Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship, Part 2, Polish Your Niche
October 6, 2008 by Akemi
From passion to business ideas
So in Part 1 of this Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship series, you went inside to realize your passion. You made a list of things you love and why. That is your niche. (Image by Patrick J Lynch)
Starting a business is really simple. You now develop that niche to something people love to pay for. It doesn’t have to be something that EVERYONE wants to get. A long tail market is sufficient if the product or the service can be promoted on the internet.
So, in my case (again, I’m using my own real life experience as an example), I decided to become a life coach with my passion for personal development. I paid several thousand dollars for the professional training course. I set up a sales page on this Yes to Me blog about my programs. (The page is currently taken down.) Here is a post that I wrote in one of my marketing efforts.
Can you take failures and learn from them?
Starting a business is really simple. Note I didn’t say easy.
I failed completely as a life coach. In fact, it was worse than a failure. It was more like a sad stillbirth. It never really took off. Failures would mean something I did wrong in my practice or business development. In my case, I just got no paying clients.
Looking back, I can think of some reasons why I failed as life coach:
- I did not market it well – I didn’t define my niche clearly and appropriately.
- I did not make enough marketing efforts.
- I gave up too quickly.
- I am meant to do something else.
In all my honesty, I can’t say it’s because I don’t have the skills to be a successful coach. Again, if I had clients and they left me quickly or something, then I can assume this may be the case. But in my case, so few people really got to know me as a coach. So it’s more of a marketing problem than skill problem, I think.
Another potential problem is – well, by now I know quite a few life coaches, but not as many people who are hiring or have hired coaches. I myself didn’t have a coach before (I hired one this spring to summer when I realized this.) So, I wonder if my passion for personal development was polished enough to the point that people would love to pay for when I decided to do coaching?
More questions to contemplate to find your winning niche
Is your niche polished to the point that it is marketable? That is, is it something worth paying for?
If not, a few more questions you might want to ask yourself are:
- Are there services or products you gladly pay for and you wish to be the provider of? Can you become the provider? Don’t write off your interests too quickly as outrageous.
- Are there any qualities about yourself and your life that you perceive as your weakness? Are there service or products that can improve them, or can you think of some new services that can improve them? Can you provide them?
The reason you might want to check your “weakness” is that if you can see it as weakness, you are probably not too far from solutions. People who are truly clueless don’t even know their weaknesses.
While I was “searching for my soul” to define my new life path, I had the opportunity to have my Akashic Record read. I was so impressed that I decided to learn how to do it myself. This is when I was still thinking of becoming a life coach, and on the conscious level, I thought this was just one more thing I’m adding to my learning. One the deeper level, however, I must say I knew something . . .
I always knew words and ideas came from thin air when I wanted to write. And when I started to meditate daily last year (I had been meditating on and off for over twenty years or so, but I made a clear decision to do this daily after reading the Secret), I got the idea to move to Portland, Oregon, which I obliged. The relocation really opened up a lot of space within me and let me be myself. All these events were leading me to this psychic stuff . . .
So thanks to the wonderfully structured training my teacher gave me, I now offer Akashic Record Reading. It’s something I paid happily, so I know there are people who would pay for this service 
And it beautifully fits with my passion for personal development and my love of working with various people.
Polishing your niche is an ongoing effort
It’s not something you do once and for all to become an entrepreneur. You need to keep becoming a successful entrepreneur. I currently spend half my time learning more and developing my skills further. I can already offer accurate reading and make my clients happy, so possibly I can use the time to take in more clients to make more money, but I don’t think that is a wise approach.
Also, I think a lot how I want to develop my niche further. For example, do I want to keep this business to myself or do I want to partner up and carve out a bigger niche? I don’t have a written business plan – I prefer to keep things fluid at this time – but I do have ideas how to serve more clients.
Are you finding a niche you can market? Then read on to Part 3.
Related reading: Why I Couldn’t Become An Entrepreneur Earlier How I missed out the opportunities before. Learn from my mistakes and fears.
If you like this article, you might enjoy my eBook on spiritual entrepreneurship. Click here for free, immediate download
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Hi Akemi. I understand this very well. In fact, I could easily say ditto to #1 to 4. And I believe # 4 resonates most strongly. I am working on a niche but “the buns are still in the oven” so to speak.
I appreciated the Akashic Reading we shared. I gained a lot of clarity about myself and strangely, a lot of the information I “knew” but your reading helped me to remember. I have recommended you to at least 5 people.
[...] Yes To Me – Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship. Akemi is one of the blogger I really like to meet some day. She has a lot of too offer and she has [...]
Hi Akemi – it sounds like your difficulties with your coaching business happened for a purpose – to bring you to the niche you’re now in.
I think you kind of flung yourself in at the deepend before. You hadn’t clearly identified your target market and you didn’t have a lot of marketing experience.
Like you said – a big part of business is about learning and improving all the time – especially when it comes to sales and marketing. It looks like you’ve picked a great niche now and with effective marketing, you’ll sky rocket.
Marketing can take time – you may not see the benefits of some of the marketing activities you do now for three months but stick at it. It will be worth it.
Akemi, before when you mentioned you were going to talk about a failed business, I didn’t think that meant your life coaching business. I had no idea you were a “failed life coach.” On the other hand, you took roughly the same idea and tweaked it to become one of the best Akashic record readers out there. (I have to say “one of” because now I know about Anna Conlan and I don’t want to play any ranking game!) Anyway, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs!
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Davina,
I know. I’m leaning toward #4, too ^_^
And thank you for your referral. Quite a few people say the same — that my reading helps to remember the things they have pushed out from their mind (partly because they didn’t know how to deal with them).
Best wishes to your business development!
Cath,
Thank you for your encouragement. Marketing is new to me and still a biggie. I’m learning to do it with pride and confidence.
Hunter,
Well, calling my coaching business as failure may be a quick judgment, and I’d like to think it didn’t take off (at least for the time being) for a reason . . .
Anna is great! We are in the same school, and I’ve personally exchanged reading with her. We are both wonderful ^_^ and we know we don’t need to compete against each other. We believe clients pick the right reader for a reason.
Hey Akemi, like everyone else said, the four points are probably universal to every one. How do we balance #4 and #3 though? If we are meant to do something else, maybe we are hurting ourselves by not giving up heh. This is something I am struggling with when people ask me for advice – when to give up? when to keep going? Your readers really appreciate your ability to be honest with your examples – great stuff.
Albert | UrbanMonk.Nets last blog post..Reader Discussion: Ask Me Anything You Want
Albert,
I think that comes as inner knowing. It doesn’t make much sense to apply external standards, like we must try such and such length of time, or we must try until we exhaust such and such resources, etc. But people tend to seek answer outside and mistrust the inner knowing. That is the real challenge.
I don’t think it’s about calling yourself a “failed life coach”. You are still involved in the business of helping others in personal change; except that you’ve redesigned and restyled yourself as an Akashic record reader. Good for you!
Evelyn,
Thank you for your kind words. Failures sound bad — but for me, they are ways to learn more. And this article is just about for now — someday, I may do “coaching” I think.
[...] Polish your niche. [...]
Hi Akemi,
It’s always nice to see kind comments of others – the esteem goes both ways
Niche is something I was learning about last weekend at my business workshop. Apparently, the more specialized you can make your niche, the more successful you are…what do you think?
Hey Anna, my buddy,
I think the more specialized you are, the easier and more effective the marketing becomes. For example, there are so many life coaches out there. Everyone has heard a pitch like “Improve your life — I can help — tap into happiness”. People have become kind of numb to a sales pitch like this. But if someone says “I help empty-nesters reorganize their lives and prepare for fulfilling retirement” the people who fall into this categories will realize it’s about them.
Does this make the specialized business more successful? Maybe. If the niche is well chosen (the niche market needs to be substantial and can afford the kind of business you are offering, and the niche needs to match your personality) and if the other aspects of the business such as financials and quality of the products or services are sound.
Akemi
This is exactly the stage I am at right now in trying to define my niche more clearly. The questions I answered in part one were very similar (almost identical with an exception of the music part and loving to write). Reading the Secret really changed my way of thinking and I found myself spreading the word through the office I work at. For an entire month, it felt like I was on a permanent high after I read the book and watched the movie. I felt so wonderful, like nothing to could bring me down. I am a cross between an introvert and extrovert. I love being around people, but there are other times I would rather be alone. I have the innate ability to relate and understand people without judging. I am a very compassionate person and love to see people happy. This is where I thought I could fit into life coaching. On to part 3
Kristy,
The Secret changed my life, too. I bought the audio CDs in July 07. By October, I was out of the corporate world and moved myself across the continent to Oregon!
This process of polishing the niche is critical, and something that I don’t think is discussed so often.