Why You Can’t Choose a Niche (And It’s Not What You Think)
If you’re an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or purpose-driven professional who can’t decide on your niche, and you think that’s because the right niche hasn’t appeared to you yet—I think you’re wrong about that. And I’m going to tell you why.
I Made This Exact Mistake for Years
If you fish around the internet, you’ll find loads of stuff of me talking about different niches which I’d try for like 30 days because I saw they were working for someone else. Then I would kind of bomb out of it, tell myself it didn’t work for X, Y, or Z reason, have a period without doing anything, and then move on to a new niche.
Sound familiar?
That was really my fear of failure. That was really my procrastination coming from the fact that if I really just went for it with one niche, then I might actually fail at it. And if I didn’t see results quickly, then I would assume that failure was inevitable.
Why Your Niche Attempts Keep Failing
The reason results weren’t coming is because I was super tense. I wasn’t really speaking from a place of authenticity, from a place of passion, from a place of experience. I was trying to play the game. I was trying to make it work quickly, and that was really the problem.
That comes across. Inauthenticity is totally obvious.
When you’re constantly asking yourself “how to choose a niche for YouTube” or “how to choose a niche for a blog” or “how to choose a niche for dropshipping,” you’re missing the point entirely. The problem isn’t your niche selection strategy—it’s what’s happening underneath.
The Real Problem: You’re Avoiding a Feeling
What I did was do nothing for a while. I just did nothing for a while and stayed with the emotion—the fear of failure, the fear of wasting time, or of doing something which came to nothing and doing it very publicly so everyone would know.
The one thing we don’t want to do is sit with the emotion. But it’s not the emotion that causes the pain—it’s actually the resistance to the emotion which causes the pain.
You have to sit with both the resistance and the fear at the same time. Honour both of them without trying to get rid of them, because just trying to get rid of the resistance doesn’t work either.
It Goes Deeper Than You Think
You have to allow yourself to fully experience the fear, maybe many times. And that means actually working out what the fear is as well, because it might not just be a fear of making a video or choosing a niche—it might go way deeper.
It can go even as far back as fear of death. That can stop us acting, put us into a freeze state on a nervous system level, and mean that we think or convince ourselves that we’re blocked on the niche when in fact we’re just terrified to move forward. We’re just terrified to put our stake in the ground and say, “Yeah, this is my space. This is what I’m doing now, and I’m going to do it from my core and from a real place.”
Stop Being So Smart About It
You know, talk about something you actually care about—not something that you just think is a means to an end, or you saw it work for someone else, or you based it on some ChatGPT research or whatever.
There’s no need to be too smart about things. In fact, spending a long time on strategizing is actually just a form of procrastination in itself.
Especially when you’re stuck, thinking is demonstrably—this has been proven time and time again—thinking is not the way out of stuckness. The reason you’re stuck is because of your thinking. The more you carry on in your loops and your patterns and your thinking patterns, the more stuck you become.
The Burnout Trap
This can lead to burnout because you’re pushing so hard to rationalise something which is not rational. What you’re doing on an emotional level is avoiding a feeling. The feeling, in general, is fear—fear of rejection, fear of putting yourself out there.
That can be like a sales call, it can be making a video, or just choosing your niche—locking into your niche and saying, “Yeah, this is what I’m going to do for now. Doesn’t have to be forever, but I’m going to give it a good go.”
My Niche-Hopping Story
I did this a lot. I hopped niches. I was talking about one thing, another thing, and another thing. I was like, “I like helping people, so I don’t really care that much,” I told myself. But in reality, I just couldn’t stick to anything because as soon as I didn’t get the results—as soon as I didn’t see things happening immediately—I would just say, “Oh, this doesn’t work. This niche is wrong for some reason. The people in this niche don’t want my help.”
And that wasn’t true at all. Of course they did. In each and every one of those niches, the people did need help balancing their nervous systems and finding unconscious patterns, which is what I do.
But I had my own nervous system dysregulation and unconscious patterns dysregulating me. The irony of it.
How to Break the Pattern
I then had to notice that. I’ve developed skills to notice these patterns in myself. Often I’ll be with a client and then I’ll say something to them and go, “Oh my god, I’ve been in a pattern and I didn’t even realise it,” because it gets us all.
The first step is labeling that pattern—finding out that, okay, I am in a loop here. The niche is not really the problem. I’ve been researching it for months. There’s something else. There’s a feeling which is not resolved. There’s a resistance to that feeling, and that’s causing an unpleasant sensation—maybe burnout, maybe indecision, whatever—but it’s not good for your business. It’s not going to move you forward.
The Simple (But Not Easy) Solution
Really, the steps that you need to take are quite simple, and yet it’s one of those things where it’s deceptive because it looks so easy, but there’s a blocker to it.
You have to sit there with that resistance and that emotion, and you have to correctly identify the emotion.
This is not an intellectual problem. It’s an emotional problem.
So treating it as such is going to change everything for you.
Why This Applies to Every Platform
Whether you’re trying to figure out how to choose niche for Instagram, how to choose niche for affiliate marketing, how to choose a niche for blogging, or how to choose niche for dropshipping—the same emotional blocks apply.
You might think:
- “How to choose a niche for YouTube” requires different criteria than blogging
- “How to choose a niche for ecommerce” is more analytical than creative pursuits
- “How to choose a niche for a virtual assistant” work is just about matching skills to demand
But here’s the truth: You already know what you want to do. The research phase, the endless comparison of “how to choose a niche for a website” versus “how to choose a niche for content writing”—that’s all avoidance.
Choose Your Niche Strategy: Feel First, Think Second
When people ask “what niche to choose” or “how to choose your niche market,” they’re asking the wrong question. The right question is: “What am I avoiding feeling?”
Because once you resolve that emotional block, choosing becomes obvious. You stop needing to research “how to choose a blogging niche” or “how to choose best niche for affiliate marketing” because you’re no longer paralysed by the fear of committing.
Start Here: Sit With the Discomfort
All you really need to do is sit there with the emotion and allow it to unfold itself. Allow it to be seen for what it really is. Don’t assume that this is an intellectual problem, because it’s not.
The core things that are going to generate business for you—especially if you’re making an online business—like making videos, making sales calls, pitching effectively—they all require you to move through this same emotional block.
Your Next Step
If you want help correctly identifying the emotion and getting unblocked in your solopreneur or creative entrepreneur pursuits, I’ve created a free PDF that outlines this process as much as possible.
It breaks down how I unblock these things, what my strategy is, and you can go away and start making changes today.
Because remember: this isn’t about finding the perfect niche strategy or the ideal “choose niche for blog” formula. This is about getting emotionally unstuck so you can finally move forward with what you already know you want to do.
Download the free PDF here and start unblocking today.
The niche you need is probably already obvious to you. You’re just too scared to admit it.