Welcome to Effortlessly Productive with Annie Veblen McCarty, where we dive into the art and science of mastering your time and boosting your productivity without the burnout.
Join Annie as she explores practical tips, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you streamline your tasks, prioritize effectively, and get more done with less stress.
Whether you're juggling work, family time, or just trying to find more time for what matters most, our conversations will empower you to work smarter, not harder.
Tune in and discover how to make productivity not just a goal, but a way of life!
How to Find Your Niche: The Journey to Authentic Productivity and Fulfillment
•Annie Veblen McCarty•Episode 25
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What if the secret to becoming effortlessly productive lies not in following conventional advice but in breaking free from it? Join me as I share my journey as a certified master coach and seasoned entrepreneur, uncovering how targeting broad audiences like "busy moms" can actually dilute your message and stifle your success. This episode sheds light on the pitfalls of traditional niche-finding methods, offering a bold alternative through hands-on experimentation. By working with diverse clients, you'll discover what truly excites you and aligns with your passions, crafting a more authentic and fulfilling business path.
Let's embark on a dynamic exploration of how understanding your unique offerings and identifying your ideal clients can revolutionize your business strategy. Forget abstract personas; the key is experimenting with different activities, products, and programs to find what truly resonates with you. This approach not only helps define your niche but also makes your business more aligned with who you are. Revel in the process of discovering the clients you're eager to serve, and watch your productivity soar. We invite you to share your insights and outcomes from this journey in the comments, fostering a community of bold, authentic entrepreneurs.
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Hey, this is Annie Veblen-McCarty and I'm gonna teach you how to be effortlessly productive. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and I got sick and tired of experts preaching what business and life should look like and what I should be doing as a leader and to turn a profit, only to find myself wasting time, burned out, feeling inauthentic and still not making any money. On this show, we are ditching the shoulds. I'm giving you permission to do business differently. As a certified master coach, I believe that everything you need to have success and build the life and business of your dreams is already living on the inside. I'm going to empower you to lean into what you do best, help you see your path forward clearly and give you the strategy and action steps along the way to become effortlessly productive. Let's dive in. Welcome to this episode of Effortlessly Productive. Today, we are going to be talking about a buzzword you probably have heard a lot in growing your business how to find your niche. There is a lot of information out there. There are so many trainings. I have done so many trainings myself on finding your niche. So your niche? If you were like what the heck are you talking about? I've never heard that word before it basically is who you work with in your business, who you are speaking to, who you are targeting, who your customers are and for some businesses out there, there may be some of you listening today and you were like well, I know exactly who I work with and it's very easy for you to be very specific because of the nature of your business. However, I know there are a lot of people out there who are like well, I work with busy moms. I've heard that a lot and it's like okay, well, let's think about the percentage of women over the age of 20 who are moms. It's a pretty large percentage, especially if we go like over the age of 30. It's pretty high. Right, there are a lot of women who are moms. And what mom do you know who is not busy? Every single mom I know. And I hate the word busy, by the way, little PS, I absolutely do not like that word. I will do another episode on why I don't like that word so much. However, what mom does not have a lot going on? Stay-at-home mom? You have a lot going on. Soccer mom, like carpool mom, you have a lot going on. Working mom, you have a lot going on Volunteering mom, you have a lot going on. Soccer mom, like carpool mom, you have a lot going on. Working mom, you have a lot going on. Volunteering mom, you have a lot going on. Everybody has a lot going on, and so when we say like, oh, I work with busy moms, you have not really narrowed very much down.
Speaker 1:
You are speaking to such a large audience. Now why is this important? Why is it important to speak to a specific person? Because when we try to speak to everyone, we have to be so general with our language, with what it is that we offer we're really thinking about our customer journey and our offers. We have to be so broad and general to make it make sense for everybody that it just becomes a bunch of noise. It's not actually specific enough to grab anybody's attention, and that's why I find that people really struggle with finding a niche, with finding those people to speak to, because often what they have picked as their niche, it's so broad that they really haven't niched out. They have not understood their specialty and who they help and how they help them. That is why it's important to drill down to that Now I will say, on the other hand, I am not a fan of the traditional trainings of find your niche, and the reason I am not a fan of them is because often what they have you do is think about who this person is, how old they are, put a name to them, where do they live, how much money do they make, what are the clothes that they wear, and we're really just surface level, creating this ideal person, which there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
Speaker 1:
But often I have found people go through these trainings and they have this picture and this person that they've named and they know how old they are. Still it's not helping them really narrow down into an exact person that they hope to serve. It more is just like oh well, they wear Lululemon clothing. That's great. Millions of people across the world wear Lululemon and I love Lululemon. That's fantastic. But so do I know men who love Lululemon and I love Lululemon. That's fantastic. But so do like I know, men who love Lululemon. My 12-year-old daughter loves Lululemon and so if you're looking at that, you're like okay, well, are you speaking to a 12-year-old, a 44-year-old woman, or like a 30-year-old man who loves their athletic wear as well? We've not actually really narrowed it down With business owners.
Speaker 1:
People get very stuck. They're like I can't create anything until I have my niche, until I know who I'm working with, and I think this is the wrong approach. If you've been listening to me for a while or watching me for a while, you know I do not use wrong a lot, because I think that so many different things work for different people. However, I think it is wrong to try to figure that out in your brain. The way that we figure out who we want to work with and who we want to help is by going out there and working with people and being like, oh, that session that I had, that coaching session with her, I loved that. Or when I talk to him about this specific topic, I never want to do this again Like no, thank you, do not want to do that. And so we try to figure it out without actually doing it and seeing what we enjoy.
Speaker 1:
So my first piece of advice is to figure out your niche. Go out there, work with a bunch of different people on a bunch of different things and see what you enjoy doing, see what comes naturally to you, see who is receptive to it. Because, again, I often have found people are like I work with busy stay-at-home moms, and there's nothing wrong with busy stay-at-home moms, but again, this is very broad. Number two maybe if somebody is a stay-at-home mom, they're not able or willing to invest huge amounts of money into whatever it is that your program is if you have a high ticket program, because they are earning their own income and it's not that we don't want to help them, but maybe what your goals are for your business are not in alignment with the people that you have in your head that you want to help.
Speaker 1:
Argument two is seeing who is attracted to what it is that we want to do, and so I more encourage you to go out there and experiment and try some things. I also know people who have been like I want to launch a group mastermind and they launch it and they're like oh, I do not want to do this, this is not my thing at all. They want to do live masterclasses and they get on there and they're like I am absolutely terrified of public speaking and I never want to do that again. So let's say you've built your business around, that you now have to go back and completely reverse engineer. And again, I encourage you to get out there and experiment. Please go experiment before you launch something that's going to be like your forever program or offer or product, let's make sure that you actually enjoy doing it and the people that you want to help actually have a need for it, and then we can figure out what is going to be our forever thing or if that even is the kind of person we want to work with. So go out there, talk to people, play around with it, experiment, get on the phone or on Zoom with as many people as you humanly possibly can and listen, ask questions and listen to what it is that they need, what support they need, and tune into yourself. Did you have more energy coming off of that session in that conversation with them? Or if you're offering a product?
Speaker 1:
That time that you were in there selling your product, were you like yes, that is what I want to do forever. That was amazing. Or were you like I never want to do that again? I absolutely hated making that product. I absolutely hated trying to sell that. Then let's move on. We can find other things.
Speaker 1:
And that's not a sign that what you're doing is wrong. It's not a sign that we are doing like you aren't meant for this. It's not a sign that you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. It's just a sign that that one thing wasn't your thing and that's okay. That's why we're doing this, so that we get to figure out what is your thing. So go out there and see what you enjoy doing and see who you enjoy helping and how you enjoy helping them. What topics light you up. Your soul should be so on fire and you should be so excited about what you're doing that you just are ready to explode. And if you haven't found that yet, that's okay. Just keep going and keep trying and keep doing new, different things until you find that.
Speaker 1:
And maybe I actually had this happen recently where I was like really questioning, like what I am doing, the programs that I'm offering, what I help people with, I just don't know if it's the right thing for me. Like maybe I've totally gone off track and totally gone astray and this actually isn't what I want to be doing. And I just realized that there was this other group of people that I really wanted to be working with, and when I'm working with them, I get so excited to help them. So that was my sign of just I just need to make that little tweak, that little pivot. And it wasn't that I totally changed my niche. I actually got just a little bit more specific right. I got a little bit more specific on the exact type of entrepreneur that I want to be working with and that got me so excited for what is to come. And that's how I know that I was making the right choice and the right decision in the direction of my business and these new offers that I am about to launch and put out there. And if you haven't gotten that yet again, just keep pivoting, just keep going forward, just keep trying new things and experimenting. And when I say pivot, I do not mean like completely renew your entire business, just these small little, like one degree, half a degree, little shifts until you find that thing.
Speaker 1:
The other thing I also would encourage when we talk about niching is sometimes it's not a specific type of person. We so often want to put an identity onto somebody and be like. I work with women in their 40s who are going through this and have this job and have this many kids and have this income and live in this area and like all of those things. And then I've had clients who are like you know what? There's this guy who is struggling with the same thing that this other woman was that I was coaching her on or helping her with in my program. This guy's going through the same thing, but I thought my niche wasn't working with men. But I really want to help him and I really enjoyed working with him.
Speaker 1:
I'm like, okay, maybe your niche is not a specific person, like all the demographic things that you can put on them. What if your niche is helping people with a specific problem? Because there are certain things that people struggle with that go across all demographics. And, for example, let's say you work with people who are struggling with addiction. Addiction is across all different lines, across all demographics. It's not specific to men or women, people who are wealthy or people who are poor. There are people struggling with addiction all over the place. Now maybe you decide I only want to work with women with addiction, with moms with addiction, want to work with women with addiction, with moms with addiction, with single moms with addiction. We can get narrower and narrower, but maybe you decide that your niche is working with more of a thing that you want to help people with rather than a specific person, and that is okay too.
Speaker 1:
Get creative. Do not put yourself in that box of all these trainings that you have done about what your niche is. Go explore, go figure out what sets your soul on fire and just come back to these few things. I know who. I am right. We need to know who we are in our heart. I know who. I am right. We need to know who we are in our heart, who we are. We don't need to know perfectly exactly Our identity can be this kind of shifting thing.
Speaker 1:
But again, tune in, pay attention. What do I love doing? What do I keep doing? What do I get excited for? What do I dread? What parts of my business am I like? Yes, I have like a speaking gig that I am going to and that's super exciting for somebody else who might be like absolutely terrified. So I know who I am.
Speaker 1:
The next thing, I know what I do. It's really important to know what you do and who you help people with. And again, this is going to be something that evolves. This is not going to be like you can just write it out and know you're going to have to go try it out. You're going to have to go try out what it is that you like doing, what products do you like making. What offers and programs do you love teaching and putting out there? So go experiment. But you're going to start to phone in little by little on. I know what I do. And then who are those people that you love helping with those things? Who are those clients that you get so excited to work with, those customers that you cannot wait to share your new product with Tune into that. That is your niche. So I hope this helps. I cannot wait to hear what came out of this for you. Drop in the comments. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and I will catch you on the next episode of Effortlessly Productive.
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