Entre-Talk: Do I Have the Right Niche?

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, Entre-Talk: Do I Have the Right Niche?

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Alright, entrepreneur friends, welcome back to another Entre-Talk episode. This question about niche is the most common question I get especially from coaches and I’m kind of trying to say this in the right way because on the one hand when I hear this question come up, a part of me wants to roll my eyes and go, “Come on, not this again.” But another part of me knows that it is a natural, normal process that a lot of coaches go through.

The reason I want to roll my eyes and grab you by the shoulders and just shake you out of it a little bit is because it gets far more airplay in the heads of coaches than is necessary and it slows coaches down. And I think the reason that we make it so dramatic and heavy, and we drag it out and make it take so long is because we don’t understand how much we’re giving weight to unnecessary things, we don’t understand. A niche, yes, I want you to have a niche. I’d love you having a niche.

In fact all these people that are just offering coaching concerns me. I think you can do a little bit of business that way. I don’t think you can get to where you may want to go, long run. I don’t think you can grow a big business that way and maybe I’m wrong, prove me wrong. But in most cases I find that having a niche which is a specific problem that you solve for a specific group of people just makes it way easier. So you don’t have to. It would just be so much easier to build a successful business if you do.

But here’s what I want to say about it. I want to explain my thoughts about this by telling you a story about my life growing up as a child with our family pets, so stay with me. The Lyman family which is my maiden name, we were and I would say still are, if we make my parents be my family that I’m referencing here. We are cat people. Now, don’t get mad at me, I know, people hate cats. My point is we had cats growing up a lot. I remember us having a cat almost all the time. And then the cat would get hit by a car or something and then we’d get a new cat, very sad.

But at any rate we know cats and we still know cats. We knew how to take care of a cat. We knew what to feed the cat and how to let it out and that it wouldn’t run away, that it would come back and how to take care of a cat. And some of those cats I liked better than others, but at any point we always had cats. Well, one day somehow my siblings and I talked my parents into getting a dog. And I was trying to remember this on my walk the other day. I feel like we went through two dogs but I don’t know, I could be wrong about that.

I’m sure some of my siblings and parents could fill me in but what I do remember is that we had this one dog named Charlie. And he was – I don’t know if he was a pure Lab, or he was Lab with a mix of some other types of dog that I’m not really familiar with. But at any rate he was a big dog and we would put him in the backyard and let him in and feed him. And we did our best to take care of this dog but in the end we had to get rid of Charlie because he was just too much. He was wild and destructive and he had all this pent up energy.

And we tried to take him on walks and things but he was still just so hyper and he was constantly chewing up things, chewing people’s shoes and just total mischievous wild dog, so we ended up getting rid of him. And I remember telling people the story at various times about yeah, we used to have a dog but we got rid of him, he was just a wild dog. I mean he would chew the trim on the outside of the house, you know the trim that goes around the windows? It was chewed up because Charlie chewed it.

And I remember telling people this story as though they would understand and what I was conveying was that we got a bad dog, a dog that was just too wild, too hyper, too disobedient. We just sort of lucked out with this dog. And then fast forward many years later and I married to a man, Jake Moore who is a dog person. The Moore’s are dog people. They have had dogs a lot in their lives and Jake understands dogs. And recently within the last three years, I guess, Jake talked me into letting us get a dog and we got this French Bulldog named Finn.

This is my first time having a dog since Charlie. And what I noticed is that Jake spent a lot of time with Finn, training him, teaching him how to obey his commands and what various commands meant. And he first of all did this on his own and he sat each of us down and said, “We have to spend time with Finn, we have to teach him how to listen and how to obey. And so he taught us how to do it, none of us were as good or consistent at it as Jake was but at any rate Jake spent a lot of time with Finn.

He would go to classes with Finn at the vet, the local dog place and he would work with Finn with somebody else teaching him what to do. And all of that helped and then at one point we even paid a lump of money to send Finn away for a couple weeks and have another trainer work really intensely with Finn for a couple weeks to teach him and train him how to be somewhat obedient.

And watching all this and watching how if we aren’t consistent with the way we talk to Finn and the way we reward him or continue to reinforce what this amazing trainer did with him then Finn starts getting a little naughty again. And we have to sometimes rein it back in. And as I’ve watched this, it made me realize, Charlie wasn’t a bad dog. We didn’t get a disobedient dogs. Dogs just are kind of wild and rowdy and they don’t obey orders unless you teach them how to obey.

Now, this might be obvious to you, especially if you grew up with dogs. But this was mind blowing to me because I’ve been believing all this time that we just got a wild dog. We did not get a wild dog, we got a dog. And then we didn’t know how to train that dog. And this is how it goes with your business my friends. This is how it goes with your niche. There is not a right niche or a good niche, there is just a niche.

Any niche you choose is going to require some work on your part. It’s going to require that you be patient, that you be consistent with what I call planting your garden. Planting your garden is putting out content, nurturing that content, taking really good care of people, being willing to help and serve in whatever way you’re trying to build a business around in the beginning for free, just because you’re trying to figure out what you’re doing and you’re trying to plant some seeds. And you’re trying to figure out the right wording and how to best serve people.

And then you consistently put out content and you consistently learn more about marketing and sales and eventually that becomes a business, eventually that garden produces crop for you. But it’s not the niche that is the secret sauce. The niche is like the dog, you don’t just get a dog normally. Now, are there people who just get lucky and just get a dog that is really even tempered, and mellow, and chill, and easy to train? Yes, that is a thing.

And are there dogs that are really difficult and stubborn, and hard to train? My husband would say Finn was kind of one of those in his experience, so yes there are. There are certain dogs that have better temperaments or maybe are for whatever reason going to be a little bit easier to train than others. And there are going to be certain niches that are easier to succeed with than others. That is true.

But for the most part, just like most dogs fall kind of in the middle where they can be trained, not impossible, and it’s not going to be overnight, it’s going to require some attention, and consistency, and work, but you can do it. And that’s true with your niche too. Most niches are going to work if you work them, but you’re going to have to be patient. You’re going to have to be consistent. You’re going to have to try a bunch of things. You are going to make the niche successful or not.

When you understand this you get out of the niche drama because you stop spending so long spinning on what’s the right one, what’s going to work, what feels like me? What am I going to not get sick of thinking and talking about? All of those questions are nonsense, they really are. What is a problem that exists in the world that I think I can help solve given my current training, and skills, and experience? What is a problem that people want help with, that people are willing to pay money for that I feel like I could help with? Go do that.

And it’s not your identity, it’s not what you have to do the rest of your life. It might morph, and change, and evolve, and grow. Okay, just pick something and go help. I’ll tell you, I all the time get new ideas. I’m kind of like, “If I were starting from scratch I could do that. If I were starting from scratch, I could do this.” And some of them just go on a document and will never do anything with them. Some of them eventually maybe I will go do something with. But the ideas don’t come from who do I feel like I am? How do I want people to know me?

I can’t make it about me, the ideas come from the outside world. This is what I see going on and I’m pretty sure I could help in that area. I’ve said this before but I feel like our teachers really need more support right now. I feel like there’s something that someone could do with teachers.

I know that mid-20s to early 30s, that age group needs help with dating, they do. They want to get married, most of them in that category, they want to get married and they don’t know how to date in a way that will lead to marriage and a lot of them are frustrated. And that’s a gross generalization but I think that there’s a way to build a business as an LDS dating coach that I could definitely do. I have enough experience, training, knowledge and skills that I could make a business go with that. Now, is that because I love dating and I love romantic comedy movies? No, it’s not about me.

It’s about this is a problem that aligns with some skills, and experience, and training, and knowledge that I have that would be kind of fun to play with. I could go build a business off of that. And would I do that forever? I don’t know, maybe. Maybe I’d love it and do it forever. Maybe it would grow and morph into something different. Pick something and go do it. I just gave you a couple of ideas. But stop thinking that you’re going to choose a magic niche that’s just going to work, you’re not.

You’re going to have to train that dog and then you’re going to end up with a cute puppy like Finn, so it will be worth it. Alright you guys, that’s what I have for you today. I will see you next Monday on another Entre-Talk episode, take care.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.