If you’re an online entrepreneur working in a personal development space - a life coach, a business coach, a healer, or an energy worker, for example - you probably know how important it is to find your niche. We’re often taught that nailing your niche is a big part of your business success.
What you probably don’t know is that most of what is conventionally taught about niching is actually pretty useless. Today, I want to talk about the 3 most common mistakes to avoid when choosing your niche. And in future posts, I’ll share with you my preferred strategies to help you get clarity on your niche using your Human Design.
The 3 Biggest Mistakes Beginner Entrepreneurs Make When Choosing a Niche
Mistake #1: Focusing Too Much on Demographics
We are often told when we first start out that we must create an Ideal Client Avatar (otherwise known as an ICA). You create a fake person whom you think will be a good fit for your product or service, and you then map out all the details of their life as if they were real.
Some things you may identify could be:
- What they like to eat for breakfast
- Which magazines they buy
- Do they have kids or not
But by obsessing over these tiny details, this creates a disconnect between you and your ideal client. Most of the time, the people you work with will be different from what you’ve mapped out in your ICA.
Don’t waste your time obsessing over irrelevant tiny details about your ideal client!! Instead, think of a real person that you know that you have either worked with or you would like to work with, and go from there!
Mistake #2: Trying to Create the Perfect Elevator Pitch
Another thing new entrepreneurs often find themselves obsessing over is creating the perfect niche statement or elevator pitch. How many hours, days, weeks, or even MONTHS (!!!) do we spend trying to come up with the “perfect” pitch?
If you’re not sure what an elevator pitch or niche statement is, it goes something like this: “I help ___ do ___ so that ____.”
And when you finally come up with something that feels like “the one,” it can immediately feel confusing and contradicting.
While this can be a helpful practice in figuring out what you do (for your own sake), this is not something you actually use in conversation that much. Plus, it can sound really robotic and scripted if you spew out this statement that you’ve clearly rehearsed again and again.
In my case when I talk to someone about what I do, I tailor the language to that person and situation. Because your niche statement or elevator pitch changes depending on the circumstance!
I might say something like “I help people discover what lights them up” if I’m with a random person that just seems curious. If I see that the person is a mom, I might say “I help moms rediscover themselves after having kids.” If I’m surrounded by entrepreneurs, I might say “I help business owners run their business in a smoother, more effortless way by working with their energy instead of against it.” The main theme of my work doesn't change - I help people live an effortless life - but "the effortless life" looks different for different people.
Everyone is different. So everyone should get a different answer! Focus on telling people what you do, in a way that resonates with them and feels good to you!
Mistake #3: Thinking Your Niche Defines You
Let’s be clear on one thing:
Your niche does not define you, it defines your offer!
Oftentimes we get so lost in this concept that we need to find the “perfect” niche, that we lose ourselves in the process. It doesn’t need to be this way!!
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Here is how you can decide on who you want to work with, in a way that doesn’t limit you or feel constricting:
- 1Find your Zone of Genius - Figure out what makes you and your expertise unique. What kind of experiences have you had that make your work one-of-a-kind? How is your work unlike any others?
Your Zone of Genius is the kind of work that feels effortless, and it lights you up when you do it! This is the kind of work you’re meant to do here on planet Earth. If you need help figuring out what your Zone of Genius is, look at your Human Design Chart! - 2Figure out which problems you help people solve - Once you’ve identified your Zone of Genius, now think of ways you can use it to help solve other people’s problems through a product or service.What feels the most aligned for you to do in your daily life? What are the problems that you think you can speak openly about and solve? Aim to list a few different problems that you can solve for people.
- 3Find out who are the people with these problems - Once you have a list of problems you can help people solve, now ask yourself: “Who are the people that struggle with these problems?” Create a list of all the different groups and subgroups of people that you believe you could help.An example: The problem you solve is helping people quit overeating. Who has this problem? Is it stressed professionals? Young adults? Middle-aged to mature people?
- 4Decide on who you’d like to work with - If you’re a multi-passionate entrepreneur, you can have multiple offers that serve different groups of people. If you have a broad audience, you can work with stay-at-home moms, entrepreneurs, or people who want to leave their 9-5 and start their business. Each group has their own specific needs, desires & problems. So you can tailor your offers to meet all of their needs, or some of them, depending on the offer.For example, if you're in a business coaching space, you may offer business coaching to beginner entrepreneurs, or advanced strategies to advanced entrepreneurs, or help starting entrepreneurs take their first ideas off the ground. If you're in a life coaching space, some of your products may be directed towards busy moms who struggle to find time for themselves, while other products may be directed towards moms who want to create a side hustle to earn extra income.
Instead of starting with the target audience & then creating an offer around this audience, I suggest that you first think of what you enjoy doing for work best, create an idea for an offer around that, and then find the people that need it and refine the offer to adjust it to their specific needs!
If you’d like to dive deeper into this topic of finding your niche using Human Design, check out my Find Your Niche Masterclass!
Your niche does not define you, it defines your offer!
I do want to leave you with a reminder that we’re all multidimensional beings with different experiences, passions and purposes. This is our superpower! And if we try to narrow ourselves to fit into a box, we lose this power. We limit our access to all of our additional skills and talents, thinking they’re not important, when in fact, this is exactly what makesus stand out.
Your unique life experience is to live YOUR truest potential. Nobody else’s! Remember that.