Finding your niche isn't always easy - and sometimes the hardest part is seeing what's right in front of you.
    Lisa Mininni was navigating a significant life transition, from corporate human resources professional to self-employed personal coach with a business called Excellerate Associates. As the pieces fell into place, she wondered how to best use the skills she'd acquired as she helped businesses through the choppy waters of merger and acquisition.
    "I was sitting around a table with a group of fellow coaches, thinking about where my niche was," Mininni recalled. "Then one woman started sharing her story, about her business partner going through cancer."
   The partner had made peace with the illness that eventually took her life; not so, the people around her.
    Mininni nodded in agreement. She knew from personal experience that cancer can be harder on the people closest to the patient.
    "I'm a cancer conqueror," she said. "I prefer that to survivor."
    As Mininni began talking about her own experience, everyone around the table pointed out she just might have found the "niche" she'd been seeking. Today, she oversees "The C Club," a burgeoning support group for people who've beat the disease and may be experiencing a certain void in their lives.
     The transforming experience can leave a cancer conqueror wanting to make significant life changes - being closer to family, cutting back on work, taking more vacations - yet unsure where to start.
    "People get stuck. They're in this fog," Mininni explained. "We help them through the fog."
    Her style of coaching isn't therapy. While a psychiatrist or psychologist delves more into the past, coaching is all about the present and identifying what keeps you from "doing who you are."
    "It's about moving forward," she said. "Sometimes, it's about letting go and learning new ways of doing things...paradigm shifts."
    Mininni hopes to publish a book next year based on the principles that provide the foundation of her business. She's also working on making The C Club a registered non-profit and a "real" club, adding to the workshops, quarterly newsletter, teleclasses, and personal coaching already a part of it.
    She's drawing on all of her past experiences, including her own bout with cancer 13 years ago, to build her coaching business.
    "It was a significant event, and I learned from it," Mininni said. "The (post-cancer) transition was also a significant event. I just redirected and decided to go with it, which can be very powerful.
    "Of course," she added, "there has to be a balance between going with it and making it happen."

To learn more about The C Club, contact Mininni via e-mail or by phone, 734.223.3938.