Coach Ajit (01:30):
So by the end of each episode, you get clarity on how do you really answer that question for your business? And today's question that I'm answering that was asked several times was how do I find my niche now, before I answer the question, how do you find your niche? I wanna address a bigger question. Does one even need to find a niche? You see when I'm interacting with coaches in our live group settings, very often I'm met with resistance, like, Ajit, I'm such an expansive human being. How can I find a niche? How can I limit myself to a small set of people? How is it that my coaching is fully realized if I only interact with a limited set of people, I can help everybody. Anybody can benefit from my coaching. So why do I have to limit to a niche? Well, you are right.

Coach Ajit (02:22):
You don't have to limit yourself to a niche, but I have a proposition for you. You see, when we don't define a niche, when we say we can serve everybody, it makes it rather difficult for us to focus our attention towards conversation that we are having with someone you see, all of us human beings have infinite possibilities that we may want to pursue. You, for example, are pursuing a coaching career. At the same point in time, you're also probably pursuing a beautiful relationship. You're maybe working on your health goals. Maybe you are also focused to, what's creating an alternate of career. You see, you have many things that you focus on at any given point. And because of that, if a coach shows up and they also say, I can help you with everything you as a person will not be able to focus on what conversation to get started with.

Coach Ajit (03:11):
So the reason why we invite you to find a niche is not because we wanna limit your potential, but because you wanna expand your impact in a person's life. When I first decided to be a coach, I identified a very specific niche where I started you see in the past, I had had some success with building online training companies. And so when I started coaching, I said, the best clientele for me to start with would be where I can work with people who are also in the space of creating transformation in other people's lives and have companies that are of a particular size. And because that was a place I started. And because I had some experience in running a company like that and building a company like that, I was able to have meaningful interactions with these potential clients, where I could relate to their experience.

Coach Ajit (04:01):
I could relate to what was happening and potentially happening for them. They could relate to what I was saying, and that made our conversation a lot more powerful. It also gave me a starting point. It gave me a niche to get started. And once I was working with these companies, I found that I don't need to limit myself to education based companies. I could impact anybody that has a business of a particular size. I could have conversation around team and culture, marketing finances, irrespective of what the product, the company sold. And soon enough, I found myself coaching companies that had products that were doing a particular size. And as I was coaching these companies, I realized there was a particular model that I used to coach companies. And that model became the coach consultant model that now I teach on the Evercoach platform under Certified Business Coach as a program.

Coach Ajit (04:54):
And that became my next niche. Training coaches to be business coaches using the models I had already tested with my clients. So you see, I started from working with a very specific group of businesses that were in online education. And then I expanded it to businesses overall. Then I ended up coaching other coaches who wanted to work with businesses. And now I train coaches across many different domains. You see, starting with niche, gave me permission to fully show up and help my clients to the greatest degree I could. And as I continued to help them, I found a bigger niche and then a bigger niche, and then even a bigger niche for myself. And I will continue to expand because like we already established, you are an infinite being. And so am I, we will always expand. The reason why we niche is so we can focus our attention to a small group, create that impact.

Coach Ajit (05:50):
So from there, we can further our impact. We can grow our niche. We can create more impact out in the world. So while you may initially want to resist the idea of a niche, my invitation is to look at finding a niche as a way to get started, to get focused. So you can impact deeply a small community. Now you may wonder, I just find, I will find my niche, but how do I actually go about finding this niche that you want me to find? Well, there are three simple questions that you'll need to ask yourself and work on. So you can identify the niche that you wanna start with. The first question is who do you serve? Who is it that you actually serve in the world? Now, when you ask a question like that, your first response usually is a fairly broad response.

Coach Ajit (06:40):
For example, if I say, who do you serve? You might say, Hey, I do men's work, so I serve men. Or I do women's work, and so I serve women. While that may seem initially as the right answer, that is a really large category of people. When you say you serve men, you serve half the population of the world. And if you say you serve women, you serve half the population of the world. So take the time to really identify who among men do you serve? Do you serve men or women that have a particular kind of awareness in the world? Are they athletes, maybe they're business women and men, maybe they are homemakers. Maybe they're people with children, maybe they're parents, maybe they're people without children, maybe they're single men or single women. The more and more specific you get to answering this question of who do you serve easier.

Coach Ajit (07:27):
It will be for you to answer the next question. What problem do you solve? You see, once you identify the person that you're working with, you need to get specific to the problem, the identifiable problem that you relate with most, and that you'll be able to solve in the greatest way possible. When I started working with online businesses, I was very specific about the problem that I wanted to tackle. I wanted to work with companies that were stagnant for a really long time and were struggling to build teams to fuel their growth. So it was very specific to building marketing and team structures that allow for growth for companies that were stagnating or that were not growing as exclusively as they should have because of the quality of the product that they already were bringing to the world. So the first question, which identifies, who do you serve actually helps you answer the second question in a very specific way or the specific problem you help them solve.

Coach Ajit (08:28):
The more specific you get with the problem, the clearer it is for you to approach a client, the clearer it is for you to identify exactly the niche that you should be working with. And then comes the final question that is vital to identify your niche. If you're struggling to respond to the second question, maybe the third question's gonna help you identify exactly the problem that you would wanna solve for your clients. You see all of us because of our experience or because of our training have a methodology. We have a way to coach someone. We have a way to show up for our clients. We have a way to really create results in the reality of our clients in potential clients. And that for me is the methodology that you bring to the table. This is what makes you unique. This methodology either originates from your training, integrated with your life experience, or it purely comes from your understanding of the world and your experience of the world.

Coach Ajit (09:21):
This unique perspective will become your unique take on coaching. Your unique reason why clients work with you. Now, if you were unable to answer the second question, which is what is the problem that you solve? Try to answer the third question first, which is what is your methodology or why you are the right person to work with your potential client. And as you identify the methodology, look for what this methodology would best serve your client. And that will help you identify the problem that you're going to focus on first as a niche that you help your clients to overcome. So three very specific questions for you to identify your niche. First, who do you serve? Second, what problem do you solve? And third, what is your methodology? Another way to really define what you do in the universe and have as a simple statement for you to remember is a statement that goes like I help (blank) where you fill in who with (blank), with what do you help them with using (blank) the methodology that you use. "I help (blank) with (blank) using (blank)."

Coach Ajit (10:30):
This statement, this memory of this statement, will help you remember how to articulate yourself to your niche. Now here's a real struggle that you may find. You may write who you serve. You may even identify some problem, and then you may identify your methodology, but you may not find yourself confidently writing these. You may find yourself doubting. If that is the right answer, you may wonder that while you've given an answer, there is something else that is on the horizon. That something that you haven't considered, if you find yourself in that situation, here's my advice. The reason why we ask you to identify a niche, to spot a niche and work towards that is because it gives you focus. It gives you something as an intention. It allows you to put your attention towards one direction instead of firing all the guns and trying to do a hundred things at the same time.

Coach Ajit (11:20):
And because that is the reason we have a niche, know that even if you're not a hundred percent confident about the answer that you gave, even if what you gave and his answer feels like there's more to it, know that moving towards that direction, maybe the best way to know what is more to it. What is truth of that niche? What is the discovery that you need to have about that niche? What is the discovery you need to have about yourself, about your methodology, about your client, for you to know if that niche is the niche, there is no cerebral way to know with absolute certainty that if a market will respond to your methodology, there is no cerebral way to know with absolute certainty that a particular niche that you'll pick will be the perfect niche. What you can get cerebrally, which is what we are doing right now is identify a direction, identify our focal points based on the data that you have information that you have, and you walk that path.

Coach Ajit (12:22):
And as you walk that path know that the universe will reveal more to, you know, that your own intention will evolve, know that your direction will evolve, but this new data point that you will get as you're moving towards your niche will give you exactly what you need. So finally know what would be the perfect niche for you to progress into. Sometimes you will find your niche in the first, go at it. You will find exactly what you were searching for and you will nail it in the head. And sometimes it may take six months before you get anywhere. A coach's ultimate transformative weapon is curiosity. And this is where your curiosity will help you find exactly the niche that you need to work with in the way you need to work with to create the results that you wanna create for the exact problems that you need to solve or exact growth areas that you need to work on.

Coach Ajit (13:14):
So while these three questions will help you identify your niche to get started, stay curious, stay present to your experience. So you can evolve as your experience evolves, as your journey evolves, as your discovery of your client evolves. And as you will evolve, you'll find more and more clarity in who you serve, what problems you solve and how you solve those problems. So if you're wondering how to find your niche, well, this episode helped you identify your niche. At least make some progress towards finding your niche. And this week we are doing a really special series called Start Strong to give you a great start to 2022. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave us at rating. If you feel there's a friend of yours that is really struggling to find their niche and need to hear what we talked about today, share this episode with them. If for some reason you haven't yet subscribed to us on your favorite podcasting platform, make sure you subscribe so you can get notified when we post tomorrow's episode tomorrow. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Coach Ajit and you're listening to Master Coaching Podcast with Ajit.