Episode Transcript

Hey, I am so glad that you opted in to sharing your time with me here today because this is a topic that is absolutely foundational to building a successful niche. It’s about getting clear on the specific problem that your ideal client is facing. Now, if you missed in our last episode, I talked about the, I gave you an overview of the framework around creating a congruent niche.

So if you haven’t heard that one yet, you might want to go back and check that one out because today we’re really zooming in on that. on the very first element, but it might be helpful for you to have that overview so that you can kind of understand the landscape that we’re working in today. So let’s start with the basics.

Well, think about it this way. Your business exists to solve a problem. And if you’re not clear on what that problem is, how can you expect your clients to understand Why they need your help. When you’re vague about the problem you solve, it makes it so much harder for people to know whether they need to stop and listen.

If you’ve heard me talk about niching at all, you will know that this piece, this problem piece, I am like a dog with a bone on it. And that is because without a crystal clear understanding of the problem that you’re solving, everything else in your business, from your messaging, to your offers, to your marketing, can feel scattered.

and ineffective. When you get specific, it means that your clients can immediately recognize that you’re speaking directly to them and it makes everything else so much easier. And it also, it means that you don’t have to convince people and it takes a lot of the pressure And a lot of the kind of sleazy tactics off the table.

And that is critically important for me. I hope that that is also one of the reasons why you’re here. For many of us as coaches and healers, we are solution oriented, and we go very quickly to talking about how we can help. And that is important in its right time. So let me give you an example where Have you ever gone to the doctor and without doing a thorough examination or spending any real time understanding your concern, the doctor writes a prescription, tells you you ought to be better in, you know, five to seven days, and leaves.

How do you feel in that moment? Probably not validated, probably unheard. And most of all, how enrolled are you in this prescription? Are you at all tentative or concerned that there’s a chance that the doctor didn’t understand your problem and that this won’t actually work? Did the doctor even take the time to establish whether or not you have actually tried this medication before?

When you emphasize how you can help without first establishing the problems and the symptoms that that your help actually supports people with, this is the equivalent of skipping these steps. Your person may not follow your understanding, they may not believe you can actually help, or you can isolate people.

Okay, before I get too far into this episode, I think we’re all sensitive to pain point marketing. Let me be very clear that Illustrating the problems that you help with is not about twisting the knife. We’re not exposing someone’s bruise and punching it to see if it hurts. The intention behind clearly articulating the problems you help people solve is for some people to identify as having that problem.

It’s about being a witness to the facts. As simple as, do you have a hole in your fence and your dog is getting out? Do you have more than a thousand unread messages cluttering up your inbox? Are you feeling guilty about missing your workouts this week? Are you overwhelmed by the number of platforms and channels that people say you have to be on to be successful as an online business?

Have you been having the same fight with your partner for the last year or more? Sick of nagging your kids to help with chores? Nicheing ground you to a halt? Is your refrigerator running? Okay, not that last one. That one was supposed to be a joke. They’re all neutral. All of those questions, what we’re trying to do is help people who come across our message immediately be a clear yes or no.

We’re not judging them. We’re not creating pain. We’re reporting on the kinds of pain and problems that we help people with. solve effectively. There are very few people that I come across who can’t benefit from getting more specific around the problems that they help people with. And specificity is on a continuum.

So one of the things that I’ll ask you to do is to think about how specific am I? And is there a way for me to get one point more specific? Everything from, you know, on the one hand, you know, probably a one in terms of specificity is helping people reduce stress. The problem is stress. If we go a few notches more specific, we could talk about helping busy professionals manage work related stress to avoid burnout.

And people are like, oh wow, that’s specific. It is several notches more specific than the last one. And can we get more specific? Yes, we can. Even more specific than work related stress is helping nurses identify whether they’re at risk of burnout in the next 12 months. That was, that’s an example I came up kind of quickly with.

I wonder, and I might sit down and do this too, I wonder if I can get even more specific.

The way that you can know if you’re specific enough is that no matter who you talk to, 90 percent of people have the same interpretation as you. They understand the words that you’re saying in this exact same meaning. Transcripts, generally, can be interpreted 90 ways by 90 different people.

Oh, you mean being late. Oh, I feel stressed when my kids are yelling. Oh, stress means you’re having a nervous breakdown. Stress is when my body shuts down. Stress is not being able to pay the bills. Stress for me is being asked to do something more and not knowing when I’ll have the time, right? There are, stress means different things and has different interpretations based on who is interpreting it and their experiences in life.

However, on the other hand, if we use the other, more specific example, nurses wondering if they’re going to be able to continue their doing their job in the short term, or whether they need to start looking for a different kind of work. Everyone is thinking of the same scenario. That’s what it means to be specific.

We’re all kind of walking around as the center of our own universe wondering, with our brains and our nervous systems scanning and saying, Is this for me? Is this for me? Do I need to pay attention here? And when you are sharing your message, when you are connecting in the marketplace, What we want is for our people to be able to quickly and effectively identify whether what you’re talking about is relevant for them and if they have the problem that you help people with, or if they know someone who has that problem.

So if I ask you, are you dealing with stress, you’re gonna be like, I don’t know, maybe, kind of, which is not the kind of response that we’re really looking to elicit. And if that is the kind of response that we are eliciting, I think that’s often where the convincing in the marketing starts to arise from, like, well, let me tell you how, you know, stressed you really are, or, or the manipulation starts to come in.

Whereas, on the other hand, if I said, Are you worried about what’s for dinner tonight and thinking about whether you have what you need and how much time it’s gonna take and what time you’re gonna, you know, fix, be able to eat by? You know, that’s either a yes or a no. You’ve either thought about that and that’s a valid, that’s a valid concern that you have or it’s not.

We think that having a broad statement or a broad problem like, you know, helping people with stress gives us a bigger pool, but it’s a bigger pool of like, of maybes and very few yeses. But also very few no’s. It really takes the sting out of getting a lot of rejection. Or so it seems. Whereas that second statement that I gave around, you know, are you stressed about dinner tonight, is a very cut and dry yes or no.

There probably will be more rejections, like outright, with the second one. And I think that there will also be more Oh my god, yes, that’s totally, it was on my mind before I started listening to this. And even if you’re not having that problem currently, you can probably imagine a time when you did, or know someone who struggles with this.

It might seem kind of counterintuitive, but we want to be rejected quickly, because what that also means is that we are getting, what’s the opposite of rejected, pro rected? Accept, maybe it’s accepted, um, equally quickly. The last thing that I want to bring up today is the difference between problems and the causes of those problems.

The best coaches, healers, and service providers are solution oriented and we are great at sussing out the cause of the problem. And we want to be able to help people at the root of what’s really going on. But when we’re talking about the root of the problem and not the symptoms of the problem, that’s where we often lose people.

If they knew what the cause of the problem was, they probably wouldn’t still be facing the same symptoms. A lot of our work as coaches and healers is often re diagnosing, or giving people the right diagnosis. They’re trying to solve either at the The surface level or they have misdiagnosed themselves and are trying to solve the problem like incorrectly, right?

A time management problem, people are looking for a new planner, whereas the root is actually poor boundaries, you know? I often see folks rejecting talking about surface level symptoms in order to spend more time talking about the causes of those symptoms and or their solution. So for example, you know, Low energy or is a symptom.

Feeling unrested despite having a full night’s sleep. Needing to be caffeinated, you know, needing to drink three cups of coffee in order to get your day moving and then often having a crash in the afternoon. Those are surface level symptoms. Oftentimes, as coaches and healers, we can identify what people are not doing.

Right? You’re not doing real self care. Or, you don’t know how, what the different kinds of rest are. And then leap to a prescription. You need mental wellness through meditation. And while you know that that is the cause of this low energy and fatigue, it’s not speaking to that person’s experience. Which is low energy, fatigue, drinking cups of coffee, um, and having that afternoon crash.

So this can be one of the primary reasons why you’re talking, but it doesn’t seem like people are listening or your message just isn’t resonating. Even though you know that you’re in front of people that you can help. So how do you go about uncovering some of these specific problems or these pain points, the symptoms that your clients are facing?

It can be as simple as having quality conversations. And you can do market research. Which is really just a formal language for really quality conversations. And to ask for what their experience is, and to get into that 3D reality of their day to day living with this kind of problem, or with this challenge.

And the kind of trick to bring to these conversations, it’s not a trick at all, it’s a intention, is to not lead with ease. any assumptions. So any kind of word that that person uses, dig in and find out. What do they mean by that? And so that would be one of the questions that I would ask kind of over and over, well, what do you mean by that?

Or can you tell me more about that? And the other one is, is there anything else you could probably have, uh, you know, if you use those three questions in like 80 percent of a conversation with, um, with someone whom is part of your kind of ideal market, you would leave with A ton of really quality information that you could then go out to the market with.

Once you start getting some feedback around these, these. specific problems and how you’re starting to articulate them, one of the other filters to put this information through is choosing a problem that you’re passionate about solving and that matches your expertise and what you want to spend time solving.

Helping people with. Okay, I could spend all day talking about problems, but in the next episode, we’re going to be diving into the second element of a congruent niche, which is discerning that specific desire or outcome that your client is wanting. So tune in for that. Until then, stay courageous.