Step 1 - What Pains You

BY ALEX MIRANDA

As Christian entrepreneurs, our hearts are shaped from before we were born to hurt for a certain wrong in this world. We don’t know it from birth, we uncover it along the way.

Entrepreneurship (God’s way) is taking a risk to launch a venture that will solve that specific problem you were created to pain over.

But with so many avenues to take and so many people we can help, how do we know the exact pain we were born to pour into?

I’ve always been in the business of launching businesses, either for myself or for my clients. Before knowing anything about Christ, I’ve had a marketing and branding agency.

But something weird happened when I started my relationship with God 5 years after launching my company. I started to “feel bad” for entrepreneurs that were coming to launch their business that I knew deep down the venture wasn’t going to work out for them.

Before knowing God, if you had an idea for a business, I would take your deposit and start working on whatever you had come to me asking for. But after knowing God, I began to question the client, “Are you sure this is the business you were born to do?”

My relationship with God revealed to me a pain that I couldn’t shake off: there are people launching businesses that they have no business launching. Furthermore, if this isn’t the right business, then what exactly is the business he or she is supposed to be in.

When we start our relationship with Christ and couple that with our vocation of entrepreneurship, God starts to shape our hearts to pain for the same things He pains for. God gives us a NEW heart-shaped like His.

The Bible says

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

(EZEKIEL 36:26 NIV)

The first clue to deciding on a niche is to carefully analyze how when certain problems come up, your heart is moved. The movement of your new heart is one way God teaches you what is your “thing” in the marketplace. Business books call it your unique selling proposition (USP): what you and your company uniquely solve, different from every other company on the planet.

Your heart was made to notice, to care, to move more for certain people (target market) and certain needs (niche problem to solve): when their needs are met, your heart is satisfied; when they aren’t, your heart hurts with their heart.

For me, it would pain me to see an entrepreneur try to be everything for everyone. It wouldn’t sit right if the person launching the business was doing it off of a whim, or because there’s “money” to be made. When I got my new heart, I grew a passion to help people discover what they were born to do BEFORE launching their business.

We can all become conscientious of the feelings our God-first heart gives off, and begin to meet the true needs or the people we’re called to help so that we can not only find their joy but ours too.

Also, take note that you’re not moved by the same thing I’m moved for. This means you and I were uniquely created, and not all of us are shaped to solve the same thing.

A second clue to deciding on a niche is understanding that although all of us Christian entrepreneurs were created for good works, as individuals, we’re not created for EVERY work. We’re all called to help those in need in our marketplaces, but as individual companies, we’re not called to meet EVERY need.

This is especially difficult for realtors to grasp their heads around. They think because they have a license to service the entire state of Florida, that everyone is their target market. But that’s impossible. I have to help them see that they were created to solve a very specific niche need, and the process of deciding on a niche makes the difference between top earners and those that struggle.

I have discovered what is my thing to do here in this world, and my prayer is that CHRIST teaches you what is yours! Don’t look for your niche at a seminar or a YouTube video or because you saw someone else succeeding. Your niche will come from a heart after God’s heart.

Imagine if we all detached ourselves from our selfish desires and considered only our hearts. What specific group of people can we help with a particular need that moves us in a unique way? That’s our niche.