Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Summary:

The riches are in the niches.

Have you heard that one? It's one of my faves.

The question of niches is one of the BIGGEST things I see people struggle with in their health and wellness businesses. It's so unnecessary.

So this episode is for you, my friend, if you've got ANY type of niche indecision or confusion, whatsoever. We want to nip that in the bud and confidently make decisions in your business so your brain can get to work on making money and helping clients. That's the goal, here. 

Every moment you spend spinning in confusion about if you should have a defined niche, and if it's specific enough, and if it's going to be lucrative, and if it's "niched down enough"...all of that is just your brain throwing up obstacles so you don't take massive action in your business and leave your comfort zone.

Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen, ok?

Big Takeaways from this episode:

1. If you already have a niche, stick to it and help those people! You'll get so much better at articulating their problems and your solution which is what marketing and selling is all about.
   
   
2. If you DON'T have a niche that's obvious and that you can stick to, then take the pressure off yourself and don't worry about it. Let your brain relax and decide that you'll reevaluate your niche after you've made the next $50k or $100k in revenue, instead. What that's going to do is calm down your brain and allow you to see the possibility and value in helping a whole bunch of different niches while you decide what you want to focus on when you grow up. Make sense? Good.
   
   
3. Lastly, expect your brain at some point to freak out that your niche (or lack thereof) is not "right".  Just expect that freak out to happen at some point and don't think anything has gone wrong when it does. Changing decisions in an attempt NOT to do hard things is what our brains want to do. That's totally normal, so expect those thoughts to come up, eventually.

Transcript:

Note: The transcription below was provided for your convenience. Please excuse any typos or mistakes the automated service made in translation.

0:00
The riches are in the niches. Have you heard that one? It's one of my favorite quotes. I never know is it niche niche? I mean, I say both. But really, I think I'm going to try to just commit to saying niche because it rhymes with rich. Deal. Alright, so niching down is a hot topic in the business world. And we are going to talk all about it today on this episode, I'm also going to tell you my personal story of niching down very badly in the beginning of my nutrition practice, and then what you can learn from that flop. So to niche or not to niche, that's the question. Well, it's kind of the question more like, what niche and what new niche Should I switch to today is a little more accurate for some of my clients. The question of niches is one of the biggest things I see people struggle with. And it is so unnecessary when it comes to making money in your business. So this episode is for you, my friend. If you have any type of niche indecision, or confusion whatsoever, we want to nip that in the bud and confidently make decisions in your business so that your brain can just get to work on making money and helping clients. That's the goal here. Every moment that you spend spinning in confusion about if you should have a defined niche, if it's specific enough, or you niche down enough, is it going to be lucrative? Are there enough clients in this niche, every minute that you spend thinking about that is just your brain throwing up obstacles so that you don't take massive action in your business and leave your comfort zone? Remember, your human brain is not exactly jumping for joy, because you're learning these new skills for running a more profitable business. It hates it, in fact, your brain hates it. Because making yourself vulnerable to rejection and failure and being shunned from society and losing all your friends and losing all your financial security. And people judging you. And people thinking you're totally incompetent, and an absolute fraud and your clients not getting results and wanting refunds and your health crumbling and your family deserting you, and you're never seeing your children again, and your house is a mess, all of this, this is what your brain tells you is going to happen. And your life is going to fall apart completely because of this business of yours. Right? At some level, that's what your brain is looping on, and trying to convince you of in between thoughts of I can do this, it's happening, and then down, like my children are never going to see me again. And I'll be a slave to my laptop. And then it's back up again to Yes, I have a new client and then it's down again to and I have no idea how to help them, they're not going to get results, they're gonna hate me, right? It's just this constant roller coaster. This is what our brain does. It's just part of the deal. So you've been a good student of this podcast. And you know, it's part of the deal, you know, that our brains have evolved to seek pleasure and avoid pain and just keep us at the status quo. That's what our human brains want to do. That's the like, the crux of the human experience, basically, is us wanting to evolve in our brain saying, No, thank you, let's just stay on the couch and eat cookies.

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That's what our brains are really good at. So it's no surprise that there's going to be some resistance that comes up in regards to the question of your niche in particular, in your business, because it's a really good scapegoat for your brain, it's a really good thing for your brain to say this is important, we need to put on the brakes, it's a big decision. It's a big consideration. And you should really wait to do anything until you figure this out. So what your brain wants you to do, so that it doesn't have to face any of the discomfort of moving out of your comfort zone. It's not true. In fact, the less time you spend ruminating on this niche decision, the better. You cannot do it wrong. Remember this, the only wrong is just not deciding and having an indulging in brain drama about it. That's the only way you can do this. If you already have a niche, that's because that could be you too, that you're listening to this, you're like, No, I already have a niche, then do not change your mind. Congratulations, you're doing it. You're amazing. Keep your niche. Because the next thing your brain is gonna want to do is change it don't do that. That's the point I want to make first and foremost, because as you listen to this episode, you might be tempted to change your decision on that. No, no, no, no, do not change your decision on your niche. We already have one. That's fantastic. There is no other niche that you could decide on that's going to be better or easier, or more lucrative or will get you more clients. All of those are thought errors. They just are not true. How does the saying go wherever you go, there you are, yeah, I would add wherever you go, there you are with your same brain. So if you think that in different niches going to be easier or better, you will have that exact same thought with the next niche after you change your mind and go to that next one. When everything doesn't go exactly as planned, your brain will default to that thought that something else will be easier, something else will be better. Not true, totally a thought error. So if at any point you're tempted to change your niche, do not do it right now. We will talk about when and how to change decisions in a bit because sometimes In the distant future, that might make sense. But for now, do not change your niche, you're going to just go make more money and help more clients in your current niche before you make any decisions to change it. So you're going to know without a shadow of a doubt, when you do it that way that your niche is not responsible for your success or your failure, you are your brain. So your ideas are your processes, your messaging is, there's no right niche, okay, you can make any niche or no niche, which we've also talked about, right. So that's what you need to know, if you do already have a niche in your practice, don't change it, you're on the right track. I don't even know what track you're on, but you're on the right track, go with it. Now, if you do not have a defined niche, in your practice, one of two things is happening. One is that you're just helping people. And you're getting lots of experience working with different niches and different groups of people, which is great. That could be happening. Or second option here is that you could think that you should have a defined niche if you don't have one, but you're thinking that you should buy now. And it's keeping you stuck. So you're just not helping anyone at all. That's another scenario, at least of all, you're not helping yourself in that scenario, because you're not making any money, probably. So if you're in camp number one where you're just racking up experience, and you're not worried about your niche, and you're kind of sick of people talking about it, congratulations, you are also doing it. That's the perfect course of action, and it will probably result in you niching down accidentally in the future, which we're going to talk about more as well. Now, I wish someone would have told me this. In 2015, when I was starting my nutritional therapy practice, here's what I did instead. First of all, I didn't know, let's just take a trip back in time, I did not know that I could work with one on one clients at a premium price and make a lot of money. I did not know this, I didn't know it was a thing. As an aside now, today in 2021. As I'm recording this, this is why I believe so strongly in elevating this entire nutrition industry so that all holistic nutritionist and health coaches can see what's possible for them. And for their businesses. By being surrounded by other successful practitioners that are full time and charging a considerable sum for their expertise and killing it in their business. I want to elevate this whole industry so that nobody else has just start their business, thinking that they can't charge more than one or $200 per client. Anyway, back in 2015. That's what I thought I didn't know that anyone was charging more than a few 100 bucks for one on one client sessions. And I could very clearly see that the math did not work out for that to be a sustainable business model. My brain didn't even offer me the option that I could charge more. I didn't even know that that was out there. So this is just another example of how interesting it is when we collect evidence for what we already believe to be true. This was exactly what was happening there. I just collected more evidence for how people were not making money with one on one clients. And I didn't even explore the option that that was false. There was no way it was going to pencil out for me to charge a couple 100 bucks. So I just took a few one on one clients. But mainly in the beginning of my business, I focused on running a group program and creating my first online course, I will tell you all about this scenario. In an upcoming episode, as a cautionary tale about how to not make the same gigantic pricing mistakes that I made in the beginning, we'll get into all of it. But the point of me bringing it up now in regards to niching down in your practice too soon, is that it really isn't necessary right away if you're working with one on one clients at a premium rate, which I didn't know was possible. But I'm telling you right now is possible and is the lowest hanging fruit in the beginning and your practice. That's the best way to get it off the ground. So I wish someone had been around when I was starting my nutrition practice to tell me this stuff. And I mean, honestly, maybe they were I guess but I don't know where they were hiding because I didn't know them. I would have loved at that point to have someone to spell out for me that I was going to have to learn some new skills, most notably how to convey useful messaging to my potential clients about the problem that they had, and how I could help them solve it. That would be it have been huge if someone could have talked to me about that. And that my brain was going to try to make this a whole lot more complicated than it needed to be every step of the way. If I had known to expect the sort of mental drama that was very predictably going to be coming my way I would have been much better prepared. And that's what my hope is for you to in everything that I teach in this podcast in my paid program in my free course, in all of my emails, what I want you to know is that it's just part of the deal, your brain will have drama about your niche, whether you have one or not, because the niche really isn't the problem. The point is that your brain is trying to throw a shit fit so that you don't take chances and move to the next level of yourself. This is what business does. It's like personal development on steroids at a fast track fast track of personal development is when you're starting your business. It's just what our brains do. So we accept the fact that our brain will always have drama about a niche whether you have one or Not, the grass is always greener or so our brain thinks, but it's not. And that's why this really isn't such a critical decision, especially in the beginning stages of your practice. I would say, as a good rule of thumb, you don't really need to define a niche at all, unless you already have one, of course, in which case, you're good to go. Don't change your mind. But you don't really need to define a niche in your practice until you've made around 100k. I want you to just kind of commit to this niche decision, either the one that you have, or not having one at all right now, until you've made around 100k. That's my recommendation. And here's why. You will make money and you will help people and you will organically naturally figure out your niche. If you just give yourself the time and space to do it and let it happen. If you're thinking your niche to death, trying to decide it cerebrally with your brain with all of the ideas, and just trying to think your way to your niche, your brain is just messing with you. It's just stalling. We know this, what would be much more useful in this scenario is just to work with clients and get really good at talking about their problems and the solution that you offer them. This is your messaging, it's your marketing, it's starting conversations, that is such a much better use of your time and attention, roll up your sleeves, and commit to delivering your process and honing your process and getting your clients really good results and making money. In the meantime, this is what I meant. In the beginning, when I said we lose the forest for the trees. What is the point of trying to nail down a niche the trees, if you're not making any money, the point of your of your entire business is to be profitable and be making money. So let's not lose sight of that we want you to be making money. And along the way, when it makes sense to define your niche, and it's going to help you make more money, then we do that. But we don't need to do it in the beginning, if it's just causing a lot of brain drama for you. Now, the most fun thing happens when you take the niche pressure off of yourself, which is that your niche will like I said, probably emerge organically on its own. Think about it, if you just take the pressure off of having to define your specific niche, and narrow your niche and all of the niche drama, you just focus on helping people that are there that want your help and making money in your business. Think about this, this is what your focus is helping people making money getting better at it, you give yourself the metric of I don't know 15 clients, for example, then you say okay, after working with 15 clients, I'll reevaluate and see if there are patterns that I can see on who I enjoy working with the most. And then you just get to work and you just do it. Like I said, you roll up your sleeves, you work with these clients, you evaluate yourself as you go, you get better at delivering your process, you're thinking about people and their problems and the solution and the results. You're thinking about it. And you're just having fun, and you're just helping people. Now guess what, here's what's going to happen, you will naturally gravitate towards some certain issues, or symptoms, or client types. As you're working with these initial clients, you're you're going to be more excited about some things than others, it's just going to happen. This is human nature, you'll find yourself really looking forward to sessions with certain clients. And then you're going to talk about your work, your messaging is evolving. At this point, you're going to talk about your work in the actual words that you say and the copy that you write and the words that you type, you're going to talk about it in a way that is going to create more clients, like the ones that you're enjoying working with, this is how it goes, it just kind of will happen. You're gonna be more excited about certain topics, you're gonna be more excited about certain personality types and certain results that your clients are getting, and you're gonna talk about them more. And then that's what draws in more of those people like that, you get more referrals of people that have the same problems and want the same results because of how you're talking about it. But you're giving yourself the space and the time to figure that out and just let it happen. And in the meantime, you're making money, your niche is just going to create itself, if you take the pressure off of your brain for figuring it out right away. And you just focus on helping real actual humans that need help right now, which I know you can do. If you're listening to this podcast, you have the skills right now today to help people that are really struggling and are already looking for the help. Right. So to be clear, I'm not anti niche at all. Actually, I am quite pro niche. But I am very anti, letting your brain make a huge deal out of this niche decision unnecessarily so that you miss out on the forest for the trees and you don't help people and you don't make money in your business. I'm against that I'm anti that. So that's why I want you to avoid it at all costs. When you try out a few things to market your business and they don't work perfectly as planned the first time you try them which spoiler is going to happen every single time. You're going to naturally think that your niche decision is the problem. This is what I see so many people do they get all excited Did they pick their niche, they think it to death, they decide on a niche, they go start taking action, and it doesn't work. Because guess what, it never does work right away. You could still make money in the meantime, but your best laid plans are not going to survive. Your first month in business, I promise things are always going to be different than you think they're going to be. We just have to monitor and adjust and evaluate and get better. Always getting better at marketing. By the way, that's the big takeaway here is your niche is not the problem. It's always the way that you're talking about the problems that your clients have, and the solutions that you offer them. That's what the answer always is. But we don't want it to be that right? We don't want it to be something that we can improve on, or something that we have to get better at. We want it to be a niche situation. See, this was so many people. So you go out, you make the decision, you go out, take imperfect action, the actions don't work, and instead of evaluating it, and using data and getting better, your brain says nope, I told you. Since this is the worst niche, we need to find an easier one, we need to think of a better one, we need to have one where the people have more money, that's another one. And then you go back to the drawing board, I see this a lot and try out a new niche. And then again, your brain that's having these thoughts thinks that the grass is always greener. So when that doesn't work, and it won't, it usually won't work right away. This is just how it is when you're running your own business, you're going to try a lot of things, most of them are not going to have the intended results right away. And you just got to get better at it and figure out what does work and keep at it. But your brain doesn't want to do that it wants to remake the niche decision and try a new niche and over and over and over. That is a real waste of time. That's what you're not going to do. So if I sound like I'm anti niche, that's not the case, I'm actually very pro niche, I'm just anti wasting time with your niche and thinking it's responsible for your results in your business. Because it's not, okay, I want you to niche down and your practice eventually, but not at the cost of wasting any time. It's just going to happen naturally. If you trust yourself and you trust this process, you let yourself work with a bunch of people and let it organically happen. It's just going to happen naturally, you're going to figure out your niche over time. And when you do figure out your specialty, and you're working within this specific niche that really excites you, some really cool things start to happen. So eventually, you do probably want to hone in on a niche, I just don't want you to believe the lie that you have to do it right away. In order to have a successful health and wellness practice. That is so not true. But one of them, like let's talk about it. Because we do need to, you know, get excited about what the future holds. When you do figure out this defined niche, one of the big pros is that when your brain is ready for it, you're really going to have tightened up your process and your marketing around this very specific set of problems and set of results that your your ideal clients are after, when you niche down, you're going to really have the the capacity to think about things very specifically, and you're going to be creating this intellectual property of yours and your ideas and like your processes evolving all around some very, very specific problems and solutions, right? Because these are people that you're working with over and over again, you're seeing patterns and your brains like really figuring them out. That is when things get to be really, really fun, right? You're tightening up your process your marketing is like so concise and speaking to these very specific problems and solutions. And you're going to know the ins and outs of these problems and solutions and the results that your clients want, oftentimes better than they can even describe them themselves. Your clients will tell you things like it's like you're reading my mind, which is basically the jackpot for your business. That's when you know that your process and your delivery are getting better and better. And your clients are getting better and better results. So the referrals are flooding in your demand goes up and so to your rates, it's the compound effect. It's the most fun in the digital world, which is also very exciting. It's great to start talking about the specific problems and results of people in your exact niche when the time is right. Because you'll be able to capitalize on this little thing called the internet. Search engines love specificity as we know. And as your niche tightens up and you're talking about it 24/7 You're talking about the problems that people in your niche have, the solutions that you offer, and the results that they get when they have achieved their desired results exactly what that is for them. When you're talking about these same things all the time in a new way. You're coming at it from different angles and you have lots of copy that you're writing and your website and your emails. They're all reflecting these very specific problems and solutions. You're generating more traffic. Okay, the internet loves this. Google loves this to know that you're very specific and that you're solving problems on your website. So you generate more traffic. It puts you in front of more strangers on the internet through search engine. results, we call this SEO search engine optimization. So when you get to this point, some very cool things happen when you're really specific, and you're getting your name out there, kind of in the digital world to the boobs, cool things happen. But it's way harder to do that when you're not niched down enough. And you're not talking about very specific problems and solutions. So I love teaching my clients all about this stuff, because maximizing the power of the interwebs is so efficient, and it's so fun. But Rome wasn't built in a day. And I think it is such a disservice for us to talk about internet marketing, like it's where you start from. It's not these things take time. So just give yourself the time and space to let it happen organically as your brain and your ideas. And your processes evolve and grow to the point where you have the capacity to commit to a certain niche, and then serve the hell out of those people. But let it happen, okay, don't force it. If it hasn't happened for you already. What you have to look forward to, when your business is cruising along, and you're consistently making the money that you want to be each month, and you're not sabotaging yourself by starting over from scratch, every time your brain freaks out and wants to go and start over, you're going to get to the point where creating and selling an online course or a membership or a digital group program is the next step. So fun. But instead of rushing into that, and then creating something that doesn't sell, because you did it way too soon,

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you're going to have done it differently, you're going to basically have already created and validated the concept with your clients along the way through delivering your process so many times already and working with these people and asking them tons of questions and getting really clear on exactly what they're struggling with and what they want from you. It's going to have already happened because you've done it so many times and you've let this happen. While making money. I might add, okay, you didn't do you didn't try to do all the research behind closed doors behind your computer screen for months and then figured it out? No, you got your hands dirty, right? You rolled up your sleeves, you figured it out and you made money along the way. And then that's when things get even more fun. But you want to have a solid niche by the time you're even considering doing something digital, because otherwise it will waste so much of your time. And I promise you, it will not sell the way that you want it to. So what I want you to do instead is just let the process happen, do the digital products, but do it at the point when your business is ready for it. And I say this a lot. But we have an entire episode coming on that because I've made all of the mistakes about creating courses and memberships too early. So we'll talk all about that. But for today, let's stay really specific on your niche, the sales pitch for why you will want to have a niche eventually. Which is that the internet loves specificity. It loves it when you have a really, really tight niche. But that doesn't have to be where you start out. So learn from my mistakes and the mistakes of my clients that we have all learned the hard way. Don't try to do internet marketing genius and digital products too soon. If you're not at that point, don't try to force it. Inside my program, I teach a process called the repeatable revenue process, which goes through all of the stages of business growth from your first dollar to 100k plus, and it tells you exactly what to focus on in each stage for this exact reason. Because we need to take away the pressure unnecessarily from decisions that don't need to be made right away, or that are going to slow you down. By far, the number one thing that my clients rave about when they go through this process is that they get so much clarity on if they need a niche right now. Or if they can just take that off their plate. It's feedback I get all the time. So I know that having a proven process for this, that prioritizes actually making a profitable business and helping people over trying to turn everyone into a marketing superstar instead is important. I know this, so we had to do a whole episode on it. Now here are the big takeaways that I want you to bring with you in your day and in your week and in your business from this episode. First of all, like I said, if you already have a niche, stick to it and help those people like serve the heck out of them, you are going to get so much better at articulating their problems and the solution that you offer and selling to them, which is what marketing and selling is all about. Right it's talking about their problems, what they're struggling with what's keeping them up at night, and then how you can help solve it. The you come at it from all different angles and you experiment with lots of different ways to talk about it. That's great. If you already have a niche you're probably already doing that stick to it. Don't second guess that decision. Number two, if you don't have a niche that's obvious that already is has come to you and you're excited about it and you can stick to it. Then just take the pressure off of yourself and your business and don't worry about a niche right now. If trying to establish your exact perfect ideal client avatar Right down to her age and her underwear color is getting you results in your business, if that's helping you, then go for it. But it's probably not. If that's the case, stop worrying about it stop worrying about what stores your ideal client avatar shops at and what magazine subscriptions they have. Okay, I truly got the advice when I was starting out my business to drill down my niche and my ideal client to what color underwear they wore. I use that example very specifically, because I remember thinking like, how was this a good use of my time or my bandwidth? To be thinking about this? Oh, my gosh, I can't even handle it. It wasn't spoiler, it was not a good use of my time. It's not a good use of yours either. That's what I mean by losing the forest for the trees. Is the point of your business or any of our businesses to define a person that doesn't exist down to their underwear color? Or is it to effectively market to people who are struggling and already looking for help, so that they can hire you and you can help them? Isn't that what the actual goal is here? Let's

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not lose sight of it. They're real people that are struggling, and you can help them. We it doesn't matter what their underwear colors. Okay. Moving on from that. So if you don't have an itch today, let your brain relax and just decide that you'll reevaluate that decision after you've made the next 50k or 100k in revenue. Instead, just let your brain relax. What's going to do is that your your brain just going to calm down. And it's going to allow you to see the possibility and the value in helping a whole bunch of different people in different niches while you decide what you want to focus on when you grow up. Make sense? Okay, good, perfect. Lastly, always want to close with this expect your brain at some point to freak out that your niche or lack thereof is not right. Just expect that freakout to happen at some point. And don't think that anything has gone wrong when it does, is changing decisions, in an attempt not to do hard things is what our brains always want to do. They love it. It's totally normal. So just expect those thoughts to come up at some point, they will. And isn't it reassuring? To know that you are not the only one experiencing uncertainty about these things in your business and having these thoughts. I like to know I'm not alone, I think it's so important. These thought patterns are completely predictable. Our brains are not that crafty, they will have the same patterns that will come up and roll reveal themselves at every stage of business growth, basically, because our brains and our capacity to experience discomfort has to grow for businesses to grow. Like they have to go together your business and my business is a reflection of our brains right now. So to grow to the next level, there's going to be some discomfort, it's going to have to grow, our thoughts have to change and evolve. And our beliefs have to change and evolve and grow for our businesses to grow. It's just the way it is. So each new level of success comes with some growing pains. It's just part of the deal. It's just part of the deal. Your business journey is basically like I said before, a personal development course on steroids. And I think that's the best part myself. I love it. I love learning about the mindset of success and how to do that, of course getting better at embracing lots of failure because success never comes without failure ever along the way and then becoming the kind of person who can handle more and more failure because that's how we handle more and more success is our capacity to handle failure and be okay with that. All right thoughts for another day. Have a wonderful week, not stressing about your niche my friend.