Why Not Choosing a Niche Is Costing You — And How to Fix It

The time is now episode three hundred twenty

You probably already know that you need a clearer niche in your business.

So lemme ask you something.

Honestly, if you've known this for months or maybe even years,

why haven't you chosen yours yet?

Is it because you don't know which one to choose or where to start?

Is it because it keeps evolving all the time?

Or is it because choosing feels like closing doors no matter

what situation you're in?

No.

That not choosing a niche is actually costing you more than you think.

So let's see what you can do about it now.

Welcome to the Time is now the podcast for mission-driven solopreneurs ready to take

action and go from invisible to in demand.

I am your host Amel Derragui.

My mission is to help you cut through the noise, get crystal clear on

your strategy, and position yourself as the go-to expert in your field.

But this podcast isn't just about marketing.

It's also about building your resilience and staying ahead of the

shift in our world so you can be the leader and change maker you truly are.

This is your time to create more growth, alignment, and impact

in your business.

You might already know that choosing a clear niche in your

business is essential to attracting your ideal clients and making

consistent revenue in your business.

But although most solo entrepreneurs know it, the reality is that very few actually

do it when it comes to choosing a niche.

I see four types of people.

The first one is what I call the unclear one.

You generally don't know where to start.

You have experienced skills, ideas, but no clear direction.

The second one is the hesitant one.

You have two or three solid options, but you might be overthinking

which one is the best to pick.

The third is the fear for one.

You know you need to choose, but you're afraid of limiting yourself, of

shrinking and even losing opportunities.

And the fourth is the disenchanted one.

You might have chosen a niche before you committed.

You tried, but it didn't work the way you expected.

Maybe the market didn't respond.

Maybe you didn't feel aligned, maybe you lost momentum, and now you're thinking,

what if nicheing just doesn't work for me?

So I'm curious to know which one of these four situations you might be in.

Know that wherever you are right now, you're not alone.

This is one of the main challenges of most solo entrepreneurs

and small business owners.

The good thing is that awareness is the first step to clarity, and

today I'll share some guidance to help you gain that clarity.

Here is what I see happening when people don't pick a niche in their business,

it's actually often not like a dramatic failure.

It's more of a subtile.

Stagnation keeps going on and on for years.

And there is how this often shows up in your business.

Your messaging keeps shifting.

You struggle to explain what you do in one clear sentence.

You lack confidence when approaching clients.

You do not charge the right price, and very often you might try

one strategy than another, than another, but nothing really works.

Here is one of the most important thing to know.

In marketing, you need one strategy per target audience.

If you have multiple target audiences or different segments in your business,

you need as many marketing strategies.

When you don't choose a niche, you are either running the same marketing

strategies for all, all your different target audiences, which doesn't work, or

you're trying to run multiple strategies at once with no real consistency.

This is what very often happens, and this is exhausting.

So you're not stuck because you're incapable.

You are stuck because your energy is scattered without a niche.

Your messaging has no anchor.

Without an anchor, your strategy keeps shifting.

And when strategy shifts, results don't show.

When results don't show confidence drops.

And when confidence drops, marketing feels heavy and often leads to earn out.

It's a real vicious circle.

So the solution isn't to work harder, the solution is to focus your energy

in one direction, long enough for momentum to start building up.

Lemme share with you my own example.

When I launched my business over a decade ago, I of course needed

a niche, but I didn't just pick the niche of expat spouses.

I narrowed it even further to expat spouses eradicating

every two to three years.

Why did I choose this niche?

Because I was an exp expert spouse myself.

I understood the emotional reality, the instability that comes with this

lifestyle, the identity shifts that it creates, and I felt really strongly

about what I call the injustice.

Women giving up their careers to move abroad for their partner's jobs and

to support their families on the move.

And in the process, they often lose their own source of professional

fulfillment and financial independence.

It made them vulnerable, especially in cases of marital challenges,

which are really cared about.

But thanks to technology and the internet, making your business portable

was finally accessible to anyone.

And as I often used to say, we live in the best times possible to launch

a location independent business.

So here the solution really matched the pain.

That combination made my niche so powerful and resonated with many around the world.

In fact, once I committed to my niche, everything became easier.

My messaging became laser focused.

My content was so obvious to my audience, my visibility and my audience kept

growing faster than I could have imagined.

And my audience and clients would often come to me telling me, oh my God, it

feels like you're in my head right now.

And that is what clarity on your niche does.

It creates resonance, and resonance creates traction.

Before we move on with this episode today, can I ask you for a small favor?

If you're getting value from this podcast, if it's really helping you think

differently or see your business clearly, please take a moment to subscribe to the

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subscribing helps this podcast reach more mission-driven solopreneurs like you, and

it allows me to continue creating these episodes and sharing the strategies,

the tools, and the mindsets that help you go from invisible to in demand.

All you need to do is press the button that says, subscribe or follow.

That's it.

In exchange, I commit to continuing to bring you thoughtful, practical,

and high value episodes to support your growth, alignment, and impact.

Thank you.

I truly appreciate it.

Today, I wanna invite you to reframe how you look at choosing a niche,

because choosing doesn't limit you.

When your niche is defined, you are not limited.

You can still work with the people outside of your niche, but it's your

marketing that is focused on that niche and that needs a clear lane to work.

And the smaller the niche, the faster you gain visibility and

become known in your industry.

I've seen this again, again with my own example as well, with my clients.

Lemme give you the example of one of my clients ruler.

She went from being a broad leadership coach to becoming the expert in employee

retention for fast growing startups.

This positioning did not come from nowhere.

It came from the work we did to identify what I call her unique zone of genius

and her experience as the general manager of an energy company that faced

the same issues as most companies.

As general managers, she used the method.

She now helps other leaders implement to double the business's revenue and

increase team engagements by 50%.

When she embraced that niche and tied it to her zone of genius, she

immediately grew in credibility and started getting real attention.

She was.

Initially hesitant because her passion was really working with artists, but choosing

fast growing startups as her niche didn't stop her from working with them.

She just didn't market to artists, and she just let them come when they come.

So let's hear from roulette herself.

Me becoming an expert in employee retention.

This has caught the attention of a lot of people because this

is the issue with which a lot of people are dealing today and.

Finding my right positioning, the one that really interests me and

in which I'm an expert because this is what I do in the company.

I'm general manager also in, has attracted me new clients and has

also helped me really, really focus on this specific topic.

It has been a total game changer for me.

That is the power of nicheing.

It creates clarity on where to focus your energy and leads to real momentum.

Also, when you nail your niche and stick to it consistently,

it often naturally expands.

Look at Apple, for example.

They didn't start with everyone.

They started with graphic designers and creatives, and look at it today.

Apple products are widely used across the entire population in the world.

In my case, I started with expat spouses, and that niche naturally expanded over the

years into globally minded solopreneurs, consultants, and coaches worldwide.

When you focus on a niche, you're not locking yourself

in, you are building momentum.

The only way to know what is the right niche for you is to get started

somewhere, and I'll give you some guidance on this very shortly.

But know that you don't need the perfect niche.

You need a committed starting point.

Niching is not like a lifetime contract.

It's what I call a strategy experiment.

Postponing the decision is postponing results.

But most importantly, it really sucks all the energy out of you.

Sometimes the niche you choose ends up not being the right one, and that's okay.

At least you tested it.

Now you know.

No more going back and forth.

No more hesitating, no more being inconsistent.

If you picked a niche that didn't work, know that I completely

understand your frustration.

But this is the part of trial and error that you need to embrace when

building your marketing strategy.

That's what entrepreneurship is about.

Without trying things out and being willing to risk getting it wrong,

you don't discover what actually works for you and your market.

It's part of the game.

So if it doesn't work the first time, please don't give up.

Move on.

Pick another niche, but one thing is don't go back to trying to target everybody,

because as the saying goes, if you try to reach everyone, you'll reach Noah.

Before we go further, let's define what a niche really is.

A niche is the intersection of a specific group of people, a specific problem.

They deeply care about solving.

A specific way you help them solve it.

This is where the three Ps framework that I created comes in to identify your niche.

I invite you to reflect on these three Ps.

The first P stands for powers.

Identify your superpowers, your skills, expertise, experiences, track record.

Assets and even your hobbies and lived experiences.

These are all the ingredients that make your solution really unique.

Then the second P stands for problem.

Identify the real specific problem you feel called to solve, the

one that matters deeply to you and creates tangible impacts.

The third P stands for people.

Clarify who you genuinely care about serving.

Who do you understand really well and who can you realistically access your

niche and your zone of genius is found where these three Ps come together.

In fact, your niche is not something you just invent or choose randomly.

It's something you uncover with deeper work if you want the business to be

aligned with who you're, I take my clients through this steep work with

a series of questions and exercises, but one of the most powerful question

to ask is this one, what can you talk about and learn about endlessly?

Because your energy flows where your attention naturally goes.

So ask yourself, what can you talk about and learn about endless endlessly?

And because I've worked through this process with hundreds of solopreneurs,

I turned it into a special AI tool that now you can use for free.

I want you to meet Nina, your niche navigator.

Nina is a custom GBT that I created just for you based on my three P framework.

Nina will guide you step by step through your powers, the people you wanna

serve and the problem you wanna solve.

To get Nina go to the time is slash 320.

Once you receive your link, you can chat with her directly on your chat account.

She'll guide you.

Just let her lead the way.

And if you want a deeper validation and strategy, you can book a 90

minute strategy session with me.

We'll clarify your niche validated strategically, and ensure that it

aligned with who you are and where you wanna go, because the reality

is that a human sounding board still makes all the difference.

You'll find all these resources on the time is now dog biz

slash three hunred twenty.

So if there's one thing I want you to take away from this episode is this,

you do not need the perfect niche.

You need a committed starting point.

And when you choose, everything shifts, your content becomes sharper,

your confidence increases, your messaging becomes more effective.

Your consistency improves, your authority and your visibility grows

faster, and you spend less energy figuring out how to market and sell.

Lemme share with you the example of my client, Katie.

You actually will hear more about her story in the next

episode, but just in few words.

When we started working together, she had experience, but she lacked clarity

and confidence in how to articulate her value and market herself consistently.

She knew who she wanted to work with, but her niche was still

quite broad and hard to explain.

Once she narrowed her focus to women over 40, navigating body changes and

overwhelmed, but conflicting health advice, everything started to shift.

She stopped feeling like she had.

Or explain things.

She started confidently owning her role in helping women build

sustainable health and healthy habits.

Her content became easier to create.

Her message became much stronger.

She even launched her Habit Champions program with paying clients without

even having a real audience yet.

So that's the power of nicheing and a strong positioning.

Which needs me to this.

As I said before, picking your niche is essential, but it's also the first

step of many to attract your ideal clients and generate your revenue.

Your niche gives you a clear direction, but it's your whole

positioning strategy that makes you stand out in a really noisy world.

In the next episode, as I said, you'll hear Katie share her story of how

refining her niche transformed her confidence and her results, and right

after that, I'll come back to you with more guidance on how to build a

strong positioning and messaging that truly attracts your ideal clients and

makes you memorable in your market.

Because your niche is the key foundation no matter what, but positioning and

messaging is what makes you unforgettable.

So until we meet again, I invite you to start reflecting on your niche right

now with Nina, your niche navigator.

Access Nina, by going to the time is now.

If you are watching this episode on YouTube or Spotify, you will also

find the link below this video.

I cannot wait to hear how it goes for you, and I hope that this episode

helps you gain clarity and the courage to finally choose your niche.

Thank you so much for listening.

I truly appreciate you spending this time with me.

Please don't forget to subscribe.

See you in the next episode for more inspiration to go

from invisible to in demand.

The time is now to create more growth, alignment, and impact with your business.