Your Niche Unlocks Everything About Your Side Hustle

Why is niching so critical to your side hustle?

Are you worried about niching? When starting a side hustle, niching can feel like you’re building a fence that cuts people out.

But that’s not how it works - let me explain...

What determines your success isn’t casting the net wide, but going deep. Niching is your opportunity to get to know your clients on a deeper level.

This means you can talk to them in a way that really resonates. That’s just one reason why determining your audience is so important!

Here's to unlocking your niche!

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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey, risers. Welcome back to episode 112, one hundred and twelve, one-twelve, whatever of Empathy Rising. I feel like I have not been at the mic with you guys in forever, which I actually haven't since I started batching my podcast and switching more from a time blocking management kind of way of looking at my schedule to more of a batching way of looking at my schedule.

It has been quite some weeks since I've sat down here. I actually had to reset up in my closet. You guys know I record in the closet of my master bedroom, so I had to get things out and reset it up, after the first time in a long time where I actually put stuff away. Cause normally I'm recording more frequently.

It's super exciting to be back at the mic with you guys. And I miss it and I'm happy to be here sharing some more information. I'm excited about today because I really think that niching is something that everybody talks about, and we don't always understand the reasons behind it. 

In fact, a couple of weeks ago(several weeks ago when I recorded it, but it went live a couple of weeks ago) I was talking about what we need to look for when we're defining our niche. Which is not only demographics but the psychographics, the emotional experience of that ideal customer that we're thinking. And so today I wanted to sit back down and talk a little bit more about this topic because as you can tell by the title, your niche really does unlock everything about your side hustle. Your niche unlocks everything about your business.

And for those of you who are getting into your private practice and if you use coaching or anything like that, or followed any of the big practice builders when you were building, they talked about your therapy niche and your ideal client, meaning your ideal therapy client.

And so this concept isn't new, but I want to talk about how it really propels your side hustle forward and how it is one of the kind of dominos that has to fall as you're building your side hustles so that you can get to the income state faster, easier, more effectively, and the impact stage faster and easier and more effectively.

So that's what we're going to talk about today is how your niche unlocks everything. The first question I want to start with, which is going to seem like a roundabout way of getting to the point (but it'll make sense, I promise) is if you guys have noticed the difference in Facebook ads lately, the Facebook ads that you were seeing in your feed, and this is Facebook and Instagram ads, so whichever platform that you are spending more time on. 

Earlier this year, there was a big update with Apple and Facebook as part of the litigation that happened in 2018, I believe where Apple, if you're an Apple phone user and I'm not exactly sure how this affects Android, but I know it was the apple update, the iOS update that came out recently.

You can now let your phone know whether you want to be targeted by companies. I can't remember what the pop-up is, but it says something like: do you want to allow this company to target you? That's not what it says, but that's what it's basically asking you. And there've been several times when I've said no.

And a few times where I've said yes because I do want to continue to see more about that company or companies like it. And holy moly, I would say I really noticed in the last 10 days, two weeks, the ads that I am seeing on Facebook are completely different than what I was seeing a month ago or six weeks ago.

And for me, that's a really positive thing because by self-selecting no, I don't want to see this, yes I do want to see this, I'm really liking the ads that I'm seeing and I've spent more money. I have spent more money based on the ads that I've seen. So what is coming up in my feed now is a really pretty planner.

It's gorgeously designed and it's not only a planner, but it's a membership site around planning which I'm like, hello, this is right up my alley for what I want to do. But also something that (hint, hint) I'm thinking about offering in the future. I don't have a date on it yet, but some sort of lifestyle, life coaching membership. You guys have heard me talk about the fact that I want to have a life coaching offer and focusing on the lifestyle side of things a little bit more.

And now I'm seeing ads for the program I was thinking, so it allows me to not only be really interested in it, but it also allows me to be like what else is on the market. I also keep seeing the same ad for a crystal subscription box. And so they send you like a crystal and a smudge stick and a meditation ritual and something new every month, it's a subscription box.

And I am super tempted to sign up for both of these things. I see their ads probably four or five times a day, and I'm like, oh, I'm like this close to pulling the trigger on it. But something that I did pull the trigger on, and my birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I'm sure that's probably how they started targeting me.

And I also have said yes to seeing things about crystals and whatever. So this birthdate candle company popped up on my feed and I bought it right away. And so it customizes with your birthdate your star sign and stuff like that. And then it's supposed to be the scent that is really customized to you.

And I don't know how they do that based on your birth date or whatever. But when I read what was in the sent mine was like sandalwood, lemon and orchid. And based on like perfumes I've bought in the past, that I've liked and stuff. I was like, this actually sounds like something I'm really going to enjoy.

So I don't know what the freaking, like, science is behind that, but I bought it immediately when I saw the ad for it. The reason I'm talking about this is because it does really bring us to our topic today because it is so obvious to these customers that I am there or to these companies that I am their ideal customer.

There is no doubt in my mind that I would end up buying from these companies. It's just a matter of, do I want to do it right now? Do I want to sign up for two subscriptions right now and have a monthly fee coming out of my bank account? That's why I bought the candle because it was like a one-time purchase.

The reason I'm on the fence with these other two is cause I just don't know if I want a recurring payment right now. But I'm happy when I see their ads. I'm like, oh yeah, that's that cute thing. I keep looking at it; I'm excited by them. I will most likely end up becoming a customer of theirs.

And they know who their ideal customer is, and it is making them super easy or making it super easy for them so almost guarantee a sale. Like I'm pretty much going to buy these things, like pretty much sold on it. I love pretty design. I love personal growth. I love crystals and wooey things.

There's no doubt that they are in the right place in front of the right person. By knowing these things about me and creating an ideal customer profile of people who are similar to me, that ideal customer avatar that we talked about a couple of episodes ago, these businesses are able to play something.

They are confident I will love it and they're able to put it right in front of me, which greatly increases their chance of a sale. They're pretty darn confident that they're going to get some sales. So this is the reason that knowing your niche unlocks everything about your side hustle. We're going to keep talking about this, something that we've firmed up this year on the podcast really is that we want to make both an impact and an income from our side hustles, right? Both money and reach are important. Making money without being grounded in our values isn't fulfilling. 

We've talked about that, but we've also talked about the fact that neither is doing a bunch of work for free, right? We're not here to recreate a hobby or to be doing this for fun. We're here to monetize this, but we want that monetization to be grounded in value. To be authentic and to be helpful to other people. So our Side Hustle really is both of those things. Adding a revenue stream and helping people in new creative, fun, and lighter ways.

And I think that's the key here. Helping people in new, more creative, more fun, or lighter ways. And that has to come from defining a niche that supports a new way of working, a more creative way of working, a funner way of working, a lighter way of working. When the niche is off, you can end up... there's a lot of things you can end up doing, which we're going to talk about in just a minute, but what's great about online income is that we have so much more ability to shape and create what we want. 

You can work with anybody you want to, you can work with them however you want to. We're no longer in these parameters of what is therapy, what is allowed, what isn't allowed, who can I work with? Who can't I work with? We've stepped outside of that box. 

That box also gives us structure. That box also gives us parameters that sometimes make it easier to operate in and sometimes make it easier to work within. So sometimes when you step out of the box, you're stepping out because you want this freedom.

You want this ability to call your own shots and all of those things. However, when you step out onto that frontier it's like the wild west, right? When people left the east and migrated west, they were leaving the structure, the literal infrastructure, but the structure of the lives they'd left behind.

And then they were looking out at this, like, wild frontier. Yes, there was an unlimited possibility of what they could create, what they could build. However, you're staring at this blank vastness of planes and desert and mountains that you've never seen before, really freeing to step outside of our box of what's allowed in our therapy industry.

It can also be really overwhelming to look out and see just like this unlimited vastness of options. The freedom is amazing, but it can also really keep us from getting started because we just look out and we're just like, okay, now what is next? So this is why I think parameters can be good. They do give us a map or a starting place, or they give us kind of boundaries that we can work within the structure that we can work within.

But the best parameter or the best thing about these parameters in online income is that you get to say what they are. You get to put them however far out, however close, however triangle-shaped, however oblong, right? Like you, you get to set your boundaries, you get to define what this looks like. I do think that the best parameter to start with is niche.

And that's what we're going to talk about today. Once you've got your niche dialed in, everything else falls into place, and that first domino. I talk a lot about the dominoes falling, right? It is the first domino and it's really what kicks off all the other dominoes falling into place. If we don't have a niche, we don't have that structure that gives us a map of where to go but also makes things clear enough for us to move forward.

We don't know exactly what we're operating. We're staring at a wild frontier and we don't know where the rivers are, where the mountains are, where the coyotes are, where the snakes are. If we have the niche and it gives us these parameters, we now know what we're operating in. We know what we're quote-unquote, up against. We know a little bit about what to expect.

When you don't nail down your niche this is where I feel like you end up with a side hustle where that impact that we're going for and that income that we're going for, it's where it's hard-saw and hard-won, right? You can't make an impact on a group of people or a much bigger group of people than you do with your therapy practice if you don't know who those people are. 

We cannot impact people without knowing what people we are trying to impact. And we certainly can't then monetize that impact. We can't charge money for that impact if we don't know who's going to buy it. We need to know who's going to buy it. We need to know what their purchasing power is.

We need to know what they can afford. We need to know what they want and what they need to buy. These are all questions that not only dictate who we can help but also how can we help them? And if we don't know who they are, then we can't move on to either of those things. We have nowhere to start if we don't have a niche. 

What I have done in the past and what I've seen a lot of other people do when you don't have a clear niche is you waste a ton of time. You waste a ton of energy and you don't know if anything's working right. That domino analogy that I share with you guys often on this show is dominos are measurable. If three fall and the fourth one doesn't fall down, then we know that's where we need to go back and adjust. 

But if we don't have that first domino to kick everything off, then we're never going to have any idea. If anything is working, if anything's measurable, if we're going to end up with the complete picture at the end. So we have to get that first domino.

The other thing that happens when you don't have a niche is that every sale you get will feel like a flip cause it'll be like I have no idea how that happened. I don't know how that person found me. I don't know why that person bought from me. Woo-hoo I had some money coming in, but I have no idea how to replicate that and how to make it happen again.

And your reach will also stay small. It feels counter-intuitive because niching often triggers people's scarcity. So we think when we are closing in those boundaries, when we are defining what those boundaries look like, that we are reducing our options, right? We're staring out at this frontier.

And the second we build a fence, it's oh, I can't go past that fence. And I can't go see what's over that hill or that mountain, it feels closing off. But I will tell you from personal experience and from my students that it's not about going wide. It's about going deep. And when you have a single niche and you have those parameters, you are able to serve that one population.

And I'll tell you, there are a lot more people in your population than you think there are. Even in the most narrow niche, there are enough people in that narrow niche to help you have a booming, successful business. I talk not only to therapists. I talk to therapists who usually are already in private practice who are so full in private practice or burnt out with private practice that they're looking for something new and that something new is an online income stream.

Like my niche doesn't get much more narrow than it could, it's pretty much as pinpoint, dialed in as it possibly could be. And I have a multi-six figure business. I have a business that's scalable. It could be any size. I want it to be, right? Even with the tiniest of niche. 

Now I know these things: your reach will stay small, that sales will feel like a fluke, that you'll feel like you're wasting a ton of time and energy and not knowing if anything is working because before I had this therapist niche, I was in the mom coaching space. And you guys should know if you're new, if you're new to this show, you're probably hearing this the first time. But if you've been with me for a while, that I've been an online income for almost seven years now. Cause yeah, so we will be seven in August. 

So about seven years now. And I started because I had a brand new baby with health concerns and my agency basically said you can't take... you can't have any more time off to take your daughter to specialists appointments. So you're going to have to figure out how your daughter is going to get to her appointments and how you're going to see your clients. So I basically left my agency at that point and I was a new mom. And was like what can I do? Let me just coach moms.

They say when you're writing, write what you know. For me, it was like, start a business with what, and so I started coaching moms, I was like, I'm a mom coach. Come work with me. Yeah. I have a new baby too. Let's be friends. And let me help you and you'll pay me.

Like I had no solid problem that I was solving for these moms. I had no certain type of mom that I was helping. And goodness gracious, there's certainly a ton of types of moms, right? There's crunchy moms or stay-at-home moms. There's working moms. There's religious moms. There's... oh my gosh. There is so many subsets of this mom niche that I didn't even connect.

Literally, I just went into Facebook groups and it was like, hey, does anybody know a new mom who needs help? I'll help you. And I think like in the first six months when I was going about it this way I made, I remember I made a $77 sale because like I said, I'm going to do my beta program. It's normally $500, but I'm gonna do it for $77.

And someone bought it. And I was like, oh my God. And then I was like, but wait, like how can I do that again? I can't just randomly spew my stuff and all of these Facebook groups back then, there were no rules about promotion and things like that in Facebook groups. There are now. So I was just, like, posting random stuff and I made one $77 sale.

And then a few weeks later I made a sale at the full price, the 497$. And this was for like, huge old coaching package guys. That would normally be in the thousands of dollars. And my full price was 497. But those sales were over like six weeks. There was no consistency. I still had no idea how I was going to replicate it, how I was going to build it, how I was going to make it cohesive, how I was going to make an actual business out of that.

Because while almost 600 bucks was great, it certainly wasn't like a business. It was like grocery money. Which could be someone's goal. It just wasn't my goal. When I figured out my niche, obviously, like I said, I have a super-duper pinpoint niche right now. And I have an actual business with recurring revenue with, continued inquiries with new prospects every day with new potential sales every day and things like that.

So once you figure out your niche, you are able to create the lighter lifestyle that you're really looking for. I really feel like the journey begins with the niche, right? It's like the map for the journey. There's still a ton of ways to go, right? You still have to build your sales funnel. You still have to come up with your marketing plan.

You still have to come up with what your offer is for that niche and what problem you're solving for that niche. But you have direction now. You know who you want to help and what you want to help them with. And then you can start from there. There's definitely ways to go. But the effort you put in will have a purpose, right?

You will know what your intentions are from your marketing. You will know what your intentions are from your sales and all of those things. You'll also be able to measure. You'll be able to see, okay, I'm talking to this person with this type of message. How effective was that? Okay, let me change the message and try this one.

Was that one more effective or less effective, right? We will be able to measure things and have data and you will lead to results right? In this therapist niche, I've worked with therapists for almost four years now. I literally think of the age of my children and that tells me how long I've been doing this.

I guess three and a half years. Cause Logan's four, so three and a half years. I've been working with therapists now and I've had pivots in that time, I haven't done the exact same thing. Over three years, I started by writing for therapists. I then had a course for marketing for therapists, and now I have pivoted into the Side Hustle stuff into the online income stuff, which is where I really shine. Where I believe I have the most knowledge and where I believe I give the best results.

By knowing my person, I was able to make those pivots. I knew my person, therefore I knew what problems they were having. I knew what outcomes they were looking for, and it has made it so this business has continued to grow and I have been able to continue to change what I'm doing maybe or try something new, have that creativity, have that flexibility. I can always pretty much count on it working because I know my niche.

So it might sound like I'm exaggerating when I say your niche unlocks everything, but I'm really not. I really don't feel like I am, it's hyperbole, but it's not because I want to walk through all of the things that fall into place once you've landed on your niche. So the first thing is how to create your program, right? 

Once you know the person, you now know what they want, what they need, what they desire, what they're afraid of, what they worry about, what keeps them up at night, what makes them feel fulfilled? What makes them feel happy? What makes them feel joyful? Both sides of the equation, what they are struggling with and you know what they are seeking.

Their problem and the promise to make for them. That's the language that I use: problem and promise. But if you know their struggle and you know what they're seeking, you can then become a resource for them. That resource could be a course. That resource could be a membership site. That resource could be one-on-one coaching, whatever - the resource can change.

But what we know is that the person and the problem and the promise are dialed in, that part is what gives you the parameters. And you can show up for that person and that problem and that promise however, and you can change your mind and you can try a couple of different things. But within that niche, within those parameters, you have a lot more room to play and there is structure.

Okay. The other thing program-related that falls into place is your price, right? Let's go with the mom niche, right? If you are really passionate about stay at home moms, okay? If you're really passionate about stay-at-home moms, then you know that you have probably a one-income household from the partner from the other parent is probably the one who is working outside of the home, maybe inside of the home, but still there's usually one income.

Now, if that stay at home mom's partner is a doctor, a psychiatrist, a hedge fund manager, a realtor in today's market, but maybe not in a different market, right? If your partner has affluence, if that partner has a high paying or is a high earning individual, we talk to that stay at home mom very differently.

She can afford very different things, even though she is not necessarily drawing in an income. Now let's say you have that stay at home mom, the partner is the one who is bringing in the income at this time. And the partner is a fifth-grade teacher. Okay, very different spending potential. Very different purchasing power.

These are things that we need to understand when we're setting our price. These are things we need to understand when we are working within those parameters. Yes, I'm going to throw a wrench in the situation, right? You've got your person, your problem, your promise, you really enjoy and want to do one-on-one coaching.

However, your person's purchasing power is not thousands of dollars. That is typically what coaching one-on-one coaching demands. Then we've got a little bit of a conundrum and we've got some variables to play with, right? Perhaps you change your niche a little bit. Perhaps you change your program a little bit.

Perhaps you change your price a little bit. All of that can be tweaked and adjusted. Each of those are different variables, but we're still within the parameters of who you want to help and why you want to help them. Okay, so your program is still unlocked by your niche. What you're going to help them with, what problem you're going to solve for them,

what promise you're going to make to them, what price you're going to charge them, the impact and the income - we have to know who the person is. Once we know that, the last thing to do in the program category is then go and find validation. We need to get validation from potential buyers because everything else is hypothetical.

Even my students inside of Side Hustle, and we're working on this together, live their lives. Do you think this will work? Or what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And I'll look at them and I say here's what I think. But remember, this is all hypothetical. The only person who can give you the real answer is a potential ideal customer.

Somebody who's actually a person who has the potential to enroll in your program. And until you're talking to them, all the data that you're getting, all the ideas that you're getting are guesses. They may be educated guesses, but they're still guesses, right? So we need to be able to find these people and go directly talk to them.

If we don't know who they are, we won't be able to find them. We won't be able to talk to them. We won't be able to validate our program, which is really an essential step before you take your program to market. So then moving on, talking about taking a program to market, how do we market the niche unlocks marketing as well.

Your niche tells you where to market. Okay, so running let's pick a different niche than the mom niche. Let's pick teachers, let's pick educators. I have a student in Side Hustle right now and her program focuses on educators. So teachers with, like, teacher burnout. Let's do that teacher burnout, teacher self-care. Okay, so where to market to these teachers? First of all, where are they? Are there teacher Facebook groups?

Are there teacher podcasts? Are there teacher Instagram accounts that are really popular? Are there teacher forums on Reddit? Are there teacher Listserv’s or chat rooms or things like that? Clubhouse? Are there teacher clubhouse rooms, right? Yes to all of those, but if we don't know who we're talking to, we don't know where to go.

If our target market is teachers and we're on a podcast for entrepreneurs, we're missing the mark. There may be some random overlap of one teacher who is starting a business on that podcast, but that's not our core demographic. That's not who we're trying to speak to. 

So by knowing our person, we then know where to show up so that we're making an impact on the listeners or the readers or the viewers or whatever so that we're reaching the right people so that we're able to monetize that impact, right? 

If we're talking to the wrong person, if we're missing the mark, it's going to be ineffective. We're not going to know if it's working and it's going to take a lot of energy to even get one sale one time. So knowing where to market. Also, if you're going to be creating your own content, if you want to create your own podcast, your own blog, your own social media posts, your own YouTube videos, right?

Knowing where your people are for me, if your audience is teenagers, you're not going to be on Facebook. You're going to be on TikTok, right? If your audience is really looking for aspirational type of content, Pinterest would be a good place for you, right? So we need to know who our person is so we can put our stuff in the right place, whether it's going on other people's platforms and using visibility marketing, or whether it's using content marketing that we create ourselves.

If it's in the wrong spot, it's pointless. It's a complete waste of your time, your effort, and your energy if the person you need to see it isn't going to stick. Also under the category of marketing is what are we talking about? What are we going on? These podcasts and sharing tips for, what are we writing on our own Instagram platforms?

What are we creating TikToks or reels or any of that stuff about, we need to know our person. We need to know our person. We need to know their struggle and what they're seeking so that we can answer those questions so that we can show up as a resource. Showing up as a resource and offering them what they need. We need to know who. Them and who they are. If we don't know that we cannot show up as a resource for the right person. 

Okay, the last piece that knowing your niche makes possible is selling. If you are selling a program that is not positioned for your niche or vice versa, selling a program that is positioned for someone else, then you're not going to have sales and sales equals yes, money, but it also equals impact because if you're not getting people into the programs, you're not helping anybody.

So sales helps you do both. It helps you bring in revenue and it helps you help people. The first thing about sales is how you're positioning your program. How are you talking about it? A great example of this is Summer Slowdown.

I positioned Summer Slowdown talking about the fact that our therapy caseloads tend to drop in the summer. That wouldn't necessarily be true for maybe other businesses. If I was talking to a water park and I was like, yeah, let's have a Summer Slowdown. The waterpark would be like, I don't know what you're talking about.

We sure as heck don't slow down in the summer, right? This is our busiest season, right? Our busiest time. It's the summer. So the positioning of that program worked because I knew who I was talking to. I also think that sales can come in the form of cash injections, quick buys, quick things to say. And you might need to know that about your ideal customer thinking of an offseason, when's it on season, right?

If your customers are teachers, are there times of the year where they're looking for your program? They might be looking for your program in the summer because it's the time when they take off. So that's when they're looking for continuing education, that's when they do self-care. That's when they focus on themselves because they have the time off of work.

Another example is if you... let's say you made candles or you add a product, teachers might buy them for during administrators week or something like that. National principal's day or something like that. That might be a good time to market to your people, to sell to your people.

But if you don't know your people, you won't know those times, those dates, those places where you could inject cash, where you could have sales, where you could increase revenue or have a bigger launch based on your ideal customer. And speaking of launches, we need to know how to best invite your people into your program.

There's a lot of buzz out there going on about removing sales calls, selling programs without sales calls. And I will never take sales calls out of the process of my sales because I know that my people want to talk to me about my program. They want to be able to ask me questions. They want to know if it's the right fit for them. They want to hear me explain the details. They want to ask questions on the fly. All of those things are really important to my people. 

And so I wouldn't change my sales process based on the advice of somebody who doesn't understand my niche now. If I didn't know my niche enough, I might be like, oh, okay. This guru says this is the thing to do, so I'm going to do it. And it would feel totally inauthentic and totally unaligned with the people who come to me as a resource. 

So to summarize everything, your niche unlocks elements of the program that you create. It unlocks how you market that program and it unlocks how you sell that program.And sales contribute not only to your income, but it contributes to your impact as well. So I really stand firmly behind this statement that your niche unlocks everything about your side hustle.

 So I'm really excited because speaking of Summer Slowdown, workshop two is just a couple of weeks away. And in the Summer Slowdown Series, we do believe that your niche unlocks everything for your online income stream.

And so I really think that this second workshop is going to be a really big turning point for a lot of people. We're going to nail down that niche. We're going to talk about where to find them, how to talk to them, what problem we're solving for them. And most importantly, how to make sure that your online income niche is lighter and contributing to a lighter lifestyle than your therapy niche might be. 

So if you've already grabbed your ticket for the workshop series, you're good to go. You're going to start getting emails from me soon about workshop two. And if you have any homework and those kinds of things, but if you haven't already gotten your ticket, you can still join us.

You get instant access to replay number one. We had a spreadsheet to work through, a tutorial to work through, and then of course the recording of our workshop itself. You get instant access to that and then you'll be able to join us for the second workshop that's coming up in July, as well as the third workshop that is coming up in August.

So you have not missed your chance to participate in Summer Slowdown at all. There's still time to unlock your Side Hustle this summer and address the three bite-sized action steps that are going to help you make huge momentum. 

So if you want your ticket, if you haven't grabbed one yet and you do want to join us for workshop two live, head on over to Marissalawton.com/summer.And we'll see you there. Until then keep on rising. 

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