Do you have a coaching niche that hasn’t paid off yet and are you wondering if you should stick with it?
I want you to know, nearly all coaches are hoping for more traction in their niche. So you may be thinking: “It sounds like it’s not very worth it to start a business!”
It absolutely is worth it IF you’re serious about being the driver of a career that’s tailor made for you.
If you want to choose how and when you work and with whom … if you want to be the one who decides your own fees, when you take time off and how often … well, your business can give you that and there’s very little else that can except being independently wealthy.
ALLOW your business to unfold but don’t sit back and wait for it to happen to you … because it’s not going to happen that way.
Here’s the truth … you have to be in it to win it, guys!
Coach, Can You Be Patient?
Hey Coaches!
You have to be in it to win it!
You have to win it a bit at a time until you find the sweet spot. Screw your courage to the sticking place— thanks Shakespeare — and take risks knowing that you CAN make it with time and patience.
So … maybe you don’t have time and patience. And that, my friends, in itself is a deal breaker. It’s not a good idea to start any type of business out of desperation.
If you are on your last legs financially — and that’s really hard — I will tell you starting a business is not a good risk for now.
Start Your Coaching Business from a Place of Strength
Start your business when you’re hungry enough to motivate yourself and not so hungry that you’ll be under enormous pressure.
Look, you don’t have to be independently wealthy to start a business. You just need a wealth of patience plus the willingness to try something — give it a fair shot for a decent amount of time while making small adjustments to improve yourself and your strategy.
Your business is your baby.
You would not judge a child harshly for not having it altogether in the first few months or the first few years of its life, would you? No, because you know there are developmental stages for every human being and every child has its own pace.
That’s true for your business also.
If you’ve had your niche for a long time – let’s say a couple of years – and it hasn’t begun to pay off the way you want it to, should you abandon it?
Well, the answer is possibly.
Sorry, there’s just not a clear straight forward answer here because there are so many variables to consider. Some have to do with the way you’re behaving and some have to do with strategy.
So, let’s look inside your niche and your business.
I have a beautiful free downloadable assessment to help you identify what needs to change in your coaching business … and yeah, it could be your niche for sure.
It could also be several other things.
10 Things Holding You Back from Financial Success in Coaching
Your niche is only one of 10 things that could be keeping you back from financial success in your coaching business. But it is the cornerstone of everything so that does need to be right from the get go.
All businesses survive and thrive on a mixture of hard work, strategy and some luck.
In my own business I surely have worked hard for over two decades. I am nothing if not doggedly determined. And I’ll tell you that characteristic is a big plus.
I come by it naturally as nearly everyone in my family of origin are entrepreneurs who have scrabbled and cobbled together a great living all their lives mostly without ever being on someone else’s payroll. So, working hard to grow my business was not at all a foreign concept.
If you’re not working ON your business consistently and persistently … if you’re not in it to win it, well, that’s some of your answer right there.
Without dedication no one makes it in business.
Now, I’ve had some good luck too. I just happened to get involved in the Denver chapter of International Coach Federation — thanks Judy, who was my mentor coach at the time. It was at the right moment when the President recognized something in me and asking me to be a trainer for his coach training company.
Coach Training Alliance was born and I had the privilege of co-authoring the curriculum and developing the Certified Coach Program there. And, I personally trained 500 coaches and that put me right in front of an audience I knew I could help with my marketing and copywriting expertise plus my coaching skills.
That launched my current business. But I don’t want you to think everything was easy peasy from there. I kept working hard to find my way.
So, coaches, there’s nothing wrong with working hard. It’s not a bad word.
It’s a positive energy unto itself. Enterprise is stimulating! It’s good for your brain to solve problems and follow a path as it meanders.
My hard work has paid off and kept on paying off and yours can too.
Think about companies like Apple, Google, Nike — do you think those company leaders and teams haven’t worked hard from the get go? They have. AND they also did not know they would make it from the start.
Half the Necessary Strategies for Coaches
The main thing you can control beyond hard work is strategy. And that’s what my free assessment – Coaching Business Checkup – is all about.
So here’s a preview of 5 of the 10 strategies …
Strategy #1 is target a unique and viable audience. Does your niche have that? If not, that’s the first place to look
Strategy #2 is center your niche on your audience’s BIG problems and goals. If you’re not good there that’s critical to fix!
Strategy #3 is articulate what you do in a way that inspires investment. That’s complex so that’s why there are powerful questions to answer in the assessment.
Strategy #4 is develop a simple coaching business model. So many coaches go with what I would call a high tech, high labor low profit business models. There’s a better way for you.
Strategy #5 is create a simple and meaningful customer journey. Most coaches don’t even think about this. I didn’t until the last 7 years! You could be way ahead of me.
There are 5 more critical strategies to assess.
It’s time to examine your business and efforts dispassionately, so you don’t beat yourself up and you can truly see what’s been in your way and fix it.
Stay inspired and make things happen!
