Not a Niche Way to Succeed in Business

It’s all over every blog, book or theory on building a business of any kind; “Don’t waste your energy trying to do it all, but point your energy and time on one narrowed down specailised area and this will lead to success.” Find a niche- specialise and you will be successful in business. 

Try as I might a 'niche' eludes me. I can’t seem to set my sights on just one tree when there is an amazing forest before my eyes. I find people, their lives, their minds, their relationships, their bodies, their environment, their everything is interconnected.

How can I point my energy in one spot when there is so much consider about human life? I think people who can concentrate on one area are amazing. I envy their focus and commitment, but I have failed business 101.

Maybe it is because I enjoy variety. Maybe it is because I lack the ability to screen out all the other factors and possibilities, but I love seeing all sorts of people with all sorts of issues. It will certainly have a lot to do with the holistic way in which I was trained and the increasing evidence that we are greater than the sum of our parts. 

I see individuals and couples that come in with all manner of conflicts and complaints. I can see couples dealing with child behaviour problems, or parents dealing with coupling after becoming parents. I see old couples married for decades and young couples contemplating a life together.
 
I see people with major life or career decisions and we focus on the future they want to create. I see people needing psychotherapy, blocked by past trauma or needs that were never met.

A variety of problems simply means I have to dip into a range of learning and keep learning and learning. For example I can use an understanding infant attachment to identify patterns in adult relationships. I keep up on neuroscience, discoveries in genetics and little known biochemical disorders that affect us emotionally. I understand how the personality is formed and the many strategies we develop to deal with our imperfect world. And one thing that really excites me is being able to pull a bit from here and connect it to there or at least create a little ah-ha.

I want to help people understand how their strategies can become habitual and block their natural urge to grow and develop. Other times I am simply the ears that hear the real story, one that has never been told, until now. I know what one needs to become more integrated and regain the parts of self that were lost along they. 

I enjoy facilitating development, personal development, family development, organisational development. I love to teach, to share what I know and help individuals or audiences learn there can be another way to see things and act or be. 

I am driven by a desire to help, I want to make the world a better place. I have learnt of so much that is needed to help others along their journey. Yet I find I am able to tolerate the ambiguity that many clients express while they explore where it is they want to go. I am impressed that as I let go of my urge to find solutions my client organically takes over finding resources, directions or answers they were previously unaware of.

So no, I am not an expert on any one aspect of our amazing minds and the complex lives that we live. And in some ways I wish I could have succeeded in specialising. I would love to be that person who knows everything about something. But in other ways I relish the variety of the human condition and its many different faces. Maybe this is a business mistake, and one day I’ll blog about the woes of neglecting to specialise  But it's not all about business success. Yes, I want to be successful, but successful in my vocation of helping and teaching with passion, commitment, clarity and authenticity.

Perhaps my ‘niche’ is life itself: our humanity, with its complexities, its challenges and its triumphs. So, if I have failed in taking the advice of all the ‘how to succeed in business’, I am at peace with that.