From Burnout to Balance: How Human Design Replaced the Niche Advice That Never Worked

For 15 years now, I’ve heard the same business advice echoing through so many entrepreneurship podcasts, courses, and coaching programs: "You need to niche down."

Pick one thing. Get specific. Find your lane and stay in it.

As a photographer, this translated to: Choose. Choose wedding photography or portraits or commercial work. Pick families or couples or newborns or brands. Narrow, narrow, narrow until you're The Go-To person for one very specific thing.

So I tried. God, did I try. For me, this was weddings.

I forced myself into marketing programs that felt like wearing someone else's clothes—technically functional, but never quite right. I implemented blunt-force strategies that had me chasing leads like I was starving and couldn’t feed my kids, and honestly, that wasn’t far from the truth during some years. At some point, I hit a plateau in my knowledge, capacity, and energy. . . I was spread so thin. I was running on empty, constantly discounting my prices when impatience got the better of me, begging for scraps, waiting for everything They told me to do to work, looking for experts to tell me what to do next. . . instead of looking inside, returning to what I wanted, and looking for the right clients.

I was going against everything my body was trying to tell me, compromising my health, my values, my vision—all for the sake of fitting into someone else's definition of "successful business strategy."

The traditional niche advice wasn't wrong, exactly. It just wasn't right for me.

When Human Design Became My Business Strategy

Everything changed for me the second time around. When I relaunched a new and improved iteration of my business, I had already decided that I had to do everything differently, and I’d had a 6-year break to think about how I’d do it differently, if I ever did it again.

During that time, I started studying Human Design. It was not new to me, but I’d never tried to embody the information. So when I picked it up again, I dove deep. And what I found was a sort of enlightenment, information about myself that made it so clear why certain strategies didn’t work for me in my business before! For example, I'm a 3/5 Generator with almost every Center defined (only my Throat isn’t). Gates and channels that deal with leadership, with clarifying complex ideas into simple, digestible information, Gates that naturally draw people toward me when I'm operating correctly.

And something that helped it all make sense: my Incarnation Cross is the Right Angle Cross of the Maya, which is, among other things, seeing through illusion and helping others do the same.

Suddenly, the "niche" advice felt like the very illusion I was designed to help people see through.

I wasn't supposed to shrink myself into a tiny corner of the photography world. I was supposed to be the one who helps people see through the illusion of what they think they need, and instead capture what they actually believe in. I was supposed to use my natural ability to simplify the human need to find a purpose and guide them to their inner voice and unique creative signature… not just to understand what makes a good photo or a good course or a good product, but what makes a meaningful one.

The Business Transformation

The results were immediate and profound:

• I stopped doing work for entry-level prices because I understood that being desperate for any client was not how I do my best work, and shifted my entire mindset and business practices to instead become magnetic to the right clients

• Burnout disappeared because I wasn't forcing strategies - like niching - that depleted me

• My work became more meaningful because I was deliberately working with my strategy, by taking work that aligned with my passion, values, and truth. And it was evident in every level of service and quality of photography I provided my clients, which meant they were overjoyed and happy to pay!

The traditional advice to "niche down" assumes that success comes from limitation. But Human Design taught me that success comes from alignment.

Your Design IS Your Niche

If you're a fellow entrepreneur feeling exhausted by the chase, burned out by strategies that work for everyone else but somehow don't work for you, consider this: maybe you don't need to niche down. Maybe you need to niche in—into your own design.

Your Human Design isn't just a personality test or a spiritual curiosity. It can be a business strategy, and a roadmap to operating in a way that feels sustainable, authentic, and magnetic.

For Generators like me, the magic isn't in forcing ourselves into someone else's template for success. It's in learning to trust our gut, respond to what lights us up, and bring our full life force energy to the work that truly satisfies us and serves the client at the same time.

The clients who are meant to work with you aren't looking for you to fit into their preconceived notion of what a photographer (or whatever your profession) should be. They're looking for you to be exactly who you are—and to help them see clearly through whatever illusions are keeping them from their own truth.

That's not a niche.

That's a calling.

And it's exactly what the world needs from you.

What would change in your business if you started operating from your design instead of against it?

Your Human Design chart might just be the business strategy you've been searching for!

There are a lot of free resources out there on the internet. To learn all about mine, I simply searched, “free human design chart” and went from there. Once I knew the basic details (Profile, Strategy, etc.), I started researching each facet individually. It took some time, but it was SO WORTH IT. There are also plenty of practitioners who can do personalized chart readings for you, at all different price points. Happy Hunting!

And remember: when you learn how to stop fighting yourself, everything shifts!