YOU might not need a coaching niche.
Niching is a strategic choice that helps you stand out in the crowd, become known more quickly, and earn more.
In my Nail Your Niche strategy session, coaches often start by saying something like this:
“I’ve been struggling to choose a coaching niche for so long because I haven’t found the RIGHT niche.”
Then, we dig deeper to uncover what’s really keeping them from make a choice.
- “I don’t want to exclude anyone”.
- “I’m afraid what people will think if I choose the niche that excites me the most.”
- “I don’t have enough credentials to pull off that specialty.”
If you’re in this camp, these doubts are natural. YOU CAN break through these limiting mindsets and choose a niche wisely.
It’s a HUGE opportunity for you to step into courage and be bold. Something all business owners do.
Let’s talk about why it’s worth it to niche and one good reason not to. See what speaks loudest to you.
Hey Coaches!
Do You Want to Control Your Coaching Experience?
Observing successful coaches over 2 decades, I came up with 5 main archetypes for coaches …
- The Teacher (that’s my archetype)
- The Healer
- The Icon
- The CEO
- The Pure Coach
The first 4 archetypes have the makings of an entrepreneur:
- They have something personal to share with the world.
- They want to have full creative control and do things their own way.
Working in a job on behalf of someone else’s goals no longer makes sense to these 4 archetypes. When they decided to become a coach, they set out to start their own business, even though there are risks and much to learn about running a business.
For those coaches, they often have clues to one specific viable audience and a niche that serves that audience and just need help to think strategically and overcome a few obstacles. Often, they are choosing to coach someone like themselves as their niche.
Whether you have ideas or not, I’d love to help you Nail Your Niche. Learn more about this single session with me at ProsperousCoach.com/niche or click here:
It makes perfect sense to choose a narrow niche IF you want to have choice over:
- WHO you coach
- WHEN and HOW you coach them, and
- HOW much you earn
You may think that all coaches want those things but I’ve found that some coaches don’t long for those points of control. Let’s talk about The Pure Coach.
The Pure Coach Doesn’t Need a Niche Unless …
What’s most important to the 5th archetype — The Pure Coach — is to coach.
There’s a caveat here … many coaches that are still in or just out of coach training will have this pure desire. I did. I was enamored about the idea of coaching and just looking for clients anywhere.
The problem was that I had little understanding of how I’d attract enough paying clients to earn well as coach.
Like many coaches, I tried to sell coaching by the session or package to anyone. I was giving away a lot of free sample sessions.
I didn’t know that, in most circles, coaching is a hard sell — people don’t know they want it so trying to get people to pay for it was much more difficult than I imagined. My first year I made a total of $5000.
But I decided I was not going to give up. I sought another way to stay in business, attract clients and earn well.
Plus, I was crystal clear that I never again wanted to work for someone else. I wanted the freedom of entrepreneurship and having control. That was a major motivator for me.
I’ve had a lot to learn nearly all on my own, but friends … I LOVE running my own business!
I don’t sweat marketing because I know how to do it in a non-salesy way, which I teach other coaches. And I love bringing my voice and unique ideas to the marketplace to attract the most ideal clients for me. I don’t worry about those who are not ideal for me. And I enjoy earning this way.
Back to The Pure Coach, they are generally not driven by a desire to put their own ideas or messages out there. They don’t care about having creative control of their own business. And there is NOTHING WRONG with that!
In fact, for a Pure Coach being an entrepreneur might be torture.
- They don’t want to market or publish content EVER!
- They would be happiest applying someone else’s approach to work with each client for however long.
- They would be fine with someone else setting their fees and setting the rules.
But a Pure Coach is likely to still want to earn well and this is why some Pure Coaches will decide to niche and run their own business anyway because the fees they get for coaching for a firm are not satisfying.
For those individuals, I like to talk about tradeoffs.
If you don’t want to niche and market, then you don’t want to run your own business. That’s the bottom line.
The tradeoff is you’ll earn less for your time coaching but you also won’t have many expenses or have to dedicate your time to attracting clients.
So, where do you stand in all of this?
If you want to have control and earn well, give yourself all the advantages and niche narrowly. If what you have to do to run your own business isn’t a fit for you, then go find a coaching firm to funnel clients to you and be happy with the fees because of what it’s saving you.
Stay inspired and make things happen!
