With the Covid crisis ongoing all around the world, more people than ever before are thinking about leaving their old jobs to pursue a creative path in online business that’s actually fulfilling to them. INFJs and INFPs naturally gravitate toward writing, coaching, blogging, and creating other forms of content that can help people grow and evolve. But one of the biggest roadblocks they run into is this idea of finding their creative niche.
How do you find your niche? How do you determine your audience, or figure out who your ideal client would be? If you look around online, you’ll find loads of advice on this topic, but I can tell you from experience that very little of it is helpful. Back when I was first getting started with my coaching business, I did all those exercises myself and I came up with an “ideal customer” that I tried to market to, as best I could. My ideal client was female, in her late 20s to early 30s, and a writer who concentrated on memoir. It was basically me, in a slightly varied form.
In the moment, this felt like it was helpful. However, as time went on and my business grew and became successful, I saw how inaccurate it was. For example, last year I looked over my client roster and realized that many of my clients are men, in their 50s and 60s, who are scientists and doctors. And of course, all of my clients these days are INFJs and INFPs, something I never could have predicted.
So, if the advice online about finding your creative niche is largely useless (which I believe it is), and you can’t predict exactly WHO you’re going to be marketing your business to, then what are you supposed to do? Shouldn’t you figure out this crucial piece of the puzzle before you even think of launching yourself into the world of online creative entrepreneurship?
Well, yes and no. This is actually one of the big pieces of the business puzzle that most creative people get wrong from day one. And it’s something I work on with clients all the time. There’s a really simple fix for this issue, but it’s so simple (and so intuitive) that a lot of people miss it. To answer this question, I made a video that explains it more in depth:
I’m launching a new video course next week called How to Launch an Online Creative Business, and this is one of the topics I’m going into deep in that course. I’ll be covering other topics as well, like how to write a non-fiction/self-help book and how to write blog posts that actually build your audience. If you’re someone who is seriously considering a career change now, or in the future, and you want that change to include a creative path, this course is for you.
And if you want to be sure to stay up-to-date on news about the course (which will be deeply discounted for the first five days after I release it), be sure to sign up for my newsletter here:
If this video speaks to you, be on the lookout for my next video in the series. I’ll be talking about how to feel confident as a coach when you’re still “aspiring” on your own creative path.
Lauren Sapala is the author of The INFJ Writer, a writing guide for sensitive intuitive writers, and The INFJ Revolution. She is also a writing coach for writers of the INFJ and INFP personality type.
