Transforming Lives Through Home with Tinka Markham Piper

My dear friend, Tinka Markham Piper, of Solve my Space, is a perfect example of combining a mish-mash of experiences to create a unique and impactful niche. In this episode of The Profitable Niche Podcast, Tinka shares her story, her “aha” moment and advice to entrepreneurs struggling with their niche. Tinka is a chaos counselor and space solver, who helps people transform their lives by transforming their homes. She works directly with people in their homes and uses decluttering, organizing and redesign to transform their outer spaces and, in doing so, transform their inner lives. Because when our homes feel good, we feel good. It’s so interesting to hear Tinka talk about how all of her past life and career experiences came together to form her niche. She tells us about moving around the world as a child, reorganizing cabinets when she went to visit family and friends’ homes and using her background in social work, public health and project management to support her clients on so many different levels. When Tinka’s children were very young, she had an “aha” moment. While working in academia, a grad student of hers came in and asked, “would you want your kids to stay in a job they weren’t happy in?” I realized that she wouldn’t and started (that very day), building her business on the weekends. Tinka had felt like she had to keep going in a certain direction because of her education and expectations that she and others had for her. She feared that her new business wasn’t serious or academic enough. That it wasn’t what she was “supposed to” be doing. She may not have known how all the pieces would ultimately come together but took the different elements of her interests, experiences and passion and created this amazing niche. Now, she loves going into people’s homes, supporting them through times of transition, and having deep conversations about how to make their homes reflect and support who they are. Her advice to those still struggling to choose a niche: Really think deeply about what ma