My Niche is Me

I’ve been teasing out a thread for my whole life… it’s been absolutely maddening at times; like trying to untangle a rat’s nest of fishing line. The last few years since I left my restaurant I’ve been on a journey to finally pull it straight, not actually knowing that I was doing it. I have jumped from one thing to another; trying to make something successful. Each endeavour becoming a clue to the knots and clusters that have lead me to now.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been pursuing a career in coaching. I’ve gone through a handful of iterations, and more than once declared that I had finally found the answer to my marketing, or my approach, or my style. I have taken courses, written and rewritten my ideal client avatars, built websites, started a facebook page, unendingly tweaked my offerings and content. Nothing felt right. I thought I needed to manufacture a ‘face’ for my practice. That my given name could never hold the weight of a witty moniker and a fancy logo and a smart looking web page. I kept being told, you have to niche down. Niches mean riches. I needed to nail exactly who and what I served or I was going to fail. I needed to crack the nut or flush another endeavour down the toilet.

Like a rock being skipped over water, each iteration brought me closer to the inevitability of the inertia failing, and then I would sink.

I could feel it coming a long way off. The physics of it couldn’t lie. I sank. I hit the sea floor and the silt that had been thrown up from the impact settled. Nothing but endless water above me, endless sky above it, endless space beyond that.

There is something about rock bottom that is comforting. It’s rock bottom after all. There is nowhere left to fall. I was finally able to take an inventory; look at all the pieces from a detached point of view. This is when the thread finally started to reveal itself and I’ve been pulling on it ever since.

It was obvious from that place that creating art was foundational for me, because it was the only thing I could think of doing from that place that held any meaning for me. I committed to a 30 day art challenge with my son, Leif, and he committed to a 30 day video challenge for his music. I am deep in that now.

I followed the thread some more, saw how I’ve been a helper of one kind or another my whole life; and particularly for the last 15 years volunteering for the Mankind Project and the Young Men’s Adventure Weekend. I took on leadership, became a board executive, hosted training events and ran groups.

I pulled the thread some more and my own work surfaced. I have walked in a thousand dark places, faced my most profound fears, walked into and through my worst physical, mental, and sexual traumas. I developed a capacity to stand in the hottest infernos until they were spent and in that I’ve become an ideal Sherpa for others do the same.

I kept pulling on the thread. My deep commitment to fatherhood and raising my children came up, my passion and love and mastery in the kitchen, my beautiful and inspiring and delightful partnership with my wife, my passion for writing, my love of music, my ferocious desire to learn.

Through it all my skill base has become vast and varied and dynamic, my toolbox is bursting at the seams.

This morning, during my own coaching session, words rolled out of my mouth that finally put it all together: “My niche is me.”

Every beautiful, messy, vulnerable, brave part of me.

And now, as i write this, I realize I’ve never been more excited in my life to build my story. All the components I ever needed for it are already in place. I am the first, and best, and most qualified to do it.

I don’t know where it is leading but I can rest easy knowing I’m not a rock skipping over the surface of the ocean anymore. I am the ocean.