Hello, and welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everyone. I’m your host, Nicole Laino, and we’re here today, just the two of us, just you and me, we are sitting down to talk about, this is something that I hear from people all the time, and this is specifically for my entrepreneurial friends, okay?

This episode, this is dedicated to you. When I speak with most entrepreneurs who are teetering around six figures, and they’ve plateaued, they’ve gotten stuck at a certain level, they feel like they can’t break through. And when I ask them, what do you think is the one thing that your business needs that will help you break through this plateau into the next level?

Whenever I ask them that question, 95 percent of the time I get the same answer. I just need to find my ideal client. And I have a controversial opinion on this, and I’m going to explain it to you in this episode, I’m going to break down why that is the thing holding most entrepreneurs back.

If you have plateaued, if you are looking outside of yourself for your niche, if you are feeling like there’s some perfect person out there, and if you could only figure out who they were, then all of your problems will be solved, then you’re going to want to listen to the rest of this episode.

That is actually the thing that is hurting you the most, because you’re looking in the wrong place. And I’m going to break this down for you in this episode. I’m going to tell you why I think that this is not the place to start, that this is not where you need to go. If you’re in this position.

Now I’m not saying that it isn’t important to know who you’re speaking to. I know who I’m talking to right now. I know who my audience is. I know who I’m trying to reach. But I didn’t start from that place. Once you understand who they are, then you, yes, you want to know the specifics about them, you want to get down and dirty into the details of what they really need, what is the language that they are speaking, but probably, if you’re listening to this and this is starting to ring true to you, or you think it is, What you’ve probably done is you’ve maybe hired a copywriter or you’ve downloaded somebody’s free guide on how to write magnificent copy or how to write your sales page and there’s all these questions about your niche and it tells you to get specific and you can’t do it.

You stare at that page and you clam up and when they ask you what the results are that you get for people and how you help and who you help, you’re like, uh, um, well I help this person. I help this kind of person. I help that kind of person. And it’s interesting to me that it’s the first thing that they teach you marketing 101 is know who you’re speaking to, right?

But yet it’s always the thing that many entrepreneurs are trying to figure out. Now deepening your connection to your ideal audience is a different thing than trying to find your niche. And I’m going to break down three key problems that there are with traditional niching. I’m going to let you know how human design ties into all of this.

I’m going to tell you what we do instead inside my world, and what I have found that kind of turned this on its head for me, because I was looking for my ideal client for a long time too. But I did have this feeling that it had more to do with me than it had to do with them at the stage that I was at, and it turned out that I was right.

So let’s dive into this episode and let’s break this down for you, shall we? So let’s talk about those three key problems. Why traditional niching is not working. I have three particular issues that I have with it. And number three is really the key one.

So the The first problem with traditional niching is that you’re giving your power away to this outside thing. If I could only find my ideal client, if I could only find my ideal audience, if I could only just know who they were, then everything will be fixed.

You’re giving your power away just in that statement. It’s outside of myself. The answer is out here, not in me. I don’t have any power. I need to go find this person. I’m on this quest. And what that equates to is desperate energy. I can usually feel it when I’m speaking to that person. It’s like a weak point when they’re even saying it, they start to shrink.

They’re like, if I could just find my ideal audience if I could just get my target market down, if I could just get in front of them. And then I asked them who they are and they’re like, well, I’m not really sure. And it’s a really broad spectrum that they’re working with.

And where they get stuck is trying to narrow it down to that specific person. And often what we’re focusing on in traditional niching are the the wrong elements. We’re working on aged 35 to 50 women who are moms. And yes, these are connection points that you can make with people.

And that can get into the specifics, but ultimately it’s about the problem that you solve for people. It’s about the solution that you have.

And that brings me to the next problem that I have is you’re being reactive in your business, not responsive by creating offers for everyone you meet who might buy from you. And PS, they often don’t.

So when you’re trying to find your niche and they teach you to go out there and you’re always doing market research. Depends on the energy that you’re doing that market research in. Are you collecting data, or are you being reactive and just waiting for somebody to give you an idea for you to go out and initiate.

Now, remember, only 8-9% of the population are manifestors, so only 8-9% are really meant to initiate on certain things like that. You get an idea, and then you move, and you put it into action from a desperate place. Here’s the answer, they just gave it to me, I’ve gotta go do this thing.

Rather than it being from, if you’re a generator, a sacral response. A real lit up feeling of this is exciting to me. I want to do this. I get excited about this. Once you start to feel what that feels like for you, you won’t be able to move on those incorrect reactions anymore. You’ll be like, this isn’t a response.

You have to experiment with that to figure out what that is. If you’re a projector, is it really someone recognizing you for something or are you jumping on and trying to figure out uninvited that this is the thing? There’s a different way for you to work with the information and the data that you get from people and not jumping into create offers and ultimately scattering your energy trying to please people.

That’s really what this one comes down to when you are speaking with people and you’re being reactive, you’re not really grounded in anything. And there is a form of people pleasing that’s happening here. If I could only just create this offer, then they’ll buy from me.

If I could only just, again, that desperate, desperate energy. You aren’t grounded in anything. And people pleasing is a shitty place for your offers to come from. It should come from a place of, this is a strength of mine. That I have a solution to a problem that these people have. When you’re working with the solutions that you’re meant to provide, the niche appears.

The niche just starts to show up, but there’s another way. Using human design that you can hone in on your unique soulmate clients, those aligned clients, those people that you are meant to help. So who your niche is has more to do with you than it does with them. Human design guides you to the correct people who are here to help you on the path of your purpose.

So when you start to understand your purpose, when you start to understand what you are here to do, when you start living in the highest expression of your energies, not in the desperate, shadowy, lack driven aspects of your design, when you start to elevate into your gifts, you can start to be pulled on that path.

You start living more in alignment with your purpose. Things feel more true. They feel easier, you feel empowered, you feel validated, usually, because a lot of times it’s not something out of left field, it’s something you’re already doing, but it’s focusing you on it. And when you start working that way, there’s also aspects of your design, specifically the nodes in your design that tell you who you are here to help, or who is going to help you on your path to your purpose.

Who are the correct people that are going to show up in your life, and you’re going to help them, and they’re going to help you. Somehow they are guiding you and helping you realize the purpose in your life. That’s how this works. So we’re colliding with the right people that are ultimately bumping us along the path of our purpose and getting us to that end goal.

Through correct action, through doing things according to our strategy and authority, all of that is always there. But there are certain people in your life that are just going to be there. They’re going to be the people you’re surrounded by. When you start understanding what that is, when you start understanding who those people are through this lens, you start to notice who those people are, they’re already in your life.

So, the solution to this is what I call reverse niching. It takes care of all of these problems, reverse niching and human design embodiment, it’s putting you first. It starts with you. And it starts with your chart.

Along with what you’re already doing. Now, when I talk to people about building their business by human design, I always am very careful, certainly in the private conversations, when people have sales calls with me, clarity calls with me, where I’m helping them get to whether this is or is not right for them.

I’m always telling them it’s never about trying to jam you into the definition of one, two, three, or four gates. It’s never about that. It’s always about looking at who you already are, how you’ve been living, your lived experience, the things that you do, what you feel truly drawn to. Usually people aren’t so far off their path that none of it makes sense.

It’s usually very validating. You go through a reading, you start digging into your design, and you start to see the light bulbs go off. And you start to see where your gifts are already shining through in your work. But the chart can tell you the area to look for your niche. Let’s look at what you’re already doing.

And how if we looked at it through this lens of you helping this type of person, or this type of person is in your world, how might what you do benefit them? How is that already fitting? And usually it’s the person who’s receiving this information from me, or getting these prompts from me. It starts to make more specific sense, that positioning.

It starts to make more sense how maybe focusing on one specific area would be more beneficial. They feel more empowered by this. It starts to feel really good. They start to get a response. They start to open up. Their wisdom starts to surface. And you start to see how you’re already surrounded by these people.

When we start to dig into the chart, and specifically those nodes, where we’re looking at the people that you are here to experience life with. You start to see that you’ve already been surrounded by them. You’re just starting to look at the people you’re surrounded by a little bit differently and you start to see the different aspects of these energies surface.

You’re like, I see it, but I see it differently now. I see how I’ve been attracting this type of person maybe in a low frequency, and it starts to tell you how you can speak to the highest version of that person and call them to something bigger. Rather than focusing just on their pain points and just speaking to that lower version, which usually leads to people who can’t pay you, who are not really great to work with, who are not empowered themselves, and you end up creating a not so great relationship for either one of you.

It doesn’t work. So how do we speak to that higher version of people? And human design can give you a bit of a window into that aspect. Another thing that we do with this reverse niching, by approaching it this way, versus looking outside of ourselves and looking in, using human design as that little portal, that lens to look at ourselves and what we do through, is it focuses you on your true gifts.

And what that does is that fast tracks you to your zone of genius, rather than your zone of excellence or your zone of competence, which is usually where we’re playing. And this is particularly helpful for people who are esoteric, spiritual, or transformational coaches, where your results can vary, people get different types of results from you, and you help people in so many ways.

So it can often be difficult for these people to get very specific because they’re like, sometimes I help people with their love life, and sometimes I’m really helping them to open their heart. And I don’t know what comes from that, because the results can be so different.

This person just felt so much more comfortable in their skin. I get a lot of testimonials where people are like, I’ve never felt so good in my life. My whole life changed. Everything changed. My relationships, my money, my love, all of this. And it’s never terribly specific. We have to get better at asking people questions so we can get those testimonials that are specific.

But when you’re focused on your gifts and you’re focused on that zone of genius, it can tell you where you might have the maximum benefit. It’ll also help you look at those results that you’re already getting from people, and I’ll use myself as an example so you can see how this works.

So one of the things that I have to offer, what I’m here to do, I have gate 64 in my conscious sun. The gift of it is illumination. So something that I’m always doing is I’m lighting the way. I’m showing people a different path to possibility.

That is what I do. So what that allowed me to do when there was a time where I really focused on the strategic side of business and I was very scared to let go of that. Because what if people don’t buy this more woo woo side of me? What if they don’t buy the energetics?

I was very afraid for the tangible results that I was going to be pushing away by going into these squishier realms of helping people with things like human design and all of this stuff. It was scary. It was a scary leap for me to make a few years ago. And it was human design, looking specifically at that key and also at my gate 26 and my unconscious earth, cause there was also the question, do I just help people with their personal lives?

Do I just abandon the whole entrepreneurship niche altogether and make it more broad and make it more where I can help everybody. That didn’t feel right either. And when I looked at my gate 26, it is part of this 26-44 channel, the channel of entrepreneurship.

It is about sales and marketing. It is about messaging. It is the design of a transmitter. It is the design of somebody who is able to position things in ways that inspire people to buy. Literally what I do. That is my purpose, that is what grounds the illuminated path that I’m lighting for people.

So by working with those energies, it made me feel more empowered to make the step to really go in on human design. Because it gave a very specific, strategic path that people could follow. So it didn’t feel totally esoteric. It allowed me to ground something. My 5/1 profile told me it has to be practical.

I have to be able to teach a system that people can follow in order for this to really feel good for me, in order for me to fulfill the projections that I have for people. It gave me the areas where I knew how to lean in and lean back. And it told me who I was here to help. And then I also looked at my nodes, looking at the niche that I’m here to help.

It does have to do a little bit with spiritual entrepreneurs. It does tell me what their message needs to be. It shed some light on what message they really need to hear. And every day by contemplating these things about me, I get better at talking to them. I get better at delivering my message.

I get better at delivering my programs. That’s the beauty of this. This is the connection of the energetic and the strategic work. And when we start to look at it through the lens of ourselves, the more we grow, the more the people that we want to attract are attracted to us. It pays off every single time you showing up differently, more grounded in who you are very strongly, not wishy washy in your message, moving from one thing to the next, but focused on the gift.

This is what I offer. This is who I am. Now, it doesn’t mean that you can only have one thing that you do. It might be multifaceted, in fact, it most likely will be. But your message, the way that you deliver it, it focuses your energy. When you can be focused on, this is what I do.

We just did this inside my mastermind yesterday. We had a really great group call and we hot seated a few people and it was just about getting them really focused on their lane and asking some really pointed questions about the things that are in the chart, which is sparking these ahas of realizing how they can message this to the people that they’re already surrounded by. And how they’re not going to speak to the lower version of them, but the higher version, because the chart gives us those spectrums of what the low and the high version looks like.

So this approach of starting with your gifts really allows you to create the offers that you truly believe in, which is the number one essential ingredient. If you don’t believe in your offer, no one will buy it. They will sense that you feel unsure, that you are not fully unshakeable in your belief that this offer can deliver something for them.

And by approaching it this way, that certainty becomes so strong in you and people feel that. And when people are purchasing from you, when people are buying coaching in particular, when they are buying that from you, or if you are a service provider and you are going to perform a service for them, if they get the sense that they can’t trust you or that you don’t trust yourself, they will not buy.

They buy from people with confidence, for better or for worse. Sometimes people buy from people totally because they are confident and then they do not deliver. You could be the person who is totally confident and who does deliver because you care. It also allows you to know exactly where to look to hang out with and connect with the people that are your perfectly aligned clients.

When I realized that actually I’m very much meant to be in this spiritual space, I have Gate 25, and Gate 25 is the gate of the priest and the priestess. When I really focused on that, I was like, I am meant to be speaking to these people.

Then that opened things up for me as well. And it gave me clues into how I could connect with those people more and more deeply and where I could go to do that. It’ll help you craft a message that’s so specific and clear that people are reaching out to you. No more chasing. I have more people who reach out to me now, sending me DMS on Instagram and that’s something that I used to think was a myth when people would talk about you have people just in your inbox and in Instagram saying how can I work with you, and then dropping thousands of dollars on your program.

And I was just like that’s not true. I used to think that because it never happened to me. And now it does happen to me, and it happens very often. It happens all the time where people are reaching out to me, where people are buying things from me and joining programs and things that I run, and I don’t know who they are.

And I didn’t think that was possible before. And a big portion of that is I built my authority platform. Which for me, is this podcast. There are many authority platforms that you could have. You could have a great YouTube channel. You could have a big Instagram presence. You could have a massive email list.

There’s some authority platform that you have that is putting your message out to the people that are meant to hear it. And it’s putting it out in a way that is inspiring them to buy from you. It’s being persuasive, and it’s being persuasive over time.

So I am actually teaching a masterclass called Your Million Dollar Message: How To Create An Authority Platform That Builds Credibility and Drives Sales.

It’s from January 29th to the 31st, plus bonus sessions. If you would like to join, that is totally free for this time. We may be charging for this in the future. So please get in free while you can. DM me the word masterclass on Instagram. I’m @nicolelainoofficial or go to nicolelaino.com/masterclass. You can go to the landing page right there and register for this masterclass. This will be fantastic. I’m really excited to teach this one. I’m very excited about this. We’ve done some iterations of this before, but we’ve switched some things up.

We fine tuned it and I’m super, super excited to deliver this to you guys at the end of January. So this is your opportunity to get in on this and kick things off with your authority platform into 2024. So please, I hope that you join us there. Thank you for making it all the way to the end of this episode.