37 – How to Find Your Education Consulting Niche as a K-12 Teacher & School Leader

If you're a teacher who wants to become a consultant, but keep asking, what should I actually focus on this episode is for you. Most educators don't struggle with having expertise. They struggle with having too much of it. You've led initiatives, coach teachers, written curriculum, and now you're overthinking which piece to build a business around. So you start chasing what you think schools want instead of what will actually scale and make you a thought leader. The truth, your niche isn't found in a spreadsheet or honest survey. It's hiding inside your own transformation story. So today, we're going to show you how to uncover it. By tracing your lived experience, tapping into the emotions beyond your expertise, and finding that sweet spot between your story and what others truly need. Welcome back to Unleash Yes, I'm Natalie Vardabaso. And I'm Tom Schimmer, and yes, isn't just a mindset. It's an acronym that stands for your entrepreneurial spirit. This is the space where educators like you come to reimagine what's possible beyond your role in the education system. In this podcast, we help you launch and grow your learning based business so that you can share your expertise as an in-demand K-12 consultant and expand your impact far beyond one classroom or district. Every other week, we dive into mindset shifts and practical strategies that turn your ideas into movements, and you're calling into meaningful, liberated work. These when educators unleash their yes, their unique vision, courage and purpose, they don't just change their own lives, they change education itself. Welcome back everybody. What's up fam? What's up fam? I'm just going to keep saying it. Just like your sports hats, a matching t-shirt. That's right. I don't know if you've noticed. Oh, yeah, that's how I would be. Part of me is like a uniform. How easy would that be to just do it in the morning? It is easy to do it in the morning. For the podcast. Match. Go. Exactly. I'm like, "My outfit's together 15 seconds later." Exactly. He's like, "Done." I'm like, "Oh man, what do I have?" Anywho, we're really excited for this episode because this is actually going back to the very beginning of this podcast and we're almost doing a 2.0 version of one of our most downloaded episodes to date, which was all about how to find your niche in this space. But we're going to approach it a little bit differently because we were just chatting before we hit record that. When we recorded that episode, we were to different place in this journey and creating this business ourselves. We hadn't even started working with clients yet when we created that episode. And so it was a little, it's good. It's like a 101. If you want to go back and learn like, "What is a niche? Why is it important? What does it have to do with business?" Like, go all the way back. I think it's like episode three. Take a listen. But this is going to be a lot more grounded in the work that we've done with real education leaders and teachers throughout the last year. And what we've learned about how to really nail that niche aspect of what is that thing that I want to be known for? Yeah. I think there's so many great examples we can point to over the years and great ways for us to highlight those examples and even deepen our understanding of the power of the niche and how those stories can manifest. So, look forward to it. But as we do. As we do most. Let's check in. Very on topic today. But Tom, why don't you go first. How did you know that assessment and grading was your niche in education? Well, that's a good question. I would say that the two things kind of unfolded. I look back historically and I was a very traditional teacher and a very traditional assessor. It felt very strongly about that for the first 13 years of my career. But as I became a little dissatisfied with who I was as a teacher and began to explore assessment, there were a lot of different topics I could have explored to improve my ability as a teacher, et cetera, and so on. But when I started to implement those changes, how I knew this was going to be my niche was two things. And it was more around the emotions of it. Teaching was watching my students' confidence in learning change as I began to implement sound assessment practices. So that was the one thing. Was noticing that it wasn't just a technical change that was happening. My classroom was actually an emotional shift. My students were starting to lean back into school. I don't want to pretend they all became straight A students or anything like that. But what I did notice is that my kids' emotion and confidence around learning started to shift and I also noticed that I actually became more energized and happier at work as a result of the things I was doing in my classroom. So it was the impact it had on my students, but also the impact it had on me as a professional because I looked back retroactively. I didn't realize it at the time. But when I was on the cusp of this change, I was actually not very happy at work. I was a bit like I was in that gotcha mode all the time and I really changed my perspective on the job. That's a really interesting thing to even open with. You know it's your niche when it not only changes you, but completely changes the impact that you're able to make in education and there should always be this kind of two-sided win-win element to it. Do you know what mine's, it'd be easy to say yes same because I obviously experienced all the same benefits in my classroom. But another layer for me that created the specific niche that I had that wasn't just assessment in the classrooms, but how do we lead assessment transformation in our schools? I really wanted to go to that level was because I had figured things out in my classroom. Me at this beautiful learning ecosystem because I built my own assessment literacy and then I went into my first leadership role as an instructional coach and had an eye on I think we should do something about assessment and that was one of the hardest, loneliest moments of what I have no one to help me with this. I feel like everyone's looking at me like I'm absolutely crazy for even opening up this dialogue, but I believe in it so deeply because I've lived experience of having done this with my own kids. So talk about gas lighting on like a huge scale because everyone's like that won't work, that won't work. And you're like it does, it does. I literally just did this. But I think that hit me that if it was that hard for me and then of course the wins when you actually see change start to happen over a three to five year period and it felt absolutely impossible at the beginning, I was like well if that was such a fulfilling journey for me, then I would love to help someone else who's at the very beginning feeling alone, feeling scared, feeling like it might be hopeless and show them it isn't and that's kind of where it all. Both our stories have similarities in terms of they, it was more about the feeling that the work generated, right? So that is interestingly to find and we often talk about as we will talk about the intersection between your story, other stories, is that niche that we find? What is a story if not something that we feel like it's not a great story if you don't feel anything? Right. Exactly. You can't really separate them. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I guess, I suppose there could be some people that say I shifted because it gave me more technical know how, but obviously to me, you know, we know that change is more emotional, the clinical and so as a result of that, the emotions are likely what's going to move us in a particular direction. Yeah. If change were just technical, we'd all put like workout at 5 a.m. in our calendar and we'd execute. Well, you work out at 6 30 a.m. now, a little new routine, right? We have a new team. I'll talk with that in another episode. Exactly. Exactly. Playing with our schedule. All right, so let's get into it. So here's the problem as we sort of see it, is that it's, it's both a good news and bad news story. Yes. As educators, we, over the course of a career, tend to, I suppose, accumulate a lot of sort of, I suppose expertise, quote unquote, maybe not expertise, but we gain a lot of knowledge and a, and a good depth of understanding about a lot of different topics. And so because of that, people find it very hard to nail down to one niche. They think, oh, but I could do so many things. And that's just everybody in education. I did a little of this in a, you know, you have a 30 year career, you're going to do a little of this, a little of that, a little of this, a little of that. That leads people down this spiral of chasing trends because they think, oh, I want to be first to the market or I want to do this. And I'm going to just look, try to anticipate market maneuvers and what's trendy and all of that stuff, but that's not sustainable. And that is most definitely not scalable if you're just constantly chasing, chasing trends in the market. Yeah. So by the end of this episode, we're going to walk you through how to uncover the niche that's been right in front of you all along because it's the one shaped by your own personal transformation. You're going to learn how to move beyond tactics and titles to identify the emotional through line that connects your story to the change that you can now help others to create. Right. And you'll see how to test it. And we're going to talk about something called empathy interviews that reveal what schools actually need so that you can find that sweet spot between your own lived experience and story and real demand because we have found with so many of our clients inside the only chest bootcamp that when those two things align, you get off this hamster wheel of chasing trends and trying to be what other people need, which is a habit. A lot of us picked up from working in education and start becoming the trusted thought leader that schools seek out to make sense of those hottest topics in education. Yeah, that's, I mean, that is something we have to stop chasing is what's the hot trend because that's going to cool off just as quickly. This is the number one thing we teach in the bootcamp, which is how to find that niche and how to make sure it's meaningful and that you, it comes from a story of receipts. And one of the, I think one of the best testimonies we could talk about is our client Kendra. And she's gone through probably her biggest transformation and the thing that we noticed about Kendra is that she stayed steady for more than a year and just kept being consistent in the work she was doing. And recently things have exploded for her like over the past couple of months. Her followers on Instagram have gone from just over two thousand. 1000 followers to something like around 11,000 followers. No, again, those are just, you know, followers are good, but followers put in you in front of people, right? So it isn't just vanity, it is really meaningful and that is a massive transformation. - Yeah, and she's been just non-negotiable from day one of like, I help elementary teachers build thriving math communities 'cause it's completely connected to her biggest story of overcoming a pain and a struggle as a teacher. And so she literally, I'm gonna read her exact words. She a message me last week and said, "Things are literally exploding and I'm absolutely loving it. I'm having so many PD inquiries and bookings lately, plus my online stuff is really coming along with lots of signups." So her online stuff, she's been running an online group coaching program, which really got her in front of teachers and gathering testimonials of impact in their classrooms, but she also has now launched a membership called the Mathematizer Monthly, I think is what she called it. And if you wanna check out and like follow her journey and you've been listening to this podcast and you like to see like evidence of people doing this, her Instagram account is at Mathematizing 24/7 or Mathematizing 24/7. But you can really see just how much engagement she's getting and she just finally hit that point where instead of being like, is this right, is this it? She's just found her voice and is speaking with this really aligned voice to her truth. And that's something we've been talking with her about for this entire year is how to get to that place of not trying to say what you think other people want you to say or what you should be saying but just saying what's true to you. So one of the pick breakthroughs which she finally started like critiquing math centers and she was scared to do that. She said, I don't wanna sound like I'm being negative or like what is true to you? Because once you let go of math centers and you came up with a better solution, it unlocked a lot of things in your classroom. So Nash talks a lot about how math centers are the problem and people are like, thank you. I've been struggling with this. So this is the power of really tapping into that story and staying consistent is you start to develop this depth and a mastery with what it is you're talking about. And so she is gonna be coming on the podcast soon. Just a little heads up. - We're trying to get her schedule worked out. - Yeah, calendar is always a challenge to line all of her calendars but we'll get her on here to tell her story in her own words very soon. But Kendra's story is such a perfect example of what happens when you stop chasing trends and start just tracing your own transformation. So she didn't find her niche by just guessing what schools wanted, she found it by digging into her own story and her own journey and that's what we wanna help you to do next. So we're gonna break down now exactly how to uncover your own uncopiable niche through your lived experiences, discover the emotional arc within it and the real conversations that you can host to reveal what others truly need. - Yeah, okay, so let's get into it. And the first thing we have to talk about is the fact that your niche is your lived experience of transformation. Like your niche is unique to you because it is your story. You need a story, if you're gonna have a niche and this is where you and I talk about receipts, right? You have to have a story where you have authentically overcome a challenge. You have gone through a transformation. And a huge bonus to that would be that you have tangible results to show for it. We even talked a little bit about our transformation in our check-in question, right? The shift that we went through and the way that transformed the students. So you have a story and not just a proven transformation within yourself, but now you can help others go through that transformation. That's what your niche is, right? It's you being able to understand what your transformation was and how you're going to coach or help support people go through that transformation on their own. What it's not is a random story from your life that you use to try to craft or manufacture or sell some kind of transformation you want others to make. - Yes. - But it's not really authentic to you. - That part is so important. I have to double tap an X. There's what we lose when we don't come from an authentic place of I've been here. I've dealt with this and here's how I've overcome it is you completely lose integrity. Story can be manipulative when it's like, hey, I'm gonna take a random story about this hardship I had in my life over here to tell you why you're not doing a good job at teaching. Like that, it's actually a firm line that we have in our bootcamp or we don't accept people that haven't actually loved these changes in the classroom or in schools. We've had people from tech or other backgrounds come to us and say, hey, I know what teachers should be doing based on my kids' experience in school or like, I'm sorry, no, unless you've been there, like you just, I think it completely. And maybe I'm wrong, like feel free to add us or to tweet at us or whatever people is to these days email us. But I really think it lacks integrity when you haven't actually walked a journey that you're telling others they should walk. - This is such an important point that I want to jump in here because this is actually something I often say during assessment workshops, which is, you know, I could tell you that I implemented these strategies and we all lived happily ever after and all of our students said wonderfully. And then I will actually say to the audience, you know, I can literally tell you whatever I want because there's no way for you to fact check me. There isn't. If I tell them a story about what I did 20 years ago in my classroom, who can fact check me? It's really up to you to gatekeep your own integrity and say, and then I look at the audience to say, but that's not what happened. I struggled with these students still. This was difficult to implement. This was authentically a challenge for me. I think you have to be real and that authenticity can be or inauthentic story or that manufactured story can be sniffed out very quickly because you can't drill down on it with a question you. So I do think it comes down to us being authentic in our stories and understanding that this is a transformation that I've gone through because you'd be able to speak to it at a level of depth that you couldn't if you made the story. - And a simple quick test here, if you're like, hmm, what would that story be for me? Others typically can see it. So if you're teaching or you're in a school leadership or a district leadership position right now, what is that thing that people look at and go, hey, how did you X? Usually when you've been through something really inspiring, others notice and they're paying attention because that is human nature. We learn through story and we learn by other people's stories, hearing stories. It's called strategy learning. There's a whole science behind it. So people naturally, if you've lived this, we'll be asking you questions. We created this whole unleashed thing because we were living the journey of having been full-time K-12 leaders and then making the jump into full-time consulting and speaking in people, we're going, how did you do it? - Yeah, how does that happen? What's the process? - So we didn't have to think about what's our niche where like this is literally what we've experienced. So when you're thinking like, what is my topic? Like take your expertise, which might be assessment or grading or executive functioning or SEL, you name it. Okay, do you have a story in which you had to face this head-on and really work through the hardship of the implementation? And have you emerged with some receipts or results on the back end? And if the answer is no, even if it's a topic you love. Even if it's something that you went to university for? - Yeah. - It might not be your niche. - No, it might not. Because integrity comes from having been there and lived it, not just knowing. And then we say all the time in today's age of technology in our modern society, we value transformation over information. People learn, we learn a lot about things in education, but then there's the knowing, doing gap that often happens. There's a lot of people that know a lot of things in education, but the question is, are they implementing them? And are they actually showing that that implementation is having a positive impact? Is it producing the desired results? That part of it is something that we have to be emphasized. So you don't just say, I want to become a consultant. You think about, you might want to become a consultant, but your first question is, do I have a story of transformation that I've actually lived through? - Yes. - Not just learned about in a book. - Do I have a story of transformation I've actually lived through and not just learned about in a book? - Yeah. - Double tap on that one and favorite line of the whole, we can just end it right there. - Let's, yeah, let's, might drop it right now. - Might drop it right now. - But this sunk cost fallacy around degrees, right? - Oh, go off. - Yeah. - Well, well, first of all, if you don't know what a sunk cost fallacy is, the whole mindset bias that we all have is I invested a lot of time and I invested a lot of money into this thing. Therefore, I need it to be valuable. - Yeah. - And we're not here to say education, like degrees, PhDs, masters aren't valuable. They have a lot of value in and of themselves, the experience, the people you get to meet, the things you learn about, but they don't guarantee that you've actually implemented something. And maybe, maybe some folks listening have a program where that was a non-negotiable. You had to lead some kind of transformation in a school or in a district. So obviously that would be, you know, an example of this, but not always, there's a lot of people where they take a bunch of courses, they learn a bunch of things, they do this inquiry-based study where they, you know, take a whole bunch of information and synthesize it to come up with some perspective. That's still a level of just learning about. And how you put it in front of human beings, teachers, students, families, whatever the change may be, you can't go to people and say you need to do these things. - Yeah. - Because learning about it and doing it are two very, very different things. - No, for sure, for sure. And people sometimes develop imposter syndrome, they think about, you know, why me, who am I? But at the same time, why not you? If you have an expertise and you have a story of transformation, that's something that you can share with people and really get out there and try to help people move through that transformation themselves. - And we want to clarify here that, though what we're saying makes it sound like you need to have like literally shifted education before you can start to be a consultant, all you need is like a 10% edge. - Right, that's it, like you don't, like, we were just talking the other day in our coaching, I think it was last night actually, about how there's this fear that comes in when you start speaking and consulting because you learn of more complexity than you were ever even aware of when you were in one context. And some folks start to panic, they're like, maybe this isn't my niche because I don't know as much as I thought I did, but the truth is, that's what expertise actually looks like. There's the old adage, right? The more you know, the more you know you don't know. - Right. So welcome, if you've really walked this journey, you should have a sense of do I know enough, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I made a lot of mistakes, perfect. That's actually a sign that you're on the right track and you're ready to jump into this with people who haven't started and think it's gonna be really easy because they don't know enough about it yet to know how complex it actually is. So you need to be in that place of complexity to guide them through it when they get there. But if you're feeling often it's a good self-check for us for like, oh, I wanna talk about this. If we're way too excited about it, it usually means that we haven't dug deep enough 'cause you should be a little trepidatious and like, ooh, this is gonna be hard. - Okay, listeners, we have an action step for you. What we want you to do is either press pause or in a time when it's more convenient to you if you're listening in the car or whatever. We want you to make a list of 10 of the hardest professional challenges that you have overcome. Personally, like what have you overcome in your professional life? And then put a star beside the three that you are most passionate about or most love talking about. That's such a great place to begin thinking about what your niche can be. - Yeah, and we're gonna take you deeper as we go through the next two sections here and hopefully you'll arrive at something that's at least a draft version of what your niche might be. So now we wanna talk you through, you've narrowed down, okay, here's three transformation stories that are real for me. We wanna help you tap into the emotional journey and not just think about the tactics, not just think about the technical sides of it. To bring up another adage that we love to share in education all the time, but people will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. The purpose of a really great niche is that you have a story that moves people. You don't just have a list of things you did. And this is a bias that we have to unlearn from education because a lot of the academic language that we are immersed in, especially as we had to university, is very devoid of the eye and of the personal and of any feelings. It's supposed to be very clinical. One might think that the purpose of this 19th century, it's just, we talk in this very, it's very, it's very, I don't know if you picked up on that, but I would say this piece of moving out of the, here's all the things I will do, which is such a mindset that we've picked up in grind culture and in education to, here's how it will feel. I would say that's the hardest thing we try to help folks with in the boot camp in particular. - Yeah, definitely. And many would think that clarity and explaining all of your tactics would help, but it actually hurts because it moves you out of empathy mode and it starts to make you sound like you're in sales mode. - Totally. - And that's not, when you're talking to people, we don't want to be in sales mode. Yes, of course, in any business you need sales, but timing is important. When you're talking to people and you're trying to connect with them, that is not the time to be selling. People can, you want people to see themselves in your story. Like empathy is really about sharing your story, hearing their story, but when you get into tactics, it just starts to feel like they're being sold to. - 100%. Well, it's a moment of, I know what it feels like to, let me tell you what I can do. - Yeah. - And those are two very different ways of communicating. So we want to talk about how do you tap into the emotion? So a story structure that everyone, I'm sure, we'll be familiar with, is the old "Rags to Riches" story, sometimes also known as the Cinderella story, but if you haven't heard of this, it's this idea that it's a story where the main character is very downtrodden, if you will. They're down on their luck at the beginning of the story and through a series of events of their own choice or sometimes luck, they emerge extremely victorious and better off than they ever were by the end of the story. So that is the kind of story that really moves people and inspires people. You could think there's a million different examples of movies like this. I think there literally is one called a Cinderella story about a boxer that's coming to mind for me. That's sports, do you know what I'm talking about? Rocky, that's a Cinderella story, right? - Yeah, Cinderella story. - He's like, I don't know the Rocky story. I'm not even gonna try to describe it. Is he like down on his luck at the beginning? - It's an all-time classic. What are we doing here? The stars, we have some movies to watch after the recording of this episode. Back to our regularly scheduled program. (laughing) - But that's the kind of story that the more that things were incredibly hard at the beginning and they're contrasted with how incredible they ended up for you at the end. That tells you you have something that will hit people's emotions. Now, why these work is because people actually invest in solving their pain. They don't invest in the outcome. So it's about like showing people I get the pain and we get so much pushback on this one. Folks, like Kendra did once said, that's gonna make me sound negative. I don't wanna sound negative. I just wanna tell them how great things are gonna be. I'm gonna break this down with some numbers for you 'cause I did a little data dive over the last week of our own work. So we're gonna pull back the curtain and reveal some numbers for you. So we've recently launched something called the Canadian Assessment Center. We have a team of consultants taking our assessment and grading expertise to Canada. And we've been running these webinars and they've all been focused on different topics. So we've done three so far. And I recently analyzed the different numbers between how many people are clicking the button to learn more from our ads. And then how many people are going to the landing page and choosing to enroll in the webinar. And the very first webinar we did blew the other ones out of the water. And there's a difference to that webinar versus the other two 'cause the first one was done by Tom. And it was called the hybrid grading blueprint. How do honor outcomes while reporting percentages? It was the number one problem that teachers told Tom when he talked to them before we launched this organization. They said, "I don't know how to deal with these percentages. "I wanna do this outcome space grading thing "and it's just not working." So it's problem focused. Hey, you have a problem. Come over here. I can help you solve it. So we were seeing numbers well beyond industry standard for that webinar. As soon as I did my webinar that was focused on how to get better feedback without burning out. So there's a little bit of problem at the end there, but it was more leading with the solution. Numbers were cut by about half. And then we did another webinar that was about how to use oral language in assessment. So again, a solution. Not talking about what problem it solves. Again, the numbers were a lot lower. So right there we have data. Like we know this stuff and yet we still make this mistake in practice, but now we're sharing it with you so you can do better than us that when you lead with the problem and you think of like the beginning of the Rocky movie, that's when people will join you on the journey and get to the outcome. But if you used to say, "I'm gonna get you," I don't know what Rocky does at the end of the movie. Something incredible, I assume. I will spoil it for you. Okay, I'm gonna get you here. Most people go, "I can't do that because I have this problem, so that's not gonna work for me." And they opt out, so you gotta start with the problem. Anyways, that is my little-- - Well, it's important and you're not just stating the emotions because that sounds really clinical and disingenuous, right? You don't say things like like, I help teachers go from feeling overwhelmed to calm. Like, okay, that sounds really technical. And what we really have to do is we have to show the emotions or generate the emotions by painting a picture, right? So if we were to think about an example, we might say, I help teachers go from feeling their heart palpitate and their vision blur at 11.30 pm on a Tuesday night because they're living one day ahead of their students and their social studies textbook, scouring the internet for a way to bring the information to life and in activity and starting to feel that the light that the light at the end of the tunnel has gone dark because there is simply too much to learn about not only their subject, but pedagogical practices to being able to confidently leave their computer. Work every day because they've mastered an AI-enabled planning flow for each unit that makes creating lessons easy because they know exactly where they were going, where students are now and how to plan research backed activities as needed to bridge the gap. - The English teacher and me is so happy. That show don't tell was beautiful. That was exemplary, Tom. - No, thank you. - I appreciate that. - Okay, we're gonna leave you with an action step for this one. So you've got those three challenges that you identified in the last section. Now we want you to pick one and say, okay, what's the one specific reg's moment, that one hardship story that I can tell, paint it as a picture, like Tom just did, like where were you? What time was it? How were you feeling? What was going on in your body? What were you trying to figure out? What were you doing? And then we want you to contrast it with do the exact same thing, but what's one moment when you had the riches where it was all clicked for you where things were making sense? Who was there? What were you thinking? What were you feeling? What were you doing? So don't just say like overwhelm to calm, paint us a picture, write it out, like put aside 15 minutes and go through this and you'll be amazed how often you use that specific story. - Yeah, don't just name it, but actually what does it feel like? - Yes. - And that's the key to tapping into that story. Now the third thing we want to share about niche is finding the middle ground. - Yeah. - Because this is where your story meets their needs. Your story is one thing, but your niche isn't only about your story or your transformation 'cause the niche is ultimately where your story meets their story. - Yes. - And the overlap between those or the bend diagram is how you find your niche. So once you know your story, we need to figure out how does my story connect with others? And what schools and what teachers are actually saying. I have a particular worldview. This has been my lived experience. This has been my transformation. Do other people share that? And where is the overlap between what where's our shared experiences? That's where the empathy interviews come in, right? Because it's not what we're not doing is chasing demand and trying to force fit our story into everybody else's lives, but to listen to their stories for alignment. And if you listen for alignment, they will give you clues as, you know, as to how their story aligns with yours in how they describe their situations. And you listen for that overlap, So that's how we find that connection. - And you literally just go in as a learner. We, having done, when I launched at back in May of 2022, I did 50 of these to really find that language and get out of my own head and my own experiences, but you start by just sharing your story. So share a couple of those moments that we just had your brain storm and say, hey, here's what I've experienced. But I'm really curious how other people are experiencing this problem. So here, here is the problem as I see it, you know? We, as imagine, let's go back to the scenario of a social studies teacher on a Tuesday night overwhelmed. I feel completely, as a social studies teacher, I used to feel chained to my textbook. I just didn't know how to design these activities that would really engage kids with the history. What's the biggest challenge that you're experiencing with that? And they'll talk about it. So you just have to give them, like, hey, here's the problem. I'm in it to tell me about it. So it creates a safe space for them to realize you're not judging them, you're not above them. You're not just trying to like dissect their problems 'cause you're somehow beyond them, you're right in there with them. So that's the first question you ask. It's just, what's the biggest challenge you're facing when it comes to X? So we would say, like, when it comes to assessment, when we were first starting out, or when it comes to grading, or when it comes to social and emotional learning. And they'll talk, you push, you say, tell me more about that. You really want to feel the pain. You want to hear their stories. You want to hear their language. Like Tom said, that's what you listen for here. Is how are they describing this problem? And then the flip side is, if you could wave a magic wand, 'cause they'll often say, if the admin wouldn't change, or if the parents were different, and if the government would sort of crap out, okay, all that stuff, I always say all that stuff's out there, but if you could wave a magic wand, and all of these things were gone, like what would the ideal outcome look like for you? Basically, you're trying to get them to tell the richest story to you, and remove all those things that they cannot control from the narrative. So you want to hear in their words, what is it that they're really seeking? Yeah, and this is, I think we want to come back to the idea of authenticity, and listeners, we cannot emphasize this enough, that you could take some of these ideas on paper and look at them through the lens of cynicism, or you could look at them through the lens of optimism. There's nothing about what Natalie and I are describing that is manufactured. It's all about authenticity. So what you're not doing is fishing for ideas so you can be first in the market, or trying to manipulate the situation. No. You are trying to authentically calibrate their language with your story and trying to find that overlap, right? You're going to start to hear patterns as you listen to people and truly empathize with them. This is not fake or manufactured. So again, if any of this we are doing in a manipulative or kind of inauthentic way, we've got to pump the brakes on that right away. This is about authentically empathizing with people, and listening to what they say, and seeing how what they say matches authentically with your story, that's where your so-called market signal comes from. - 100% - The fact that their language matches your language, your story, or if that doesn't happen, it might be time to explore a different story, because this is not something we want to force. This is not square peg round hole. This is authentically coming into this space and saying, this is what I've experienced. Now, have other people experience this too? Okay, I'm starting to hear language that matches my story. There's something to this here that I could really help people authentically go through. - Absolutely. - So just because you're building a business or trying to get into a market, and we talk about sales and all those different things, none of it should come from a place of inauthentic approach. Everything is about authentically connecting to their stories, 'cause otherwise, it's time to find a different story. - 100%, and there is something to be said here through the process. Sometimes it's not that you have to find a different story, but you refine your story in a way that wasn't available to you when it was just you reflecting on your own. I know in my experience, I knew there was something with you were a coach or a consultant in a district trying to make change, and I actually found the language through talking to people and sharing a bit about, oh, here's my story, here's where I'm having these conversations. I landed on this phrase. I felt like I was a middle child of the education system, and every time the other person would go, oh my God, that is perfect. That is literally me, and I was like, huh, I never, and then I would do it the next time, and then the next time, and suddenly I was like, that's a great phrase, and now it's quoted in Peter Lillard's new book. I have become the person who has coined that phrase, and it's now cited in other people's books, but it actually just came from, here's my story, and through talking to people, you not only calibrate your own language, but you deepen your understanding of what that actually was like for you and what that felt like by talking to other people. And middle child means? Middle child means? What does it mean? Well, you're not leader enough for the leaders, you're not teacher enough for the teachers, you're just in the middle of trying to get everyone on the same page. And it is such a, I mean, full credit to you for coming up with that, 'cause it actually fully encapsulates what it's like to be in that position in general lead. So you did 50 empathy interviews as you launched your empowerment ecosystem, which is an impressive number. I don't know if any of our clients have actually reached that 50 number. Shedded to Chris, he's at like 40. Oh, that's true, that's true, okay. So 50 is the record, Chris, let's get on it. See if you can get to at least 51 and set the new bar. But listeners, here's what we want you to do. Here's the action step on this part. And I actually, I love this activity. This is good, pick three people, whether they're colleagues acquaintances or folks who know on social media, you follow them, and ask those two questions this week, right? Those two questions that we talked about earlier, like what's the biggest challenge you're facing in your area right now, your topic, whatever your niche topic is? And if you could wave a magic wand, what would be different for you? Ask those two questions this week and write down their exact words because your niche lives in the overlap between your transformation and their vocabulary. - All right, so by way of summary, because we're nearing the end of our time together, you are going to find your uncopyable niche as a K12 consultant here in education. Through first, analyzing your lived experience of transformation and then looking at that through the lens of like, okay, what am I also passionate about? So where have I experienced the most change for myself and for others? And where is there a little bit of passion there? And usually those two things overlap. 'Cause if you went through something hard, you came out the other side, Victoria, as you often are really excited about it. Even if you didn't love it in the beginning, I never would have picked assessment and started my career, here we are. The second thing you're gonna do is really paint a vivid emotional picture of your rags to riches story. What was your lowest low? Bring us into that moment and what was your highest high? And then you're gonna dial that language by talking to others through empathy interviews so that you land on those phrases or turns of, or wording that just makes people go, yes, you get me. - Right. - So now, what's next? We wanna invite you once you have a sense of the story to just share it far and wide. Start telling people in your circle that this is what you're building and why. Tell them a bit about your story, post it on social media, get on podcasts and open when they say, what do you do and why do you do it? Open with that story. If you're running a PD session, open with your story. Talk about that rags moment, ask people if they've been there, but you'll be amazed at how so much of the work will just naturally flow from this place of story. - Right. - So if you've been spinning on what your niche should be, remember, it's not about choosing the trendiest topic, it's about tracing your own transformation and turning it into something that helps others. - Exactly, the more clarity you have on your story, the easier everything else becomes. Your offers, your marketing, even your confidence. - And if you're ready to take that clarity and actually build the business around it, that's what we do inside the only CS bootcamp. It's our six months done with you program where we help educators turn their expertise into a consulting business that unlocks freedom in their lives. - Right, the next cohort kicks off in January. So if you've been waiting for a sign that it's time, well, this is your sign that it is time. If you're interested, click the link in the episodes description to book a meeting with us and we can have a conversation. It's not gonna be a hard sales call or anything like that. Have a conversation with us and see if you're a fit for the community and fit for the bootcamp. - All right, friends, thank you for listening and remember your niche isn't something you find once. It's something you will continue to grow into as you unleash your next chapter. - See you next time on Unleash Yes.