 In this video, I'm going to share a diagram with you that I created more than five years ago, and someone just reminded me of that. Thanks, Lachlan McKinnon, for the reminder. So this diagram helps you to reflect on your niche. And when I say your niche, I mean it can be for your whole business, your career, or it could be a particular project that you're working on, and you're kind of trying to decide how to frame the project, how to title the course, or the book, or whatever it may be. Okay, so let's get going. First, there are two circles. The right hand circle is your uniqueness, which is your art. And by art, I don't mean you have to be a painter or a musician. I mean by your art is however you express yourself uniquely, compared to most other people. Okay, and on the left hand circle is other people's wants, which is the market. And I've said this before, and I want to reiterate the point. Your income, where does your income come from? Where does your money come from? Your money comes from other people. You weren't born, you know, with cash, holding cash in your hands or a credit card. You were born, and other people, of course, at first, it's your parents or authority figure or government, gives you money. But as an adult, your money comes from other people's wants. Other people say, you know what, you know, I want to pay you money, because I want you to do something for me, or I want you to sell me something. Okay, so that's where money comes from. That's why this is the gold circle, other people's wants. The green, I don't know, I guess the green could stand for freshness or life, you know, you feel alive when you are in your art. And the gold is where the gold comes from. Okay, the gold circle. So the intersection of the two is your niche. By your niche, I mean where you can make money without being completely resentful. Okay, because you could basically completely just be outside your uniqueness. But then you would feel like you're prostituting yourself. You're selling your soul, right? This is the definition of selling your soul is just to be in the gold, the gold part of the circle without being in your green part of the circle. Okay, so your niche is the intersection. It's the cross because there are some things that are here in the gold circle. There's some things that are unique to you and that you love to talk about, you love to work on you, the problems you love to solve, the people you love to help, the types of people you love to serve, the way you love to communicate. You know, that's the green circle and you write all this stuff in there. And then there's the stuff that sells. And you probably know honestly what sells, right? Because you look out there, oh, weight loss pills. Okay, weight loss pills sell. Oh, you know, how to have more sex, right? That sells. Oh, how to make more money. That sells. You know what sells. What sells is basically, and we can be as extreme as we want to go all the way into the center of the market, which is the most instant gratification items are what sells. You know, the most highly pleasurable, instant things are what tends to sell the most, which is why pornography is a very good industry in terms of money making, which is why junk food is a great industry for money making, which is why, and also things have to do with pleasure or fear, which is, you know, it's not my favorite things to focus on in terms of personal growth. That's kind of the opposite of personal growth and spiritual growth is kind of going away from, you know, immersing completely in pleasure or fear, right? But fear sells too, of course. Like, oh, I'm so afraid of, you know, like I was talking with a client who is a doula, and she teaches classes. She, you know, she was naming her classes. Oh, comfort, comfort during labor, things like that. And then her classes sold okay, so so. But then she named the classes easing labor pain. And then it's sold a lot more because people are afraid. And not that she was trying to go their fear, but she was trying to meet them where they're at. Like, that's really what they're thinking about. They're thinking about the pain of labor. So when you title over class that, it was much more in the center of what the market wants, right? So pain and pleasure are what sells and the more instant or the more great the pain and pleasure is, the more people are willing to pay money to get that instant great pleasure or to solve or to avoid the instant great pain. Does that make sense? Or the coming pain that they know is going to come for sure. So you have to think about what that means for your industry. Okay, where in your industry is the instant great pain or the instant great pleasure? And that's for you to think about. That's for you to think about and reflect on. And so the center of these things, I mean, you I shouldn't say I didn't, we didn't talk as much about your uniqueness because that should be more obvious to you because you you have certain things that you just love to talk all day about that you would love to get paid to do what you would love to get paid to talk about what you would love to get paid to help what kinds of people to do, solve what kinds of problems or to reach what kinds of goals. That's your uniqueness. That's your art. No one might pay you for that. Maybe nobody will. Okay, if you didn't think about this side of things. So your niche is there, the center of those two, what is the intersection of those two make sense? Okay, now let's talk about, let's talk about how these two dots that I've added here. Okay. Remember, the center there is your your ideal niche is like, you know, it's partly what you love to do and it's partly what people will pay for. Okay, but what about these two dots? These two dots are usually where people start and that's what I would recommend that you start in one of these two places. Well, how do you decide which of these two dots to start in? You'll notice that this green dot, okay, is closer to the center of your uniqueness. The green dot is closer to your passion. In other words, it's more of your passion, but it's farther away from other people's wants. Okay, it's not at the center of the market, but it's still within the market. It's not completely outside the gold circle. It's still within the gold circle. It's just not as money making as the gold dot. Okay, so the gold dot is closer to solving people's instant pain or giving people instant pleasure, but it's still within your uniqueness. It's still within your passion or it's still where you can bring some of your artistry, some of your personality to it, some of your interests to it. So that's where the gold circle is. Does that make sense, the gold dot? Now, where should you start? If you need to make more meaning in your work right now, if you're like, God, I've been in a corporate job for a decade and I just am tired of that corporate job. I just need to do something that I love right now. Okay, money is less important. I need to do something that I love. Then you can start where closer to the center of your passion, but hopefully it's still somewhere within the market if you still want response from other people because others wants and the market is not just money making. The gold circle isn't just about making a lot of money. The gold circle is also about getting validation from others. It's about getting response or engagement from other people. If you're doing a bunch of stuff and you're like, God, nobody's responding to what I'm saying, then you need to think about the gold circle. What might they respond more to? What is more about their instant pleasure or solving their instant pain? That's it. Okay, well, anyway, if you're coming out of corporate, you should probably have some money saved. You don't need to make money right away. You could start at the green dot. It's great. Still somewhere within the goal. Okay, start there and then you could decide. You'll get some response from the market, which is nice. Not a lot, but some response, some validation and some helpfulness like, oh, I'm really helping people with something. That's nice. That's nice. It's nice to feel and then you could decide whether or not you want to pull the market along further and further to the right towards your uniqueness, which you can. As you build a community of people who really like who you are, your personality, your uniqueness, your art, the way you talk about things, the way you think about things, you can pull the market, you can pull the gold circle closer and closer toward the center of your art. Then that's what I've been able to do. I didn't start there. I'll tell you where I started. I started here, which is where probably a lot of you need to start, because a lot of you have not been focused on money for too long and now you need to make some money. If you need to make some money, you need to get closer to what other people want, which is, again, think about this. How can you give people instant pleasure or to help someone solve their instant pain? What are the various pains that they have in their life? You can list them out. Which ones are more intense? Which ones are more, what's the opposite of chronic? I'm missing the word right now. The opposite of chronic is, anyway, someone chat, please. Non-chronic but intense, acute. There's the word. Acute pain or intense pleasure. Now, like I said, prostitution is the oldest job. Prostitution is the oldest job. Why? It's because it gives people intense pleasure and that's where money comes from. That's an ugly way of thinking about work and about livelihood, for most of us anyway. We want to think about other kinds of intense pleasures or intense pains we can help solve. If you want to make money, closer to the center of give people pain relief. Think about what that might mean in your line of work. I started there with solving people's intense pain or intense want to have social media expertise. I started that 10 years ago and again, I'm still kind of here. People are still desperate to learn Facebook from me. They're still desperate for that. That's still where I can make the most money. I know that for sure. Over time, I have been able to travel from this gold dot closer and closer to the green dot where I'm now teaching classes on mastery. Much fewer people are willing to pay me money to learn from me, George Cow, about how to become more excellent at whatever you want to become excellent at. Fewer people are desperate about that. That's more long-term thinking. Those are my least selling classes, joyful productivity and mastery and framework somewhere in the middle there. Framework is selling okay, teaching people how to create their frameworks. It's not intense pain. It's kind of some people are thinking, oh, I got to get organized. That's so painful. That's a little bit more in the center. So think about what that might mean for you. Most of you need to go from the gold dot to the green dot. Most of you need to think about what is more painful for people? What are they more desperate in trying to figure out, solve what kind of goals are most pleasurable for them? That they're like, oh, I have to get it right now. The instant, it's about what they want instantly. They could snap a finger. Whereas with things like excellence, they know, everybody knows that you can't get excellent overnight. But of course, there are some courses that still try to sell you. Become an amazing whatever in 90 days. Become instantly amazing at something in three steps. That's marketers lying to you. They know that people want instant gratification. They know people are desperate about certain things. And so they market as if that was possible. And if you can truly do it in your service, you could seriously give and you can think about this not just in terms of what to offer, but also just how to frame your services and products in a way that does give the customer, the client, the student some instant pleasure. Like when they buy something, can you give them something right away to give them some instant gratification? That's closer. And you could say, hey, once you buy this thing, you're going to immediately get this. Oh, yeah, I'm so, I'm so desperate to learn that. I'm so desperate to get that. You know, that's something I want right away. You could deliver that in some kind of video or in some kind of ebook or in some kind of, you know, article series or something like that. No, yeah, I want that right away. But over time, as you build your community of people for whom you've been solving instant problems now for a little while, or for whom you've been giving some instant pleasure a little while, you can go more and more towards the green dot, go closer and closer towards the center of your, of your passion, your uniqueness, which tends to be more spiritual, right? For most of you who are watching this anyway, it tends to be things about more spiritual things, more long term things, things have to do with transformation, things where people have to do some work. And you've done the work. That's why you are so passionate about it. You've spent years doing some kind of work or you spent years just studying something. And now you're like, Oh my God, if other people only spent the amount of time and energy doing this thing that I've been doing, they too can experience this kind of joy or this kind of success in this area that I've experiencing, right? That is your uniqueness. That's your art. That's your passion where you want more people to experience as well. But it tends to be more on the edge of what other people are willing to pay for right away. So does that make sense? Let me know if this, this is helpful. If you have any questions, comment below the video. And I guess that's all I want to say for today. So until the next video, I wish you thoughtful reflection on how you too can find and find your niche that makes the most sense for your priorities at this time. Do you need to make more money right now? Or do you need to make more meaning right now? Start at one of these two circles and go go in the other direction. And again, this can be for any, it doesn't have to be for your entire business or entire career. These circles and these dots can apply to any specific project that you're going to work on, that you get the thing, the service you're going to launch next, the program you're going to launch next. I think about these circles all the time when it comes to deciding, okay, what online courses am I going to launch next? When one of my courses does really well. So for example, my writing course did really well. A lot of people were desperate to learn how to write, finally get into authentic content writing. So a lot of people bought that course for me. So that was the goal dot. And I kind of enjoyed it. It's sort of something I really enjoyed too. I'm really lucky that a lot of people decided to buy it. So then I didn't need to make as much money the next launch. So then I decided to go with a green dot launch the next time. Oh, mastery. Nobody knows, including myself, what the course is really going to be about. But it's something that I'm vaguely passionate about. It's very vague for me, but I have some juice around it. And I wasn't able to sell very much of it. Because I didn't really know how to frame it in a way that was a goal dot for people. I didn't really know how to frame it in a way that would give people more pleasure or solve people more pain. So it didn't sell as well. But that's okay. Because I sold well in the previous launch. So now I can give myself the luxury of doing something that was more passionate for me, and then because the mastery class didn't sell as well, next launch, I needed to do something that was closer to the goal dot, which is the framework, because I took a survey for people. Hey, which of these things are you most wanting me to teach? Oh, more people said framework. So that's the more goal dot. So okay, I'm going to sell something more that more people are going to buy now to make some more money so that the next month maybe I can be more for the green. So again, you get to choose and this is choosing the clients as well. It's like right now you may need to choose clients who are willing to pay you more money. And then you make a little bit of money and then now you can have some more luxury to choose clients that have less money to pay you. And you could serve them because for some reason you really enjoy serving them. You can volunteer. You could do some volunteer services. So I hope this is an interesting way of thinking about what you're going to do going forward for your business. And anyway, I look forward to your comments and your questions. All right, have a great day.