Episode Transcript

Let’s just start off by saying that I do recognize that it’s a little bit buzzwordy to call it, you know, the secret to finding your niche that works for you. However, I really do find that these are things that no one is talking about and so it does end up being kind of secret if nobody is sharing it.

So today I want to reveal that. In this episode, the framework that I help coaches and healers finally feel at peace with their niche so that they can confidently share what they do and how they help. And this is what I call creating a congruent niche. In the next few episodes, I want to break down each of these four elements.

that need to be aligned in order for your niche to be congruent between you and your people. The four elements are identifying specific problems that your people want solved. This is my favorite topic. Discerning the specific desire or result or outcome that your people want. Bringing your history and your whole self into your business.

And the last one is offering your unique gifts and skills to help your people. Now just notice that that is the last thing on the list and that is intentional. It’s critical that your niche begins with others and it ends with you. The function of a business is to is to serve others. What I see a lot is people having maybe one of the elements of this framework that I’m going to give you in its entirety in this episode.

Then I’ll break down each of these elements in subsequent episodes. So stick around for the next several, and you’ll get the entire framework that I really do feel is the secret to To defining your congruent niche so that both you feel represented and honored in your business. It’s something that you love showing up to, and it’s attracting people who you can uniquely help.

Okay. So why don’t people approach niching this way? One of the flags I see is people come to me and they say, I’m a fill in the blank methodology. Like I’m an astrologer or I’m a coach or I have certifications in somatics and reiki and feng shui and I want to help xyz people get this thing. And they’re coming to me saying, I want to attract people into my business.

And here’s everything about me. This is just the reality. This is the truth. These, and these aren’t people with big egos. We’re mostly all just walking around as the center of our own universe. And I respect people’s background and how they got to where they are today. If you’re focused on building an online business, then your, your focus needs to be on the people you’re serving.

Now, it depends on whether you’re building a local business or starting with a local network, because it’s possible that you can be like the. person that people come to because you’re the only one doing it in your community, right? You could be the only feng shui practitioner or the only one that does slow yoga.

Great! As long as people in your community are looking for your modality and everyone, then everyone knows that they send people to you. Everyone comes to you for the one thing in that community. That’s fantastic. Don’t expect that you can approach the internet that has billions of users in the same way as you approach your local community.

And I get it. As a service provider or a practitioner, you. Deeply believe in what you’re offering and you ought to like, you know that your method or your skill or your approach is beneficial. That’s why you do it. And there is a place for how you support people. It just isn’t where we start. The other thing I see people do is they pick a niche based on previous work experience or careers.

Like you used to be in tech and you went into coaching and now you think you need to coach people in tech. Even though your heart really isn’t into it. And I think sometimes people tell them that that’s the only option or they have a network and that’s easy. And while sure, it’s nice to be able to jumpstart your business there and.

Know that if you don’t love working with those clients, it will suck you dry the same way that a job will suck you dry. The business that you design will simply become a golden cage from which it is hard to escape. So why do you want to have this kind of congruent niche? To go into niching with this kind of intentionality.

One of the most important reasons is that so you can attract great fit clients. And stick with them for the long run. So if you don’t have the kind of intentionality, you’re not going to be clear and focused. You might struggle to articulate what you do and people don’t buy things that they don’t see as valuable, let alone things that they don’t understand.

When you go into niching with this kind of intentionality around What problem am I going to focus on solving, and who has that particular problem? It makes your marketing so much easier and it makes you have to market yourself so much less. You can give a clear message and other people can share it for you.

Let’s get into these four elements that you need for a congruent niche. So remember they’re identifying a specific problem and discerning a specific desire, bringing your whole self and knowing your unique gifts and skills. Well, let’s get into briefly what each of these are, and then we’ll dive deeper so you can have a better understanding.

Just so you know, these are exactly what I am looking for and listening for when my clients get a niche review, to uncover the niche that they can get started sharing their work in the world and getting the, that’s me, response from people that they’re connecting with. The first topic is identifying specific problems.

This involves getting crystal clear about the specific symptoms The pain points, the unwanted experiences that your person is being challenged by. And this means that when people hear you share the problem that you focus on, they raise their hand or lean in and can self identify what you’re describing.

And I know that we have some hangups around pain point. marketing and, and problem marketing. So we will get into that, but for now, it’s important that you know, that their brain, the person that you’re speaking to their brain and their nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for what to pay attention to.

And if it is not relevant, they are going to pass on by. And this is why I tell everyone I talk to about getting specific. You don’t have to, you can stay general and broad. And. Today, I’m just, I’m here letting you in on the secrets to attracting and connecting with people who are a fit for what you have to offer.

In which case, then, it is about, the secret is to describe their experience. So that it is hard for them to ignore because it is for them. That’s the key to the specific problem. It’s also about being tuned into and being able to speak to their real life, tangible experiences. This is about going from that fluffy, conceptual, abstract mumbo jumbo down to reality, into 3d, into physical life, that kind of, uh, Communication is so much more impactful.

So one example is I help people deal with conflict too. You could say, I help people who have been having the same fight with an intimate partner for a year or more. And you’ve tried shutting down. You’ve tried talking more. You’ve tried taking the blame or fighting back and you’re. out of ways to try and manage the conflict.

You feel angry at your partner nearly every day, and you can’t remember the last time when you felt deeply connected, right? This is why people think that some marketing strategies, or that marketing only works for business coaches, or people who help you make money. No, this is because money is real.

Either it’s in your bank account or it isn’t. You can show your bank statement to anyone and they will come up with the same objective answer of how much you have. And so many of the healers and spiritual coaches and people who want to make a difference in the emotional lives, the mental health struggles, the spiritual development struggle.

The degree to which you are willing to get tangible about the 3D changes that your people can expect, the easier it will be for people to understand, relate, and share your work with others, okay?

The next part is your person’s desire or what they want. And this needs to be clearly aligned with the previous one. These go hand in hand. If you are focused on helping people clean out their closet, then what they want is You’ve got it a clean closet and you’d be surprised how many people miss this because they want to speak to that Emotional impact that having a clean closet can create they talk about the peace having more peace or less Stress and more joy, which feels either kind of meh or Not even connected.

However, if we can get specific, after cleaning your closet, you’ll have a more peaceful morning when you’re deciding what to wear is easier and everything you choose looks great. You’ll feel less stress about having clothes everywhere at the end of the day or how much laundry you have to do each week.

In fact, the skill you build around cleaning your closet might actually start to expand into more spaces in your house, making your home a more joyful place to spend time because you’re not constantly cleaning up. Boom! Each of those emotional differences Peace, less stress, more joy, is grounded in how that is coming about.

Peace comes from being able to decide what to wear and everything you choose looks good. The tangible is what grounds the emotional. Okay, the other part is being able to discern what your person wants and if that’s different from what you want for them. From our vantage point as a practitioner, we can often see more of what’s possible and can want things for our people that they aren’t even aware of or they don’t know is available for them once they get past this initial problem.

You can speak to what you want for them. And you have to know and meet them where they are and what they want. You know, I can go a little bit meta in this episode. For instance, I believe, and if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I believe that you Want to have your person be able to easily identify themselves when you start talking about what you do and how you help for them to lean in and say, Oh, wow, I think you’re talking about me and for your allies, your friends, and your fans to be able to share your work with others.

So you have less marketing to do yourself. If you come out with a solid and congruent niche, you will get these kinds of results. That’s my purpose. And when you can do that, your people will feel inspired to learn more and maybe take the next step with you. And you need to be able to speak to the results that you’re prepared to help them create in their life.

I just finished helping one of my clients identify some non typical results that she helps with in the fitness industry. She works with people who know they need to exercise, but it feels like a chore and they often skip workouts and can’t get consistent. What they want is for exercise to feel like a chore.

Easy. To not have to follow a complicated workout routine at the end of a day, or to have to plan out their workouts, or remember all these complicated moves. For them to show up to their workout easily without wasting energy fighting or negotiating with themselves. That makes sense, right? You’d be surprised how many people are not talking about what changes for people when they do this work together.

They’re talking about the features and not about the benefits. The next element you need to be congruent is bringing your history and your whole self. This is the part that is so cool for me. I have a lot of people who come to get help with their niche and. And they’re like, can you help me uncover my niche?

And to my not surprise anymore, it is inextricably linked to their history, to a problem that they’ve solved for themselves or a result that they’ve created to make their life better. And they often don’t see the value of that for others. It’s like we come across this boulder on our path and we tried hammering it and we tried pushing on it And then we found that we could use a lever to move the boulder so that we could I don’t know like get to our Watering hole, I guess.

I don’t know in this example. We’re cave people. I don’t know why that’s what came to my mind regardless Once we’re past the boulder, we forget how hard it is to be on the other side, feeling thirsty, not knowing how to get past. I think besides that, we can sometimes have trouble being vulnerable about our experience.

We think that maybe it reduces our expertise if we admit that we haven’t just skipped along through life, never having any problems. But of course, that is A, not relatable, and B, not relatable. Not true. In fact, having gone through the thing that your people have gone through gives you so much more empathy.

This is one of my main motivations for helping reluctant marketers, because the advice that I received was so unempathetic. It was just, you have to suck it up and do it. And I felt incredibly misunderstood and alone in my experience of not being able to just do it. So I bring all of the, I get it. And all of the, you’re not alone in this, because I know what it was like to be in that spot.

And when you can convey that to your clients, it creates more connection. And when you convey that to your clients, it creates more connection and more credibility in you as an expert. Not one that read the books, but one that lived through it. And that is so much more valid. The last part of having a congruent niche where All of these elements line up together is leveraging your gifts and skills to uniquely support your people.

This part is both the skills that you’ve trained in or grown intentionally, and the gifts that you might not even recognize that you have. The tendency is to focus on the modality. The unique way that you, that the modality comes through you is special. Your flavor of coaching or the special interpretations and definitions that you bring to healing is unlike anything else.

Anyone else that’s practicing something similar beyond the fundamentals, you get to go deeper into your approach and what you see is necessary to solving this problem or arriving at the desired result. Like what’s the route that you suggest people to take to move from problem to solution? And how is that different?

than what they’ve inevitably tried in the past. And let me tell you why that’s important. Because we need to satisfy the logical mind. No matter how open people are to alternative strategies, the way we help needs to make sense on some level. If you haven’t taken the time to connect some of these four pieces, that might A, B, why you’ve struggled to find a niche that you feel compelled to move forward with and that people resonate with.

Like I said, in the next few episodes, I’m going to go into these secret elements even more. This was just the overview of what it takes to create a congruent niche that is foundational for creating offers you love sharing and being able to communicate clearly. I can’t wait to share more with you.

Thanks so much for being here.

Until next time, stay courageous.