching, and that make it such a struggle for entrepreneurs.
There can be a fear or concern about limiting one’s income. We fall into the trap of thinking that if we are choosing to niche our audience, we are limiting our audience. If we choose to just talk to and create products and services for women, well aren’t we just cutting out 50% of the market and our potential income?
Another fear that underlies this struggle is one of limiting ourselves. By committing to a niche, we can feel that we are trapping ourselves in a box. Sure, we may want to offer life coaching now, but what if we want to teach yoga later? We often have many passions and skills, and choosing to focus those can feel scary.
So yes, niching can feel scary! It can be scary and daunting to feel like you’re saying no to potential customers. It can be scary to feel like you’re limiting YOURSELF and your passions.
But, niching is a game changer for your business.
When you niche, you choose your audience. You choose the people you are most passionate and excited about helping. And they will see that you choose them. Think about when you get a service or product: do you want something that is trying to please everyone and anyone? That’s general and vague? Or, do you want a business that specializes in you? That is skilled and experienced and focused on solving your problem and meeting your specific needs?
When you niche, you get to become really good at working with audiences that you are really excited about. And, what’s great is that there are enough of them. When you build your niche based on research, you can feel confident that there is a big enough audience for you to make your business sustainable and scalable.
Niching isn’t about limiting yourself or your business, it’s about clarity. It’s about getting really incredibly beautifully CLEAR on your business and your audience. This clarity will make it easy to build a brand you love and one that feels RIGHT. It will make it easy to build a website, to create content, to choose what services and products to offer. Being this CLEAR is essential if you want to be able to build something meaningful and successful and not get bogged down in overwhelm and the inability to make decisions.
Let me repeat that one more time: Niching is NOT limiting yourself or your business. It’s setting the stage for success.
And the amazing thing about having a business is that it is always growing and changing. Throughout the business lifecycle, you will constantly be measuring and tweaking your services, products, and approaches. This means that as your business grows and scales up, you may expand into new audiences and have new products and services.
Niching isn’t about limiting yourself. It is about focusing your efforts for success and pivoting and tweaking as you learn and grow.
Find your niche with these three questions
Ask yourself these questions to figure out your niche – or where you should focus your efforts. Download the free worksheet.
What do you love doing?
Like love so much that you are happy to make it your whole life – learn about it, wake up and read about it, talk about it all the time, and do day in and day out.
I always use this example when I am recommending my financial advisor to people – which I do a lot because he is awesome. Feel free to PM me if you want to know who he is.
He literally wakes up in the morning and reads about finances. THAT’S HOW MUCH HE LOVES IT.
You aren’t going to love what you do all the time, but if you’re building a business that you’re passionate about, you want to make sure that you are incredibly interested in it and want to learn about it and do it all the time.
What are you doing when you feel the happiest and most fulfilled?
Are you creating? Are you helping people feel healthier? Are you creating fitness plans or are you motivating in person a group of people and watching them get stronger every week?
I still remember my one yoga instructor who so clearly loved teaching a group of students, correcting their form, watching them be transformed through the class. I went back every time I could and I still miss him years later after moving because it was so obvious how much he loved it. I’ve also been to yoga classes where the teacher did not seem to love it. I’m sure they loved yoga but it felt like they didn’t really love teaching a class of people doing yoga – they weren’t modifying anything or checking alignment or helping any of us get better. Teaching classes probably was NOT a great focus for them.
What is the thing that makes YOU feel happy and fulfilled? Think back to jobs and projects that you have LOVED and ask why you loved them so much.
Who do you love working with? Who would you feel jazzed to work with day in and day out?
For example, if you’re a fitness coach, do you love helping young athletes excel and get to the point where they are competing? Do you love helping body builders compete? Do you love working with people who want to be healthier?
I was working with a coaching client in the fitness industry around this very thing. Once she realized that what really excited her was working with women who wanted to be healthy and were motivated to follow through but wanted her expertise and her motivating abilities to get them there, we could focus her services and her marketing.
That is the power of this question.
Really visualize who you enjoy working with and how you enjoy working with them. What is it that you’re helping them with? How are you making their life better?
Takeaways:
- Niching isn’t about limiting your potential; it’s about focusing your efforts for success.
- Niching is a game changer for your business.
- Niching will help you to cut through overwhelm and indecision.
- Ask yourself three questions to help find your niche!
