Female emPOWERED: Winning in Business & Life

Episode 308: Afraid to Niche Down? How to Make the Transition With Confidence

• Christa Gurka

Share episode

In this week’s Female emPOWERED episode, Christa breaks down one of the most powerful—and misunderstood—decisions you’ll ever make as a boutique fitness or wellness business owner: finding your niche.

If you’ve ever worried that niching down means turning clients away, leaving money on the table, or boxing yourself in, this episode will change your perspective. Christa shares why narrowing your focus actually expands your impact and profitability, how to identify your ideal client, and what it really takes to become the go-to expert in your area.

This is the episode every Pilates, PT, and yoga studio owner needs to hear before the new year!

🔍 What You’ll Learn

  • Why niching doesn’t mean excluding people—it means serving the right ones better
  • The key benefits of specialization for boutique fitness and wellness businesses
  • How to find your ideal clients based on energy, outcomes, and results
  • The three-step process to discover your profitable niche
  • Real examples of successful niche businesses (like Pilates in the Grove!)
  • How to align your niche with your profit goals and lifestyle
  • What to do when your niche evolves over time
  • Why being known for one thing creates clarity in your marketing, referrals, and offers

🧭 Takeaway Framework: The 4-Step Niche Discovery Process

  1. Passion & Energy: Who lights you up to work with? Who drains you?
  2. Expertise: Who do you get the best results for? What are your consistent transformations?
  3. Market Demand: Is there an underserved group in your community or industry?
  4. Profitability & Lifestyle Fit: Can you charge premium rates—and does it support your ideal work-life balance?

🧩 Why This Matters

Niching down simplifies everything—your messaging, your offers, your marketing, and your growth. It positions you as an expert, creates client buy-in, and increases profitability.

When people think of your specialty, they should immediately think of you.

💼 Want Help Defining Your Niche?

Get Christa’s exact specialization and messaging framework inside the Fit Biz Foundations program.

You’ll get:
 ✅ A full video module on core specialization and finding your niche
 ✅ Monthly live coaching calls
 ✅ Access to a community of women running brick-and-mortar boutique wellness businesses

👉 Join for just $99/month at www.christagurka.com/fitbizfoundations

🔗 Connect with Christa

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies:

Hey there everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Female Empowered Podcast. I am your host Christa Gurka, and I'm so happy that you are here. If you are a Pilates, pt, yoga business owner, I bet you've had this thought. You've been told that. Niching down the riches are in the niches. all of those, I don't know, sayings or whatever and, and your thought process behind that, because when we talk about niching down or specializing is a lot of people push back with, won't I lose money or I don't wanna leave money on the table, or I don't wanna leave people out. And so today we're really talking about. A scary, but also super, super powerful decision in your business, which is how to find a niche and why niching is. A very surefire way to success. Okay, so, somebody told me when I was in physical therapy school, when I was in physical therapy school, I remember I was a, I had a graduate assistant. I was a TA for gross Anatomy, and I'll never forget, there was a graduate assistant. He was getting his PhD. He's actually a very, very well known. PT and in the Pilates world today. And I remember talking to him about, you know, how he got to where he was in his career and if he had any advice. And I'll never forget this to this day, so this was like 27 years ago, and he said to me, find a niche and be really, really good at it. And. Kind of what I, you know, what I did, my niche in the Pilates world was really like, I mean in the physical therapy world was, was really like a Pilates based physical therapist. So what I wanna talk to you about today is how specializing doesn't mean shutting people out, but more like how to. Transition your messaging, your core offer, and your client base with confidence to be able to serve people that you actually really love to serve, and people that will pay you money to do it. Somebody also said this to me once, people will pay an expert for general advice, but they're not gonna pay a generalist for expert advice, so be the expert. Right, be the expert, have a core focus. So everyone's like, oh, if you wanna do Pilates, go see Krista. So if you wanna do public health, go see X, Y, Z, public health therapist. That's real. You just wanna be known in your area for this kind of stuff. So I get the fears that are involved with it. I get it. There's, I don't wanna turn people away. There's not enough clients in my area, so I have to serve everybody. Won't I believe in money on the table? I can help everybody and yes, while we can help everyone, if we really. For everyone. Our messaging gets watered down, and then no one really sees us as an expert. If you think about doctors, a general practitioner is great, super helpful, but when you need heart surgery, go see a cardiologist, right? The same applies in our businesses. So let's talk a little bit about the benefits of specialization. One thing is clarity in your messaging and in your marketing, it is easier to write social posts. It's easier to create ads. It's easier to send emails when you know exactly who you are speaking to. Clients self-select because they feel like you get them. So when you get your messaging, this is a lot. What we teach in our messaging frameworks and our Fit BS programs is you want your customer to be like, oh my gosh, yeah, that's totally me. You're in my head. Right? That is. Magic messaging and it's, it takes a while to get that. But if you know who your client really is, then you're able to put messaging in front of them that they're like, yes, self-select that, that's where I wanna be. are you a mom in her thirties that's embarrassed to go on a field trip with your kid because you have to use the bathroom 10 times? That is very specific. Okay. Are you a woman? Woman in her fifties that's finally putting herself first and is gonna. Finally address the incontinence that you've had since menopause, right? So it's really, people wanna know that you get them and they wanna be able to resonate with this, that whole know, like, and trust factor. So how do you become the go-to expert in your area? Well, one, you have to be really good at what you do. All of us that are business owners that are technicians. I don't wanna say all, but I'm gonna say most of us are high achieving women who are really good at the service that we offer. So we, when we started our own businesses, we were really great Pilates instructors, yoga instructors, physical therapists, all of the above, right? So it's one of the reasons we went out on our own because we had a client base. And so now you wanna continue to create that just more on scale for your whole. Business. You want to become the go-to expert in your area. Other providers are gonna refer clients to you because you're known for your specialty. So if people are like, oh, you have a back injury, Pilates is really good for that, you should go see Krista Pilates in the Grove. All her people are physical therapists. Like that was our specialization. That was our core focus of our type of business. Are there a ton of Pilates studios by me in Miami? Absolutely. We were very specific on. Who it was that we served. The other thing that's very helpful about specializing, and niching is it really creates client buy-in. Clients are attracted to. They are looking for the best value and the best value is usually your expertise, in which case they are more. Inclined to pay the high ticket for your service. So for example, again, I'm gonna use Pilates in the Grove as an example. Pilates in the Grove, because we had a lot of physical therapists on our staff, people that were of a certain age or had injuries felt that we were experts in this. Area. Right? And so they were more likely to come to us because they knew that their knee injuries or their scoliosis or pre and postnatal were really gonna be looked after. So, especially now, you can say things 30 plus years of experience as a pelvic health practitioner, ora doctor of physical therapy treating. Athletes for 25 years, right? My expertise in working with athletes from the Dolphins and the Miami Heat really set me apart from other people. So other athletes were well, if the heat will hire her, or if people that have contracts of tens of millions of dollars a year are using her, then she must be an expert in what she does. So it's third party validation and it is. You're getting the ability to have more sustainability and more growth. It's easier to build programs and packages and offerings tailored to. A specific group or specific individuals rather than trying to sugarcoat it for everyone. SoI'll Give you another example. Totally not in our industry, but Chick-fil-A, what do they do? Just chicken. Right? Just chicken. So, and their slogan is Eat more chicken. So cane's chicken, what do they do? Chicken, they're not necessarily diversifying into like burgers and all this stuff. And why do people go to them? Because they're efficient and they're good and they've been able to hone in on that expertise. you don't think, I'm sure that at some point they're should we do burgers? Should we do this? Should we do no chicken is what they're gonna do. And it's what they do really, really well. It allows'em to be SS efficient. It allows them to really understand what their messaging is. It's. Eat more chicken, right? It allows them to, to be more efficient in their cost. And so you really can say, okay, this is what we do. And throughout the years people would say to me, oh, you should have TRX and you should have this. And it's, it's easy to get to distracted with these shiny objects, but I was people want reformer. This is what we do. That's great, but this is what we do here and it's what we did really, really well. We stayed in our lane and we knew what we were gonna do really well. And it also allowed us every time we were going to, do a partnership or stuff like that, we knew these are our customers, this is what they want from us, and it helped us stay true to who we wanted to be and what we wanted to be known for in the community. So let's talk about redefining a little bit about what a niche means. So I think it kind of gets a little bit of a bad rap where people are like, oh, that means I can only work with women in their thirties that are pregnant. You don't have to think of niching really as like one specific diagnosis. I only work with back pain, or I only work with runners, or I only work with scoliosis. You can think of it in terms of a person, a certain type of buyer or a certain type of person in, in a certain life stage. Okay, so. Busy professional women who value time, efficiency, and premium services. So that could be menopausal women, right? That could be pelvic floor, that could be Pilates, that could be back issues. so you're necessary, you're going after a certain type of person, not necessarily a certain type of demographic, right? So I teach, excuse me, I teach business. Strategy, business training, business mentorship specifically to women who own brick and mortar boutique fitness and wellness businesses. It's very specific. Okay. So when I talk about my messaging, I teach women who own and operate brick and mortar. So in person Pilates, boutique fitness and wellness businesses. And what helps me with that is I really understand the psyche of this person because I was one, I was a female who owned and operated and eventually sold a boutique fitness and wellness brand, so I know how to take. The information that I learned through all my business training and kind of molded into what women in our industry need. So I don't work with necessary. I don't work with online businesses. I refer out to that. I work with brick and mortar, boutique, fitness and wellness, and women, very specific. Now, when people are looking for coaches, that doesn't mean that they're like, oh, this, I'm the only one in this. Niche. No, there's a lot of people in our niche, but I, one of the things that sets me apart is that I specifically work with women. Okay? So people sometimes are gravitate towards me. One,'cause I'm a woman. Two, I'm a mom. So people are well, if she can do it again, I can be an example of what's available to other people, right? So. When you start thinking about who is it that I'm trying to help, it doesn't, again, it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific diagnosis, but it could be active aging adults who want to stay independent and strong, so that can be a variety of diagnosis, but we specialize in helping people over 60 stay active and fit and independent. Right. Then those people over 60 are gonna be these are the experts in my industry, in my world, and what I want. I wanna work with the experts. My time and my money is valuable. I'm gonna go directly get it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. All right, so how do we go through, how do you define what's work? Because some people are well, I can do this and I can do this, and I can do this. And yeah, you can. You can. Okay. And sometimes it may take you a little time to discover your niche. It might, and it might come to you after a few years of seeing being oh, I really, really enjoyed working with these clients. I get really, really results working with these clients. I'm really fascinated by this type. I do really well with this type of clientele and demographic. You can also change your minds. you can also decide, I think that a lot of people decide, at least when I was gonna PT school, a lot of people were oh, I wanna work with a professional sports team. I wanna work with athletes. And while my careers kind of come full circle till I get to do that, working for a sports team, actually on their staff is. Very difficult. It's a lot of hours. And so some people may be yeah, I thought this was gonna be all rose petals and unicorns and rainbows, and it's really not. It's a lot of hard work. when I first came outta PT school, I wanted to work in spinal cord and in, spinal cord and neuro. And I did that for two years and it was very physically demanding and it was really emotionally demanding. And I realized like, this is not actually how I wanna spend the rest of my career. So I pivoted and went with a different niche. So let me run you through a process that I recommend in our Fit BS Foundations program, which comes with our Fit Biz community membership and also our inner circle enrollment. There is an entire module all about niching down and how to get your core. Focus your core specialization and how to determine what your three unique selling propositions are. And so it's a training that, that they get in the program and it's very, it's one of the ones that I'm like, you guys have to do this. It's one of the first things I really recommend that the business owners do when they get into the program. So here's just gonna be a quick down and dirty. Example of how I recommend that you can do this. So you can either write this down, you can go back and listen to it. and you can probably do this exercise yourself if you already do not have a niche. Alright? So one of the things is look at your favorite clients. Okay? Who do you love working with? Who energizes you? When you see their name on the schedule. So one thing I can say is I love working with business owners. I love doing one-on-one coachings. It lights me up. It does not feel like work to me now. That's when I was like, this is something I think I can do. I'm good at it. I have expert insight and I really am energized by it. It does not drain me. It energizes me. Okay, so. Then on the flip side, who does drain you? Who are the people you don't want to work with? Who leaves you exhausted? And so your messaging should say who you are not for, right? So for example, in cash-based pt, I am not for people or you are not for people who wanna go through their insurance. Those are not your people. There are people that will spend$25,000 on a Birkin bag. There will also be people then that will spend$200 on a service with you. Okay? So there are people out there. I just watched the most ridiculous, I'm a big documentary, geek. So I just watched a documentary on The anatomy of rush or something like that. And people were saying that they spend$20,000 on a rush coach for their daughter, that they start them. As a junior in high school. So not only are people out there paying for college coaches, people who write their essays for their kids, now there are rush coaches that are charging anywhere from four to$20,000. So when you're people won't pay 200, yeah, you just have to go find them. There are people that are looking for experts to get them faster results. You just have to go and find them. Okay, so. Maybe an example is you might get lit up when you work with postpartum women who are motivated, consistent, curious, active participants in their recovery. But you get drained with the people that are always canceling. They're, it's not important to them. They always have an excuse for why they can't do that. So again. Your niche should feel aligned with your energy because if you're going to build a business around a specific group, it better really be one that you're passionate about and one that excites you. Okay? Now the next thing would be this is something you're passionate about, so that's step number one. Now, can you get these people. Results. Who are the people that get the best results from you? Sometimes your favorite clients are also the ones who trust your process and actually do the work that tells you that you are uniquely set up to serve a specific type of client. I am uniquely set up to serve a specific type of female business owner, someone who's an action taker, someone who's a high achiever, someone who has a really good. Idea and foundation, they just need a little help to stay accountable and reinforce the foundation that might've gotten kind of buried under just years of busy work. Okay, so an example maybe in physical therapy would be like, I was really good treating back patients who are the best back patients that got the best results from me, people that were willing to put in the work. Okay. And then people that had a relatively good foundation and I could be oh, I see that their hip mobility just needs to improve a little bit. And once we get that, if they do the work, their back symptoms are gonna resolve. Okay, so tho who are the people that you get the best? Outcomes with this is where you can evaluate your expertise. Where do you consistently create these kind of transformations? What kind of problems do you solve better than the average Pilates instructor or therapist? You might be incredible at taking clients with chronic low back pain and getting them back to tennis or golf. Maybe you have a track record of helping women safely return to running postpartum, or maybe you shine working with active older adults who wanna maintain independence and strength and even get stronger rather than just maintain. If you can clearly articulate the transformation you deliver, you already have the seed of a niche. sometimes you can ask your clients, what am I really good at that made you seek me out for services? Or be glad, or why would you refer me to someone else? Don't be afraid to ask your clients. Okay, now, step number three is we have to look at the market demand. All right, zoom out a little bit. Is there a group that's underserved, maybe where you live? Is there a growing population you could support? Is it afterschool fitness programs for youth? Is it pelvic health for young women? Gymnasts and dancers? Is it working with female entrepreneurs who own brick and mortar health and wellness businesses? All right. Maybe in your area, and this is one of the things that I used to see, there's dozens, tens, hundreds of CrossFit gyms, but no one's focusing on recovery and injury prevention. Longevity is by far and away the next big. Specialty longevity, generation X, we've been exercising our whole lives. We're gonna continue to exercise. Longevity, functional fitness, trainings, recovery. That is the next coming niche. Alright? if that's something you're interested in, use your expertise, use that and say, this is what I do and I do really, really well. Are there medical providers in your area who are desperate to refer clients to? Somewhere where they know that they can trust things like postpartum recovery, scoliosis. You can find the gap, right? I thought that there was a gap in our community in the industry. When I opened Pilates in the Grove, I thought there was a gap of, there were these big box gyms, and then there was a bunch of people, mostly the boomer generation, that didn't wanna go to a big box gym. They wanted a smaller. More intimate type of fitness program and exercise modality that served them. And I was like, these are the people I wanna serve. I found a gap in the industry. It was the same with my, with my mentoring, I found a gap where I thought, everyone's teaching how to be a better clinician, a better instructor. Why don't we teach these women how to be better business owners? Right, like teaching someone, giving someone fish versus teaching them how to fish. When you find a need and create the, you find a problem and you create the solution to that problem. That's what niching is about. It's about identifying where there's an opportunity in the marketplace. Now, lastly, the next thing I want you to remember is you wanna check. Is your niche in alignment with your business goals? So here's the thing. People forget all the time, will people pay you for the service? Now, initially, some people always are like, people won't pay you. People will pay for a lot of things. But for an example Nowadays, I think people will pay for anything. So I was just trying to think of something, but you have to go after the people that you're looking for that will pay for that service, right? So the right niche should support your revenue. Can you charge premium rates? They should control your profitability too. So it should be something where you can charge enough that you'll have a profit. and then lifestyle. Does it allow you to create the lifestyle that you want? So another example, at one point I was really fascinated with RO and scoliosis. The more I started to learn, the more some of my colleagues were teaching me, I was like, Ooh, this is really good. And I thought this would be really fantastic for Pilates in the Grove. The problem. For me was most of that industry are teenagers. And so what does that mean? Even afternoons and weekends. And I didn't wanna work at that time for afternoons and weekends, so I was like, this is not the right niche for me. It did hit, I could charge premium race. There was profitability, but I didn't wanna be available afternoons and evening after school and weekends. So that did not check that box. So I was like, this is not the right niche for me. So you kind of have to also be realistic about is there money in this indu niche? Is there profit in this niche? And is it does it will allow you the lifestyle that you want. The last thing I wanna really tell you is that remember that your niche can evolve. You don't have to get it perfect. In fact, I don't think it's great to get you get it perfect until you're like, yes, this is who I really, you've done it for a couple years, and you're like, yes, this is who I wanna work with. So it took me. The consulting business probably five years to really hone in on who my very specific client avatar, who really wins and who I really wanna work with. And in Pilates of the Grove, even though I knew from the get go, the gap I wanted to fill in the community, it took me several years to get my messaging right. Who were we really, and how could we stand firm in that and not worry as much about. Competition. All right, so you might start to say, I really love helping women after pregnancy. And over time you realize that you actually love active moms get back to playing sports and running. So maybe you go from a general postpartum population to more of an active athletic postpartum. Population. It's really just a process of refinement and being open to the fact that once your data starts telling you, these are the people that are seeking me out, these are the people I really love working with. These are the people I get really great results from. These are the things that people are saying, their testimonials, and you're like, that's where I'm gonna start moving in that direction with a little more intention. And believe me, it's. It's better too when you tell people, yeah, that's not my expertise. Could I work with people that run online businesses? Yeah. I actually run an online business, but that's not my, my, my expertise. So I'll refer out to that. Could I technically treat A pelvic health patient? Well, I don't do internal, but could I do it? I do, but that's not my expertise. Again, if I go back to what someone said to me when I was in PT school that really, really stood, stayed with me and stood out with me was find your niche and get really, really good at it. Like rather be an expert, right? Rather than a jack of all trades, master of none. Be good. And I know some people might disagree and that's okay. You can totally disagree. Doesn't mean that I haven't offered advice to men, right? It doesn't mean that I can't treat men. It doesn't mean that I, even though Pilates was my niche, it doesn't mean that I can't treat people with kettlebells. Of course, I know how to use kettlebells, but. I stood true to what was true to me and what was my, bread and butter. And that's allowed me to grow a business and keeping my eye on the prize and being like, this is what we're really good at. This is what we're gonna stay consistent with. Allowed me to create an asset that was so valuable that I was able to actually sell it with a lot of zeros on the backend. Okay? And it's now what I help other women really. Lean into like, what are you really good at? And let's focus on that. So you're not shrinking your business, you're focusing your energy, where it will have the biggest impact for you. And it's, I'd rather you think of it that way than leaving money on the table. It's like, who are you attracting? What's the type of buyer persona that you're attracting? What type, what can you say in confidence that's gonna give you, The testimonials and the messaging that that's gonna show clients that you are gonna be able to create this transformation from that for them. People are looking for experts and they are willing to pay for it. They are, they're willing to pay for expert advice. And I know that this is a little controversial. I know there's some people out there that don't believe in niching. And like I said, it doesn't mean you can never treat, like if your focus is women, it doesn't mean you don't treat a man. It just means that if you're gonna put marketing dollars and advertising dollars behind something, let's go after the biggest piece of pie. Make sense? I hope it does. I hope it made sense a little bit. If this resonates with you, what I'd love for you to do is go audit your current client list. C, who really likes me up? Lights me up. What am I really interested in learning? Who can I really get? How can I differentiate myself from down the street? Okay. How can I show that I can get the transformation for my clients that other people may not be able to do? And that's where you start when you're thinking of specialization and niching down. Like I said, in our Fit Biz Foundations course, we have an entire module all on core specialization, the specialization framework and determining there are three unique selling propositions. it's something that's really powerful to help you get a handle on what could be your niche, and if you're interested in that. You get all access to that for just$99 a month? Yes.$99 a month. Less than the cost of a private session at your business. You get live coaching calls, two of them each and every month. You get access to this entire video training all on how to. Grow how to systematize, how to process out your business for sustainability and profit, and you get a really great community of women that are doing exactly what you're doing day in and day out in their business. So if you're interested in checking that out, you can visit christagurka.com/fitbizfoundations and you can join our monthly membership. It's cancel anytime,$99 a month, I guarantee you. You will get value out of it in the first 30 days that you've enrolled. Alright, well I hope you enjoyed that episode and until next time, my friends, bye for now.