Have you ever gone through something truly arduous and come out stronger and wiser than you were before?
I have — so many times.
It could have been a health crisis or relationship crisis. It could be a tragic loss of someone or something — some part of yourself that you’ll never get back.
I hear poignant stories from many coaches that hire me for a Nail Your Niche session. They share how they overcame something – by facing the truth, studying and learning to care for themselves.
So often those stories are a clue to the coaching niche they’ve been seeking. In many ways their personal transformation makes them far more credible than a pile of credentials.
Let’s talk about the coach archetype that emerges from personal healing journeys. You may have this archetype and it may shape your coaching business with meaning.
Your Personal Journey is Compelling to Your Coaching Clients
It’s a rare person that gets through life without deep struggles. For some people life starts hard and they have to bear up under tough circumstances in every avenue of their life. Some people are handed privilege but tragedy or hardship finds them other ways.
Many of the coaches I work with turn their personal struggles into a unique passion-driven niche.
- One of my clients healed herself from deep burnout and now helps women leaders do the same.
- Some of my clients have found the way to live a good life with chronic illness and have a system to help others do the same.
- A recent VIP client has an autistic child and now helps other moms through her business, Thriving Moms of Autistics
- One of my clients created Synergistic Stepparenting to help other new stepparents co-parent harmoniously.
- I’ve worked with clients who have faced racial aggression every day of their lives and have created niches helping others navigate that territory.
Are You the Healer Archetype as a Coach?
Has something happened in your life that caused you years of struggle and through your hard work you’ve transformed? Now you are wondering if you can pass that forward in your coaching business.
If so, you might be what I call the Healer Archetype, one of 5 coach archetypes I came up with, which you can hear about in Episode 73.
Maybe you are not completely over the struggle and that’s okay. You don’t have to be. But no doubt you have healed yourself to some degree and gathered a toolbox of things that help you manage.
You could:
- Target the specific audience who, like you, deals with the specific health or relationship difficulty.
- Develop a Signature Program where you help them:
- See their life from a new perspective.
- Accept what they can’t change but stay awake to the journey.
- Create routines, habits and mindsets that make life easier.
- Become a stronger, more resilient version of themselves.
- Achieve things they didn’t think they could.
As you continue to grow through your own challenges and see your clients grow through theirs, you will continually improve your program and grow your business.
If you decided to coach around loss, grief and healing, do you need special training or certifications? Possibly, if special training is available. It partly depends on exactly what you intend to offer your clients.
Of course, as a coach, you can’t do therapy or act as a doctor or other licensed expert. But do consider creating a board of experts to advise you. It’s not difficult to do.
In any case, it’s critical to think through where the boundaries are ethically and legally in your program and not cross those as you work with clients.
Would you like to coach others around a healing challenge you’ve overcome or improved? Grab a Nail Your Niche Strategy Session with me. Before we meet, I will send a questionnaire customized to generate clues to your niche. Then in a 90-minute session we brainstorm your target audience and other aspects of your niche so you can move forward powerfully in your coaching business.
Once you know your audience and niche so much more becomes clear about how you’ll attract clients and earn well. And you can potentially go further with your business than offering coaching sessions.
Two coaches that I know took their personal struggle beyond coaching those like them to training other coaches to do the same.
In Episode 17, I interviewed Tami Stacklehouse, a coach with fibromyalgia. She began working with other women who have fibromyalgia to take back control of their lives. Later, so many of her clients said they wanted to also coach people with fibromyalgia too, so she developed the Fibromyalgia Coaching Institute to train new coaches in her system.
Impressive, right?
Here’s another coach who has taken her pain and used it to help others …
Julie Cluff tragically lost two children in an accident. For 3 years she barely coped. But then she realized that she could honor her children and also live a purposeful, joy-filled life. She trained in Grief Coaching and created her company Build a Life After Loss to help women who have lost children to build a life of purpose and joy. Now she is certifying other coaches as Grief Coaches as well.
Are you the Healer Archetype? It’s a beautiful way to pass forward what you’ve learned on your personal healing journey.