I have had so many sales calls lately where I am talking to a prospective client, and everybody is worried about the same word. Picking a niche. I have beef with that word, honestly. Because it stresses people out that they have to pick one lane, one audience, and describe themselves a particular way in order to appeal to one group of people.
So here is what I say on almost every one of those calls.
You are the niche. It is your unique blend of experience, your expertise, lived wisdom, passions, interest, training, and education that make you a category of one. Really, the conversation is about flipping the script, people seeking you out and your wisdom for exactly the unique combination of who you are, and how you help your audience transform based on everything you know and all that you are. That is what connects you to people based on the things you care about, want to be doing, and that rare blend of everything you know and are good at.
The people who reach out to DesignGood are not people who fit neatly into one box, and that is actually their superpower. It is how they go from just a coach, consultant, therapist, or healer, into someone who is found for their specific expertise, experience, passions, and wisdom. People that get on the calls with me typically are incredibly talented people that feel frozen by picking one particular path or one particular label, or they don't know how to put into words exactly what they do because they are not just one thing.
Take Bréné Brown for example. She is a social worker, LMSW, who became a research professor at the University of Houston with an interest in shame, vulnerability, courage, and leadership. Now she is known for being an expert in those things, and writes books and creates trainings and content around all the different ways you can combine them. She has got a unique point of view, and that is what makes her desirable and discoverable for the work that only she can do.
That same combination of your own uniqueness is also what makes you easier to find now. People used to Google "therapist Texas" and make decisions purely on title and location. Now someone is going to Claude or ChatGPT and asking something more layered, a woman who is a therapist and who integrates spiritual techniques, who has experience working with grief, and uses somatic techniques. That is several specific things named at once, and the clearer your own language is about that exact blend, the more recognizable you are to the person asking. This is where we can look to AI to do more aligned matching, but only if your brand is communicating your uniqueness.
You don't have to pick one thing, but you need a through line
This is not a case for picking one thing. Most of the people who reach out to us are juggling two or three different skills, audiences, or modalities, and that range of how you can help someone transform is often the whole point. What has to be consistent is not the number of things you do. It is the thread that connects them.
When your brand and your language stay focused on the transformations you help your audience achieve, how you get them there becomes your unique selling proposition. That is the blend of everything you are, everything you do, and everything you know. A therapist who blends trauma work with breathwork and a therapist who only does trauma work can both be the right fit for someone, as long as each one is clear about what actually changes for the person on the other side of the work.
How this helps AI recommend you
You may have heard of E-E-A-T. It's the framework Google uses to judge whether content, and the person behind it, can be trusted: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Google did not invent the idea so much as name it, and the same underlying principle shows up in how answer engines like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini evaluate who to point someone toward. None of them publish an exact formula, but the pattern holds. Can they tell you have actually done the work? Are you recognized as credible somewhere beyond your own website? Does your own language back all of that up, consistently, everywhere your name shows up?
That clarity is also what an answer engine like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini is looking for, and how well what you offer answers the more layered searches your audience is already doing. It is trying to understand what you help people move through, and whether that matches what someone is asking for. The more consistently your language points back to that particular desired transformation, across your website, your directory profiles, your bio, your social media, and anywhere else your name shows up, the more an AI system has to work with when it is deciding whether to mention you at all. Inconsistent language, a different story on your website than on your Psychology Today profile or LinkedIn than in your last podcast interview, gives these systems nothing solid to recognize you by. You want to be consistently talking about the same things and sharing the same message, even if that means you have multiple things you offer and can help multiple groups of people with your uniqueness.
This is why brand positioning is such a big part of the work we do with clients. It is not about inventing a story that forces all the pieces to fit. It is about attaching language to the uniqueness that is already there, the blend of transformation and method that makes you exactly what someone might be searching for, so that both the people and the AI systems looking for exactly that can actually find it.
Here's where I'd start
If you're reading this and realize you could not say, in a couple of sentences, the specific combination of experience, training, and point of view that makes you a category of one, and what your audience can expect from working with you, that's where I'd start.
If you'd like to work with me one on one to figure this out, and have us develop the language that connects you with the audience that is looking for exactly what you offer, that's what our Business Intensive is created for.
