How do you figure out what to do? How do you figure out what your niche should be? When it comes to being a freelancer? You can't just put your shingle out for 20 or 30 different services? Well, you could, but it's not going to work. I think there are three main factors you really need to look at.
When trying to decide your niche. You may want to think of it in terms of a Venn diagram with with circles, and see where the overlap is. The first thing you got to figure out is, what do you really enjoy doing? What do you like doing? What's something you would do? If frankly, you weren't paid anything?
You might just do it for fun on a Saturday morning. The second big question I would ask is, what are you good at? There are some things that you may love doing. I might love playing golf, but I don't shoot better than about 140 I'm not ever gonna make a living With golf. The second big question is, what are you actually good at? That's the second circle, the third circle where there needs to be an overlap.
Yes. Why are people willing to pay for, you can be really good at something and have a passion for it. No one's willing to pay you might be really great at analyzing who's gonna win a fantasy football league. No one's gonna pay for it. In all likelihood. He may be really good at watching old horror movies and saying who's good and who's bad sports are acting skills.
I don't know if anyone willing to pay for that. You've got to have that third element. There is someone willing to pay for it. In my own career for many, many years, I was a talk show host a political talk show host I was in fact on one of the original talk radio stations that rush limbaugh was on. His career turned out a little better than mine. I had a passion for political talk radio and TV.
I was on about seven different radio networks. I had syndicated TV talk show by the time I was 26 years old. I had a passion for it. Frankly, I thought I was very good at it to only one problem. In the particular political niche I was in, no one was willing to pay for it. So I had two out of the three didn't do me any good.
I had years and years and years of practically starving to death, living on friends couches. And I might get recognized walking down the street occasionally. And people tell me they love my shows occasionally. I wasn't a real business. I didn't figure out how I could actually get paid for it. So So how did I get to my particular niche?
Well, I had a lifelong interest in speaking public speaking in the media. Starting off in sixth grade, my teacher came up to me I was a very shy, quiet little kid, my teacher came up to me and said, TJ, I'm in charge of the graduation ceremony, I need some student to give a Hello speech, a welcoming speech to the parents, teachers and students. Right now. You're getting all A's and all your classes but a C in handwriting. I'll give you an A in handwriting. If you just give this speech.
And I thought I don't know anything about speaking but it'd be nice to have an A so I did it. It wasn't a great speech. But I learned at a very early age, that if you just stand up and speak, people will give you things and the very next year I was in junior high school. We didn't have middle school back then. And one of the first days in school I won a Fonzie look alike contest. I had a lot more hair back then it was slicked back.
And my prize was I got to do the junior high school newscast on closed circuit TV the next day. So that was my first experience, communicating on television on video, essentially not much different than here we are now although it was more than 40 years ago. And later that year, I ran for the student council of my just my own homeroom, I won that. Then the next year after that I became student body president was routinely speaking to 1200 students and teachers on an almost daily basis. So ever since then, I've had a lifelong passion for speaking, politics and media. So at some level that's guided me through everything I've done, so I have a passion for this.
You give me a try. preteen watching the World Series and watching a bunch of political speeches of that convention. I'm going to choose the speeches that the convention no one has to pay me. So I have a passion for this. So that's how I ended up in my niche. I was good at it.
And I had a passion for it. And once I stripped out the political element of being a talk show host and focused on helping people build their skills in a political environment, my career flourished. So that's what I need you to think about is, what are you good at? What do people want to pay you for? And what do you have a passion for? If you don't have all three?
You're gonna have a really difficult time in this freelance business.