This is a guest post by my friend and colleague Corrina Gordon-Barnes of http://youinspireme.co.uk. Corrina has been a client of ours, and has gone on to create an incredibly successful business, helping self-employed professionals, many of them holistic practitioners, have the impact and income they want. She had quite a journey herself in changing her niche, and I love her perspective here. – Mark Silver
Having a niche when you go self-employed is generally considered very wise. It makes marketing far easier and gives your business focus.
However, many people resist niching. One of the main objections is, “But I don’t want to leave people out”. (Sound familiar?)
I used to say I worked primarily with women. Earlier this year I decided to drop the gender focus, and I received some interesting comments when I announced this on Facebook:
- Absolutely, why segregate? Men and women are equally valuable in their difference
- Yey to everyone
- No limits…
- Thats a step forward for equality!
- Great decision, women have been excluded for so long, we shouldn’t do the same with men
I realized from these comments that “niching” can sometimes be perceived as synonymous with “discriminating” and so it feels important to make a distinction around what niche is and is not.
The Red Herring
I’m bisexual. I’m married to a woman; my main long-term relationship previously was with a man. Gender is irrelevant to me in terms of my sexuality.
Over time, I realized that gender was also irrelevant in terms of my business. I’d never been able to articulate why women were my market. I now see that I’d focused on gender because my passion is for practitioners working in the helping-healing realm and that the majority of coaches and holistic practitioners just so happen to be women.
So gender was one aspect that characterised my niche, but it wasn’t the significant one. It turns out gender was a red herring.
Being a woman is not the characteristic that my ideal clients would most identify with. Sure, they know they’re a woman and they’re probably quite happy about that, but it’s not their woman-ness that is the shared need.
The shared need is that they want to do good stuff in the world: something they’re trained in, that they love, that they’re ready to share, and they really don’t know where to start with actually getting clients and making money doing this thing.
Men share this need too. When I chose “women going into business” as my niche, it wasn’t because I had some political point to make about self-employed women. Some coaches do; I’ve seen plenty speak about “how to talk with your husband about what you do” and “how to keep your man happy when you run a business”. There’s an assumption of heterosexuality and an interest in how being a self-employed woman fits with that.
I don’t come from a heterosexist perspective. I reckon similar issues face self-employed men and women, whether we’re single or married and whether we’re in same-sex or different-sex relationships. I love sisterhood and I also love brotherhood and I love it when men and women support each other in shared peoplehood.
When I dropped the female focus, I dropped the red herring aspect of my niche. I did not drop the concept of niche. I did not decide to “work with everyone”. I remain a strong advocate of niche. It’s just about getting your niche right.
So, if you’re playing with the concept of niche, make a list of the characteristics that you reckon your ideal clients might share.
Then, put them in order of importance – from your perspective and from their perspective. What do these people strongly identify with? What do you passionately care about?
Build your niche business around the most significant characteristics; the ones which have your ideal clients say, “Oh yes, THAT is absolutely who I am!” and which feel like a fit with you pursuing your greatest calling.
I’d love to hear about your adventures in niching. When has it felt like an awkward fit? When have you pursued red herring characteristics? And when has it felt just right? Leave a comment, let us know.
Corrina Gordon-Barnes is a self-employment and marketing coach based in Cambridge, England who enables coaches, holistic practitioners and other service professionals to find clients and earn a healthy living. She is author of Turn Your Passion To Profit: a step-by-step guide to getting your business off the ground. Find out more at http://youinspireme.co.uk
8 Responses
Wow, Corinna, I really love this, and really hate it at the same time.
Love it because it’s thoughtful, well written, and true.
Hate it because it’s making me rethink my “I work with women in business who…” niche, because what you wrote is so true.
Ahhh, AFGO. As we say in Brooklyn: Another frickin’ growth opportunity.
Love and blessings!
Sue
My red herring was not declaring a gender. After operating a business since 2006 without stating which specific gender I help, I now publicly proclaim that I work exclusively with women. Given the topic I coach on, my clients feel safe knowing that they’ll be working in a community of sisters. It took a bit of prodding from my coach and a few colleagues to claim this, but now that I have, I feel utterly at peace.
I
Really eye opening. As a therapist, I also tend to make my niche oriented to women since they are primarely those seeking for change and those who focus on the well being of their nucleus and their environment. This gender related niche as always been for me a big weight, being a person, like you, not gender oriented in my personnal and loving life. Thanks for this post!
Funnily enough this landed in my inbox (via Mark Silver) as I experiment with changing my OUT LOUD niche to women only – reason being that despite my protestations, the fact is that if I look at my client list it is mostly female. And I have to ask myself why. I think perhaps it’s because deep down I am a feminist and am really passionate about helping women to find their power. I feel for so long they have been denied that – and still are in many cases. Therefore I think the vibe I put out that I help individuals find their voice and be truly self expressed – be OUT LOUD basically – appeals particularly to women because they intuit where I am coming from. I am going to put it out there and see because after all as you have demonstrated a niche isn’t carved in stone and can evolve and develop.
Brilliant Rona. Stake your claim. We are all looking for leaders and a leader has an opinion, a purpose and a stake. Most importantly isn’t afraid to air her belief, to speak up about it and take a stand. You watch your impact! Just reading what you have written here shows this niche is YOUR purpose laden with passion, destined to make change.
I am rooting for you x.
Thanks so much @[739471277:2048:Phil]. And this is the reason I so support what you are doing in your work with men. By encouraging men to embrace their masculinity and purpose in a non violent and non aggressive way, but rather in a healthy and enlightened way, this will not only be good for men but for women too. For all mankind in fact because we all need to recognise we are all part of the human race and need to work for a common purpose which celebrates both our differences and our similarities.
I red your post so interested because I was in really this situation. I had a website about school that was working quite good (not super, but every day 200 people visited it). I was really happy about because was my first experience in the world web and everything looked so easy! So I asked in the Facebook page of the website if I will have to insert something of interesting of everybody (and not only for students)… All my followers answered always “Yes yes, is important! More people more photos” – “Yes, so your website will be famous easier”….
Me, excited for their comments, I insert a blog, a forum and a section of community… but was a massacre!!!!
I don’t know why, now my visitors are really really less (around 80-90 for day) and almost nobody looks interested to join in my website…
At the final, I have to remind for the future that my slogan will be: NICHE FOR ALL LIFE!!!