Finding The Niche

Advice to entrepreneurs:

"Identify a niche that plays to their strengths and is distinct from that of everyone else in the marketplace. Then own that. Bring everything you have to bear on that single point." - David Oreck, vacuum cleaner magnate

I spend much time thinking about a niche that I could fill in a second career. Maybe... it's offering special tutoring and ACT/SAT prep sessions for math. It's an educationally-intense community awash enough with money that every kid on the block's got mobile internet access. Almost everyone hates math, and most parents I know would give their left arm if they thought it would help the children keep up with the crowd... so a couple hundred bucks could be worth it to them.

Who are the worst math teachers in the local schools? Right there is an unmet need, a niche market of 30-60 kids whose parents could use a crutch. Who knows, maybe I could get wind of the kind of tests they offer and specialize in helping students pass those classes. I've heard too many sad stories of people who were decent at math until they ran into a meat grinder of a teacher and got completely derailed. Could a fallback plan have spared them?

The best per-hour job I've ever had, current one included, was when I subbed in a Saturday ACT prep class and pulled in nearly $100/hour.

And thankfully, I'm blessed with the teaching gift as measured in a couple of different ways. First of all, it's the kind of work I can lose myself in for hours. A friend's daughter would send me her toughest math questions via e-mail, and it's a motivating personal challenge to deliver the right answer and the simplest explanation for the result. Secondly, my work as an undergraduate teaching assistant drew top marks. And finally, I enjoy presenting. My experience with supervising and coaching would equip me for disciplinary issues. Having tutored learning disabled students, I know I've got the patience to succeed in most any one-on-one setting.

I look back on the good and unexplainable fortune that's shone upon my actuarial career and wonder if it's God's way of setting us up financially so that my more successful calling can become reality, whatever that may be.