Thriving in the Sweet Spot:
How to Declare a Meaningful
and Profitable Niche

Thriving in the Sweet Spot is a four-week teleclass that will teach you a way to name your niche that increases your scope and your value to prospective clients while vastly simplifying the task of marketing your work. In four 90-minute teleclasses you will learn the lessons it took me over five years to figure out, lessons that have enabled me to double revenues and simplify marketing at the same time.

The life-lesson that is at the core of this teleclass is one of the most useful I've learned in building my business. Over and over I'd read and heard about the importance of defining a niche, but in practice choosing a niche seemed so limiting. What if it boxed me in doing things I'd outgrown? Wouldn’t choosing a niche limit the pool of prospects from which I might attract future clients? Could I risk specializing? Besides, I've always been a generalist at heart, wouldn't declaring a niche be boring and even somehow dishonest?

I resisted declaring a niche for five years, and I managed to fill my coaching practice anyway. Still, it was slow going. Many times I had the experience of telling people what I did only to hear them say, "What does that mean?" I played around with tag lines like "personal and business coach," but I was always hedging my bets. My tag lines weren't so much declarations of niche as attempts to say what I thought people wanted to hear. Yuck. That didn't work and it didn't feel very good.

I'm not saying these tag lines were lies. They were sincere as far as they went, but they fell far short of my goal of communicating my real gifts in a simple, clear, and effective manner while helping to focus my marketing efforts for optimal results.

By the summer and fall of 2001 I was in a slump. Although my coaching calendar was full, I was dissatisfied. I had reached the limit of what I could earn by billing on an hourly basis for professional services, and because I did not have a niche that fit, I could not come up with a coherent plan for creating additional streams of income. At the same time I was experiencing a crisis of meaning. Where did I add value, really? How was I a gift to the world, and how could I serve while continuing to grow and prosper. And how come it all felt so darn hard?

I wrestled with these questions for months, and then one day it hit me. My thinking about niche had been all wrong. I'd been looking at niche as a sort of trade off: I'd exchange my freedom and diversity for a steady stream of predictable (boring!) work. I saw niche as a confinement, when in fact it was an opening, an opening to a fuller and more complete path of right livelihood.

What changed everything was seeing niche in ecological terms. You see, in ecology a niche is that place in an ecosystem where a species has a natural competitive advantage. What differentiates one critter from another is its unique coloration, diet, or other adaptive features. Suddenly I saw that to choose a niche is simply to identify my own sweet spot, the place where I add loads of value simply because of who I am.

Do you see the implications? When we work with this interpretation of niche, we can be vastly more compelling and attractive to the right clients because we are being ourselves. Not only do you not have to look like all the other critters in your niche, it is an advantage to be yourself.

My new interpretation of niche has helped me to develop a simple, practical plan for creating multiple streams of income that complement my coaching business. It’s made it possible for me to spend less time and money on marketing while earning more revenue. And, perhaps most satisfying of all, it has enabled me to add tons more value to hundreds of clients and students. In short, it has made it easier for me to show up, serve, and prosper.

I believe in this material so much that I guarantee it will grow your business. Take the course, applying the principles, use the tools. Try them out in your business for up to one full year. And if you are unsatisfied, simply return the study materials and I will refund your tuition, no questions asked. (Actually, that’s not quite true. I will refund your money without hassle, and I will ask you how I could have made the course more useful. But you absolutely do not have to answer that in order to collect your refund.)

This approach of niche got consistently high marks from students in my Authentic Promotion® program. In that course, we had only one hour to study this important element of building meaningful prosperity. Now, in Thriving in the Sweet Spot, you'll have six hours of class time to not only learn the principles but apply them to your business. You'll find out how to:

• Differentiate yourself from your competition without competing. (Really!)
• Choose a precise and understandable niche so that it is easy to tell people what you do.
• Develop an elevator speech you'll look forward to using.
• Bring all that you are to this niche so that you can act authentically, creatively, and spontaneously.
• Use your niche to develop additional revenue sources without spreading yourself too thin.

Thriving in the Sweet Spot is about discovering where you add the most value with the least struggle. That doesn't mean you get to dictate your terms to an admiring world. It does imagine that there are ways and contexts in which you tend to shine more brightly, delivering greater benefit with less strain and more grace and that it's up to you to bring that into your work.

When you join this class you'll:

• Receive a workbook that includes text for deep inquiry and reflection and worksheets to develop your awareness and increase your ability to name what it is that you and only you are doing in the world and how that lines up (or doesn't) with how you make your living.
• Have 24x7 access to an Audio Podium, a recording of each call that you can listen to over your phone.
• Enjoy 24x7 access to an online recording of all the classes. These recordings remain live until 6 weeks after the end of the last session.
• Be enrolled in a private listserv you can use to network, share fieldwork, ask for support, and build a learning community.

You're ready for this course if:

• You're sincere about following your bliss, but not blissing out.
• You're ready to grapple with big thoughts and take solid, practical action to focus your business for greater effectiveness and profit.
• You're fed up with off-the-shelf approaches to defining a niche, yet you know that there's something about this whole business that you need to get your brain around.
• You think it would be grand to experience thrills and chills, fear and delight, profound satisfaction and gnawing hunger all at the same time.
• You're willing to devote at least two hours each week (plus the 90 minute class time) to your personal inquiry into right livelihood means for you.

Thriving in the Sweet Spot, Risking Blissful Service is not currently scheduled. If you would like to be notified when the next teleseminar is scheduled, email us.

Please check your schedule carefully before committing to a course. If you do need to cancel up to one week before the course begins, we will be happy to refund your tuition less a $20 administrative fee. If you cancel less than one week before a course begins, we will gladly issue a credit for a future course.

Your satisfaction is our primary concern. If after completing a course and applying the principles for up to one full year you are unsatisfied, simply return the study materials and we will credit your account for the full tuition.