Insights from an industry leader

We’ve talked about why it’s so important to really hone your niche. After all, you’ve got limited capacity when you’re first starting out as an expert or practitioner. And so, we want it to be really easy for clients to find you. Here, expert Australian nutritionist, Lyndi Cohen, talks about why she decided on a niche that excited and fulfilled her. And, she has some insight on how to do this. She also shares what happens when you do hone in on your niche, including the impact it has on your messaging, your marketing and your ability to serve your clients in a much more dynamic and powerful way. Here’s Lyndi.

As I progress through my clinical work, what I realised was that the clients I found the most rewarding were the ones that I was most excited to help. Um, and they often revolved around things like emotional eating, binge eating, people who had struggled to lose weight before. People who knew what they should be eating, but kept feeling like every Monday, they had to start over from scratch. Now these are the clients I identified. I get excited to help these people. And there was a whole bunch of people who um, whether it’s diabetes, and and gut issues, and a whole bunch of stuff. That was really interesting, but ultimately it didn’t light me up, and it wasn’t my core focus.

So when I first launched my business, it was very much a, Hi, I’m Lyndi, and I can help you with all these conditions. And I’d list them out and you know as a myriad of things I could help you with, but I wasn’t a specialist. And this is when I decided, all right, now I need to hone in on what I brings me joy. And I know that I’m going to help my clients the best when I’m really specialising. I think if you are listening and you haven’t done this, specialising is so useful to get that really clear niche.

And so um, your communications shift completely and what ends up happening is, if you’re a generalist, I will go to see the closest person near me. But if you’re a specialist and I have an issue, I will travel across the city. I will pay a premium. I will wait in a wait list. I will do what I need to do to see you, because you are the person that’s going to help me. And I think that there is real value in that. And I think also from a health perspective, I think the clients– the patients get such better care when you are a specialist in one area.

Because there is each area is so broad and depthy, that, to be really great at what you do, we can’t just all be generalists.

I started to notice what my clients were saying. I I think so often when we’re trying to create marketing, we’re thinking about how we as the person– the outsider is seeing the problem. I became obsessed, and I still am obsessed with understanding my client’s problems. And I don’t want to you know put words in their mouth. If someone is telling me their problem, I want to know the exact language they’re using to explain that problem. And I have spreadsheets, and I have all these folders. I have so many folders, which is basically just sentences, and phrases, and people explaining their problem to me in a myriad of different ways.

So that I can fully understand the real problem that I’m solving. I’m not going, all right, well this is the solution, and I think that some people do that, they focus on solution first and then they find a problem to fix. I focus on the problem that I’m fixing, and then I build the solution around that. And so everything on my website is about my customer. It’s not– I think a lot of people, they build these expert websites. And it’s very much about– you can be the centre, and you can tell your story, and the brand is ultimately you.

But the reason a customer is clicking and staying on your website is because when they log on they’re like, aah this person gets me. This person is you know this is this light bulb moment. They’re saying things– it sounds like they’re in my head. That is the exact phrase that you want them to be able to say. And so when I started doing this– when I became obsessed with insights, and then I reflected it back to my customer, they understood that I got them. Because I’m not just anyone. I have this lived experience, plus the expertise.

So I got to say, though um, this is what, seven years ago when I started my practise, or my business as a new nutritionist. And I was nowhere near where I am now, and this is a constant evolution. I would say that I hop onto my website every couple of months, and I review all the copy, and I fix it. And I’m constantly refining it, so it’s never a done process.