So glad to that you’re joining me on It’s A Niche podcast. Today I’m introducing the third element in creating what I call a congruent niche. And today, really it’s all about bringing your history and your whole self into your business and your niche. So a quick recap, the last.

In the last two episodes, I chatted about and kind of revealed the first two elements of creating a congruent niche. And both of those pieces are focused on your clients, your soulmate clients, the people that you are meant to be serving that bring out your best. And that is, those first two elements are around their specific problems and their desires that they want to be having and creating in their lives that they don’t currently, that you’re going to help them with.

In my model of a congruent niche, the emphasis is on starting with other people. That is one of the challenges that I see a lot of practitioners facing is that they start with themselves. And for me, it’s not until we get to this third element where we shift from outward from the other person, from the client and back inward to the practitioner. Um, so that’s probably you.

We shifted this week into you and your history. So where this comes from is this concept from Jeffrey Van Dyke. You can find out more about him here. And it’s this concept that your deepest wound can be the doorway to your greatest niche, which is such a beautiful sentiment.

And it seems to be often the case as service providers and practitioners. And I really deeply understand how much we all wish that this was not the case. And that we can really resist the idea that our own personal problems and challenges are a central part of our business and our work that we’re bringing into the world.

And I think that this can be kind of compounded by business culture, which often promotes the idea of leaving your emotions or your personal history or your baggage outside of the office door. So first off, I want to start to give you permission to bring your whole self into your business, including your past, including your challenges with the your history,  like warts and all, because that is going to be also where a lot of the beauty and the richness of your work will come from as well.

There is a kind of  main challenge of integrating your history, of bringing that into your work. And then I also want to share a lot of the benefits that come with that. When you do integrate and incorporate your past into how you serve others in your work.

There is, I think, one deep challenge, and then there is a breadth of benefits. So, starting with the challenge, and that is a really sticky challenge of admitting that you’ve had this problem, and often, and how difficult potentially that problem was to face, or to, um, or to solve, and that’s a challenge. How that can really be tied to some feelings potentially of shame or fear of being judged for having been in this problem and potentially even some imposter syndrome that can come along with that. The kind of “who am I…” effect that can arise when you do reveal some of your personal history.

And I just want to mention that this is not about kind of exposing your wounds inside your marketing necessarily. That this is more about, for now anyways, is. an internal reflection and for you to kind of sit with and open yourself to the idea that your own story and history with a problem could help you identify a niche that is very powerful.

And really kind of steeped in your own authentic experience. This has certainly been the case for me. I do now call myself the original reluctant marketer. And I was someone who really struggled to find my way out. To sharing my work and what I do. I struggled for a long time with the idea of niche, struggled and resisted.

And on the one hand, I really didn’t see myself as qualified to be helping people with their business or with their marketing or with their niche. Until I realized that, especially with niching, this was a problem that I knew the landscape of so well. So intimately, because I’d been wandering around circling for ages in the same spaces that I knew it well, I knew that problem inside and out and realize that I could help others as well.

So let’s look at some of the benefits that come from integrating and bringing your history to your niche.

And the first one, as I’ve kind of started to tell with my own story, is this deep understanding and expertise that is built in. From having personally experienced the problem that you now solve. And that is significantly different from reading about a problem, right? Living through something and reading about it are very different perspectives and point of views that you bring.

Imagine the difference between asking directions from someone who has read about a place and asking for directions from someone who has lived in a place. Which directions are you more likely to trust? There is a richness to your marketing and your storytelling that is so important and is inherent when you’ve had those experiences, when you’ve lived in that landscape.

The other big benefit is that having been in the jar of the problem, and finding a way out gives you credibility. It also provides a really nuanced understanding of the problem. And I think about people who have been wandering around in the landscape of a problem, who have been trying to move out of that problem. You have a nuanced sense of what works and what doesn’t.

Under what circumstances it might work or it might not. The context behind how different solutions may or may not be effective. You know, when you spend that amount of time in, rolling, you know, rolling around in a problem, you have so much more to bring. to people. I think so often we put a lot of emphasis on experts who are, you know, professors or who have, um, studied and learned, have that book learning.

And I’m just gonna say that I’m gonna put my chips behind anyone who has more experience as opposed to the one who has read the most books. And I’m. I’m all for books. I’m all for formal education and experience matters. And so I want to offer you this idea to putting stock in your experience, because what you have moved through in your life has holds weight, right?

The other fundamental thing that bringing your history to the work that you do is massive empathy. You know viscerally what it’s like to be in that situation and how hard it was and how much you wanted to be out of it. My gosh, if there is one thing we can be bringing to marketing and to the marketplace right now, it’s some goddamn empathy.

So that is also one of the very significant gifts of having your history be a part of what you’re now helping your people with. One of the other things that bringing your history and experience of having been in a problem and moved out of it is that you have a route out of the problem. You have now a model of how to move through change.

I was speaking to a woman recently. And she was telling me the story of when she started, when she was really struggling and she started working out, she started going to the gym and lifting weights. And she started to build up a little bit of consistency and over time that consistency turned into confidence.

And she started to apply this new, identity, this new person that she had found within herself to additional things in her life. She started doing fitness competitions and then she started doing outdoor adventures and then she started her own business. And it transformed her life. It really illustrated her way out of being in the struggle that she was in.

And then when I asked her, you know, how she helps people, she said, I really helped them start by focusing on goal setting. And I said, wait, wait, wait, let’s take a look back at your story of when you were struggling. You didn’t start with goal setting. You started by establishing a small habit and getting, gaining consistency with that.

And, and then you started to see, Oh, now that I’ve built up this habit and now that I can see what I’m capable of, I think I could start setting some goals for myself. So your history of how you move through your challenge, it can really provide a model or a path for others to follow. I think it’s just so important for us all to see and have, yeah, a model, you know, like here’s the, here’s the steps, but also a model as like a person who has, like, accomplish this, who has been in this problem and has moved out of it, right?

Not just influencers or, or celebrities, but everyday people who are facing the same challenges that we are and are So I think that it, one of the other things I think that your story can provide for others is hope that, that, that changes is possible. If you decide to integrate and bring your history with your problem into your niche, it really reduces the amount of imposter syndrome because there is no need to fake it till you make it.

It’s really about bringing and sharing your own experiences within your marketing with a level of truth and transparency that is unendingly refreshing. And to know that you don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to be at the end of your journey. Starting with how you have made change, where you have made progress is hugely valuable for people at the beginning of their journey.

Don’t discount the steps that you have taken, the experiences that you have harnessed.

That really is the essence of the episode for today. And I’m thinking about Brene Brown’s work around vulnerability, and this really is a way of owning your story, rather than having your story own you. And whether or not your history, your experience with a problem becomes a part of your niche, it really is important to get into right relationship With your own past and how it has shaped you and brought you to where you are now.

Until next time, stay courageous.