Stepping into a specialized niche can feel counterintuitive, especially when it seems like being a generalist would allow you to serve a broader audience. In this episode, I explore the liberation and clarity that comes with focusing on a specific market. Through real client stories and personal insights, I'll guide you on how to define your category niche and leverage your unique brilliance to stand out in a crowded industry.

By narrowing your focus, your marketing becomes clearer, your offers more compelling, and your business more profitable. This episode will challenge your preconceived notions about niching down and inspire you to embrace specialization for greater impact and success.

Key Takeaways:

• The benefits of moving from generalist to specialist and how it leads to business growth and personal freedom.
• How to clearly define your category niche to make a lasting impact in your market.
• Overcoming the fears and misconceptions associated with specialization.
• Aligning your unique skills and brilliance with a lucrative and specific market.
• Separating your personal identity from your business niche to avoid burnout and confusion.
• Real-world examples of how specialization has transformed businesses and lives.

Resources Mentioned:

• Episode 52: MVP: Speaking To The Top 1% of Your Market

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About the Host

Kinsey Machos is the host and founder of The Category Queen, a podcast and community for coaches, consultants, practitioners, and professionals who desire to help more people with their unique expertise. 

Kinsey's mission is to help women transform their unique brilliance into a profitable coaching business where they can experience true time and financial freedom while changing the world one human at a time.

I'm Kinsey Machos, your host and founder of the category Queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own league. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary with nothing more than a used MacBook and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized, helping thousands of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing and money, and more importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category queen show. Hello my fellow category queens. I hope you are having an amazing day. I am excited to dive into this conversation. Actually, I have had some notes on it because this has been coming up a lot in conversations with clients and in fact, I just got off one a couple days ago and it again just reiterated this idea of really specializing and the liberation around that feeling. Now, I know this is a little bit counterintuitive because you likely might feel like specializing in something might feel a little constricting.

Now I'm going to use terms like specialization and quote unquote, niching down, or rather I like to talk about niching up, if you will, but I'm going to use those concepts interchangeably, really in the context of this conversation. What this all means is starting to narrow in on a specialized market. So instead of just being a health coach, you are somebody that helps women over 40 lose 20 pounds in 90 days, right? And you're really niched into the age group. The solution that you're providing, the problem that you're solving. When I work with my clients, I help them define their category niche. And part of that is not just who do you help, but it's also bringing together your unique brilliance, which is the solution that you provided.

And this is very different than maybe what you're used to hearing or learning about when it comes to defining your avatar and identifying your ideal client, but really niching down and defining your category niche so that it is a category of one where you have no competition. This is like the key to really standing out in what feels like a very noisy, saturated industry, whether you're a health coach, relationship coach, business coach, life coach, right? There are a lot of coaches coming to the market because it is very lucrative and it doesn't require a lot. Right. The barrier to entry is so low, you don't need any money to start. You don't need certifications or qualifications. You can literally wake up and call yourself a coach.

Now, I know you're not that person, and you're probably listening because you're somebody who has either gone through a transformation yourself and is working with other people to experience that same result or you do. You have a lot of proof of the problem solution that you provide, and you are an expert in your field. But when you come in to work with us, what we really want to help you do is get known in that specialized niche. But prior to this experience, what I find is people are a little bit resistant to it. There's a lot of fear around this idea of not quote unquote, being for everybody. It's very alluring, if you will, being a generalist, which is really fascinating. Right. It can feel like there's sort of this perceived flexibility.

It's sort of like, oh, if I have, if I'm a generalist, meaning if I don't niche down, if I don't kind of put my stake in the ground of what I want to be known for, then I can serve a wider range of clients, which means that I can work with more people. That means I can help more people and make more money. Okay. It also is sort of, it activates the sense of fomo when you're remaining more of a generalist subconsciously or even consciously, it's sort of like I am available to everybody and therefore I am not missing out on anybody. Right. And I hope this is resonating. But again, I'm just really being, just repeating what I hear from women and clients when they're starting to really think about narrowing in on their niche.

And I think it's, again, because of these really alluring beliefs or limitations around just kind of being a generalist, it also is going to really think or force you to think about your knowledge in a different way. Right. I think that it can feel maybe a little bit constricting if you think like, well, but I'm so much more than that. Right? I'm so much more than helping somebody lose 20 pounds in 90 days, or I'm so much more than helping somebody discover their next career move by developing their exit plan. Like, I'm so much more than the thing that I help women do. And we know that what's really important to know is you are not really your niche. You are a human.

But your business, your offers, your marketing, that is meant to serve someone and it is meant to align with a lucrative market, or this would be all for nothing. These are just business economics. I'm just asking that you remove some of the identity piece in this idea of a category, niche and specializing, because that will help also soften the hesitancy when it comes to starting to this idea of, like, getting known. Right. I think of Amy Porterfield a lot in this. I think of also, like, Russell Brunson. You know, Amy Porterfield is known for digital courses, and that is because she talks about digital courses in everything she does. And she has stuck with the one core offer for years. I think over like a decade. She's built a very successful business. I think she surpassed like 100 million last year.

But I, and so she has a breadth of knowledge. She has so much wisdom to her. And I think it's so courageous and brave for her to continue to stick with her digital courses and selling the same offer while she also evolves as a woman, she is not a digital course, but she is very good at teaching people how to create, launch and grow their digital courses. It's very lucrative. It's been very consistent, and it's just growing and growing because she's continuing to build that demand. So when you think of that breadth of knowledge, it's sort of like, well, I'm just, I know so much more than that, and we know that. And also you can still infuse your personality and these different levers of who you are and what you're good at in your marketing and your messaging, if it makes sense.

But I just want you to know that it's important that you don't get this idea of, like, you and your business mixed up. It's really easy to do that, especially if you're the only one running your business. But you are a human. You are a person. You have a life. You are also running a business. The business has certain responsibilities, right? It has a responsibility to generate revenue. And how we do that is we solve problems for other people. And so really removing that emotion out of sort of those ideas and allowing yourself to be okay with the idea that it's really cool to not be a generalist, and then you have a lot of the sort of idea of like, well, what it, what happens? Is my niche too, or is my market too small?

Or this idea of even like, can I actually be an expert in this particular area? There's always going to be the doubt and the limitations that come up. But this conversation is really meant to show you that after you get over the hump, I find time and time again women feel so liberated once they really sink into their really defined specialization, what we call their category niche. And I just had a conversation with a human design coach and she is starting to define her scalable offer and what that looks like for her and her business. And I thought it was really just so cool because it's a perfect example of somebody that actually doesn't want to conform to sort of the mainstream messaging around human design.

But she was feeling a little bit of fear around, well, what is the look like not to do that? And so after really developing her core avatar based on what she loves to do in human design and what she's really good at, what her expertise is, what we really started to come up with was that her expertise wasn't for somebody that is just coming to know human design. You know, she came into my experience really thinking that she needed to create a foundational human design course. And people could go through that, you know, at 997. And then if they wanted to upsell, she could do reading for them.

But she has this whole other sort of toolkit of expertise that comes into play because she is actually doing human design in corporations, in companies, and she's helping them with team because there's so much that goes into communication and energy and workflow when it comes to your human design. And the people that she's been working with in these companies are incredible. They're getting incredible results by understanding their own human design and then understanding the human design of their team. And then she's leveraging that vehicle to go deeper with, how do we communicate in this way? How do we really allow some fluidity in our team so you can decrease retention and really divide or create an amazing culture. And so as I started to really sink into, like, well, why are you not making that your core messaging, your core marketing?

Why are you not the specialist in human design and leadership, right, for CEO's execs, whatever that looks like, why are we not defining you there? Right. And of course, again, the fear is like, well, I don't know, like, I feel like everybody wants this thing, but I actually don't want to just talk about human design foundations. Right. So, good. And so after crafting out her offer in alignment to really what she wanted to focus on and where she's the most brilliant athlete. She sent me a message and she was like, I cannot even describe how liberating this feels to really specialize. And also I feel like when I sit down to write content, it is just so clear who I need to write to and what do I need to say?

This is why specializing is just such a game changer, because everything else becomes easier, your content becomes more clear, your offers will convert at a higher rate. You are working with your best clients, not just clients you know, you could help, but clients where you are operating at your highest zone of genius. If went back to this example of this human design coach, she could continue just do readings for people, like helping them understand their chart and coaching them here and there. And there is a market for that. She could do that, but that is not where her highest level of brilliance is. And that is also not where she feels completely lit up.

And so where women go wrong here is believing like, oh, I don't have a market for this, or I need to continue to stick with the mainstream sort of market. I just had this conversation with another client who is, she's just surpassed her six figure month and she feels like she's kind of leaving out the beginners in her niche. So she has, she works with really established business owners more in the practitioner field, in brick and mortars that are reaching more 50 to 100k months in their clinic, you know, seven figures. And she has this whole other subpopulation that hasn't even reached, you know, 20k months even. And she feels like she needs to create a product or a program for them.

And I asked her, do you feel like your current offerings are, do they have rhythm enough where you can literally go for on vacation for two weeks and still bring in leads and enroll clients consistently without any of you? And the answer was no. And I said, why don't you get there first? And then you can decide if there's room capacity, or even a vision to have a program, another program for your beginner clients. But don't forget, your free content is still serving your clients. This goes back to the idea that we cannot be everything to everybody, because if we also revisit the need for you to think about your offers, as individual businesses each require their own marketing plan, their own sales plan, and their own operational plan.

If you're delivering on two or three offers at once, not to mention having to market and sell it, you will be spread thin. And so it's not that you are wanting to ignore people or you're wanting to leave out. You desire to build an efficient, profitable, thriving business. And we need to do that one step at a time, one offer at a time. And if you feel the need after, everything's humming along and you are meeting your revenue goals with the offers that you have, and it's a really well oiled machine, and you feel like that next step in your business is to introduce the next offer down sort of the pyramid, if you will go for it. But if you do it prematurely, you will regret it. I 100% know that's guaranteed.

The truth is, if you think about the mainstream market, I think of it like kind of 80 20. 80% of people are kind of like dabblers, whether it comes to weight loss or relationship building, relationship management, you know, people building a business, people in AI. Like, if you think about all the industries, there's gonna be, a large part of that population is just kind of like dabblers. They're not looking to go balls to the wall. Maybe they're not even really wanting to make a change. They don't want to go maybe super deep. They just maybe want to know enough or do enough that's going to satisfy just something small within them. That is the majority of most industries. But the 20%, maybe it's 510 20%. I talk about this in the top 1% of your market.

So I have a podcast episode, how to speak to the top 1% of your market, which is really along the same idea of, like, if you think about the top percent of your market. So the people that are so much further along in their journey, again, whether it's losing weight or growing their marriage, or being a parent to a teenager or growing their business, if they're so much further along and they are more advanced in their skills or they're just more ready, that's where your unique brilliance is going to really best utilized. If we use the example of the human design coach, the majority of the human design market, yes, they want just foundational introduction to human design. They want a little bit more. They want to know about themselves.

You know, they want to read the books, they'll read your Instagram post or whatever. But if we think about actually utilizing human design to actually equip yourself as a leader, a CEO, and take your business to the next level, because now you have a team and understanding how to really know your team, grow your team by the ways of human design, that is the top 5% of the market, top 10% of the market, whatever that looks like, that is where you're going to have that really magical experience when you're operating at your highest zone of genius, and also you're working with your best clients.

What happens when you marry these two is you have clients that are getting incredible results, then you have testimonials that are crazy, and then it's just attracting more of those best clients, and you're operating in your zone of genius. So by the end of the day, you're freaking fired up, rather than feeling depleted, fatigued, and burnt out. But the opposite of that is if you are spread so thin, you're working with all these different people, that may not be a good fit for you. Right? You are feeling tired, you're feeling resentful. You're not feeling excited about your business. You're not getting great testimonials from your offer or your programs. And so maybe you're just attracting more of those type of people, and it's just kind of like this spiral or this cycle that gets really hard to get out of.

But the best thing you can do for yourself is just decide. Decide that you want to specialize. Decide what that looks like right now. Put a stake in the ground and start to put a framework around that. That is the point, I believe. Again, I don't know what it looks like to do it on your own, but I know that women, when I watch women sort of have that aha. Or breakthrough after defining their category niche and really outlining their marketing sales strategy, it is just this weight that gets lifted. Right? It's liberating. It feels so aligned, and it feels so much more clear of what everything else looks like. And so if you have been feeling, like niching down, niching up, specializing feels too constricting. This is to help you see that the other side of that is actually freedom.

And now more than ever, it is important to put a stake in the ground. What do you want to be known for? What do you want your testimonials to say? I love that question. I had a mentor actually asked me that. I'm going to continue to ask it to my clients. If you think about those perfect testimonials, it requires that the right type of person. Right. Do you want to be known for somebody that's just helping somebody get their business off the ground? Or do you want to be known for somebody that's helping someone get to seven figures? Do you want to be known for helping a CEO decrease their team retention through human design? Or do you want to be known as someone that does human design readings? Right.

I could go on and on about what this looks like, but that alone just kind of thinking about what your testimonials, your dream testimonials look like will help you really sink into what your category niche looks like and also put some filters on in regards to what type of clients you actually want to work with and what type of clients you need to start saying no to. I know it feels hard because the people pleaser in us wants to say yes, and also it feels a little counterintuitive to say no to clients and say no to money. But I promise if you continue to do this, things will move so much more faster and you'll build a very scalable aligned business.

I also go deeper here in this topic regarding building your perfect business around your perfect client, and I'll link that up in the show notes. But I just want to encourage you. You have a really, really specific, unique brilliance and if you're not allowing yourself to go there, what happens is you end up just watering down yourself. You're water down your messaging, your brilliance. And that's what happens when we start to attract lower quality leads, the people that are not really meant for us. So try this on if you need our help. Obviously this is one of the first steps we do. We start to really look at your unique brilliance, your unique goals and start to put structure around how to take will extract that and transform your expertise into fully aligned scalable offer.

We'll link up some more information in the show notes. But do not settle for less, my friend. Do not stay in that mainstream noise. Start to stand out for who you really are and also what you're exceptional athlete. So I hope you love this episode as much as I do and I will talk to you next time. Hey, if you're ready to stand out online and get paying clients consistently without having to fumble your way through tech run ads or create complicated funnels, I want to invite you to join us in the category queen school where you're going to learn my simple, proven formula for getting clients online. It's risk free. You either make your money back or we'll give you a refund fund. Just head over to kinseymachos.com/theCQschool and join today to get instant access. We'll see you inside.