Should You Choose Your Consulting Niche Based on Passion or Feasibility?
In this episode of The Consultant School, Laurie Reinhart, Director of Consultant Development and Senior Consultant at The Genysys Group, joins Andrea to discuss how to choose your consulting niche.
Why is it important to choose a consulting niche?
Choosing a consulting niche enables you to say no to work that really isn’t what you need to be doing.
When you know exactly what it is that you do, who you do it for, and what are the services you provide, that allows you to focus. When you don’t have that focus, your efforts are too diffuse and you can waste a lot of energy.
Choosing your niche also enables you to mentally free yourself up for doing the kinds of projects you want to do which is where the passion part comes in.
Balancing passion and feasibility is the name of the game.
We live in the real world where we sometimes have to take the work that is available so focusing solely on passion may not be realistic. On the other hand, focusing solely on feasibility, or money, and always doing things that are outside of your passion is exhausting and unsustainable.
If you have a project that requires you to do things outside your passion, one option is to subcontract or partner with someone so you can stay focused on the things that are really in your wheelhouse.
How can you ensure that your passion and in feasibility do overlap when you’re choosing your niche?
Taking the time to do some self-reflection on what expertise do you bring to the table is a first step. Generate a list of these areas of expertise, areas you’ve been trained in, areas of strength, and then ask yourself, “What’s the part where work doesn’t feel like work?”
It is also helpful to do this in consultation with two or three trusted people who have worked with you over the years and know what it is that you do really well to get their outside perspective on your work.
Take the time to identify, “What do I know that somebody else wants to know?” Because if you know something that somebody else wants to know, that is something that is for sale. And along with that, part of your whole expertise is not just your technical expertise, but it’s in how you work with clients and how you help them understand what they already know. When you put those two together, there’s always a market.”
After identifying this for yourself, the key to understanding that niche is to then ask: What is the size of that market? Where are those people? What are they willing to pay? And being realistic about that.
Once you’ve gone through that self-reflective time and you’ve clarified for yourself where your passion and your expertise intersect, you will have the confidence to communicate clearly what it is that you do to prospective clients.
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