We’re all savvy business people and we understand the importance of niching, right?  So I’m not going to waste your time telling why you should niche, or even how to do so, I mean, I’m not a marketing guru or even a business coach.  What I am going to do, though, is share a personal story about how I arrived at my particular niche.

Starting out

Despite working for over thirty years in the corporate sector, I hadn’t really considered the concept of niching.  I worked for a huge global manufacturer in the automotive industry – we had markets for our products, and advertising campaigns, and customer avatars, and I was even aware of the concept of big fishes in small ponds, but I don’t recall anyone mentioning niches.

When I retired from that job, I retrained as a life coach and suddenly the importance of niching overwhelmed me.  What?!  I couldn’t just be a life coach and help people fix…well…their lives?  Nope, way too broad.  What about being a health and wellbeing coach?  Hmmm, still too broad – do you want to specialise in gut health, menopause, fitness, weight loss, or what? 

Now don’t get me wrong, there are coaches out there who are doing very well with a vague niche, but chances are they’ve been going for a while and have built up credibility.  The coaching market is expanding fast, and launching a new coaching business means you need to be able to cut through the noise with some very targeted messaging.

On my life coaching course, we had spent some time exploring how we might niche.  We considered our values and beliefs, our interests and passions, and our personal experiences.  Aha, I thought, I’ve got it!  Body confidence has been a big issue for me so that’s where I’ll focus.  I wove it into “my story,” I spoke openly about my experiences, I revealed things about myself that I’d kept hidden for decades, and it was liberating in a way.

And then the dreaded Imposter Syndrome hit.  Who am I to be coaching others in body confidence when I don’t really have it myself (even though I was successfully coaching others in exactly that)?  What do I know about body confidence?  There are so many amazing body confidence coaches out there with far more experience than me.  I don’t think this is for me after all.

Re-niching

So I reined it back in and set about relaunching myself as a type of health and wellbeing coach specialising in ageing well.  It wasn’t a great success and I didn’t get a single client.  For starters, I didn’t really know what to call myself, which can be a bit of a challenge in networking meetings.  I also struggled to crystalise my messaging, so it wasn’t clear who I help or how their lives would be better after working with me.

I retreated into the background and set about gaining my NLP certification – whatever my niche, this would at least add a whole set of useful tools to my coaching practice.  I enjoyed the hot summer of 2022 and spent time with my family. 

Yet every time I introduced myself at a networking meeting, I could feel my enthusiasm for the ageing well niche dimming.  The lure of body confidence started to tug away at my subconscious.

Eureka!

It was actually at a WIBN meeting in August when my Eureka moment hit! 

The lovely Carla Watkins, branding photography specialist, was urging us to be 3,000 per cent ourselves.  After pedantically thinking that you can’t be more than 100 per cent, I embraced the sentiment with open arms – helping others to be themselves, wholly and completely, warts and all, that was what I wanted to do!  And I most wanted to help people like myself, people with a physical disfigurement that has eroded their self-worth and sapped their confidence, that’s held them back and kept them playing small.

I suddenly realised I had actually come a long way on my own body confidence journey, and that I wasn’t an imposter after all.  Looking at the websites and posts of other body confidence coaches, it struck me that their messaging doesn’t resonate with me because they’re not talking about my issues.  Their starting point is different.  They don’t get what it’s like for someone like me.  And if I feel like that, maybe others do too.

Coming home

So here I am, re-niched again (I’m making it a verb!), back to body confidence but this time with a focus on physical disfigurement.

When I was describing this to a business friend, her response was to exclaim that finally, the aeroplane has landed!  And to be honest, that’s what it feels like – after months of circling and approaching, I’m down, I’ve come home to the niche that feels absolutely right for me.

** Image credit: Sarah Padilha **