Do you get sick and tired of hearing you should niche down?
Well, good news, this episode’s for you!
I 100% believe that niching down is great, but it’s a process that takes time. In this episode I’m sharing the idea of finding your "core message" and how to find this for you. By finding your core message, it will lead you to your niche in a way that will feel natural for you and not forced.
I really think you’re going to enjoy this one! Let's dig in.
**This was also a podcast episode (episode #145. Use the player below if you'd prefer to listen to this message.
Let’s reframe niching down
If you don’t know my friend D’ana Joi, please find her on her podcast, Multi-Passionate Mastery, her website, instagram or on this podcast in episode #117. She speaks multi-passionate more than I do and I just adore her! So all credit to reframing niching goes to my lovely friend Joi. Thank you Joi!
In episode #10 on her podcast she talks about how to reframe niching down. Whether you’re a multi-passionate person or not, I know you’re going to love this. She talks about instead of thinking of niching down being a thing you have to do, that instead you think about arriving at your niche. YES!
“You arrive at your niche over time.” - D'ana Joi
Joi shares her example by saying “I arrived at my niche after writing a sh*t ton of blog posts and seeing that I kept coming back to celebrating and supporting multi-passionate people. If I had niched down at the beginning of starting my blog I only would have written about house plants or crystals.”
Learn from Joi and learn from myself. Start somewhere. Create. Then look back at whatever you're creating and see what you find yourself talking about the most. You can't look back if you don't start creating...so just start!
We don’t just pick a niche out of thin air and run with it; we can arrive at our niche over time.
Think "core message" instead of niching
So now you know that it will take time to arrive at your niche and you can breathe easier. My suggestion is to start a mission of figuring out what your core message is. Allow this to take all the time it takes, but you will arrive at that message the more you share with your students and in your marketing.
I like to think about a “core message” as this: If I could give you the chance to reach 100 people, 1000 people, or all the people in the world and you could share one short text message with them, what would that be?
Yes, this will change over time too and you can easily overthink this process - but please don’t. Just go with it.
For me, I probably would have started with “marketing isn’t bad” and I 100% still believe that but I know that’s not what I would say to everyone today. After writing hundreds of blog posts, thousands of emails, and who knows how many social media posts I have a core message in all of them.
You’ve got this.
If I could send a text message to every person in the world I would say “You’ve got this, whatever “this” is for you today. Whatever you desire, you’ve got this and I believe in you.”
Nothing about marketing, nothing about entrepreneurship, everything about inspiration. This is my core message and I never would have guessed this years ago when I started my business. I arrived at this message after talking, typing, speaking, and coaching. If I hadn’t blogged, created videos, written emails, or made silly instagram reels I never would have found this message.
How you find your core message
It’s no surprise that I think you will find your core message by typing, by talking, by teaching. All these conversations will help you find where you start to repeat yourself over time.
Imagine this: You write blogs once a week for a year (52 blog posts), you send 2 emails a month for a year (24 emails), and you post to social media 2 times a week for 8 months out of the year (64 social media posts). This all adds up to140 pieces of content.
You copy and paste all that text into one of those word-cloud generators and see what words you typed the most in those 140 pieces of content. You would have elements of your core message!
I wouldn’t suggest actually doing that as it would take a ton of copy and pasting but you get the idea. Write a lot so you can see what you talk about the most. Start to notice what you talk about the most with your students and clients. What do you find yourself repeating over and over again? What do you find yourself interrupting people to say because you’re just too excited to share it with them?
Your core message helps you identify what you have a deep passion for within your yoga teaching. You are unique in how you teach and what you share with your students, we just have to pick that out and identify it.
From core message to niche
As you talk and type and figure out your core message, it will also help you niche down in your business too. But they aren’t necessarily one and the same.
My core message is “You’ve got this,” but my niche is helping yoga teachers with marketing.
My core message is how I do this differently than anyone else who’s doing the same thing. If anyone said “what makes you different from another marketing coach” without hesitation I would say, I’m the most encouraging person you’ll meet. I’ve got tough love and I don’t shy away from sharing what I believe but I will do this with compassion and encouragement because I just can’t help it. It’s in my DNA to encourage people.
For you, this might be that your core message is that you want people to find balance in life and you do that through yoga and dance and meditation and many other modes.
Or maybe your core message is that you believe that motion is lotion for your joints and so you help people find what movement works for them so they can grow older with less joint pain.
Or maybe your core message is everyone is welcome so eventually you find yourself working with marginalized communities as your niche.
Your core message and your niche will be different but it’s my hope that you find this idea of arriving at your niche by way of finding your core message helpful for you today.
Your next step
Start talking and typing today if you haven’t been. Share what’s on your heart and see what comes up for you. And if you’ve been talking and typing for a while now, go back and look at old emails and social posts and blogs and see what you find yourself repeating. You just might surprise yourself with your core message today!
Until next time, give yourself permission to start without the answer and grace along the way. I’ll talk to you soon.
"If I could give you the chance to reach 100 people, 1000 people, or all the people in the world and you could share one short text message with them, what would that be?"
- Amanda McKinney
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