In this episode, I'm breaking down why your niche isn't some fancy statement or ideal client avatar worksheet.

It's simply your lived experience, your voice, and what you deeply understand from your lived personal and professional experiences. And I'll show you how to find out without spiraling into overthinking and overwhelm for months on end. Because if I know one thing. The one thing that keeps nurses stuck when starting their business is indecision about their niche.

Now, if I had a dollar for every nurse preneur who said, I don't know what my profitable niche would be, I would be retired by now on a yacht, lying, bathing in my money. Here's the truth that you need to hear. Your niche is not what you think. What if I told you your niche is actually you?

We call it niche drama in the entrepreneur academy, and they will spend months overthinking it, sometimes even years. And whilst they're thinking about it, someone else at there is actually creating the offer for their niche that they would be amazing at, and they're getting paid. So let's talk about the niche.

So a niche is a population of people that you get to serve, okay? The niche is basically a past version of you. If we think of it in its simplest form, a niche is who you're gonna serve. How? Who are you gonna take on a journey of transformation from A to B, who you're gonna serve? And typically, it is a past version of yourself.

Now, here's what people get wrong about niching. They think that a niche needs to be something that they are just.

Okay, and here's what most people get wrong about niching. Dan

Martin, I need to, let's just put in here yeah, it's fine. Just scrap the bits I've just messed up on there.

Now, the reason why it's important for you to have a niche is because when you have a niche, you become known for something. And when you're first starting out as a new entrepreneur, if you try to speak to everyone, you speak to, no one. And what I teach is we need to double down and identify your niche, and we do that typically by looking at where you've come from yourself through your lived experience, the collection of personal and professional skills, knowledge, experience, passions that you've accumulated up until this point.

And we reflect back and we identify a potential niche that is profitable and that the market is already. Indicating that there is a valid need for support in this space, and we put your unique flavor on it. Now when it comes to nicheing,

now when it comes to niching down, everybody gets so worried and concerned, and the reality is when you are a new entrepreneur, we must get as hyper niche as we possibly can. We want to be almost specifically. We want to be so specific that we are able to speak to your ideal client's pain and problem.

And so when we're thinking about our niche, we want to give ourselves permission to dive deeper than you think you should to be able to. Unearth the past version of yourself that you're gonna solve through your business. So let me just give you a couple of examples. When I was a nurse unit manager and I was in my nurse unit manager position, Joe Masters, qualified years of experience, new nurse unit manager and leader, I was in a state where my niche could have been.

Basically any, anything and anyone that I'd encountered on my nursing career journey, right? So I'd been a nurse educator for 150 staff, so I could have been a coach for nurse educators who wanted to better manage their education attendance. And I could have created an offer around that. 'cause we had exceptional education attendance.

I could have been a mul, I was a nurse career coach helping nurses transition within their careers because I had done it over 12 times so I could help other people do it. I also had applied for a couple of scholarships and got them paid out. I could be like a nursing scholarship coach, but I help you apply for scholarships so that you get them.

That's totally random, but I could totally have done that. I could have been a nurse unit manager coach, where after my year of experience, I could have gone, okay, I feel like I did it well. I have these results. I could create like an offer and a solution for this niche and that could be my niche. So we get to look back at your lived experiences and see what is it that you've done and you've achieved that we can then monetize and create a whole business and brand around.

Because here's the thing. When you're niching down what we don't want you to do is to identify a niche you've not achieved anything in. 'cause that's gonna be really freaking hard. It's gonna be hard for you to sell market. Talk about, create content about, because you're gonna be researching rather than repeating your lived experiences.

And so people often think that in order to niche down, you need to have a brand new market idea. It has to be brand spanking you and innovative, and it needs to be leading edge. No, most people that offer services are doing them pretty poorly. Just be better than them. Just find the gap in their service and be better than them.

That is why we in the Entrepreneur Academy do a lot of market research. We look at our competitors, we look at the people who we deem. In, in our air quotes here, competitors, and we look at what they're doing well, what they're not doing so well, and what are the opportunities that exist so that we can come in and create an offer that's even better.

That's what I did in the career coaching space. There were so many career coaches, thousands of career coaches doing cvs, cover letters, selection criteria, and interview. They would offer them all separately for $200, or they would do them all in one for 900. And I came in and I said, I'm gonna do your CV cover letter selection criteria and your interview.

I'm gonna help you apply for as many jobs as you need to apply for over, a 10 month period. And I'm not gonna charge you each time for those jobs. I'm gonna just charge you one price. It's a higher price, it's $2,500. But you, I work with you until you launch your dream job. And I support you through that process.

No one else was offering that. So of course my business blew up and I was able to generate six figures because I leveraged an idea that was already working. People were already paying for it. I thought, okay, what are the problems here? They're having to pay a thousand dollars for one resume, one cv, one cover letter, one election criteria.

But hold on a minute, these grads, they need to apply for five jobs, some of them 10 because they're international nurses and they want to give themselves all the opportunities. Why do I not just create a container where they can do all of that? And I make that accessible to them. And so that's what I did.

So it doesn't have to be like super brand new as an idea. You just take what's already working and put you a spin on it. The other thing that people think they need to be able to have in order to be like a niche expert is to be an expert, like to be PhD qualified in something. Like I don't have enough expertise.

I don't have enough certifications, qualifications. This comes up all the time. And trust me when I say this, hear me when I say this loud and clear. No one cares about your certifications. Except you. No one cares, but love and kindness, they don't care. Your ideal client's never gonna buy from you because you have a certification.

They are not, I can tell you right now, no one has bought from me because I have a life coaching certification. No one has bought from me because I have an NLP certification. No one has bought for me because I have done Brene Brown's Dare to Lead Course. No one bought for me because I have a Joe Masters, they're part of my narrative.

They equip me with tools and skills to be able to serve my clients. Why they pay me is because I've been so niche and I speak to their ideal, their I speak to their pain and I take them on a transformation and I guarantee their results. And I take them from A to B and I make sure they get the results.

That is why people pay me. And also maybe they like my vibe. I don't know, there's a connection piece there. I'm a nurse, but no one is paying because I'm an expert, 'cause I'm not an expert. We're all learning and growing and developing and so you've gotta really manage your thinking around that. And so the truth of the matter is.

For everybody listening, and there's a lot of con contentious arguments around this online, and I just think it's the easiest and cleanest way to talk about it because it's what I've seen to be true. Having supported many nurses through this process and also just looking at really successful entrepreneurs and what they do, it is that the niche you're trying to find external to yourself is actually hidden within you.

You are the niche, your lived experiences, your skills, your beliefs, your perspective. That is the niche that you are gonna serve. But the nuance is that we have to make sure that we're leveraging niches and markets that already exist that people are gonna pay for. Okay? And we're going to that. Instead of creating something entirely from scratch, we're leveraging what already works.

Okay? Unless you are an absolute tech mogul and you've got so many skills and you want to run out and create an app, then go for that. But it's not where most people should start, right? It's about taking what already works, what people are already paying for, putting your amazing, unique flavor to it, your voice, your unique lens on it, and that's what makes an offer.

Six Fable, right? I just made that up. But it is literally what makes it magnetic worthy and powerful. That is what people are gonna pay you for. So today I'm doing what I don't do, which is giving you some behind the scenes in the Entrepreneur Academy. And I'm teaching you one of my frameworks to help you unearth or start to unearth.

'cause this is one part of the process. But I want to help you unearth how you're gonna identify your niche. And so inside the Nurse Preneur Academy program, we use the Scrub Your Niche Framework. This is having gone through at least 10 to 15 different people's business coaching programs and exploring how they help you achieve their niche.

And honestly, I've gone through some that have been amazing and they've been very thorough, almost too thorough. And then I've gone through programs that are like, you are your niche. Just pick something and run with it and test it. I found a happy medium where we gather a lot of data and we are very evidence informed by you, but also by the market, and we come together and we scrub your niche.

Okay, without overthinking it. Might I add? So let's talk about what Scrub actually means and what it stands for. So the first thing that I want you to think about are what skills S stands for? Skills. What skills do you have right now that people are looking for that you could use to solve problems for people?

It's that simple. Make a list. What personal professional skills do you have right now that people would pay you for that people are paying other people for, so therefore they would pay you for to be able to build a business. Boom. C is challenges. What challenges, unique challenges, situations have you gone through in order to get to where you are today?

What badges of honor have you collected in the pursuit of where you are today and how is there like other people in the world that are looking for what you have created and that in you leveraging those challenges, you could help them navigate those challenges better to be able to get to where you are?

Okay, because whether you like to believe this or not, where you are other people aspire to be, regardless of where you are in your journey results, what results have you created for yourself and others personally and professionally? This is where I had my aha moment, right? When I was thinking about career coaching.

I, I never thought of being a career coach. I didn't have a career coaching certification. How could I be a career coach? And then my career coach said to me, that's bullshit. You don't need a career coaching certification. You just need results. And so my results were that I had 12 different jobs. I'd applied for about 15 different roles.

I was very opportunistic in my job hunting approach where I found most people weren't. I. They were very much, I'll follow the rules, I'll do what I'm told, and I would like job hop and explore and gather experiences. So that gave me permission to see that I had results where other people didn't.

I also applied for most of my jobs and I got them. There was of course a few jobs that I didn't get, but nine times outta 10 I got the job. Other people wouldn't get the job. And so I saw a need there and so it had all of these results, but I could have also have done so many other things, right? As I mentioned earlier, I had worked full time and did two masters at the same time.

I could have targeted the. A highly ambitious nurse who wants to progress professionally. How do you manage your time and be productive, whilst looking after yourself. I could have had that whole niche. I could have done like a wellbeing niche. I'd burnt out. I could have become a burnout coach.

I am L-G-B-T-Q-I-A, so in my life I have created results where I have. Began to do the work around accepting myself and my sexuality and who I am and how that fits into the role of my family. And so I could coach somebody that's maybe just exploring coming out. I've come out, I came outta the closet, and I could coach other people that are going through that process with my lived experience. So you can see here. That there are lots of different things, personally and professionally, results that I've created that I could leverage. The next is unmet needs. Now, sorry, just to go back to results. Don't overthink this, and do not sit there and tell yourself I've done nothing.

Is the worst thing you can say to yourself 'cause it's absolute rubbish like my friend. You have done so much in your life and actually the second part of Scrubbing your Niche is going in and doing a timeline and looking at your life up until this point and looking at the key kind of macro and micro milestones of things that you've achieved because that's where you unearth all of the things that you're currently probably.

Poo-pooing and saying, no, I didn't do anything. You have done things and we need to acknowledge that when we think about, u is all about unmet needs. So U is the next step and it's unmet needs. So what do you see other people struggling with that potentially you struggled with that having gone through it.

Now you could solve it because you only have to be one or two steps ahead of your ideal client. You do not have to be three years ahead. In fact. It's actually worse off for your client if you are much farther ahead. I've been in containers where I like coaching containers where my coach was making eight figures a year.

She was amazing, but she couldn't understand, or maybe she just was so far beyond it that she did understand it. But the way she spoke about things was so flippant because she's making $300,000 a month, right? And like here I am making three, $3, no $3,000. And so we couldn't connect. I. As much as I could with somebody that's maybe made $300,000 in a year.

Okay. That seems much more doable to me, and my brain believes that's actually possible. So what unmet needs have you noticed personally and professionally? Now, a lot of nurses get caught up in the fact that oh, I need to nurse people like I'm a nurse, so I need to be nursing people. No.

Leverage your lived experiences like we're multifaceted, amazing multi-passionate creatures. So leverage your personal and professional experiences to be able to create something and to identify unmet needs in both realms of your life. Okay. You are a nurse that's building a business. Yes, but you're not gonna be nursing in your business.

That is a really clear distinction I need to make. You're not nursing unless you're doing IV hydration cosmetics. It's a different field, but if you are. Coaching, mentoring, digital products, courses, consulting. You're typically not gonna be nursing, and that's really important for you to understand. So give yourself permission to explore what is it that I could be addressing personally in the personal world, like the unmet needs that I've seen there.

Beliefs is the final part in this process. Now, this is just the first part of the process is scrubbing your niche. What do you believe about? Your abilities to support people in nursing, health, wellbeing, burnout, insert here from your lived experiences that you could confidently offer to other people.

So for example, here, it's not about me saying, I'm gonna help you build a seven figure nurse-led business, because I don't believe that right now. I haven't done that. How could I offer that to the world if I don't have the belief in myself that I could create that? Now, on the flip side, what I do believe is that absolutely every nurse could create a six figure offer and build a six figure income online using their business.

I. As a vehicle to do that. Why do I know that's true? Because I've done it. I also know and I could sell, I'm gonna help you generate $200,000 in your noad business because I've done that, okay? And so like I will help you create a podcast that generates a hundred thousand downloads. Why? Because I've built belief in being able to do that.

So it's really important that whatever niche you land on, like you actually believe, you can help them get results. Now, it's not about knowing how you're gonna get them results. 'cause this is what happens is when you start to think about your niche, you think how would I do that? Right now you don't need to know the how.

Right now you are just excavating from your amazing lift. Personal and professional experiences to come up with something that you could potentially monetize. So when you put all of these together, you have the foundation of a potential niche and you'll start to see some patterns. You're not gonna have a, oh my God, this is it, but you're gonna start to see.

The dots connecting, and this is like the first iteration of that. Before we go into mapping out your timeline and looking at your milestones, and actually in the Entrepreneur Academy, the niche module is the largest module, and so it should be because. This we need to get right and we want to land on it and not just pluck it outta thin air and be like, this feels really good to me.

Like my chakras a line when I think of this. No, we need to make sure that it's profitable, that it's marketable, that it's, you can commit to this for at least 12 months. Because the last thing you wanna do is jump back and forth and have niche drama and change a niche every week on Instagram.

Your people are gonna be so confused and they'll just check out, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. So this gives you the foundations of identifying your niche. So let me tell you a little real story from our entrepreneur academy. So we've got the amazing Alfie who joined us in our April cohort.

Alfie has been a client working with me for the last year and a half. And we did career coaching and now he's building his business. Now. Alfie is a second year international graduate nurse. I say international because that will be very important in a second. And when Alfie came to work with me originally in the Nurse Career Academy, he was so worried he wouldn't get a job.

Because he was told he will not get a job by everybody in Australia. And the grad programs, we don't take international, so on and so forth. And so Alpha came to me and I worked with him to help him get his graduate program. And in the process he invested in himself and he gathered all the skills, the tools and knowledge, the experience, and he created an incredible result for himself.

So he's got the skills. To be able to help someone achieve the same thing that he just achieved, and he has got the, he's overcome a challenge, right? That, that he was navigating, which was, everybody said I couldn't, but he did. And he got exceptional results. He actually got two or three amazing public offers being in ICU, so not just any offer, like top tier offer as an international nurse.

So he was. Breaking all the rules, but in the best way and breaking the status quo. He was able to create a result for himself, which was having three offers. I think he had more at the time, I can't remember now, but he had I think two or three public offers, one of them being ICU, which is what he took.

The unmet need for Alfie is obviously what I was solving at the time, which was helping graduate nurses apply interviewing land their dream graduate nursing role. But he also sees the same needs, but through his lens of, oh, international nurses, it doesn't just stop when you get the job. When you get the job, you then have to be able to like culturally acclimatize to the role.

And so he's now like looking at the pre. Application then like getting a visa, getting into the system and going through that. I didn't know anything about that. So he has that lived experience and he's unearthing unmet needs that he's now experienced as a second year graduate nurse to be able to help people that are third years transitioning into their graduate year as an international nurse.

It's a genius niche. It's incredible. And then for belief, obviously. Alfie has gone through the MPA process and through that process he's been building belief. But of course he's had all of the mind drama, right? 'cause he's a human with the brain. And so his brain's been like, what if I can't do this?

What if and what if it's not possible? Or what if I need more qualifications? Like all of these conversations we've had in coaching. And the reality is Alfie has the, all of the things that he needs to be able to. Help someone go from third year international nurse to apply interviewing land, a dream graduate nursing role because he's invested in himself and he learn those skills and he now has them by default as a strategic byproduct.

And now he gets to monetize them as his skillset and be able to help other people. And people will buy from Alfie and take his course and his coaching container over mine if it still existed because he is so close to them. I'm 10, 12 years at. He is so close. He's lived it. He's breathed it. It's a perfect idea for Alfie to be able to double down and he could even go even further, right?

He could leverage his cultural backgrounds and speak particularly only to those backgrounds and those international nurses from his countries. And that's what's really. Awesome about the scrub Your niche process, right? It's like he didn't invent a new market. There are graduate nurses that spend over a hundred thousand dollars internationals, including Alfie.

He did the same thing, and they want to get a job. Like culturally, they have pressure to get a job. Their families want 'em to get a job. They want to succeed. They want to stay in Australia. They need a visa. There are so many reasons why. They would want to guarantee themselves the result. So AFI can leverage that and leverage his amazing expertise and create an offer that solves that problem for them and allows them to do that with less stress, less overwhelm, and the safety I.

To be able to get the result that they came for. So he didn't create a new market. He leveraged what's already there and he's just brought his unique lens to it. And we're at the stage now where we're building at that offer, and it's gonna be exceptional and it's gonna be a six figure offer. He commits to it puts in the time, the effort, it will build, it will grow.

And there's always gonna be international nurses, always gonna be nurses that need support in navigating the graduate process. So I'm really excited. So hopefully you can see through that how the scrub your niche. Now, Alvi went through the whole process and then we had a one-to-one call together and we confirmed it and locked it in and.

He's, started with Scrub, did the timeline mapping, and then all of the extra curriculum processes that we have in the Entrepreneur Academy. He went through all of that, but hopefully you can see I. That like that was, to me was super obvious that should be and could be his profitable niche.

And this is what I've learned to be true, is that most people overcomplicate it. And the reality is having someone like myself to just bounce back off and back and forth off will help you on earth what that could be.

So hopefully you can see that by Alfie Landing a public ICU grad nursing role, his dream has now become his niche offering, helping other international grad nurses land public hospital roles that they think are out of reach just like he did. He's not inventing a new market, he's leveraging an existing market nursing graduates, and brought his unique lived experience and lens to it.

Inside my Bedside to business roadmap, a free download that you can get your hands on. I help you start to see the things that you can't see yourself because your niche is so close to you that often nurses are blind to it. It is literally my super skill to pull it out of you with. Precision and then help you position it in an existing market so you can start creating offers that people are ready to, that are already paying for and searching for, but with your unique twist.

So we've covered today, while your niche isn't what you think it might be, imagine if you stopped overthinking your niche and you stopped. Believing that your niche was just gonna land on your lap and you started excavating. Looking back to your past and seeing what you have done to be able to get to where you are today.

Imagine helping people with something that comes so naturally to you that you can't believe people would pay for, but yet they do because you created the thing that a past version of you that need eat. That's what happens when you claim you'll live. Truth and position it within an existing market. So if you're ready to stop thinking and start building, I'm inviting you to download my bedside to business roadmap where I deep dive into niche and how to find your niche and explore your pathway to more income, impact and freedom.

The link is in the show notes. Your niche, my friend, is you, and people need you to show up and to offer your gifts and your wisdom to the world. That's where we build from. That's how you start making nursing optional.