How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Niche

I want to talk about something that I don’t see a lot of people talking about, and that is how to become a thought leader in your niche. Somebody asked me recently, “Milana, people see you as a leader or mover and shaker in your niche. Why do you think they see you that way?”

In this video, I’ll share the strategies and actions I’ve taken, whether consciously or unintentionally to establish myself as a niche leader.

These are the steps I’ve followed, and my hope is that you can extract valuable insights from my experience and apply them to your own journey of becoming a leader in your coaching niche.

 

How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Niche: 6 Strategies

And so I had to really examine what it is that I’ve been doing in my business that has allowed me to move from being seen as a coach and an expert to really becoming a niche leader and even a paradigm shifter, as someone called me recently.

So many of the things I’ll share with you, what I’ve done consciously or unintentionally. But I simply followed my heart and I did what I enjoyed and kind of followed what I thought I was supposed to do to build my business.

As a result, I shifted my positioning a little bit towards being seen as a niche leader, mover and shaker, paradigm shifter, all those wonderful things that I’m so honored to be called.

And these are all the things that people have said to me, and I think that it really helps build credibility and trust when people see you that way. So, I’m going to try and share with you some of the things that I’ve done to position myself that way, intentionally or unintentionally.

These are the things that I’ve done, the steps I followed, and hopefully you can use some of that and apply in your own business.

So here are 6 strategies on how to become a thought leader in your niche:

1. Create new things.

So the first thing that I’ve done is I have been creating new things. I’ve created the “Telesummit”. I hosted the very first one in the world.

I’ve been creating coaching programs. I’ve developed many different methods some of which I licensed to other coaches.

So even having your own licensing product where you license it to other experts and coaches it’s a great idea to create some things.

I created software years ago. I built software called Assessment Generator, which allows people to build their own assessments and self assessments.

My most recent software is Coaching Genie, which is a coaching platform that allows you to deliver your coaching programs and become the most organized coach on the planet so that you could just show up and coach.

So when it comes to becoming a thought leader in your niche, I think creating new things is one of the steps that people see as a step up from a regular expert or regular coach.

And I’m trying to share these things as a way to help you think through what you could be doing, what you could be creating, and where you could be stepping up.

 

2. Bring people together.

The second thing I’ve done is I have been bringing people together for as long as I remember myself in business from the very first telesummit that I hosted, I always bring people together.

That could be virtual summits, group coaching programs, mastermind groups, and that means that I create opportunities for people to collaborate and network, positioning myself as the unifying force within the niche.

So that is why I love bringing people together because I like to facilitate. I’m a former music teacher who used to teach solfeggio and music history to little kids. So I love to facilitate learning. And so for that reason, I’ve been bringing people together. But as a wonderful side effect, it has allowed me to position myself as a unifying force within my niche market.

 

3. Put yourself out there.

The next thing I do is I put myself out there because if you’re not visible, nobody knows about you. People don’t know that. All that magic that you can bring to their lives.

So I do launches, summits, webinars, online challenges. I’ve published two books. I’m always putting myself out there.

You can’t really be quiet in business. If you’re quiet, you might as well not have a business.

So, even if you’re an introvert, and I am kind of a 50-50 introvert-extrovert, but even if you are introverted, there’s so many things you can do as an introvert to put yourself out there through writing, through creating, there’s no reason why you can’t put yourself out there.

 

 

4. Partner with other leaders in your niche.

The next thing I do is I partner with other leaders in my niche. I partner with joint venture partners who are also successful. I speak at people’s events, so I partner with other leaders so that I can associate myself.

I do that as a way to grow my business, but as a side effect, it also elevates the way that people see me in my niche market.

This is definitely one of my top strategies on how to become a thought leader in your niche.

 

5. Look for new ways to solve a big problem your market experiences.

I like to look for new ways to solve a big problem that my market is experiencing. That’s where really all my good ideas come from.

The reason I created all of my products is because I saw a problem, and I felt like there needed to be a solution. And that solution is typically different from what else is out there.

So leaders in general look for new ways to create, to solve problems that other people haven’t solved or have been ignoring or haven’t been noticing. So start asking yourself, what problems does your niche experience and can you solve a problem? Can you find a solution? Can you bring people together so that together you can find a solution?

 

6. Create content where you share your opinions.

I never create just generic content on generic topics. I always like to put my own spin, my own angle, my own methodology into whatever I create.

So moving from being a coach or an expert to being seen as a niche leader is really a combination of strategic actions and some of the qualities and personality that sets you apart from others. These are my tried and tested strategies on how to become a thought leader in your niche.

Hopefully, some of these ideas were helpful that you could implement in your businesses. And as I said when people introduce me, they do use words like a thought leader, a niche leader, paradigm shifter, mover and shaker. And I feel so blessed for having elevated my personal brand to be seen that way.

But as I mentioned earlier, I’ve done all of these things as a way to grow my business, get more clients, be more visible so that people recognize the name of my business, of my programs, of my tools.

And so hopefully this will help you elevate your own personal brand as a coach or an expert so that you can move from that position to being seen as a niche leader.

Because let me tell you, it is so much easier to get clients. And to attract partners when people see you as a niche leader. So that’s why it’s important that you pay attention to these things.

 

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