I’ve never had children of my own. My maternal instincts show up in other ways. I can be a mama bear with clients, fiercely helping them get their branding lined up. I love helping clients with their niche. I see determining someone’s business niche as both an art and a science. I listen to what a client says and doesn’t say. The “doesn’t say” is where it can get interesting. I sometimes ask questions that sound like they come out of left field. They actually come from my intuition, where NicheMama has a second home. Sometimes my intuition says the person is in the right business, sometimes they’re not. If they’re not, what’s keeping them there? Sometimes they’re in the right industry but they’ve got the wrong job. One of my foodie clients showed up frustrated and burned out, ready to quit their food sales job and flee the industry altogether. I worked with them to shift from corporate work to self employment. My NicheMama sense was that they had fallen out of love with food because they were in the wrong job. It wasn’t easy for them to leave that job, though, as unhappy as they were. After awhile, the job began taking a heavier toll on their life. Meanwhile, we kept working to find their niche. They’d always loved cooking for others. They discovered that their special joy was sushi, and began giving sushi classes and doing sushi catering. They’ve been successfully self-employed ever since. Sometimes we don’t have to ditch the industry we’re in, just the way we’re doing it.

Have you fallen out of love with your work? What could you do about that?