Episode 3:

Why you shouldn't worry about choosing the wrong niche in business.

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Summary

If there is one thing I see that really stresses educators in business out and stops them dead in their tracks, it is choosing their niche. I have never fully understood why people have put so much pressure on themselves to choose the 'perfect' niche and anything beyond that isn't even worth starting, and so the result: They never actually start.


The honest truth is that you are worrying way too much about the wrong things, and in this episode, I show you why by sharing my niche journey with you.


You will learn how I started in the 'wrong' niche, but how that was the perfect stepping stone to get me to where I wanted to be. If you're changing niches every two seconds, or you are still putting all this pressure on yourself to have the 'perfect' niche and you're frozen to move forward then this podcast episode is for you.


If this episode inspired you in some way then take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories, and tag me @_digiteach_.


If you would like to leave a review and rate us, then you can do so on iTunes or Spotify. I appreciate the support.

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 Welcome to the Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit and I am an ex teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs the owner of Digiteach and a six figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.


If you are looking to up level your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you.


To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. We are going to have much fun together. Thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in.


Hello, beautiful human. I am happy to be chatting with you today in my third episode of my podcast. Eventually, I will stop counting, but for now I'm still counting. In my first podcast episode I shared my journey to six figures, and at the end of that episode, I mentioned that I built my business in the wrong niche and I had to basically restart it.


If you haven't listened to that episode, go and listen. It was a goodie. Okay, after that episode, I had a few people message me wanting to know sort of how that all happened, because I think it surprised people. I think it was surprising for some and what I have seen and what I have found with the students I work with and my students in Digiteachers Biz Academy and even my Educators Income Booster Bootcamp.


Cause I get tons of students in that is the absolute overwhelm and paralysis around deciding their niche. Okay, I mean, this goes as far as some people never actually being able to pull the trigger and choose a niche for weeks, for months, and maybe even years. Honestly, I wouldn't even know this part of the business or of the business building journey.

Often stops people dead in their tracks, and I don't fully understand why, but I think it comes from a belief of I need to get this niche perfect or it's going to be a total waste of time. And man, oh man. Does that create some serious pressure on ourselves? Like that is a lot, you know, it's a lot more pressure than we need now.


Our first big decision that we need to make in our business is deciding our niche, deciding the audience we're going to serve, the people we're going to help and deciding how we're going to help them. And I think this is a very, very important part of your business journey. It's a very important first step because from that first step, we can then take all our next steps.


You can't really do the next steps without deciding on each, right. But if you can't even make that decision, how are you ever going to make progress? Right? You're never actually going to get in the. Take action and make some progress. I wanted to share a little secret with you today on this podcast. Okay?


And this is for everyone out there who is in paralysis mode about their niche. They keep changing niches or they cannot even choose a niche, and it just creates this like weird, they put this pressure on themselves. And you actually haven't really progressed from that point. You haven't been able to take the next steps in your business because you're still working on the niche, right?


this is for you. Okay. This is a secret that I want to share with you. A secret that's going to help a lot of educators in business stop swallowing many hours into choosing their niche. Do you want to hear the secret? Okay. Here. You're almost guaranteed to change niches down the line, like almost guaranteed.


I can almost say that every one of you will probably change niches down the line in your business. Shock horror, you may be asking, what on earth do you mean, Michelle? How is this possible? I build my business in a whole different niche only to start again. Like, how is that a thing? And yes, that's kind of what I mean, but not a hundred percent.


But many of you will do this, just like I did this. Okay? And many, many, many, many entrepreneurs in business have done this. I, I see it all the time now. I didn't choose a niche in. At the time when I went into starting my business in 2018, I didn't choose that niche with the intention of changing it down the line.


I didn't really think about the long run. I wasn't thinking like my five year runway. I was just thinking about what I could do in that moment and what I could help people with at that point in my life. And that's what I chose my niche on. That's what made most sense at that point in my. What I didn't realize was that the business I was building would be something I would have for many, many, many, many years, hopefully for as long as I want it to support me.


A very long term vision. You know, I wasn't really looking at that long term vision and at that point in my life, what I didn't think about or actually know yet was what niche I wanted to be in for years. I didn't know that much about myself to know what I actually wanted to do, what my purpose was, what I was here to do on this planet.


All of those deeper questions. I didn't really know that stuff at that point. Okay, in this episode, now, I'm going to, you know, share my story of how I changed niches and how it happened, what it looked. And why it was the best thing ever actually for me, and why? This just shows me that you should not be worried about the niche you choose.


Do not let this stop you from moving forward. Rather choose a niche and just take action and move forward and evolve. I'm going to share my story. With you. Remember I built a business in the niche of online ESL teaching, right? I sold a course helping people become online teachers. I did this from 2018 to the start of 2020.


And at that point in my life, that is what I knew how to do. That is what I knew how to help people do, and it was very much in integrity from where I was at in my life to sell that offer and to create that. Because I had walked the journey, right. And this business was very successful. We did hit six figures.


And it was a very successful course. Everyone wanted to buy this course, right? It was, it was awesome. Now, after my biggest launch yet of that course, it was a $40,000 launch and it was in 2020 at the beginning of that year. And I said to Mike, my boyfriend at the. Afterwards, I was like, I am never live launching this course again.


And he's probably thinking what do you mean you crazy woman? You just made, we just made more money than we ever have in five days with this product. How can you not sell this again, right? I guess it was a crazy thing. It was a crazy thing to stop selling something that was making you money, right?


But for many, many, many months leading up to that, I think it already started in 2019, that and just before, yeah, that launch, there was a niggle inside me that I was not, With my niche, not really just the niche, but what I was doing in my business, the kind of questions I had to answer, the kind of help I was giving to people, I wasn't getting that fulfillment from it.

And the way I noticed this is that I got super annoyed with the questions that I was being asked, and I got really annoyed by the repeat answers I was giving. I had millions of emails where I had the same questions and I had to give. Repeat answers over and over again. And the longer I had to do this, the more that resentment grew.


And yeah, basically I was just really out of alignment with my niche. I was out of alignment with what I was helping people do, the greater vision of my business, the greater impact that I wanted to. I wasn't having that with people and I wasn't able to go deep with people. Which is what I do. It's what I love to do and it's the person that I am.


I like to go deep with people and I liked, I wanted to impact people in a deeper way, and to be honest, online ESL teaching was not my passion. It was just something I was good at, at the time. And I learned to monetize my knowledge and skills at that time to help others. And at that time, my knowledge and my skills was online teaching.


I didn't really have that much else at that point, that's what I could monetize. Anyways, I ended up not live launching that course again. We turned it evergreen and it's sold on its own, which worked amazingly. And in that time there was. I don't know. It was about a six to eight month period. There was a huge shift that was happening internally.


I had decided, firstly that I would had to do something else. I needed to do something else there was no way I could keep selling this course and in this time I was really going inward and looking at what really lit me up, and I asked myself, where do I spend all my excess money at the moment?

Where do I spend all my time? What can I talk about for hours on end with much energy? What could I teach for the next five years and still. By the way, these are all great questions for you to ask yourself when choosing your niche, and the answers were as clear as daylight for me. Online business strategy, launching mindsets and personal development stuff, mindset, and even energy.


Now, that is where all my money went. That is where I was investing. That is where I had grown the most. I had learned how to build my own business. I had really walked that journey as a teacher who transformed into an entrepreneur, okay? And I was already coaching people in their course launches. I was already doing that in my business, right?


And that was where my heart was telling me to go, and I had this never ending niggle inside of me, telling me that I had to play much bigger and I needed to follow my calling. And it's this internal thing. It will happen. It's a niggle and it happens to you and it will probably keep happening as you evolve as a human and you need to shift your business to align to where you're at. But you have to listen to that niggle, right?


I would get quiet and I'd meditate on it. And it was such a huge decision actually to stop selling that course and to shift niches. As you can imagine, this is two years of work, blood, sweat, and tears and I had no job.

I quit my teaching job, my business was my sole form of income. I knew this was taking a huge risk. Of course, this was a bit of a crazy thing. Like we had just finally started getting momentum. We were making we had great profits, all of that jazz. And now I want to go and change niche. I really, it's like, come on.


Even some of my family were like are you, are you sure you should be doing that, right? Are you a hundred percent sure you should do that? It was a big deal, right? But. When the niggle is there, it's there. It's not going, it's not leaving you, and it gets louder, and it gets louder, and it gets more intense.


And the more you don't listen to it, the more intense it gets. The universe sends you signs, and sometimes if you aren't listening for long enough, it will send you something big it forces you to change. Sometimes the discomfort needs to be bad. That it pushes you to actually take action and do something.


And this has happened quite a few times in my business already. That's what happened with me. And I had this download when I was like doing all that introspection stuff. I had this download that I'm a teacher who built a six figure business and I'm already helping many people launch their course and build their business.


It's what I did in my free time. I literally just helped people build courses and launch them in my free time. This was what I needed to do. This is, this is where it was pointing that all arrows were pointing down this road. I need to help educators build businesses, monetize their skills online and launch courses that they can stop teaching one on one.


They can step into their power and they can build lives they love. That is exactly what I did and am doing, and is something I'm super passionate about. And just like that when I had that download. Everything changed. I changed. It was like, this is it. This is where I'm going, and I will not stop until I get there.


And I was on a mission, right? I made that decision in my mind and that was that the decision was done. I had 10,000 subscribers on my email list for the online ESL teaching. In the online ESL teaching business. I had 10,000 email subscribers and I had a bunch of students, I had this course, I had 600 students in this course or so.


And yeah, people waiting for the course to open and I announced that my business was going to change on an email newsletter, and I just sent some emails and I said to my email list, I'm no longer in service of ESL teaching, like I'm no longer in the service of ESL teaching. And I explained Where Digiteach was going at that point, it was called Digiteachesl.


I changed the name to just Digiteach. And I told them if they were not interested in building their own business and launching their own courses in Money mindset, personal development, all that jazz that they could unsubscribe. And I told them several times, you know, this is, I'm moving direction.


This is where we're going. I announced that I'm not selling my Jump Start course. Anyone who emailed me, I would decline and say it's no longer selling. Okay. I rebranded my business, completely changed my domain, changed my logo, changed everything. And I basically started from scratch in a new niche with a new avatar, with new problems, with new messaging.

And of course, I needed a new offer, an entirely new program to sell. And yeah, that is what happened. And that is basically how the Digiteachers Biz Academy was born. Because at that point I spent months and months and months taking all that I had integrated in the years of me building my business and launching, I built dba.


Okay. And was this baby that I was working on for. And we had a lot of people unsubscribe. Obviously they weren't interested in building an online business and all that jazz, but there was quite a lot of people on my email list who were interested. And I was able to launch DBA to my email list and we had an amazing launch.


It was an amazing first launch. We had an incredible return on investment. Many people bought dba and. Within the first year of selling DBA and going into that new niche, we hit six figures again. We went from scrapping niches to a whole new niche and then making a hundred K that year of 2022, and continued to grow since then.


Now, luckily, there was some alignment between my previous niche and that niche pivot. Obviously if you're completely changing niches, you might have to start from complete scratch, like zero email list and everything. We didn't have to do that at that point. We, we did have to rebuild our email list, but we still had people who were interested on our current email list, that was cool.


There was some alignment. That is what my journey was, and it was really difficult. Okay. Did changing niches feel absolutely terrifying? Totally. Definitely. Did closing down an offer that was basically printing money, feel scary and maybe a bit crazy, yes. But when you are misaligned with what you are selling. That misalignment will grow bigger and bigger and louder.

And the, the, the struggle is real when you are misaligned, when you don't actually believe in what you're selling. That the money didn't actually even matter. My heart wasn't in it. And it felt hard delivering on this program. I didn't want to answer questions about that. I didn't want to help people get a job in the ESL world, like I didn't want to be in that space.


There was way more for me that I needed to explore. My soul was literally like begging me for that, for a, for a long, long time. I had to choose my soul. My heart and that calling over the success and the money, and I'm so grateful I did.


Was it a complete waste of time for me to go into the online ESL teaching niche and then change niche's years later? Hell no! It was the most perfect and natural unfolding and progression of my business journey. It was the most perfect initiation and all the real life business experience that I needed to learn and integrate and practice in order to make money online in order to learn the skills required to make money online.


It was the best two years of growing skills playing in the arena, launching, selling, growing an audience. It was like going to real life business university that actually gives you proper skills that change your life, okay? It's literally you're building a business in real life, and you're building the skill set in real life.


You're not just listening to theory and learning about it. You're doing it. You see, it doesn't matter what niche you are. To a certain extent. Of course there needs to be a market for it and all that jazz, but what matters is who you become in the process of building a business in that area. And you know what's the absolute best part is that when you get that niggle to pivot into a new direction, a new niche, a new calling, and I say when, because I believe that most people will have.


I really, truly believe that most people in business will have this. When you get that calling, you can start a business in that niche, and guess what? This time you're not starting from scratch. You're not starting from zero. You now know how to build an email list, how to create content. How to map out an amazing offer that people want to buy, how to launch your offer, how to sell your offer, how to make money online, how to speak on camera.


I mean, all of these skills that you are building from simply playing in the arena, from simply taking action, from getting messy, from just doing the thing that is what matters. That is what matters. Not the niche, not the business who you become, the skills you build in that process is everything that is the magic. And that is the magic that will make you millions of dollars.


The person you become, the mindset you create or cultivate the attitude you build the, the belief system, the identity. The skills the person you become is the magic. Okay? Those of you who are panicking about their niche or changing niches or freaking about having to change niche and thinking it's a complete waste of time.


It's absolutely never a waste of time. Nothing in your business is ever a waste of time. I promise you. There is always something to learn. There is always something you've gained. It's a perspective shift, right? Even if you invest in a mentor and you feel like they did nothing for you, I promise you there is something they did for you.


There is always something to learn, integrate, and there are so many lessons in all of it that we need to learn. We are here to learn those lessons and evolve, and the one thing I just want you to realize is that you are a human being and you will evolve and change. Always. Who you are now is different to who you will be in five years.


Who is very different to who you will be in 15 years time. The entire journey of your life is you going to be evolving through that whole process, you're going to be changing, basically every minute of your life, you are changing. Your online education business, the offers that you sell.

These are an extension of you. And in order for you to keep alignment between you, who you are, your heart, your soul, the core of who you are in this world, what impact you want to have, all of that and your business. If you want to keep alignment between those two things, your business is going to have to evolve with.


What that means is that you're going to start in the niche that makes sense for you right now, and know that in a few years time, as you have evolved as a human being, as you have expanded in your skills, as you have maybe discovered a whole new world of something that lights you up or a part of you that you never knew about.


That is going to happen, okay? In this journey of self-discovery, okay? And you are going to change. And what you want to teach is going to change and how you're going to want to work with people is going to change. And how you're going to want to impact people is going to change. And you're allowed to follow your heart.


And honestly, if there's one thing I can tell you, it is imperative for you to follow your heart, your soul and that alignment, it is imperative because it makes the world of a difference to your fulfillment, to that feeling you get of absolute satisfaction, which you need in your business.


You want to feel fulfilled from your business and how you help people and the way you help people. That is what will keep you going. That is what will keep you growing your business. That is what will keep you. Quantum leaping. If there's misalignment and you are unhappy in how, in, in stuff in your business, it's, it just creates much resistance that it's virtually impossible to ignore.


Okay? Your niche is not permanent. It's not a tattoo. It's not something that will stay fixed. It will evolve and. Like it's going to evolve right now. That being said, choose a niche and stick to it for enough time to build momentum. Become an authority in whatever niche it is for enough time to make some money.


If you keep changing niches every month, that's not going to work, okay? If you are a multi-passionate person, my message to you is not every passion of yours needs to be monetized. Not every passion of yours needs to become your business. Some passions should just be passions, and they should remain that way, and that's the beauty of it.


That's how they remain a passion. I was passionate about photography once upon a time. I then decided to make that my work and I lost my passion for it. Sometimes keeping your passion is, your passion is amazing and beautiful. Let that be it. Part of playing your CEO self. Making decisions, pulling the trigger on decisions and sticking to it and not going after shiny ball syndrome.


You know, changing niches every two seconds. Changing offers every two seconds. Changing how you want to help people every two seconds. That is like shiny ball syndrome and it's confusing and it's distracting and it's exhaust. Focus on a niche. Just choose a niche, focus on it, create a great offer. Focus on a great sales system to sell it, and stick to that for maybe two years even before you decide to change.


Give it enough time to work and do its thing and stop building momentum and making you money and all that jazz and go with the flow. If you start shifting as a human. And you realize that you've been building your business in the wrong niche. You're going to join thousands and thousands and thousands of other entrepreneurs who have done that exact thing.

And you know what? It's fine. It's totally fine. You are going to be able to change niches because now you know what you're doing. You know what you should be looking for. You've learned about. You know what? You can help people Do you know how to make money online? You know the fundamentals of running an online business.


If you can create a business in one niche, you can create a business in another niche. It's, it's literally applying the same thing over and over, right? What I want you to do is not to completely panic about choosing the wrong niche and all that jazz, honestly, it. Part of the journey, right? And I want you to understand that you are a spiritual being, living a human experience.


I am a spiritual being living this human experience. And as humans, we are going to change, okay? There are things that are going to happen in our life that is going to change. And there are going to be times in your life that you need to look at your business and you need to look at who you are and you need to look at that alignment.


And you're probably going to need to make some shifts and it's not going to feel easy. There will be a death, some type of shamanic death, if you want to call it that. A part of your business will need to die off. Like how my ESL offer that needed to die off that ESL niche needed to die off for me to rebirth and, you know, create this new baby and move in a new direction.


I had to cut out old stuff and let it die off for me to bring in this new energy, bring in this new offer, bring. This new business. Right? And that's also, as a human being, that's what happens. Parts of you have to, you have to say, it's, you know, it's done, it's over. You've got to close the door on some chapters and you've got to make space for the new.


And that is just the process of evolving. And it doesn't always feel easy. It actually often feels really hard and really confusing. And I'm actually being going through it again, and I, I'm going through it again. Right. For another podcast episode, but this whole year is, couple of months of this year have been like that for me.


And that is just what happens in life. Okay? We, we need to realize this in our business, and we need to be, we need to be flexible. We need to, we, we also just need to stop putting much damn pressure on ourselves to choose the perfect niche. Like it's not going to be perfect. What you need to do is choose a niche and get in the arena and start playing the game and start building some skills and just trust that the unfolding will happen as it should.


And whatever needs to be revealed to you in that next step is coming and it's going to be revealed to you. We don't know everything up front. We can only through taking action can we get that clarity, can that road ahead of us start being clearer we can start seeing what we want to. But you need to take action.


You need to just start. Don't hold back on the niche. Just choose a niche and just start and just play in the arena of business and the answers that you're looking for, and that clarity that you're looking for. It will come. It will come as a by-product of you taking that action. I hope this made, this episode made you chill out a bit when it comes to picking a niche.

Honestly, don't let this trip you up. You have got way too much magic to share with the world, to have this decision stop you dead in your tracks. And yeah, I really hope this inspired you just to not make such a big deal. And just to pull the trigger and choose an niche and start playing the business game, getting in the arena.


Thank you much for listening as always. I really love chatting about this today. Let me know if this episode helped you share it with me on Instagram. I know a lot of people struggle with the niche stuff. I hope this really helped you. And I hope you have a beautiful day, and I'll chat to you next time.


Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you are interested in building your online business, but you have no clue how to choose a niche, then I have just the thing for you. Grab my free niche discovery guide and it'll walk you through discovering your niche for your business in three simple steps.


This is your first big step to unlock in your business journey, go ahead and grab that free guide to help you. I appreciate you much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode.


In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.

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ABOUT THE PODCAST

The Empowered Edupreneur is your weekly dose of business and mindset development geared towards educators in online business. 

Michelle's mission is simple: To help educators unlock their infinite potential within, take back their power, and make their own money online. In this podcast, you can expect weekly inspiration, relatable stories, and business advice to help you grow your online business with more ease and joy (and fewer teaching hours). 

Be sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode! 

Tags: online business, make money online, growing a business, niche, business niche, how to choose a niche, niching down, finding your niche in business, online education business, online teaching business, teachers in business, online business, teachers in business

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