386 | Manage Your Mind to End Niche Drama

Let's talk about the role your mindset has on not just your marketing, but on your ability to stay focused on a niche. And typically, my readers are in one of two places. 

1. Either you're just starting your business and trying to figure out what that niche is. 
2. You've been in business for some time and you've pivoted quite a bit in the niche. You may have gotten back and forth a bit, and you are struggling with clarity. 

Either way, you're struggling with clarity. I would say this happens to close to 90% or more of all entrepreneurs. They don’t know right away who they’re serving, what they're offer is, what their niche is, what their brand message is, what they want to be known for, etc.  I like to call this niche drama, and it’s a real thing! 

You could spend forever trying to get to the perfect niche and make everything perfect behind the scenes before you ever test something out in the marketplace, before you actually start taking action. We don't want that. We want to take imperfect action and connect the dots. However, at the same time, understanding your niche and having extreme clarity with your niche is one of the most critical elements of marketing. 

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Having niche clarity is an absolute must. If you are a coach or any kind of a service based entrepreneur where the product is you, your brand, the results you’re helping people achieve, it is absolutely critical. What specific problem do you solve for whom specifically must need to be answered. 

Here's Where the Challenge Comes In…

When we're very first starting our coaching or consulting type business, we can get stuck in niche drama because it's actually a coping safety mechanism. We get so caught up in niche drama and don’t take any action, so that we don’t have to put ourselves out there and risk anything. When you're just starting, you may not have your niche perfectly tied in a bow, and that is okay. You'll actually start to get that clarity after you've already been working with a few clients. I teach that when you’re first starting your coaching business to launch to your warm market, to the network you already have. Now, all of those people in your network aren't necessarily your dream client, and that's okay. They know you. You already have the know, love, and trust factor and people that want to support you. 

It always makes sense to launch to your warm market, so that your network knows what you're doing. You're asking for referrals, or you’re giving out a complimentary session, and asking if anyone in your warm market knows of someone that would want a free session with you. You don't have to have your niche perfect and with extreme clarity to launch to your warm market, but you do from there out. 

When you are talking out on social media platforms and new people are finding you, or you're reaching out to podcasts to be a podcast guest, people don't know you yet. There isn’t any know, love and trust factor. Therefore, the first thing that's going to be a “yes” or a “no” is whether or not it is clear on who you help, what problem you solve, what solution or result you can get for people. That's the key. When people don't know you, it has to be so crystal clear what you do. 

The Clarity Will Come

When you first are launching, it's okay if it's not totally clear. The clarity actually can come when you're working with people. When you're working with your first few clients, you're going to know which ones you absolutely love to work with and those that maybe aren't the right fit. When I first launched my life coaching business, I had a wide range of people that I was working with, and it was all through my warm network. I found that there were certain people that had certain problems looking for a certain result that I enjoyed working with the most. What started to become crystal clear for me after I was working with some clients is how much I loved helping women who had just started or have had an established business with their marketing, their brand, standing out online and helping to coach them to take action, to go to the next level and get out of their own head. That's my jam. That is who I love to serve. More women, starting more businesses and having successful businesses will make this world a much better place for so many reasons. So, that's my jam. But, I didn't know that until I started to really work with people. 

What also happened to me was that I was having success in my niche, but then I went too broad. I went too broad in my marketing because I had so much passion for so many different aspects of building a business. Then, when I started to really get into the mindset work and got certified with Bob Proctor I was kind of swimming in how much I loved everything – Paradigm shifting, self-image, the inner work, etc. I LOVED it! I still do! It’s the key to everything! But, because of my excitement, I kind of lost sight of the niche and I went too broad trying to help all women everywhere IGNITE herself from the inside out, to go after her big purpose, and all the things.

Here's What Happened…

It sounded very inspirational, but it wasn't actually landing on people in terms of them saying, “wait a minute, you're talking about me,” or “oh, I have that problem. I would love to work with you to help me.” That part was missing because it was too broad. It was way too broad. It was inspirational, it was motivational, but it wasn't actionable in terms of working with me. When you have a business you need to sell, and my broad messaging wasn’t selling. What I have come to realize is that niche drama never actually goes away.

It Starts with Awareness

Niche drama is completely avoidable by leveraging your mind. It starts with awareness, as does everything. So, you could either have niche drama in the beginning where you are not taking action because you haven't perfected your niche, or you could have niche drama when you start to lose sight of the power of the narrow niche, and you start to go too broad. Become known as the problem solver in one area, narrow the niche as much as you possibly can, and then you have to manage your mind to stay there. 

You have to manage your mind so that you don't get shiny object syndrome when it comes to what you're saying in your marketing, what you're offering, and  being too broad. Take it from someone who has learned from experience, and I'm glad I had this experience. I really do believe that part of my role in business is to go first, to see what the potholes are, so that I come back and say, “okay, do this, but I would not recommend doing this.” That, I do believe, is part of my purpose. I think it's what makes me very relatable to people, is that I'm very honest and I share with total transparency. 

I'm okay with the fact that the last 18 months, the end of 2021 and then into 2022, I definitely went too broad. I went too broad in my messaging, in my marketing, in my niche that wasn't really much of a niche anymore, and also in my offerings. It also complicated my business in a lot of ways as well. Not just in the marketing, but actually in the day-to-day behind the scenes of running my business. 

The Year of Simplification

2023 has been the year of simplification. Major simplification on the back end and the front end of my business, and reminding myself and managing my mind to go back to the basics that created $1.4 million in revenue in 18 months. Remembering that a super focused niche and launching the same offering over and over and over and over and over again is what I needed to learn again. I'm sharing this with you in this post because I want to help you with your niche drama. I want to help you get to extreme clarity so that you can manage your mind and say, “oh, okay, nope. That's a shiny object.” I want you to be very discerning. I want you to get into protection mode of your niche, on what specific problem you are solving for specifically whom with what kind of a solution specifically, and focus on it nonstop. It's how you're going to be referable. It is the clarity that's required. People buy when things are clear. People do not buy when they are confused. It is so important to nail this clearly.

The Inner Work

I believe that it is inner work, so that you unlock your deeper intuition because your intuition knows. Intuition is how you tap into your soul and your soul already knows your mind and your subconscious. That's what blocks you from truly knowing. I love to use several tools to tap into your intuition. I like to use Human design, I like to use Gene Keys, and then I like to use good old fashion coaching to help ask the right questions so that that niche clarity comes through. Then, we throw in a little bit of self-coaching on top of that and voila! You are going to have a crystal clear brand, crystal clear niche, crystal clear set of messages that you put on repeat over and over and over again. That's how you get a business to the revenue, to the scalability, to the joy, to the impact that you really want to have. 

We have made it all very complicated in the online space and it's all about back to basics and a clear brand wins every time. So I want you to ask yourself the following question, is my business extremely clear on what specific problem I solve specifically for whom? Is it so clear that my grandmother could refer someone, or that my 10 year old could refer someone? 

You need to get to that level because we have overcomplicated this online space in a major way. So much so that we've gotten clever and cute over clear, and we've gotten to the point where we just have a deluge of content that we throw at people in the hopes that that's the thing that's going to convince them that you have what they need. I want to be really clear, and this is really an important distinction – You want to be that specific and that clear in your marketing, but it does not mean that's the only thing that you sell. What the heck do I mean by that? 

I want you to picture stepping in front of a room full of people that do not know you, never heard of you before, and you try to be very vague in who you are and what you do. I don't think any of those people would take the next step with you. If instead, you got into that room, and let's say you do what I do, which is to help people create referable brands. You go into a room full of coaches and you get in front of them, they didn't know who you were and you talked about how to start getting referrals. How to get 30% of all of your clients coming in through referrals and that you had a proven process to make that happen, and then you extended your offer to that room of coaches. I can help you create 30% of your revenue coming from referrals with my framework, with my offer. They're going to buy from you. 

Do you see the difference? If you were like, “I help coaches with their marketing,” and it was super vague, it's not going to have the same impact. You want to be super specific in a room full of people that do not know you. 

Now I want you to picture being in a room full of people that are your clients. They've already been working with you, they think you are amazing, you've helped them get results, you've helped them with whatever you help people with. You help this room of people with getting that result and they love you. You can sell other things to those people. You might have a great additional offer to sell to them, or a new offer that you want to sell to them. You could even potentially pivot a little outside your niche with them, right? I'm not saying you have to do that, but I'm saying it's so much easier when someone already knows you, they've already worked with you, they've already gotten a result from you. They trust you, they believe in you. That's the difference between marketing and selling.

The Difference Between Marketing & Selling

Marketing is getting in front of new people, new leads, to create new clients. That's where you have to be so specific. When it's talking to your existing clients, and maybe they're ready to renew into the next thing, or they're ready to start working one-on-one with you, or to take the next step. It is so much easier to sell that. On the backend, you could have several offers that you're selling to clients, but to land a brand new client, to get on a guest spot, on a podcast, to be asked to speak at someone's event or mastermind, you want to be so specific and clear. 

BEcome Referable

It's the key to becoming referable, and that's why I've created the free training BEcome Referable. When you become referable, everything else falls into place. When you take this training and you learn how to become referable, it has a ripple effect on everything. 

1. Your social media presence will become so much more specific. 
2. Your ability to land podcast spots will increase
3. Your ability to reach out and land speaking engagements will increase 
4. Your ability to have your ads perform
5. Your ability to have existing clients refer you

I promise you, all of that starts to come together with the singular focus of I need to become referable, I need a referable brand. That is becoming so specific in your niche and requires you to manage your mind to stay the course. As I've already mentioned, when you deviate from that and you start to go way too broad in your marketing and you start to go way too broad in what you're sharing in a room full of people that do not know you, I promise you that you're going to have a really challenging time growing your business. 

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Grab the free training so that you are able to become referable. Everything starts with that. If that's the lens that you can create your marketing around, your niche around, your offer around, I promise you everything else in your business and in your marketing goes so much easier. 

Get the training here!