Episode Transcript

Hey there. Thanks for joining me in this initial episode. Well. If you’re still listening after that ultra corny joke, then great. I really am going to have to keep my eyes and ears open for other like fun niche puns, so stay tuned for those, obviously. While that joke is awesome, it’s not nearly as awesome as what’s coming up today.

I want to take the time today to set the scene for this season and this podcast. The It’s a Niche podcast is here to help you get over your niche and on to doing what you love and actually growing your business. If you’re like so many reluctant marketers that I connect with, you’re not in business for the business stuff.

You’re in business because you want to change lives and make your corner of the world a better place. So this is really made for coaches and healers and online service providers who are introverted. Intuitive, empathic, or, and highly sensitive and who hesitate when it comes to marketing. One of the first things I want to get out of the way is that I’m not here to convince you that you have to niche.

And at the same time, I will also stand firmly in the fact that not niching makes it a harder and longer path to sustainability in your business. It’s more work, and it takes way more marketing when you don’t have a niche. At this point, you might be wondering who I am and why I care about all this niching stuff.

Or maybe we’ve met before. Either way, you’re gonna get a little bit. About me and how I got here five years ago, if someone had told me that I’d not only be marketing a business, I’d also be helping other entrepreneurs market their businesses, I would never believe them. I didn’t have a business background and I would say I was.

It’s disdainful of business, especially marketing and sales, since obviously they’re the worst part of business, right? Things have shifted for me significantly since then, though not easily and not quickly. It’s taken me years to redefine marketing and foster a new approach that eliminates manipulation, coercion, fear, and pressure, and instead centers consent.

Intentionality, humanity, care, compassion, and especially safety. But before that, I was really the original reluctant marketer. I struggled to talk about my work. I was embarrassed by how I introduced myself. It never seemed like I could convey the power of my work to others. And I always felt a little desperate sharing what I do, hoping that number one, they would get what I was saying and be.

Or number two, that they wanted what I was saying. All of that meant that I avoided doing all of the marketing stuff. I resisted niching, and even when I relented, it took nearly two years to understand how to niche and what my niche was. I knew I was a great coach, but I only ever had one or two paying clients, and all I wanted to do was help more people.

So I took course after course, rewriting, I help statements and searching for the answer all while staying behind the scenes.

Now, because I was a part of some wonderful entrepreneur spaces and made some amazing and valuable friendships, I knew that I was not the only one struggling with this. I would say I was actually part of the majority though. It did not feel like that.

And a few people would actually admit it. The turning point for me was when I identified this problem and turned my attention and energy to solving it. That meant understanding why these big hearted, service oriented, well qualified coaches and healers weren’t able to do what they loved doing, helping people and changing lives.

One big reason was niching. They weren’t able to articulate clearly what they do or who they help. And it means that they aren’t serving the number of clients they want. They don’t know who they’re talking to. And so they aren’t putting themselves out there. Part of them wants to be more visible, but the barrier of where to start.

Is one that they can’t get past this keeps them from being discoverable in the market from building really key business allies that build momentum. And from having a calendar of soulmate clients to serve, it keeps you at the starting line of building a real business. And many aren’t being compensated for the thing they love doing.

It’s not financially contributing to their household. This creates doubt in the value of their skills and services, which festers under the surface and impacts our most important relationships. Overall, good people and good solutions stay out of the market. This keeps us as a community, as a society, as a culture, solving the same problems.

Instead of moving on to new, complex, and pressing issues, the ones that are on our hearts, I’m ready for us to move on. And we get to do that when we share our services and solve the problems with our offers, our services, and our business. That’s the big picture I’m holding. But what is all this reluctance and resistance caused by?

It’s not that you haven’t figured it out yet. If you’re like most, you’ve been trying to write your niche statement and redesign your homepage and you’ve taken the courses. If more marketing tactics were the answer, you would have found it by now. The pressure and overwhelm. The doubt, the fear, the risk when it comes to niching and marketing are interpreted by our body and our nervous systems as fundamentally unsafe.

And because its number one goal is to keep you aliving, it uses every tool to keep you Avoiding and procrastinating and holding you back. It’s a perfectly natural and healthy protection mechanism. And in my experience, not something that you overcome. Certainly not through brute force. When willpower goes head to head against our innate biological protection mechanisms, protection always wins.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that we’re doomed. It means that we need a different approach. It’s about understanding this protection mechanism, befriending it, and developing a safety first model when it comes to your niching and marketing. That’s what I’m all about. That’s how I work with my clients and in my membership.

And that’s what this podcast is about. With the It’s a Niche podcast, I hope to get you past this stage of niching with safety at the center and on to doing more of what you love. I don’t want you to niche in a way that feels forced or constrictive. I don’t want you to feel like your niching is the equivalent of stuffing an octopus into a snowsuit.

Instead, I want niching to bring you closer to the heart of your work and to help others quickly and easily understand what you do, how you help and who you help. I want your marketing to feel like a natural extension of the work you do in the world. For you to feel unshakeable when you introduce yourself to others and for them to easily pass your name and your work on to fantastic people that become your allies, your clients, your fans, like a really wonderful game of telephone.

For your business in this season, I’m going to be sharing my point of view about what is a niche and what it is not. Because a lot of people are getting really busted up advice. I want to help you take action that gets you going in a positive direction. Plus, I’m going to share my model of a congruent niche and the key elements to consider around that.

All right, that’s it for today’s video. Initial episode, you knew I had to use it one last time, right? So today I shared a little bit of my journey of being a reluctant marketer to embracing and redefining marketing with consent and safety at the center. And I painted a picture of what it looks like when you struggle with niching, especially for coaches and handlers and online entrepreneurs.

What I want to leave you with is to remember that niching isn’t about limiting yourself. It’s about bringing clarity to your work and making it easy for others to understand and connect with what you do.

Until next time, stay courageous.