One raw December evening my client Gary called a little after 10pm. He sounded pretty tired and discouraged. “Stew, I know we’ve been talking about finding a new job for me, but the more I think about it the more I feel uncertain about it.”

“Well Gary, you’ve wanted to change jobs for a number of reasons, your boss, the long hours, the low pay. Has any of that changed?”

“No, Stew, but I’m afraid I’ll just end up in a job where it’s more of the same.”

“Makes sense to me, Gary. Why don’t we address each issue, one at a time? We talk a lot about your boss. He’s fickle. He’s angry and overbearing. He doesn’t seem to care about you in the least, that is until he needs something from you. Just out of curiosity - Who would be your ideal boss?”

The phone line was silent for a moment, then Gary spoke rather hesitantly. “I know this sounds arrogant, but I think I would make a great boss.”

Bingo! I thought. “Gary, what would it be like if you changed jobs so that you became your own boss?”

I could almost hear Gary’s heart beat. “You know, it seems like I’ve always dreamed of having my own business, of being my own boss.” He spoke hesitantly, but with evident truth.

Over the next few weeks, we began to talk through the idea in some depth. Gary, it turns out, was a closet entrepreneur. He had a bundle of ideas, which we began to sift through, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking that all of Gary’s ideas were a little bit pre-fabricated - they all sounded as though they were designed to appeal to me, rather than Gary.

“Gary, I gotta say that I feel like you’re trying to sell me. Truthfully, none of these ideas seem to be truly your own.”

He was quiet a moment. “But Stew, I’ve gotta do something that makes good business sense!”

“That depends on what makes good sense for you – not for me.” was my reply. “Gary I feel like there’s something you’d really like to do that you’re not telling me.”

Gary was quiet, deliberating. “What I love to do the most has nothing to do with making money.” Gary almost shouted this.

“How do you know that? Have you ever tried to make money at it?” I pushed back in a quiet tone.

“No. But you don’t understand! What I love most is going to my cabin in Oklahoma and fishing and hunting. That has nothing to do with making money.”

“Sounds like work to me Gary.” was my reply.

And within six months Gary was renting his cabin to fishermen and hunters and working as a guide. He eventually built several cabins and rents them all regularly, making a nice income for himself. Most important of all, he feels fulfilled and happy about what he is doing.

Gary is an example of what I call the Me Niche. Simply put, the Me Niche is that something unique and special about each of us that, it turns out, a lot of other people out there would like to be part of. The Me Niche has become an improbable destiny for every human on this earth, thanks to the Internet.

If you haven’t already done so, read Chris Anderson’s book entitled “The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More: (Hyperion; $24.95). In this intelligent book, Anderson explains how the Internet has made it possible for each consumer to find the one, exact thing she wants. An example Anderson sites is the on-line music business, which sells small numbers of downloads of millions of tunes every day. Anderson calls this the long tail, because on a graph of sales the number of small sales stretches out to the right on the graph almost infinitely, but it amounts to a very large sum in total.

For a musician the implications of this are huge. Where before, an artist could only get a recording contract if she were characterized as having “mass appeal”, now a musician can compose and record her unique style and make it available on the net to the small audience that is of most importance to her… the people who really like her music. This is the Me Niche.

Another good example of a person in the Me Niche is my wonderful friend Shari Lidji, a quilter. Shari started quilting for fun. She didn’t sell a lot of quilts at first. Once in a while a friend would ask her to make a “special quilt” for them. One woman had a quilt made with all of her husband’s tee shirts from the marathons he had run. Another wanted a quilt showing her family tree. Shari decided to grow her business by developing a web site http://www.redllamastudio.com. At first, Shari was nervous about making the investment in the web site.  She was concerned that people wouldn’t buy her quilts. And mostly they didn’t! But what they did want - and paid well for - were the quilts of their heart’s desire. Once Shari figured this out, her business in commissioned quilts boomed. It turns out that practically everyone wants a quilt if it’s made for them.

In a future post, I’ll talk about how to discover your Me Niche. For now, let me leave you with one thought. With over five billion people on this planet, there is no shortage of souls wanting to connect with your ME Niche.