How to Find Your Niche In Fitness

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 42. Today I'm walking you through how to find your niche in fitness. Are you ready? Stay tuned.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Welcome back to another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and today we're diving into how to find your niche in fitness. So you may or may not have heard that the riches are in the niches. And if you're anything like me or anything like the coaches that I work with, it can be very confusing in to pick your niche or to even start thinking about niching. Why? Because most people have had the opportunity to work with a whole slew of different types of people with different types of goals. And what happens is that because we've had the luxury of having this type of experience, what happens is that people don't want to pick their niche because they think, oh, if I get too specific, then I won't be able to help everybody, which is then going to hurt my business. But that type of thinking is actually backwards, which is what I'm going to be diving into in this episode. The reason why it's backwards is because if you are writing content for everyone, then you are speaking to no one. And I'm not sure if you've ever heard this phrase before, but have you ever heard that what is most personal tends to be most general? So what that means is that people tend to go through something that feels so personal and so painful, and they often don't want to share it because they have feelings around it or they think that it's shameful. But then once they start opening up and recognizing that other people go through the same thing, and so things that feel the most painful or the most personal tend to often happen to many people, which is a good thing. Because when you can speak to that one pain or that one problem and you become the solution, chances are there's going to be a whole lot of other people that look and feel and struggle with the same types of of problems. And when you can speak to that one problem or that one struggle and present yourself as the only solution, or maybe not even the only, but the best solution for them, then you're going to have a higher chance of converting that potential customer into a customer. But if you speak to everyone, then you speak to no one. And also it's important to recognize that when you're determining your niche, it doesn't necessarily mean that this is who you're going to have to work with forever offers change messaging changes and talent talks friends. So when you start getting incredible results for one group of people, they're going to be talking about it, they're going to be showing it, they're going to be showing off their skills based on stuff they're learning from you, which then their friends are going to want in on it. Because at the end of the day, if talent talks and if they see that their friends are getting results, then they're going to reach out to you. So I'll give you an example for me and from my perspective. When I was training moms, I primarily trained moms online, but I had a lot of of women that were older but they potentially didn't have children. But because I was talking about pelvic floor stuff, because I talking about core training, they were drawn to my work and so I still worked with them even though they weren't technically moms. I also had a full schedule of in person clients that were mostly males. So it wasn't about who can I be exclusive with, it was more about what are the problems or problem that I can solve and speak to so that my ideal client knows that my solution is for them. And even now I work primarily with fitness professionals, strengthened conditioning coaches and also physical therapists. But I have a couple of clients and worked with a couple of people that are not in that industry. So let's work through five powerful questions that you can ask yourself when you are determining the niche that you're wanting to work in inside of your fitness business. So number one, and I think this is going to be counterintuitive to what you may or may not have heard in the past from other fitness from other marketing gurus. But number one, what do you want to talk about? You'll hear people say, oh, you need to survey your audience. But before we even get there, you need to really ask yourself, what is it that you want to talk about? Because when you do what you love, it will not feel like work. I know that was a quote. I can't remember who said it. I could google it right now. But it's all right. Someone said that quote, right? If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. But it's true in the sense that when you are in the process of doing the things that you love to do, then you are going to want to do it. You're going to want to show up. What's going to be, what helps you get out of the bed in the morning when you are not feeling motivated? Because you're not going to feel motivated. It's just like fitness. We don't always want to work out all the time, we don't always want to go to work all the time. But you will have the discipline because you're doing what you love. So what is it that you want to talk about? And when you are talking about what you want to talk about, you're going to spend your free time researching, studying, loving it, be talking about it all the time, thinking about it all the time. So start there. What is it that you want to talk about? What is it that you're thinking about? What is it that you're researching all the time? Honestly, that question is, what led me to move into marketing and what led me to move into sales and what led me to get into alignment? And this was because all I think about is this. And this is true. When I was a fitness, back when I was a fitness manager, yeah, I do love the science of training. I do think it's fun. I like to listen to it, I like to share it, I like to help my trainers get, get better. But when it came to me specifically, I was only thinking about the power of language and thinking about connecting and thinking about people and thinking about persuasive language, thinking about marketing. That's all I think about, is how I can sharpen that, saw how I can get better at that. It made more sense. It was easy to get into alignment. So ask yourself, what do you want to talk about? And then number two, now this is also going to be counterintuitive, and this is also going to go against what my mentor says. But number two is I want to know what is the transformation that you want to provide? So this is actually part of the offer. Now, you'll hear gurus say out there, oh, you don't, don't start with the offer because you don't want to create something that no one's going to buy. Don't spend your time creating something that no one's going to buy. I totally get that. Understand that. But your promise is the most important part of your transformation. And so many people that I work with in fitness, they already know who you know they, you don't have to really spend time talking to a fitness professional about what, you know, processes. They know that they want to train, they know that they want to do. You know, they already have kind of an idea of what is it they want to do, but they don't really understand what the transformation is, what is the promise? And when you can communicate that in your offer, your products and services will sell. And so if you don't know who it is that you serve, start thinking about what's the transformation that you want to provide, because then your ideal client will start to get clear. So let me give you an example. So when I first came into the online space, I had just had a baby. I was eight, you know, eight weeks postpartum, I think I had just had a baby and I was, I. That transformation was insane. I'll leave that for a different podcast. But that transformation was insane. And I knew that I wanted to talk about weight loss, but it was right in a time where there was a massive shift in the industry from moving away from weight loss, believing that weight loss meant self esteem lost. And so I had a lot of fear around talking about weight loss. I had a lot of fear talking about weight loss because of what my colleagues were going to think. And then also I had a lot of fear talking about weight loss because I was not considered in my opinion at the time. Listen, I've done a lot of work on this now, but I had this belief, which I feel like so many trainers do that like, ah, I'm not fit enough to talk about this. Not true. By the way, this is also another podcast which I'll leave, I'll leave, I'll set that aside. But because I had those fears holding me back, I was writing very vanilla, fluffy, content and it was not resonating with anyone because I was, it wasn't resonating with me. And it wasn't what I wanted to talk about. And it wasn't until I could get very clear on the fact that I wanted to provide this specific transformation, which was at the time, lose up to 50 pounds without dieting, without counting calories, because it's exactly what I did in my journey. And I knew that I could help other people do the same thing. And it didn't start with counting calories and macros and dieting. It actually started with what I was talking about earlier, which is that letting go of the look of a body and that the look of a body wasn't the measure of health, that was the trans. And so when I could get clear on that transformation, knowing that that was what I wanted to talk about. My ideal client, my niche started to become clearer. I started to know because I started to ask myself the third question, which is, who specifically is that for? And so when I asked my question of my deeper purpose, questions like why. Why do I want to talk about this? It started to get clear that I wanted to work with the moms. Because, listen, being a mom for my parents out there, you know, this, it changes you. You become a whole. Like, I'm a completely different person from when I was. Didn't have kids. There wasn't. There's an element of responsibility that I didn't have before, that I wanted to show up and. And be a role model and not just say things that I wanted to protect. Yeah, I get teary. I can feel my eyes misting talking about it, but I want to protect my children from feeling the way that I felt in my own body. And that was something I got super passionate about. So that is why I wanted to specifically help moms. Plus, if you've spent a long time here and you're hanging out with me from the beginning, then you'll know that when I gave birth to Gwen in 2015, I knew zero about the transformation that I was going to go through. And I literally mean zero where I knew nothing about, you know, my sister had a conversation with me in September on the phone that said, hey, just so you know, you're going to look pregnant when the baby comes out. And I was like, wait, what? That baby is not going to be in me anymore. I'm not going to look pregnant. So I knew nothing. And so I knew nothing about recovery, pelvic floor, health. It was really my children that led me to become a powerful mover in terms of core training and breathing. It's what. That's what led me down this path. And when I realized that it was my children, and I had been a trainer for years before that, and I didn't become a power of more. A more powerful trainer until I had my kids. And so you want to ask yourself, who specifically is this for and what is causing me to want to serve them? And then we can get to number four, which is where people often start, which is what is preventing them from achieving the goal. What is the promise? What is the struggle? So when you talk, number two, you're going to know what that goal is. So number four is where we can talk about what's the struggle. This is when we can start getting really clear on finding the language of our clients, you know, and our ideal clients. And this is when we can start doing that, those market research and asking yourself like, what's the problem? What is the struggle of these people? And get specific. And then the last question that I'll leave you with when it comes to determining your niche is why specifically you? This is a very hard question to answer. So spend some time here, get silent, really start thinking, asking yourself, why specifically you? And try to do it in an emotionally detached way. And listen, I know that it is harder to. It's easier said than done. And if you listen to my podcast last week, I'm going to encourage you to check that out because I speak a lot about emotional resilience in that episode and being able to look at your in that episode, I was talking about looking at your content without personalizing it, which is very hard to do. So this is in line with that. But why specifically you? This is how you're going to niche. This is how you're going to set yourself apart in the marketplace. And in addition to doing that, this is how you're going to do it in a way that you love because you'll start to be connected to your deeper purpose. This is what's knowing. This is going to help you set yourself apart and also help you get up in the morning and stay motivated when you don't feel motivated. This is what's going to help you stay disciplined. I'll say when you don't feel motivated. So just a quick recap the five powerful questions that you can be asking yourself when you're trying to find your niche. Number one, why? What do you want to talk about? Number two, what's the transformation that you want to provide? Number three, who specifically is that for and what causes you to want to serve them? And number four, what's preventing them from achieving their goal? What is the problem? And number five, why specifically you? All right, friends, thanks so much for hanging out with me today on this episode of the podcast and I'll catch you on the next one.

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