Busting Your Niche Hesitations

No matter who I’m working with, no matter what context, be it Group or Free Individual Consultation (yes, that’s a thing, email to get scheduled), I always start with creating a niche. At least 30% of the time the person doesn’t want to go there. Usually they don’t want to limit themselves or they think they’re niching themselves with a population like “women in transition ages 25 to 60.” (Think for a second about the difference in marketing to a 25 year old in a quarter-life crisis and a 60 year old who is retiring to watch her grandbabies. Very different.) Deciding on your niche is another ball game altogether that we’ll get to in another blog post. First, I just want you to buy in to the idea: Your private practice will build faster and be more satisfying with a niche.  Let’s work on two scarcity mindsets that come up with niching: The first rebuttal I usually get is: I don’t want to limit the referrals that come in. I can work with a lot of presenting concerns and I need money to pay for my business expenses.   Ok, fair enough. This seems counterintuitive, but here’s the thing: if you market to everyone, you’re really marketing to no one. When I see someone list EVERYTHING in the DSM as their specialty, I don’t make the assumption that they have extensive training in a lot of things, I think of them as mediocre at everything. When I network with people who describe themselves as “generalists” I usually put them in the category of allllllll the other “generalists” I’ve ever met. They get lumped in together in a forgettable heap. That’s harsh, but unless something about you really stands out, I am not going to remember to refer to you, nor will others. There are exceptions to this of course, but it stands as a general rule. Consider yourself as a potential client. Imagine if you were struggling with something specific, even something that is considered “generalist” territory like anxiety. Are you going to choose the person your friend tells you about who LOVES working with therapists struggling with anxiety or someone whose website lists children, adolescents, and adults struggling with anxiety, depression, adjustment, addiction, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, and family of origin issues as their client population? Here's a non-hypothetical: When I had Postpartum Depression after my first daughter was born, I wasn’t interested in seeing someone who had Perinatal Mental Health listed amongst a slew of other concerns they treated. I wanted the therapist who talked exclusively about Perinatal Mood Disorders on her website. I wanted someone who could explain the dynamics between my hormones, my lack of sleep, my daughter’s feeding issues and my mood, beyond what Google or my own training provided.  I’m sure there are well-trained folks out there who would have been great, but I was miserable and unwilling to take the risk of shopping around for a therapist. I needed relief and found the person who looked most likely to know what was going on with me. The second rebuttal I get is: I don’t want to see just one presenting concern or just one kind of client. Me either!  How burned out would we all be if that’s how it worked! I’ve been a highly niched therapist for years. My website is straight up Eating Disorders with images and copy aimed toward twenty-somethings. I have never had more than 75% of my clientele have an eating disorder. Usually it hovers around 60%. How do I make this magic happen? Though I’ve been known for eating disorders in my communities, I am also known as someone who is fairly directive. Someone who will call someone on their stuff in a loving way they can hear. So if someone needs a clinician for their perseverating roommate or depressed mom, they're told I have the ability to reach them. My graduated clients refer their friends to me because they know I know what I’m doing with feelings. You don’t have to be pigeon-holed. It’s also totally okay to tell a few referral sources you’re close to, “Hey, I’m getting kinda full with this one type of client. I’d love someone who struggles with ____ instead.” Let’s take a very meta example! You’re reading something from a business consultant who specializes in therapy private practices. You could follow a general business coach instead, but you know I know what it is to be a therapist, the idiosyncrasies of counseling private practices, the legal obligations that HIPAA and our licensing boards require. Now, the majority of my Abundance clientele is indeed counselors, but I’ve also worked with doctors, psych prescribers, massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, aestheticians, dietitians, interior decorators, yogis, etc. What other hesitations do you have about having a niche? Let us know in the comments!  

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9 comments

Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Hey Catherine, great question! I'd think about who you have experience and who you enjoy working with. You can change the language from "specialty" since you might not have logged the hours that have you feeling like a specialist to something like "I work with 20-something women who keep dating some version of their father" or "I work with teenage boys with lots of anger." If you're wanting to develop a specialty and are currently getting supervision or training, look for the overlap between the population you're more comfortable working with and the population you want to work with. For instance, if you're learning how to work with women with eating disorders but don't feel ready to see them yet, you could put it out there that you work with women struggling with perfectionism, people-pleasing and anxiety. It'll give you more experience working with those specific issues, which often present in clients with ED's. I hope that helps! Allison
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Hey Linda, Think of your niche as only taking up 60% of your caseload. It could still be a "generalist" kind of niche like anxiety or depression. In my experience we tend to enjoy working with one more than the other. If you love working with folks with depression for instance, you could gear your website towards the specific concerns of someone with depression in a rural area (perhaps fewer jobs to transition to when their job is a huge component of their misery, maybe feeling ambivalent about the expectations to take over a long-time family business or farm). Does that help?
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

I'd think about how they think about what we identify as trauma, whether it's "been through hard times" or "overcome a lot" or "had a rocky childhood." If your niche is 60% of your caseload, do you like working with women slightly more than men or vice versa. You're still going to get the other in your practice. And some people are looking specifically for EMDR now that it's starting to be known more by people outside the field, so your modality is a specialty amongst those that have heard of it. For those that haven't, however, it's not going to reel them in.
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

It's a great specialty! There's a difference between specialty and ideal client. It's kind of like a funnel. So you can draw in those who want help for addictions but still have an ideal client of say, a single mother trying to kick her alcoholism who has some trauma to work through.
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Absolutely! Great point! I love the diversity of what my client's have experienced in their lives, which helps me stretch and grow as a clinician, as much as I love the common themes that feel very familiar.
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Bianca, if you had to choose one for 60% of your practice, which is slightly more appealing? You can still work with the other niche, and still potentially market the other niche if you can find a cohesive thread between them. Codependency & addictions & couples work seems like it all fits together. Perfectionism and people pleasing certainly does as well. I think narrowing your marketing efforts to something like I work with couples in the addiction/codependency cycle (but using their words to describe it). Or I work with partners of addicts who have a hard time setting boundaries and who feel like they have to hold everything together perfectly. Does that help? I know it's hard to choose. Something I think about is what population feels most sustainable in terms of my energy level. Who lights me up? I'm someone who loves a challenge, but having a lot of resistant clients would wear me down. So I market to a more ripe-for-change client and will certainly get some resistance sometimes too, but not all the time.
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Thanks, Kari! Think about how the couple would describe the problem in their relationship and what would bring them in. Helping men understand women makes it sound like it's all the man's fault. Helping them express their emotions may not sound appealing (since if they aren't expressing them they sometimes don't realize it's a problem). How does their not getting women or not expressing feelings manifest problem-wise. Is it distance? Is it hostility? What does your favorite couple want to change. Start there & you can cover them in any phase of relationship.
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Good questions! I'm all about being open to all. But for marketing, focusing on ONE person to market to is so much more effective. So you could market to people who lost a sibling, for instance and that could be open to all genders, ages, etc. but having in mind a specific person (Jane is 31. She lost her brother to an overdose last year and is realizing it's affecting her more than she thought it would by this time. She's finding that she's drinking more in response. Jane loves action movies and shops at Target. She has a strained relationship with her mother and a distant relationship with her dad) See how it's so much easier to know what she specifically needs to hear on your website than general bereaved, traumatized person? You'll still get variety in your caseload, but this is a good start.
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Allison Puryear
Staff
 

Hi, Diana! This is a great question - love to see you working to define your niche. We provide loads of support in honing in on your niche in the Abundance Party (www.abundanceparty.com). Hop on in & gain some clarity today.
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