How to Find The PERFECT Niche For Your Business in 2022

Dean Graziosi explains the "knowledge industry" as the practice of turning lived experience and hard-won skills into teachable products (courses, live trainings) and describes it metaphorically as building a "bridge" that guides people out of life’s "dips." He argues technology has greatly simplified delivery (phone uploads, Zoom, platforms) and that success comes from narrowing your niche (drilling down from broad markets to a tiny dot of ideal clients) which increases confidence and makes marketing precise. Graziosi supports this with many short case studies (Mindy the photographer who moved online; Jamie Folahi who created a course to help parents manage childhood eczema naturally; his wife who trains stylists on a specific hair-extension method; Fernando organizing chef-led events) and prescribes reverse-engineering the ideal client, targeted messaging, and using modern delivery systems to reach global audiences.
Chapters
Your delivery systems are endless. You could create a course. You could create a course in today's world from your phone and upload it from your phone. I mean, technology has not made it harder. Technology has simplified it in this industry. This is my quick definition of the knowledge industry. And what does this graph mean? This is life. Let's just say this is our journey of life, okay? During that journey of life, have you ever had a mess come up unexpected, right? Went through an unexpected divorce? Got fired from the job? Something happened with your family, you had an illness, something went sideways in your life, Somebody let you down, you lost that inner love that you had for yourself, and you lost who you were supposed to be or who God designed you to be. And you just got off on the path. Or maybe at this moment, right, this is a pivotal moment, you had to learn something. You decided, I'm going into business for myself, I'm going to get the raise, I'm going to do better at this relationship, I'm going to parent differently. You had to learn something or you had to take some uncomfortable action. Ah, I got to end this. I got to start this. I have to fix this. Any one of these scenarios, it does something, it puts you in this downward position, right? I had to fix this mess. I had to learn this new thing. I had to learn this skill or how to figure this thing out, or I had to get better at it, or how to take uncomfortable action to start the business. Scale the business, ask the question, ask for the yes, get the money, right? But during this journey of going down, what happens? You start uncovering, you start understanding how to fix the mess, and you come up with a solution. The learning of starting your own thing, being in the business you're in, learning sales, learning how to eat vegan, learning how to exercise better from home, learning how to make your kids be the center if you had a divorce and you put them first or like, you learn a little bit, maybe you had a child born with eczema and you learn how to naturally heal it. I don't know what that learning was, but it became a skill and that uncomfortable action became mastery in some cases. So you went through this journey and all of a sudden now you're over here and life gets to continue. But during this dip, and sometimes, let's be honest, that dip looks like this, right? Sometimes we go down to the lowest points in our lives. During this journey, you learned this, became this. And here's the part that I believe describes self education the best right now at this point, are so many people in the exact niche of what you learned during this journey and they're looking over the cliff and they need to go through this journey. And there's two things they can do or you can let them do. They can go here or maybe they have to go all the way down here and someday come back or and this is what I love to call, this is what we do in the self education industry. We build a bridge. That's really what the knowledge industry is. It's a bridge. But let me just tell you what's changed in the world. You see, when I started and when Tony started, we had to do infomercials and then we had to build a course and we had to put the course into a warehouse and then we had to get people calling the phone and then the warehouse would pack up the box and ship it to them and we had to pay for media and all that stuff. That was great. It's how I learned if you knew what it looks like through my lens in today, in today's world, when we can identify the exact people, we'll talk more about that in a moment that want exactly what it is you're sharing that we can deliver this just like I'm doing right now on a zoom call. You can write a book over the next year. That's great. I've written multiple New York Times bestsellers. I love books. But I would much rather lay out what I was going to do if someone gave me the blueprint like Tony and I do. And in 30 days from now be on a zoom call in impacting lives all over the world that want to eat better live, better work out better fix their relationship, find self love, sell better live. I mean 4,500 different niches. We can do this through platforms, through zoom, through something Tony and I created. We'll share with you a little bit. Like your delivery systems are endless. You can create a course. You could create a course in today's world from your phone and upload it from your phone. I mean technology has not made it harder. Technology has simplified in this industry. Technology drives me nuts. I'm 52, I didn't grow up with a phone in my hand or technology. I like simple in this industry. It's so easy to deliver once you know. So that's the best way I love to describe the knowledge industry is you are providing a bridge. And when you look at it, somebody like Mindy, she's so awesome. I had the chance to talk to Mindy on the phone. Mindy was in A traditional corporate life and just got tired of it and decided to follow her passion of photography. She went from one extreme to another and she wanted to be creative. And she went around New York City just taking pictures of all this cool stuff and doing it in a way that was different than the traditional way. She loved it so much that she decided to build a little school in New York City to teach people how to be better at photography. And she got momentum and started doing well. And then all of a sudden, Covid came and that put an end to it. Like, people would come to her office, she'd teach it. And she thought to herself, I wonder if I could ever do something online? And her friend's like, nah, that's for young people. No, that's too busy. No, that's too big of a crowd. That's what the naysayers said. That's what maybe my sister would have said, even though she loves me and was trying to protect me. Thankfully, Mindy didn't listen to the naysayers or in her self doubt. She started working with Toni and I and realized that wasn't true, that she could stand out. And now Mindy is absolutely crushing it. She built not only a course, she does live virtual trainings. And now, guess what? The people she teaches are not people from New York City anymore. She's teaching people from all around the world. She went from this tiny niche and now she's training everyone how to have this creative eye and take pictures in a different way. And she's doing absolutely amazing. It was so great having an awesome conversation with her. Okay, so here's where we're at first is knowing what to sell. Why now? Why this? I hope, I hope I'm doing this live. I'm doing this without scripts. I hope that you get to see that. This is an industry that's exponentially growing. This is an industry that shifted, that people aren't looking for the doctors and the lawyers and the people with initials after their name or 40 years experience. They're looking for somebody that's a chapter ahead that would be willing to share what they know to help them with that bridge in every niche you could possibly imagine. I hope I did you a service by understanding it. And the next part is knowing what to sell, right? It's like, okay, I know a lot of things or maybe I don't know enough, but I want you to think about this, right? Actually pull these up. These are regular people, everyday people doing extraordinary things. These are on a platform. I'll tell you later that Tony and I created for people to share their stories. Now these are everyday people. These aren't the doctors and people who figured out. These are people that were scared, had imposter syndrome, didn't know if they had a strategy. And these are all people selling what they know online, their commodity. Right, I said this before. Their experiences, their inventory, their knowledge is their asset. Go ahead and pull those up. So Erica is teaching people how to brand themselves, write a book or do a course done for you in 30 days. Charles King is teaching people how to film themselves. There's a lot of people filming themselves in today's world, not sure how to do it in an elegant way. Adam is teaching people how to manage your finances yourself from home, taking ownership of your 401k. He's not a financial expert. He just did this for himself and had some great results. Tiffany teaches people how to do a six week low carb nutrition support. Mark Evans teaches people how to build an app. And Mark had never done that before. I know his story. Let's see. Holly teaches people how to write songs from the heart. I mean, how cool is that? Who would have ever thought she writes songs now she teaches people how to do it. Floraine teaches people how to master stress and anxiety and find peace and calm. Now none of us need that in today's world, right? Let's see. Peter teaches the seven principles to make sure your children are thriving now during divorce. Now think about that, right? I talked about before. Your mess sometimes becomes your message. I want you to think about this. It if you were going through a divorce and I hope nobody I went through one. I'm not an advocate of divorce, but I went through it. I remember the fear and the angst I had about my children because I was a child divorce. When I did, I looked for people who had already gone through it. Let me just ask you if you were going through that situation in today's world is different. 20 years ago you might have said I got to go to a therapist who specializes in that. That's not the way people think anymore. The way people think is I want someone who went through it, whose kids are thriving, who's aligned with their ex and they parent the same way. They co parent magically and is willing to share it. I would much rather learn from someone who's been through it, experienced, went through the valley and is on the other side. That's how most of you are if you're willing to share your experience. And then lastly, I mean there's so many of these but Jen teaches six months of coaching for young widows and widowers. I know that seems like a small niche, and it fills my heart that she's helping other people because obviously she went through that. And here's one I think is really important. Pull this slide up, Mike. You can leave this up. How to help cure eczema naturally. Right? And I know there's no natural cures or any of that, and that's not what she claims. But let me just tell you about Jamie Folahi. This is a really personal story because Jamie filmed a course. You could take that down now, Mike. She filmed a course on how to naturally help eczema, right? Because she had a son with eczema and took him to doctors and he was on steroids. And she just had all these different opinions, couldn't take it anymore. She read every book, thought of, went to every expert she could, and she came up with a process and she naturally cured her son of eczema. Now that sounds great. She was scared to death to release this. She was like, I'm not a doctor. I don't have. I don't have. I didn't go to school for this. I just have what I did for my son. But I want you to know she was scared and she almost didn't do it because she didn't feel like the expert. It was only, I'm not a doctor, but all her years of research to cure her son allowed my wife to gain it in two days going through her course. Jamie was selfless and shared and allowed my boy to be better. And that's not. This is just one simple case. This happens over and over. My daughter also bought how to do oil painting off of someone and went through that entire course. And she cut the learning curve. There's so many cool things that we could share, but there's so many things that can truly impact other people's lives that lives inside here with you. And you just have to understand the strategy of how to unlock it. In fact, Scott, could you follow me over to the whiteboard? This is my next fancy schmancy drawing for you guys. We'll do this so we don't. So we can focus on that. Okay? Now, here's what happens when you start thinking and maybe I'm wrong. You can let me know in the chat. But here's what happens when you start thinking about what you're going to share, right? Jamie, she filmed that, I think, on her phone in her kitchen. It's an unbelievable, awesome course, right? But when you start thinking about what you're going to share. You're like, oh, my God. Like when I talked about Motor Millions, right? When I was thinking, when I almost gave up was when I was thinking, I got to be something for everyone. I got to teach how to do dealerships and how to do your spreadsheets and how to calculate and create your standing operating procedures, and what are your KPIs, your key performance indicators. Oh, my God. I don't know that I'm a loser. I can't do it. That brain started that. But then when I said, no, I just want to teach people how to flip one extra car a month from home. I could do that. I could kill it. So I want you to think about, the smaller we get, the more your confidence goes up, the bigger it gets. So if we think about. Let's use Jamie as an example. I just shared her personal story. If Jamie thought about I got to try to sell how to cure eczema or how to help eczema naturally to 7 billion people. I'm not a doctor. I can't do it. But was she really going after 7 billion people or was she going after parents? Right. It gets a little smaller when she was just going after parents. But was she going after all parents? No, she was just going after parents with young kids. Well, that gets smaller. But was she going after parents with just young kids? No, she was going after parents with young kids that have eczema. Oh, that gets even smaller. But then that wasn't who she was going after. She was going after parents with young kids who have eczema that want to cure it naturally. And that dot becomes small. And when that dot became small, her confidence went through the roof because she knows that she could teach. That she could teach parents of kids with eczema how to use the strategy she used to get him off steroids and do it naturally. You see, when I thought about helping people sell cars, 7 billion people seemed overwhelming. But I wasn't going after people that 7 billion people. I was going after people that wanted to do something a little extra, that wanted to just sell a couple cars, that wanted to do it from home, that didn't want to start a dealership and wanted to just make a few bucks extra a month, not millions. When I did that, that's all I went after. Right. My wife. I'll give you an example. I met my wife. She was the top hairstylist in Arizona. Amazing at what she does. And she specializes in hair extensions. I didn't even know hair extension extensions were a Thing had no idea. Now I'm an expert in hair extensions because my wife's so passionate about it. She's so passionate because she believes she helps when women come in. The reason she's so damn good is because she loves women. And she loves women to be empowered and look amazing and feel amazing, like it's her art that she wants women to come in not feeling the best about themselves. And when they leave, they feel on fire, and it lights her up. And that's why she's so damn good at what she's done now. She's already done some trainings. When I first met her, she's like, I could never do this. And then when I did this exact. I literally did this with her, this little evolution. And when I did, she went from, I could never do that to I must do it. Because when I said to her, you're thinking that you got to serve 7 billion people on how to do hair better, right? What she wanted to do is help hairstylists impact lives more and make more money. You know, an average blow dryer might be 50 bucks, or hair extensions are like $500, $700. It's crazy. I had no idea that women spent that. But it looks magnificent, right? So she wanted to help other stylists do better for themselves. And when she thought about training 7 billion people. Overwhelming. She thought about the beauty industry. Still too overwhelming. Thought about just helping people with haircuts and blow dries and sops and running the front desk and how to advertise all that overwhelmed her. I said, but what if you didn't do the beauty industry? You didn't do all the stuff you just did. Hair extensions. But I said, babe, do you use all kinds of different hair extensions? She's like, no. A lot of them break the hair off and hurt. A lot of them give you a headache because it's too tight. She's like, I use the one that I believe feels the. You don't even know they're in. They're easy to put in. They don't give you a headache, and they're most cost effective. It's natural hair. So I said, you use one kind. She goes, yeah, just one kind of. So it went from 7 billion down to this little dot that she was just teaching other hairstylists. Not how to do color, not how to cut, not how to blow dry, just to do hair extensions and this one type of hair extension. When I did that, she's like, oh, I could do that in my sleep. Like, exactly. And now she's fired up to do this. So the reason I took a moment is because once you narrow it down and it's a process that Tony and I have mastered, that we walk people through in a much deeper process strategy and build a framework. And then here's the part you really got to understand. You reverse engineer what you've discovered. Not all this, just this. And you find your ideal client. Jamie is just looking for parents of kids with eczema that want to cure it naturally. I was just looking for people that wanted to do one car a month. I was looking for people that wanted to do one or two real estate deals a year. I was looking for people that Tony and I are sharing, people who want to be in the knowledge industry, right? When you fine tune it, then you just look for the exact person. And then all your advertising, all your marketing, your social media posts, whatever it is you do, the emails to friends just go say, I'm looking for people that want this. Here's the cool part. In today's world, this could potentially be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people because we're all connected to everyone around the world. This why the knowledge industry is exploding the way it is. So sometimes we're the reporter of other people's knowledge because we've obsessed on it. Right? Fernando, if you pull this up, he was an event planner. Covid came, everything changed. So what he did is he put on an event because he loves cooking, he loves food, he loves culture. He was in South America. He put an event on with different chefs, all socially distanced, right? And he got all these chefs to come together and teach their expertise. He was just the like, he just brought the people together. He wasn't the expert, but he did amazing. Absolutely crushed it, bringing other people's knowledge together. And that's another way to jump in the knowledge industry. One is hopefully you see why this industry, why now, why you two? I hope that little diagram helped you see that when the smaller you get for your niche, the smaller your niche gets, the more opportunity you have to gain the confidence to make this real. And the more you get to pinpoint who needs it. And when you talk to people who want exactly what you're offering, it doesn't feel uncomfortable, it feels amazing because each person wants it. Whether that's cooking, eating better, fixing your relationship, fixing eczema, doing hair extensions or flipping a car. When you talk to the person that wants it, you get a different feel. So if you know what it is the industry, and then you know, or you start to think about what you can offer. The last thing I'd be thinking is, well, how the hell do I sell it? Like, just thinking about it, like, you know, who'd buy from me? I don't have any followers. Where do I find them? I'm not a big influencer on Instagram, and I know that's one of the biggest things that hold people back and can ruin people. To miss out on this, to miss this huge wave coming in, right? You think of a surfer. If a surfer gets in front of the wave, it drives them all the way to the beach. If you wait too long, the wave kind of goes by and you're paddling to keep up. And I would just hate for those myths to stop you from moving forward to explore in this. Because if you think I'm an introvert, I don't know if I could teach people again. I don't have a huge following. That's enough to make you play small. Miss out. And then the wave goes by. What's up? What's up? 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