I don’t like using the word reinvention when it comes to our careers or live. It’s semantics, I know, but I think what we do when we create a “new identity” for ourselves is more about evolution than reinvention. Several years ago I noticed I was very resistant to the idea of reinventing myself. It felt like I needed to learn new skills, market myself differently and see myself as someone new. I now realize that all the fragments of myself have been forming with each job I worked and each class and personality test I took. I’ve been evolving into who I want to become so there is no need to reinvent myself.

Reinvention means taking our lives and creating something new. Yet, what we really do when we start a new career or business is called evolution. It’s the natural progression towards fulfilling our life mission.

When we repackage all of our skills, talents, experience, and knowledge and present it to the world, it is the next step along our life’s evolutionary path. Here’s an example. A person who is a carpenter for a living fulfills his life long dream of being a writer. To the rest of us it may look like a career reinvention but what it really means is the carpenter is doing what he felt destined to do. What we don’t see is all the years he fantasized about becoming a writer, studied writing techniques, collected ideas in his journal, and wrote short stories. His career evolved into something new behind closed doors.

If you’ve been feeling pressure to reinvent yourself, all you really need to do is reframe your life from a different perspective. There is no need to become someone new. Just allow yourself to evolve into the person you are destined to become.

How do you feel about reinventing yourself and moving into a new career or business? Can you see how you have consciously or subconsciously moving into a different direction? 

I read a blog post that got me thinking I needed to be clearer on what I do and who I help. The post also inspired me to explain what I mean by helping people about finding their niche. To be clear, I’m not talking about narrowing your business into a particular niche, though I can help with that too. What I am talking about is helping people find their niche in LIFE and then turn that niche into a business. It’s one thing to help someone who runs a marketing business find a profitable target market like people who run fishing expeditions. It’s quite another to help someone who has no idea what they want to do for a living and feels a deep spiritual calling to do meaningful work.

That’s what I do. I help people discover whom they are first then I can help them find a business that fits many, many aspects of their life calling and their lifestyle. These are people who have gone through some sort of life-altering event that awakened them spiritually. During this awakening they realize they are feel calling to do something significant. Because of the bad experiences they went through they may feel a disconnect between the spiritual meaning of life and the physical existence that requires them to earn a living.

The reason I know about this path is because I experienced it myself. Here I was, a CEO/President of our million dollars a year family business, feeling totally lost when it closed. During my tenure as CEO I found amazing abilities I was unaware I had. Things like tenacity, negotiating skills, boldness, and inner strengths  to name just a few. At the time of the business closure none of that mattered. I had to find a job quick and deal with the aftermath of the financial mess that was left behind. I soon felt disconnected from my CEO experience and suffered a temporary “amnesia” over who I had become during those years.

It was the period of time after I found a job to support our family that changed my life. I spent several years after that rediscovering who I was. I felt the desperation of wondering what I was supposed to do. I just knew it was something big and something meaningful. There were days of agony as I searched. I even tried on several different hats to find out what struck a deep meaning for me.

That’s why I am passionate about helping others who feel the same way. They may be people who are starting over or they could be drowning in the business they already own. I help people dig deep into who they are and what they are meant to do. I firmly believe each of us has our own little niche in the world that we are meant to fulfill.

Here’s something important to know if you are going through tough times. Do not be fooled into putting labels on yourself until you are ready to acknowledge all parts of yourself. There is a healing process that needs to occur before you can leap into the world of business in a big way. It’s only when you take yourself apart and exam everything will you know really who you are meant to be and what you can become.

One of the questions I ask my clients is what subject are they really passionate about . . . what topic sends them into a rant. That’s one clue into where their niche is and what can be the fuel behind their career. Within our rants when a certain topic comes up is a hidden pain we feel. That pain is what we are here to heal in ourselves and help to heal in others.

Today I’ll reveal mine. Mine is how many of us are raised and educated. I learned early in life that our educational system didn’t fit who we are individually. I remember feeling lost and not feeling recognized for what I was really good at doing. Sure, I did okay when it came to testing and getting decent grades. But what I was really good at wasn’t tested or highly recognized as a skill or talent so I was left feeling like I wasn’t highly talented at anything.

Now, looking back after all the training and self-learning I’ve gone through, I realized what I was really, really good at was seeing the big picture of situations. I have a high common sense ability. I value learning on the fly. I read a lot but I never read each word. I scan the material and gather any information I feel is important. I am the person people came to for practical advice and generally known as the “know it all.” But, in full disclosure, I seem to have an ability to pass on wisdom that comesthrough me. I don’t go around considering  myself a wise person. Oh yeah, I also have a high B.S. radar. I know when things don’t add up.

None of these abilities would have been recognized and career tested back then. I floundered for YEARS wondering what I was good at and what I could do for a living because I didn’t see I could be paid for sharing wisdom. I kept looking outside of myself for validation for what I did well. I think one of the problems was that I did it so naturally and my mom says I was pretty much born that way nobody thought to encourage that part of me. In fact, having these abilities at a young age only made me feel left out and teased which didn’t help my self-esteem.

Which leads to why I’m passionate about helping people who have a hard time seeing the innate skills that aren’t obvious to the outside world. Sure, it’s easy to recognize talents that can be tested, heard, and observed by many. It’s harder to recognize the beautiful gifts we have that can’t be tested, that are under recognized and needed by the rest of us.

I want people to know that there are many, many aspects of them that go into developing a rewarding career/business. It’s not just the skills that you learned in classrooms and training programs. If you read my other blog posts you’ll get an idea on what those aspects of self I consider important. 

I’ve learned something interesting from coaching clients concerning their divine calling or niche. It’s the joy and surprise they express when I help them connect the dots concerning their past. I realized a lot of people are unaware that those random experiences and interest are actually connected to their future business niche.  

How about you? Have you encountered these five ways people struggle to see their niche clearly?

You Dismiss Their Learning Experiences as Bad

This one is tough. We’re taught to see unpleasant experiences as bad. We then try to forget the memories and move on to make things more pleasant for ourselves. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. I believe all experiences are teaching lessons. Something valuable comes from everything we experience. There are hidden gems within everything you learn. It could be something you can teach, coach, or write about. Pay attention to this lessons because the can lead to the next mistake. 

You’re Blind to Reoccurring Patterns in Your Life

No one really teaches you to watch your life from an objective point of view. The thing is, if you look back with out judgment you will notice patterns in the career you chose, the friends you make, the hobbies you chose, and more. Here’s an example from my life. When I started looking back at my career I noticed that I loved sharing wisdom and advice with co-workers. I found myself talking about values, lifestyles, and what I saw people would be good doing. At the time I dismissed what I did because it didn’t relate to what I was doing as a career. 

Your Self-Image is Not Accurate

We tend to see ourselves from other people’s point of view. It starts from our parents. They reward us for what they see as valuable and dismiss what they don’t. We tend to focus on what people feel appealing about us. For instance, I’m super organized so I would get complimented (or teased) for this natural ability. When I would search careers I would come back to this skill thinking it was something people admired about me. But when I thought about being a personal organizer, let’s say. I cringed. I have no desire to organize for someone else so I knew not to base any career I started using that skill for others. 

You Confuse Your Recreational Hobbies for Possible Business Ideas

Hobbies are great and sometimes they indicate a passion that could be turned into a business. We’ve all heard of someone who turned a passion for collecting something into a money making business. But more often than not a recreational hobbies are not solid business ideas. 

You See Your Interests Too Literally and Don’t Know How They Apply to a Career

I love this one because when I ask clients about their random experiences and I point out what I see they experience a true aha moment. If you let go of the judgment about the random interests you’ve picked up along the way you will find some interesting ways to incorporate them into a career. 

Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll share what you can do instead to get yourself started on creating your business niche.

It is surprising how difficult it can be to define your business niche. I struggled with this myself because the hardest person for you to understand, it seems, is you.

It should be so simple, right? You create a business based on your skills, talents, and experiences and you are in business. But, then you start to market your business and you realize it’s a lot harder to get attention than you thought. Marketing experts say we need to have our own niche, one we can dominate, in order to succeed. So why do we get stuck finding our own niche?

Here are five reasons why it may be causing such a hard time:

1. You are constantly attracted to what makes other’s successful in their field and try to duplicate what they do.
2. You haven’t fully accepted what makes you special.
3. You’re focusing mostly on what you do and not what clients may need.
4. You’re afraid to lose out on potential sales because you don’t want to narrow your business down to a particular niche.
5. You don’t know your true life purpose and how you are meant to serve. Example: Are you meant to be a teacher, healer, advisor, motivator, or support person?

In order to dominate in your field you need a clear focus on who you are and what you do best. Once you gain clarity you can create a solid plan based on your target market which will help accelerate business growth.

How about you? Do you have a solid business and marketing niche? If not, what’s stopping you from declaring one?

Have you been secretly drooling over the marketing materials of your peers? Come on, I know you have. I definitely do. Just this morning I was on a great website and was amazed at how everything was branded consistently and beautifully. Of course that’s what they do for a living so it should be no surprise. But then we’ve all run across experts who don’t have that level of consistency. Why?

Here’s the thing about the branding and marketing of you. The only way it can be consistent is if you know yourself first. Of course, you can hire a marketing company to design marketing materials and build an awesome website. But then what? Are you sure the materials match YOU?

The way to create your niche and then a brand around it is to know who you are and what you are passionate about. A brand isn’t about marketing materials, social media and websites. It’s about bringing the true you out and embracing it. Seriously, stop worrying about your image and get who you are straight in you head.  And please don’t stress about it the whole process. It won’t be perfect all at once, if ever. The best thing to do is to be conscious of what your unique niche is and develop it along the way. Brands are not created overnight.

To be frank, I’m not an expert on branding. I consider myself a pre-branding coach. That’s not the point of this article. I’m working on my brand myself. I consider myself a CWP, short for Certified Work in Progress. My point is when you are ready you can hire an expert to help you with your marketing and brand. My job today is to help you get the information ready so you give them the right information to brand.

Sherrie Koretke, Niche Clarity Coach. Certified Professional Career Coach, Law of Attraction Specialist, Small Business Coach and Consultant.