Turning content creation into a healing self-actualization process

My friend Joy Malek, LMFT is a psychotherapist, life coach, and educator who works specifically with INFJs. Not only that, she puts out some truly special content into the world that makes other INFJs, like me, feel like they are finally home and fully understood.?

I’m re-sharing this episode of the Campfire Circle as a meaningful reminder about not just the power of niching - but about rooting into your lived experience.? This can turn content creation from a chore into a process of self-actualization. After all, we are most equipped to serve the person we once were - or still are!?

This article is just an excerpt. To listen to the whole episode, check it out on Apple, Spotify, or on the blog.?

Niching down to just work with INFJs

“I remember when I first started telling people I was going to work only with INFJs. They balked and said: “Oh my goodness, are you sure? Are you going to focus your entire business on the smallest population in terms of type? You are going to have three customers and that's going to be the entire population of INFJs!”?

What's interesting is that it was the exact opposite. I knew from my experience as an INFJ that there was just an absence of deeper learning, understanding, and validation for INFJs.?

We are indeed such a small slice of the population, but when you think about how many people there are in the world, 1 to 3% is still a lot of people. My mission was not just to serve people where I live, my mission was to reach people all over the world, which I still hope to do.?

[If other educators aren’t]?INFJs themselves, they don't get to sit down every day and pattern recognize what's going on inside themselves and how they're working, and how they're wired. So I felt that, even with all the information out there about INFJs, it would be important for us to be able to come to a space where the guide is an INFJ and the focus is not just on describing our type, but really digging down and diving deep into our type’s brilliance, how to use our strengths to address our struggles, how to get out of common binds that INFJs find themselves into, how to craft the kind of life we dream of that's full of connection, but also has space for ourselves.

I felt like that wasn't being done, or at least I hadn't found anyone doing that, and it made me feel good about venturing out in that direction.?

The scary process of niching down your business (and its many rewards)

On the day I made the switch, I didn't know how many INFJs were out there, but I knew that I wanted to start speaking to the INFJs on my list. So, I wrote an email announcing my first offering for INFJs and I wrote it in a different voice than I had used in any other message for my audience.

Prior to that day, I had specialized in working with Highly Sensitive People, but because any personality type can be highly sensitive, I had been speaking in a more general voice.?

I remember sitting down and writing the email, while holding front and center and with clarity the INFJ types who I wanted to reach, and I was writing from my INFJ heart straight to the hearts of other INFJs. I felt really good about the email. It was me speaking in my most authentic voice, and I thought it was really going to resonate in a much deeper way than anything I had ever written before for INFJs.?

Right before I hit send, though, it suddenly hit me that that mailing list included everybody in my circle, people I didn’t know very well, and people I'd never bared my soul to.

So, I reread the email, putting myself into the perspective of someone who's not an INFJ, and all of a sudden, I felt the stab of fear, I felt so exposed, and I felt like to a non-INFJ this was going to read as something really strange, overly emotional, and worse. I sat there, pausing and wondering if I could do this.?

My mission is to reach INFJs because we have such potential for being able to heal and change the way the world currently functions, and the idea is of empowering people with so much healing and change potential. I can't change the systems we live in single-handedly, but if I can give INFJs the self-knowledge, the validation, and the self-understanding to fully embrace themselves and stand rooted in their gifts and their power, then that can help change the world.

So, I sat there with my mission, and I thought: “I'm not writing to everyone. I'm not writing to everybody in my circle. I'm not writing to every colleague. I know who I'm writing for.” and I hit send.?

And out of the woodwork people who I knew but had no idea were INFJs started messaging me and saying that they had never felt so pinpointed, that they had never heard from someone who seemed so dialed into the way that their minds work, the things that they feel, and what they ultimately need in life.

So, the first big change that I saw in my business was hearing more and more from individual people about how much my work was reaching them, and how uncanny it felt that the things that I wrote about INFJs in general landed on such a personal level for them. That was huge for me. What better feedback or validation to confirm that I'm on the right track than when the very people I'm trying to reach are telling me how helped and seen they feel by my work??

I know I've not fulfilled my mission, because I'm not reaching every INFJ in the world, but I keep growing little by little, and I find that the same people come back again and again. I delight in building deep relationships over time, so that's perfect for me. The biggest way that niching down changed my business is that the people who find me seem to really stick.

Turning content creation from a chore into a healing and self-actualization process?

Being a therapist, having a therapy practice, and then adding on this online business for INFJs, I often didn't want to think about creating content with my free time.? I wanted to be able to go deep inside and be able to process my own experiences. I didn't want to be front-facing.?

I was going through that process until the stars aligned and I developed this little ritual where I would wake up, I would eat breakfast, I would take my time, I would watch my favorite gardening YouTube channel, and then I would sit in quiet reflection, and come up with a tweet-length Instagram post.

Some of the inspiration I got for those was from moments in therapy with INFJs, where I would hear myself saying something to someone, and realize “Hey, I think all INFJs could benefit from hearing this.” A lot of the time, it was me sitting myself down and saying “What do I need to hear this morning?”?

For about three or four months, almost every morning, I did that. But then I went ahead and put everything I had posted on a post scheduler so that it wouldn't have to be me giving attention to this every single day. Now, every once in a while, I'll brainstorm for a new post, and I'll add that to the queue.

But what I get to do now that I have so much content already, is allow them to recycle and what I really get to be there for every day is reading people's comments, responding to them, getting DMs, responding to them, and all the stuff that is more about connection. This is more magical to me than trying to be some kind of “content pump”. It used to be just that quiet moment with myself every morning making the post, but now it's really more about adding to that when I feel inspired but not feeling pressured.

I always struggled with putting together some kind of abstract amalgamation of an ideal client, but now my ideal client is me at different stages of my life, and I can think of:

• What did I need to hear at this stage??
• What did I need people to be able to reflect back to me at the stage??
• What kind of validation did I need when I was struggling with this??
• What kind of learning about myself would have just opened my world up when I was going through that?”?

And I'm going to be honest, very often I'm talking to myself now and I'm reminding myself of the things that I need to hear right now.

That may seem a little navel-gazing to some people, but I'm the person I know best, and I've found that when I write authentically and honestly and with vulnerability to what I need to hear, that's what other people respond to.

This article was originally shared on the Lumos Marketing website: ‘Find your Niche by Serving your Past Self with Joy Malek’

Visit Joy's website here.