Stuck on defining your niche? Build an audience first.

I see people getting stuck on defining their niche, figuring out their target market, what should they offer, what kind of products or services or programs? Here is my suggestion. If you're stuck on that, then maybe just let it go for now. Yeah, you don't have to figure it out yet. It took me a long time to figure out my niche. Well, after I was already earning a full time living from my business. How is that possible? Well, let's talk about it this way. When you try to figure out your niche in the beginning, what are you doing? You're what, journaling on your own? You're thinking on your own. Maybe you're working with a business coach or a marketing coach or a marketing expert. How many opinions do you have about your niche at that point? You and your marketing expert, do you think that's enough to actually understand the market? Remember, your money, your income comes from other people's spending and not just one person spending. It's not your marketing expert spending. It's not your own spending. It's the spending of lots and lots of people who will be right for your offerings. So instead of trying to find a niche first, instead of trying to figure out your offerings, what if you build an audience first? You build an audience first. Okay? Based on your authentic expression, based on your exploration of your ideas and practicing your voice, whether it's through video or through writings, you build an audience for your personal brand. You, the things that you're interested in, the things that you're passionate about, the things that you're learning, you build an audience first. And then you get to know your audience members through one to one conversations or through the comments that they're posting on your content, you apply to them and you kind of get to know them better. And then once you've gotten to know some of your audience members and you have a bit of a relationship with some of your, your audience, then you take a survey to say, what should I create next as an online course or as a one to one offering or as whatever. And you get their votes. Because now you're not just relying on the opinion of yourself, your own journaling, and your marketing expert. Now you've got the opinions of hopefully dozens of your audience members. And dozens of people are a good, reliable representation of thousands of people. Okay, maybe in the beginning you're only getting the opinions of 10 to 15 or 5 to 10 people. Still 5 to 10 people, probably a good representation of hundreds of people. Okay, so this is the core, I guess, strategy that I've been using for myself. And for my clients is to build an authentic audience first. Authentic audience meaning people, I should say, build an audience of true fans first. True fans are the people who just love everything you do. And yes, they are out there. They are out there. Absolutely. The Internet is such a big place. There are billions of people on the Internet. Okay, think about this way. Billions of people on the Internet. What's. I think it's. Last I researched, I think it was something like 4 billion people on the Internet. 4 billion. Okay. What's 1% of 4 billion? Just 1% of 4 billion. That's 400 million. Sorry, 40 million people. 40 million people. Okay. That's 1% of the Internet might resonate with you. Maybe it's not 1%. Maybe it's 1/10 of 1%. Fine. 4 million people might resonate with you. Okay? And let's go even smaller. Fine. It's. 40,000 people are going to be ravenously, you know, into your content. Probably true. 40,000 people. You will find them in the lifetime of your business if you distribute your content. So that's the, that's the sort of main question that a lot of you have is, George. I, I want to build an audience, but how do I. How do I do that? Okay. Through content. Authentic content marketing. And the simplest way that I know how to do that is through Facebook ads. I've said it before, and I'll say it again and again and again until it's no longer true. Facebook ads is the cheapest online ads right now that are the most effective as well. So if you want to learn how to do authentic content marketing, Facebook ads is my number one choice. Number two choice is probably Google Ads. Google Ads is way more complicated and difficult to use than Facebook ads. Facebook ads is much easier than Google Ads. So Facebook ads, as well as collaborating with other people who have a similar audience that you want to reach, you do joint interviews together. Sorry, you interview the other person. The other person interviews you. That kind of thing is how you build an audience. Okay? That's how you build an authentic. An audience of true fans based on your authenticity, personality, and ideas. And as you. Once you build in a bit of an audience where you're, you're, you know, every time you post something and do do an ad to your warm audience, you get hopefully 10 plus comments on it, then it's time to do a survey, a survey of your audience on what you should offer next. Okay. And then offer the thing that is most popular. It's really a very simple thing, not necessarily easy, but you Build audience based on your authentic content. You get to know your audience, you take a survey, and then you offer whatever thing that they most want you to offer. Instead of the traditional way of doing business and marketing is to figure everything out in the beginning. Figure out what your product is going to be, Figure out your target market. I just think that that is such an unproductive thing. Because here's what happens when you try to figure things out in the beginning, is that you become so invested. You become so invested in the niche you've defined and the offering you've created and the beautiful website you've spent thousands of dollars making. And yet you have no audience. You have no audience. Nobody cares. Except you and your marketing expert, okay? And maybe a few of your friends. Nobody cares. And so now you're trying to shove down the. Shove this thing down people's throats. You're like, I've created this thing. This thing's the greatest thing in the world because I've spent years creating it. The more time and energy you spend creating something, the more you're going to be invested in it and the more devastated you're going to be when people aren't totally into it. That's just a human bias. That's why I'm very careful not to invest myself in any idea unless you all audience members, tell me it's a great idea. Then I invest more of myself in it. But everything, every idea that I put forth, it's very casual. Very casual. Whether it's a piece of content. Casually, I'm going to just write about it or speak about it very casually. See if it gets traction. If it gets traction, then I'll. Then I'll put my more energy into editing the thing, making a better video or whatever it may be. Same thing with offers. I'll very casually put it out there. If nobody buys, I'll cancel it. I'll cancel that course. Nobody buys it. Fine, I'll cancel it. Very casual. I haven't put a sales page together yet. It's all very casual. When people are buying without a sales page with just a quick blurb, people are buying. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I'm going to put together a sales page. I'm going to take it more seriously. Now, this is the market driven approach. This is the market driven approach, which is what makes money. Okay, See, I'm not. When people think, oh, George, authentic business, you're not about making money. No, I'm about making money. It's just I do it in a very authentic way and the authentic way is to. Is to be myself, not try to persuade you of anything. Okay. But just put stuff out there and see if you are. You are. You love it. If you love it. I don't have. There's no persuasion needed. I just put more effort into that thing that you love. And then I'll keep going and I'll keep scaling up and I'll try different things. So be careful of defining your niche in the beginning before you have an audience, okay? Build an audience first based on your authentic voice and authentic style, authentic personality, authentic ideas, okay? And then get to know your audience. Right? People who already love you, they don't know why, but the things you say really resonate with them. Your personality really resonates with them. Great. Wonderful. Get to know them. Take a survey of what they. What they want from you in terms of a product or a service or program or an event or whatever, and then make the thing that most of them want from you. That's it. So. Because then you're not trying to defend an idea that you came up with in your own closet. You came up with. With your marketing expert who you think is so smart. And if they. And you think it's a great idea, must know it's two people's opinions. You need dozens or hundreds of people's opinions because that's where the money comes from. Does that make sense? So I hope this is helpful. And it's a much more. I think it's a much more practical way of building a business. It's more likely to make money. It's more likely to be authentic because you don't have to try to persuade anyone of anything. Because when you first define your niche, you first create an offering and you try to push it down people's throats with marketing. See, this is the mistake that people make with marketing. They think marketing is about. Now that I've created this great thing, I'm going to show it to enough people so that enough people will buy it. Or I've got to use clever copywriting, clever language to get people to really salivate and really love that thing and really want it, to create the demand for it. That's inauthentic. That's inauthentic. Because every time you're trying to. If I'm trying to persuade you of something, okay. I become inauthentic. If I'm merely sharing my honest views on something, then I'm authentic, right? But when you try to. When you. When you create an offer in the beginning, define your niche. Define your target audience to create an offer in the beginning and then try to sell it. You now feel the pressure of, my God, I've spent so much time and energy and money on creating this thing. It's better work. It's better work. And so now I'm going to spend a lot of money on copywriting and funnel creation, try to force people to buy this thing. It's terrible. That's why most marketing sucks. Most marketing rubs us the wrong way. This is so much promotion and just, you know, persuasion and trying to get us to do stuff versus you first, show up to the world as yourself with your writings or with your videos or however you're comfortable. You show up the world, blessing the world, not trying to sell anything. You show up to bless the world with your ideas, with your personality, with your style, whatever is uplifting that you want to share or something you've learned. You've learned so many things in your life. You're learning things now. Share what you're learning. Share what you're interested in. Share what you're passionate about. Distribute those things through Facebook ads until you find the group of people who just love you for who you are, who just love you for who you are, and then find out what they want from you and then sell it to them. That's it. It's very simple. All right. I hope this is helpful. I'm going to take a look to see if there are any comments and questions now from my Facebook Live. I always welcome your comments and your questions. So go ahead and put that below, below the video and let me take a look here. Let's see here. Thanks for joining me here. Kim and Lisa and Tara, Arturo and Tracy, Linda, Jelena, Vivianne, Wendy, and let's see, already have a couple of people sharing this video. So thank you, Wendy, and thank you, Linda. Appreciate your shares. And so, yeah, I hope this is clear. This is sort of like an overview of my entire strategy and I look forward to seeing how you, where you take this and take it and run with it and let me know your updates and your questions as you, as you go along the way. All right, I look forward to your updates. Take care of.