Building A Side Gig - Part Two

Niches & Problems

In certain narrow niches, my experience is world class and valuable.

Hopefully, Part One:

1. Reduced the financial hurdle to make it worthwhile to get started.

2. Focused your thinking on what constitutes a success.

Today, we will explore the basics of finding our niche.

Identifying Our Niche

Simple truths:

• There are many ways to make money.

• I want to feel engaged.

• There are areas where my experience is world class and valuable.

• The world is a noisy place and has a short memory.

Start with two questions:

1. What motivates YOU?

2. What doesn’t motivate you?

When I ask those questions (in a coaching context)…

Motivates:

• Helping someone win World Champs.

• Learn about different physiologies.

• Have relationships with smart people.

• See how another subculture lives.

• Learn.

• Watch an athlete’s physiology change.

• Change someone’s inner life.

• Shared Experiences.

Kills Motivation:

• Say Do Gap.

• A$$hole Tendencies.

• Increased Admin.

• Infringement On Core Activities (from Part One).

• Being Too Busy.

When you ask the questions…

• Capture Everything.

• Don’t Edit.

• Don’t Judge.

If you journal then…

Certain themes will pop up over and over again.

In my case:

1. Helping, learning, teaching.

2. Part of high-performance team.

3. Control my schedule.

4. Like & respect the client.

5. Extremely high value add per hour invested.

Whenever I do these exercises, money does not appear as a motivator.¹

That said, there are many ways to make money and I have no problem being highly paid for using my skills to help people.²

Several of my pals have issues with being paid for their world class experience. Sometimes their individual issues are projected towards capitalism in general.

In sport, there are two sayings I’ve found helpful…

We might as well win.

Give yourself every chance to succeed.

The business equivalent is…

If you’re doing great work then it is OK to be paid well.

Knowledge that feels obvious to an expert can be complex, opaque and valuable to others.

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People & Problems

The pieces are starting to come together…

1. Where we want to take our life.

2. What we like, and don’t like, to do.

3. The scale of the commitment we are willing to make.

That’s “our side” of it.

It’s time to look outwards and consider…

What are interesting problems I can solve?

The classic ones in competitive sport is a desire to:

• Win

• Qualify (Olympics, Boston, Kona, World Champs, Select Team)

Stepping down a competitive level:

• Lose weight.

• Gain muscle.

• Look better.

But those are broad, and general.

I’d encourage you to get as specific as possible.

Some examples:

• Help pilots & doctors quality for Ironman Hawaii.

• Help men over 30, regain vitality, lose weight and increase strength.

• Help female athletes navigate menopause.

• Help mothers navigate pregnancy and return to competitive sport.

• Help tactical athletes improve mission-specific performance.

• Free up time for busy CEOs.

• Help D1 athletes get to the professional ranks.

In my mind, each niche has a person attached to it.

• The potential niches are endless.

• There’s a niche that fits your unique experience.

Each niche is a potential stream of cash flow and some niches pay (much) better than others.³

You want to be THE PERSON for your niche.⁴

• Not in my mind (!)

• In the mind of people who want their problem solved.

That’s going to take some work, and is the topic covered in Part Three.

Back to Index

1. I’m fortunate to have enough. I don’t always remember this fact.

2. Some people have a problem with being wildly successful. You could be one of these people and not realize it.

I’ve found it useful to look deeply into feelings of envy and disgust. The reason being… it’s hard to be successful if we don’t respect people who achieve success.

3. I like to work for people with excellent time management skills, who value their time.

INVERT

It’s a nightmare to work for someone who struggles to get stuff done and doesn’t value their time.

4. 20 years ago, when you googled Ironman Training Plan, my name came up at the top. The world rewards the ability to communicate expert knowledge that solves problems.

It wasn’t my racing performance that was rewarded. It was my ability to help people solve their problems.