Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, hey. It's Shauna A, the delightful clinician. And you are currently listening to delightful audio sodes, the email newsletter where I empower therapists to build lucrative careers and side hustles. And today we're to dive right into the importance of finding your niche and targeting your ideal audience. Here we go. So the other day, I received this email. It had a webinar in it, and it was very interesting. Of course, the webinar was really a funnel into a product that was being sold, but I took in so much confirmation from this webinar. So in the episode, the coach was sharing about their coaching program, right? And it's a four month coaching program with worth over $17,000. And I was so tickled when they mentioned that niche development was a part of the coaching program. Here's why I'm tickled. I have been talking about niche for years, y'all. I have a course on it. I have done coaching around it. I've made social media posts. I have been talking about niche for a very, very long time. And here's why. A couple of years ago, when I was still running delightful struggles, it was a blog that I had, and I was looking to take that business to the next step. And I was shopping coaches. And so when I went to this one coach, they asked me what my niche was, and I was like, you know, young adults who are struggling with the quarter life crisis. And this coach laughed at me, and I was so embarrassed. I really just turned that energy in word, and I internalized that. And the reason why they laughed at me was because they were like, well, that's not a niche. Everybody works with millennials. Every millennial is having a quarter life, cris. And that kind of just stopped me in my tracks. I had been working so hard on this blog four years. It wasn't going anywhere. And I really just felt so stuck. I, of course, stopped working on that blog completely, mostly because I was at a pivotal point in my life where I was just entering a new phase and I just left that behind. But it always stuck with me, that coach who laughed at me. And I tell this story from time to time because not only did I think that was just a really mean moment from someone who, by the way, after they laughed at me, I was on their email list. They continued to send me information about their coaching services. They were legitimately not aware that I did not want to work with this person anyway. One of the things that came out of that moment was the recognization of how important a niche is and how much. Many of us, including myself at that point in time, have no idea what a niche is. So we just make up stuff. We try and capture what it is. And I don't know why more coaches aren't just upfront and straightforward about what a niche is. Don't worry, I'm going to keep talking, but I'm going to share with you what my idea of a niche is and how you can go on building one. So I told you that story and I'm going to bring it back to this situation. I've been talking about niche for years and sometimes it feels like it falls on deaf ears. Or maybe it's just because there's so many of us out here that was just given terrible information. No matter how many times I say your niche is not a label, it's not a diagnosis, it's not a demographic. There are always 15 more therapists who are going to come back and say their niche is adults with depression. Let's put this to rest. If you are listening to this audio episode here today, please put the demographics down when it comes to defining your niche. Yes, it's a part of it, but it is not all of it. I will say it again. Yes, it's a part of it. It is not all of it. I am going to take ownership, however, because I continually missed a very significant portion of the message that I am going to share with you now. Here it is. People have so much more access today to information. It's sitting at their fingertips. They have social media that has now become a search engine for many people. They also know more about themselves. They know more about mental health than they ever have before. And them having this information, them knowing more about themselves, what it does is it creates a yearning for specialized care. You are going to have a lot more people that are coming into you with very specific problems and very specific understanding of these problems, more than people saying, I don't know what's wrong with me. We talk so much about trauma, we talk so much about social justice. We talk so much about ADHD now. We talk so much about autism now more than we ever have before. We talk so much about ADHD that it has now become a trending topic on etsy. People are constantly looking for things that are created specifically for people who are neurodivergent. So you have to keep this in mind. If you are in one place where you're saying, I do this specific thing, right, I work with adults with depression, somebody who identifies themselves as having ADHD, they may be depressed, they may absolutely have that. But because there is nothing in your messaging, because it is so broad, they may look specifically past you for a clinician who is speaking directly to them, this is why it is so important to have a niche nowadays. It is because people want those boutique services. They want customized, personalized, individualized care to help them work through the problems that they're coming with. And they have more information about themselves than they ever have before. Here's another added factor that you need to think about. It is the fact that people have less money to work with than they did before. And because the feeling of money is so much tighter for so many people, they have less room to explore. They have less room to try and generalize their way to an issue. They want to tackle problems head on so that they feel as though they're getting their worth and they're getting to where they're trying to go faster than they had been before. And because our clients are evolving, so do we as clinicians. So the portion that I consistently missed when sharing about why it is important for us to have a niche was the fact that our clientele was changing before our eyes. They are now more aware of a starting point of where they are at as far as their mental health is concerned. And because they are more aware, we as clinicians have to be better at meeting them where they are at, as well as speaking directly to them before they even come to our office door, speaking to them through our messaging, through our social medias, wherever we try and show up when it comes to our clientele. So here's what you need to do when it comes to defining your niche. I'm going to give you the secret sauce right here, right now. I want you to ask yourself three things. One, who are you helping? Two, what issues or problems do you help? Those who you are helping to solve? And three, this one is important. You want to be able to bridge all of those issues together, whatever that bridge is, that is your niche. So when it comes to my private practice, my niche is that I help people who are in the fertility and the perinatal mental health realm to strengthen bonds within themselves and with those around them. Now, if you follow me, you've heard me say this before. My niche covers so many things. I cover depression. I cover anxiety, I cover trauma. I cover family issues. I cover postpartum issues. You can imagine there is so much to cover in this realm because the bridge of all of the issues that I cover is the bonds that those people have, the bonds with themselves. And the bonds with other people. I'm really talking about how you formulate relationships, how you feel about yourself. That is my bridge. So in that you can hear who I help, you heard many issues that I help them solved, and then what I do is talk about the bridge of that, your esteem, your self esteem, and the relationships that they have with others. I want you to do the same exact thing. Then after you do that, you are going to research the market. Here is how you go about researching the market in mental health. I want you to do three things. The first thing that you're going to do is you're going to look around and you're going to see what other therapists are doing who are in your niche. I want you to study their social media. If they have one, study their Facebook pages. You don't have to be a creeper. Just check out what it is that they're doing, notice what they are missing. And then if you're already working with clients within your niche, you want to see what the clients are saying, what do they like, and what they don't like. You can also find this out by just seeing who has, again, a similar audience to you on social media and go through some of their comments, see what people are saying, see what people's experiences are. The next part you're going to do when you're researching the market is you're going to look to see what's trending and how does that connect to what it is that you do. One of the things that I like to do is I like to listen to social media drama, and I see if that drama is relevant to what I do. And I do this both in my coaching work as well as with my clientele. So if there is something that's coming up and it's trending and it's trending and trending, I may not respond on social media. I might just hold on to that information and really think more deeply about it, but it might show up in my therapy sessions sometimes. The other thing that I do is I might go back and make a video if it's relevant. So I might just highlight something and talk more about that. But I find a way to utilize it because that trending information is important that tells us something about where people are at. And if you are engulfed in your audience already on social media, or even like if it's something in the news, if you're engulfed in that in some kind of way, you're going to see people's reactions and engagement with that particular thing. And as far as researching the market, the last thing I would like you to do is start networking with colleagues. So when you're networking with your colleagues, this creates word of mouth. So in the travel agent world, people know me as a go to for Disney World. I specialize in it. I talk about it a lot. I've been to Disney World several times. And so whenever people come to me about travel stuff, I have made myself the expert in that area. So you want to do the same things. And again, this is why it's so important to have a niche. Because the more that you network with your colleagues and the more that you tell your colleagues, like, hey, I do this thing, it creates a word of mouth. So let's say your colleague got a client who is not a fit for them, but they are fit for you because you cover these particular services or they'll send that client to you. And I want to tell you that I've gotten so good at this that sometimes people will recommend me to my own posts. One time I was online and I had posted something. I was looking for a particular therapist because I was referring somebody outside of my practice. And as I was referring this person outside of my practice, I was like, hey, these are the particular things that I was looking for. And one of my colleagues was like, oh, you should look for Shauna. A and I was like, it's me. And then I was like, wow, I have gotten to the point where people are recommending me because I have made it very clear that this is what I do. And when you tell people, when you've made it clear that this is what you do, you become people's go to's. So I want you to start networking with colleagues. And in the last part, you are going to take action. I want you to make a list of all of the themes of the issues that you help to solve. Look over the list and see what the bridge of the issues are. And then you're going to ask your colleagues, what do they think your niche are? In this episode, I'm going to drop you a worksheet. It is the finding your niche worksheet. I have utilized this worksheet for years. I think it will help you along the way as well. Niche is not as complicated as many all are making it, but it's not a demographic or a diagnosis. So part of the issue is that you're unsure of who you're marketing to or what you're marketing for. As soon as you're able to narrow it down with confidence, the sooner you'll be able to move forward in your marketing and actually attracting your ideal client. So to get started, go ahead and answer these questions. Do the worksheet and find me in the therapizing therapist Facebook group. Let's take a step to getting the clients that are right for your practice. Hey hey, I'm Shauna A. You are listening to a delightful audio sode. I'm so glad that you are here. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out the delightful announcements. You can go ahead and click to join. The therapizing therapist collective is right here on this webpage that you're listening from. You could also join the lucrative Therapist Resource library and get access to all of the first Friday replays, plus previous resources from the Delightful clinician brand, all for 499 a month or $27 a year. Or right now you can get full access for a lifetime for only $155. And the last thing is the first Friday workshop is coming up. The next one is on March 1 and it's all about creating and selling your next workbookguided journal. So you can go ahead and sign up with your email for the first Friday workshop. I'm so excited about this one. I think it's going to be a lot of fun and I know a lot of you are interested in workbooks and guided journals. I can't wait to hear your niches. I'm going to help you break them down and get them going in the therapizing therapist collective. Join me there and I'll see y'all soon. Bye for now.
