Great post by Seth Godin on picking a niche. Makes me think of something my husband has been saying, half-joking, to me for several years, ever since I left the engineering profession: "Honey, I don’t know what you do, but whatever it is, you’re the best in the world at it." 

BTW–Godin’s most recent book, The Dip is a quick read, with a nice model for thinking about anything worth working for.

In the book, Godin talks about how getting through a large dip means that fewer people can make it to the other side. The result is scarcity in the marketplace, increasing the value of those who do make it through the dip.

A related quote from Randy Pausch, the professor at Carnegie Mellon University with pancreatic cancer, who gave a last lecture that’s been viewed around the world:  “The brick walls are there for a reason: They let us prove how badly we want a thing."

At the outset, coaching appears to have no brick walls. However, when coaches get into the journey of creating a business, they find a brick wall very quickly. That’s why I think there are so many coaches who don’t make it.

I heard Godin talk about his book in relationship to life coaches. His advice: find a niche.  This decreases the size of the dip for you (after all, who has the capacity to become the next Tony Robbins?) It’s a way of minimizing the dip based on your strengths.