#507: Niching as a personal brand: The uncomfortable conversation - Tash Corbin, Heart-Centred Business Podcast

Full article and show notes available at: tashcorbin.com/507

Niching as a Personal Brand: The Uncomfortable Conversation

Let’s talk about a topic that’s pivotal for heart-centred entrepreneurs, but often gets swept under the rug because, honestly, it feels awkward. I want to have an honest conversation with you about niching—especially if you run a personal brand.

I’m going to be upfront: recording this episode makes me noticeably uncomfortable! The “niching conversation” comes up for me every single week, and I’ve always preferred to have it privately, one-on-one, where I can tailor my approach to the person in front of me. But right now, my job is to help you, so I’m gathering my bravery and putting it out there.

First, What Does “Niching” Even Mean?

Some marketing approaches will tell you your niche is just your topic area: relationships, fitness, parenting... I don’t see it that way. For me, and for the purpose of this episode, niching is about WHO you are focused on reaching and speaking to with your marketing. It’s about the specific person you're writing for, the avatar of your ideal client, or that narrow group who most needs your work.

It’s not about “what” you do, or your modality (like kinesiology or EFT), or simply helping “anyone who wants kinesiology.” That’s not niching. I want you to get specific about who your marketing is actually trying to reach.

 ...read the full article at: tashcorbin.com/507

Join us in Noosa at the Heart-Centred Business Conference in September!

Find out more and secure your ticket at: tashcorbin.com/conference

Transcript

1:35

To say I am uncomfortable with this podcast episode would be an understatement because in today's episode of the Heart Center Business Podcast, I want to talk about the uncomfortable conversation that sometimes needs to happen when it comes to niching for online business, and particularly if you have a personal brand. And this conversation has come up for me every single week since I started my business, pretty much. And that conversation is one that I feel far more comfortable having one on one with people because it's a back and forth conversation and I can approach it as gently or as bluntly as the relationship I have with that individual person might need. And so having that conversation in a podcast at scale makes me quite uncomfortable. But I'm going to be brave because it's not about me. I'm here to help you and that's part of the conversation. So that's what we're going to do. This is episode number 507 of the Heart Centered Business Podcast, which means you can find all the links and the relevant show notes for today's episode over@tashcorbyn.com 506 and I do have a newly revamped resource for you today, so you're definitely going to want to keep note of that one. Tashcorbyn.com 507 let's do it. Hello, I'm Tash Corbin, a business strategist and mentor based on the Sunshine coast in Australia. The mission of this podcast is to help heart centered entrepreneurs to make more money and in doing so change the world for the better. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gubbi Gubbi and Jinnaburra people. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Now I'm going to apologise in advance if my voice gets high pitched or a little loud or a little shaky or I struggle to find my words in this episode because it is going to get uncomfortable. But before it gets uncomfortable, I want to start off by making sure we're on the same page when it comes to niching. And by the same page I mean let's define it. There are some schools of thought in marketing and some mentors who define niche as the topic area that you focus on. So for example, relationships. But the definition of niching that I use and that we're going to be centered on today is where your niche is. The people you are focused on reaching with your marketing, the person you message to when promoting your products and services. It's who we niche to who, not what. Another approach can sometimes be niching to Your modality. So if you're a kinesiologist or an EFT practitioner, right? So your niche is anyone who wants kinesiology, but that's also not a niche. So when I define niche, we are specific about who you are focused on when you are marketing. So it's a specific person or an avatar of a person or a very narrow group of people that your messaging can then focus on. Now, the second thing I want to say about that is that you do not just tell people who your niche is, right? So I see this happen a lot where people finally decide on a niche and then they go all around the Internet saying, I help this person, I help this person. This is the person that I help. And that can contribute to a lot of people's niche resistance because they don't want to limit themselves. They don't want to run around the Internet saying I help moms of toddlers who want to get fit and healthy. That feels really uncomfortable for them and it feels like it's very limiting. In actual fact, your niche is a behind the scenes decision. And there are very few times where as a mentor, I recommend that you tell your audience who your nich are or what your niche is instead. The reason why we need to make that decision behind the scenes is because it then informs the other foundations of your business. Your messaging will struggle to be resonant and effective unless it's specifically for a certain person. Your messaging will struggle to be tangible, will struggle to really break through the noise of the Internet if it is unniched. Similarly, your offers will really struggle to convert. You'll struggle to make sales. You'll struggle to be able to craft an offer that makes a tangible promise if it doesn't have a very specific niche. And therefore you'll struggle to make sales. Similarly, your marketing decisions should be informed by your niche decisions both. But you do not need to tell everyone who your niche is. That doesn't need to form part of your messaging. Your messaging is informed by those niche decisions, but your messaging does not need to include those niche decisions. So an example of that would be making a decision that your niche is going to be people in a job who want to find their purpose in life versus your niche could be people who are in a business, they're business owners who want to find their purpose in life, right? So let's look at those two different examples. If you are someone who is really good at purpose work, you love deep diving with people in uncovering their soul's purpose and creating alignment with their purpose. You, for all intents and purposes, should be able to or could be able to help people in a job and people who have a business. Absolutely, yes, I agree with that wholeheartedly. What becomes tricky then is if you were to put a post up on social media that said, I help you find your purpose, the only people who would be keen on that would would be people who already decided that they want to uncover their purpose. And even then you might attract a lot of people who want free information about working out what their purpose is. But are they actually action takers? Are they motivated to invest? Are you able to talk about the journey of uncovering and aligning with purpose through a lens of value, when you're really just attaching everything to this hope that every person who sees it gets it and every person who sees it sees the value in it. Whereas if we were to make a decision behind the scenes that you were going to focus on people in a job who were really struggling with this concept of purpose and wanted to find their purpose and align with their purpose. If I was to ask you questions about, well, how is this showing up? What makes them want to find their purpose? What's going on at work that tells them they need to find more purpose? What is it that they feel having more purpose in their life might enable for them? Why can't they find out their purpose on their own? Why do they need to work with someone like you? The answers you would give me if we had the specifics of someone in a job would be very different to the answers you would give me if it was anyone. And even further, the more specific we get about the decision about who, the more practical, tangible and effective the message can be about the very thing you're trying to get them on board with. So that's one loosey goosey kind of example of it. Just to show you the tangibility so you don't ever have to say in your messaging, I help people in a job find their purpose. You can absolutely keep your messaging a little more broad when you're explaining what you do. But the content that you get the most traction with online, I'm going to guarantee, is not the content in which you center yourself and say, here's who I am and what I do. Have you seen content on social media where someone's talking about, here's who I am, here's what I do, and you're instantly like, oh my gosh, that's what I need, I'll buy from you. That's the exception. It's not the Rule. The content we are most drawn to online is content that's written for us, about us, to help us. So if I saw a post from you that said, you know, on the bus to work each day, you're questioning whether you can really do this for the rest of your life, that's resonant compared to I am a purpose mentor who helps people to find their purpose, their soul's purpose in life, see the difference. But in order to get to the tangible, resonant messaging, we need to make decisions about who behind the scenes. And they're not just demographic messages decisions. I've used demographic in terms of work situation as one of those examples to provide a tangible difference. But the decisions you make about who are aren't just demographic decisions. There's layers to it. Now, I won't go into the depths of how to niche. That might be the resource I have for you, but I do want to make sure that we're clear on niching, right? And the value of niching. What it is, what it isn't. It's not your message, right? Your niche is not your message. Your message is driven by and made specific by being clear about your niche behind the scenes. It's a behind the scenes decision. So niche is who you are focused on with your messaging and your marketing. Niche resistance is big and it feels very hard. And I totally understand why people feel resistant to making that decision. It feels like it's boxing you in. It feels limiting rather than freeing for a lot of people. Now, part of the reason for that is because the way you've been told to niche or what you do with those niche decisions has been limiting and it has boxed you in. Not all niching courses or niching approaches are created equally. A lot of people who come into the takeoff program who tell me beforehand, oh, I don't think I need to do the niching stuff because I've already done a lot of work on my niche. They are often the ones who are blown away by the way that I teach niching and how different it is compared to what they've done. The niching they've done in the past has been purely demographics, and it has been very boxing in and it's been very limiting. And all they've been told is to go and share that online rather than learning strategies to convert niche decisions behind the scene into deeply resonant messaging through connected conversations. That's how we do it in takeoff. But this is not a takeoff promo. So niche resistance is real. It's big, it's Hard, I totally understand, but it's not about you. And that's the crux of this awkward conversation. Because at the end of the day, in order to make the decision to niche and actually follow through with it, you need to decentre yourself in your business. And this is where it gets tricky for personal brands. Because the whole thing about having a personal brand is centering yourself in your business messaging, is centering yourself in your business content, or is it? So if we think about establishing a personal brand, what are some of the things that you are told you need to do in order to be able to stand out online and get clients? One of the key things is around positioning, positioning yourself as an expert, as an authority, as a leader. And all of those are, are making you the centered person in the conversation. So establishing a personal brand like I did when I started my business, it's Tash Corbyn. And so here I am wanting to jump up online and get clients and grow my business. And one of the most consistent pieces of advice that I got was around positioning. You need to position yourself as an authority, you need to position yourself as an expert. But there are multiple ways to do that. And the lens that I like to think of this through when it comes to niching is the lens of the hero's journey, right? And as a personal brand and as a business owner, you are going through your own hero's journey in getting your business established. You have obstacles to overcome, you have a goal of where you want to get to and you often have a sage advisor, a wise consultant or someone who helps you along your way, helps you to overcome a specific challenge. And actually, if you want to make sales, especially as a personal brand, especially if you are a service based business, you need to get out of the hero role and become the sage advisor in your client's journey. They are the hero. So you need to decentre yourself so you might face this dichotomy in your messaging and how you market yourself. I need to be this expert, this authority, this leader. I need to position myself in that way. But I also want to be advisor. I want to, once I get in relationship with someone, I'm not the hero. I'm not the center of the story. I'm the trusted advisor. And actually the answer to the dichotomy is niching. Because every advisor, every sage advisor in the hero's journey has their own backstory. And often their backstory was the perfect training for them to be the hero's advisor. And so if you are able to focus on A specific set of people, a specific niche. With your messaging, it gives context and reason to your story being part of the message. So rather than positioning yourself as the expert above the people that you are working with, patriarchal model of marketing and messaging and making sales. I'm better at this than you. I'm better at everything than you. I'm more successful than you. Therefore, you must buy from me, little minion. Instead, if we look at a more matriarchal model of business, that flat model of business, we are both whole human beings. I can be the hero and you can be my sage advisor. And in the same experience, you can be the hero and I can be your sage advisor. Because we are both whole human beings who have value to share with each other. And just because I'm good at marketing doesn't mean that I can't buy from you as a style expert. And just because you're a style expert doesn't mean that you can't buy from me as a marketing expert. Right? Like we can actually be each other's peers and still buy and sell from each other. Love that model of business. Myself. And niching is the key to making that work. Because by being very specific about who now your messaging can have context. Now the stories you share have reasons beyond pumping up your tires as the marketer, beyond blowing your own trumpet. I'm so good at this. And instead the context and the reason is so that you can be the perfect sage advisor for that person in that part of their journey, for that hero. So you're de centering yourself by niching. You're focusing on them instead of focusing on you. So for clients, they are the hero and you are just one of the potential advisors that they could get help from along the way. And the reason why they get help from you is not because you're the best at everything. It's not because you're above everyone. It's not because you can help anyone in the world. It's because it feels like you are the perfect person to help them at this stage of their journey. And the more specific you are in your niche decisions, the more you can speak to that stage of their journey, the challenges that they're facing, and the way that you are able to help them in a far more tangible, specific and resonant way. And so even in your messaging, you can probably see now how when you build a personal brand, it feels very self absorbed, right? It feels quite narcissistic often at first to try and do it. And a lot of people resist even talking about themselves in their business. And that's why a lot of people resist naming their business, their name, because it's not about me and I'm not focused on me. But then by the same token, because they don't have clarity on their niche, they feel like they have to share their own story. They have to divulge. They have to be the main character. And so they start sharing about themselves and their own experiences and what they've overcome as the reason why someone should buy from them. They're still positioning themselves as a hero. You should buy from me because I overcame this. I didn't have any money. I. I figured it out. I've got the magic keys to the kingdom. I've got the special secret process. I've got the special secret recipe. And so they're putting themselves in a position of power. But in fact, if we think about it again, through this hero's journey, that is not the reason why the hero leans on the sage advisor. It's not because they. They're the only one with the secret. It's not because they're all knowing, all powerful, all wise. Often the advisor is flawed, as is the hero. We all get to be flawed and human, and we all get to succeed and thrive and fulfill our roles. And I feel relief at knowing that. I feel relief in understanding the difference between the different options for positioning. And I would much rather position myself as a peer, as a human, as an advisor. And in order for that to resonate and to work in a messaging and marketing context, I need to niche. And in order to niche, I need to let go of being the central character. I need to let go of. Of the ego that might be keeping me trapped in thinking I am the answer for everyone. I have services that could help everyone. And really, that's the crux of this awkward conversation that I wanted to have in this podcast episode. And that is if you get the logic of niching, and if you understand that niching can be very valuable and make your messaging far more effective, if you get it at a logical level, but you're still facing niche resistance, the final piece of the puzzle, or the problem could be that you are still focused on yourself, that you are still centering yourself in this decision, and there is an ego death that may be required or a release of focusing on yourself and protecting your ego in order to actually release that resistance and finally step into making a niche decision that can inform the rest of your foundations and do it in a way that is going to create resonance in your messaging. Validated offers that people are excited to buy, and marketing that really lands and attracts and magnetizes the right people into your business. And I feel very uncomfortable saying that because in my experience of my audience, there isn't a lot of ego being thrown around. There isn't a lot of selfishness. In fact, I would say I tend to attract an audience that's far more focused on over giving and probably needs to be a little less generous and a little more focused on themselves. But this final piece of niche resistance and this being focused on yourself or your ego, it's not a conscious choice, it's an unconscious choice. And that might come from a fear that if you let it go, then you're going to not be good enough or you're limiting the potential of your business in some way, you're going to be less successful in some way. It's not going to work for you. But ultimately, hopefully, with having this conversation in this way, I've been gentle and clear enough on the value that you can see that it comes from a place of love and it comes from a space of really wanting to see you succeed. And for a lot of people, their niche resistance is the missing link between crafting messaging that resonates and messaging that just sounds like everyone else. It's the missing link between people seeing your business and going, oh, that sounds nice, or people seeing your content in your business going, I need you. You're exactly the person I need. And it's. It often comes back to niching. And the niche resistance often either comes from not getting it at a logical level, but for most people who follow me, they get it at a logical level. And then that missing piece, that final piece of the puzzle, is to stop focusing on yourself, put yourself in the sage advisor position and instead center your clients in the hero's journey. And in doing so, you need to make decisions about who that is in that hero's position. And that is not you. It's not you two years ago. It's not anyone who might benefit from your advice. It's a very specific person. Which brings me to the resource that I have to offer to go with this podcast episode. And it's the new and improved Nail your niche training. I have recently recorded this again at the start of the year. It is a little more short and sharp and punchy, but I have made it far more powerful, practical and tangible. And so hopefully you find it really helpful. I will have the link to the new nail your niche training with the show notes of today's episode over@tashcorbyn.com or 507 and I really look forward to hearing how you go with it and hearing your feedback on that new training as well. When you sign up to get the free training, you'll receive it into your inbox. You'll get emails following up as well with some extra extension exercises and questions. And I encourage you to reply to any of those questions, any of those emails. Because I want this to be a conversation and I see for myself in the next couple of years that helping people to understand the value of niching and helping people to be able to get really specific with their niching is one of the most powerful ways I can help you to make the rest of your business easier and more effective. Niching is the key to great messaging. Niching is the key to to making great marketing decisions and finding your very specific, very streamlined way that you attract and convert clients. Niching is the key to offers that people actually want to buy. Niching is the key to content that resonates. Niching is the key to audience growth. Niching is the key to all of the other parts that I see so many people struggling with in their business. And so I'm going to share about that quite consistently. And this new nail your niche training is going to be one of the pillars of that. So please, please, please do reply to my emails. Let me know how you find it. I am absolutely looking forward to having further discussions with you about it and I hope I've been gently, gently in having this awkward conversation about niching and the potential reason why it might be something that still has a little bit of a hold on you in terms of niche resistance. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart Center Business Podcast. That link one more time for show notes and to grab the new nail your niche training is tashcorbyn.com 507 and until next time, I cannot wait to see you shine. Bye for now.