You Don’t Find Your Niche

You Remember It.

When you’re new to marketing your work, people tell you to build a client avatar.
"Name them. Age them. Job title. Income. Lifestyle. Write their morning routine. Where do they hang out? What do they dream about?” You fill out a worksheet. You invent a person. But it falls flat.

Because it isn’t real.

It’s not felt. It’s not lived.
It doesn’t move you.

And if it doesn’t move you, it won’t move them.

When I first tried to market myself, I wasn’t speaking to anyone real.
I was trying to sound professional. Safe. Like someone who had answers.

But I didn’t feel like someone who had answers. I felt like someone who had survived.
And survival has its own kind of knowledge.

One day I threw out the worksheet and asked a different question:
What would I have needed to hear back then?

Back when I thought my relationship was the problem—but really, I was drowning in unprocessed pain... Back when I kept cycling through the same addictions, blaming the world, feeling alone... Back when I looked outward for clarity because no one taught me how to hear myself...

What would I have needed? Someone to see me. Someone to tell the truth.
Someone to say: "You're not broken. You're becoming."

So I started speaking to him. That younger version of me.
The one who didn’t trust his own voice yet.

I didn’t plan to focus on relationships.
But when I stopped posturing and started remembering, I realized how many of my struggles were relational.

I was in relationships I didn’t understand.
I was afraid of intimacy but obsessed with connection.
I longed to be chosen—but didn’t know how to choose myself.
I hurt people. People hurt me. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t have a map.

And when I started writing, I wasn’t trying to sell anything.
I was trying to bring language to a silence I once lived in.
And people responded.

Because they were still there.

Your niche is NOT the clever summary of what you do.
It’s the door you hold open to the version of you who never found one.

When you speak to them, it doesn’t feel like marketing.
It feels like truth. It feels like service. That’s what builds trust.
That’s what builds a body of work that speaks beyond the algorithm.

You stop needing tricks. You stop mimicking others.
You remember your own pain.
You build your niche from scar tissue.

Remember Pain Points

Pain is not only the hook. It is also the direction. Pain tells you where you’ve walked.
It shows you what you now carry. It makes you trustworthy.

Most people are afraid to go there. But the ones you are meant to serve are already there. They’re waiting. They’re watching. They’re asking the questions you once screamed into the dark.

Answer them.

Here’s how to begin:

1. Pick the moment that changed everything.
Not the polished transformation story.
The one where you finally admitted:
“I can’t do this anymore.”

Speak from there.

2. Write to the version of you who still believed the lie.
That love had to hurt.
That healing was impossible.
That no one would ever understand.
What did they need to hear?

Write it.
Not with pity. Not with preaching.
With presence.

3. Don’t clean it up. Let it bleed.
Marketing makes you want to wrap it up in a bow.
But your people don’t need the bow. They need the thread.
The unraveling. The honesty. The line they can grab onto when everything falls apart.

I once wrote a post about relationships that said:

Hate to break it to you.

Every relationship is Karmic:

• Soul Mates

• Twin Flames

• Tribe/Family

It wasn’t a pitch. It wasn’t a CTA.
It was something I wish someone had told me.
It got more responses than anything else I had written.

Why?

Because it was real.
Because people felt me in it.
Because people felt themselves in it.

That’s how you build a niche.
You speak with the authority of lived experience.
You give your voice to those who don’t know they have one yet.

Here’s the secret:

When you speak to your former self, you don’t narrow your audience.
You clarify it.

You become magnetic to those who are walking the same path. And they don’t need convincing. They already trust you. Because you’re not marketing at them.
You’re remembering for them.

Check out the first part here:

Next week in Part 3, we’ll talk about Vision:
How to turn pain into direction.
How to turn a story into a movement.
And why “impact” begins with intimacy.

Until then—

Speak true.
Write to the one who waited.
And never forget:

You are still becoming.

Your Guide,

Benji Faun