To The Coach Who Keeps Switching Their Niche...

When a coach is new, it is very common for them to change their niche at least 2 or 3 times before they find the one that fits.

The bad news is that they often remain in the wrong niche(s) for months or even years before finding the one that they love.

This results in a ton of wasted time and energy. Building the wrong audience. Spinning up marketing only to stop soon after. Launching and closing down programs.

This happens because most coaches were never taught how to think about picking their niche.

The decision was made from asking themselves some combination of:

“what am I good at/qualified to do?”

and

“what does the market want?”

“Give the market what it wants” - the goal of this advice is to make it easy to sell (make money) from your program.

The only coach who will benefit from that question alone is the one who solely wants to earn money.

The coaches who want to love what they do, leave their impact, and unlock & share their greatest gifts won’t get the answers they need from a surface level question.

“What am I good at” is also a problematic way to choose your niche.

This question (along with “what does the market want?”) in no way tells us whether or not someone would enjoy coaching in a certain niche.

It just suggests that they have some previous experience/qualifications there.

That’s not nearly enough to go all in something.

The most ideal niche is the one that you’re most excited about. And, most people get excited about the things that helped them grow personally.

It could have been something they learned 2 years ago that overhauled their health. Something they discovered 3 years ago that transformed their business.

An epiphany they had 1 year ago that led to greater inner peace.
The ideal niche for most coaches is found in their personal story. Nothing will be closer to their heart.

Still, it can be confusing to look at our own stories and find the gold in them. We often discount or forget about lessons and growths we’ve had.

If you’re a coach struggling to look back to your personal journey to discover what niche you want to coach in, I have a technique that will be useful for you.

I want you to plot out your story in the form of a timeline.

That’s right. Draw a long line on a whiteboard or sideways piece of paper.

Plot out all the major moments of personal growth on the timeline. The big turning points in your life personally and professionally.

(Plotted linearly, of course, like a timeline calls for. Oldest stuff on the left, newest on the right.)

Put your current status on the very far right at the end.

Now, I want you to add a line that marks (approximately) where 5 years ago was.

So if you’re reading this in 2021, draw a line to indicate where 2016 occurred.

Look at the big epiphanies and moments of growth that happened in just the last 5 years, and ignore the older stuff.

Your most ideal niche - meaning the one you’ll be most excited about coaching - likely lives within that 5 years of your story.

Let’s focus in even more.

Add another line for just 2 years back, so 2019.

Consider the big moments in your journey during just that timeframe.

My guess is that the best niche for you - the freshest, most exciting one, the one that you could coach in with enthusiasm for at least 5 years to come - lies within the past 2 years of your story.

Coaches who follow the advice of “choose what you’re good at” often end up picking a moment from their story that happened more than 5 years ago, sometimes even 10 or more.

This pigeonholes them into coaching on something they’re good at but not excited about anymore.

It’s better to choose your niche from a more recent moment from your story - even if you’re less qualified in this area - and craft an offer within that niche that you can authentically deliver on.

Picking your niche is one part of the larger task of setting your coaching business up correctly. The other core pieces are choosing your ideal client, creating your offer, choosing your marketing strategy and delivery model.

When you begin coaching people in the niche that most excites you, you will have a passion for your business that was unable to be found before. You will no longer suffer from procrastination.

Your clients and prospects will be able to feel the excitement you have for what you do. This is the business you can scale with much more ease.

Identifying your ideal niche is one of the things we fix in my 6 week 1:1 program that takes coaches & experts who are struggling with low confidence, wavering enthusiasm, and lack of focus, and completely breaks and rebuilds their business so that these things occur naturally and they finally have the business they are excited to scale.

I also address choosing your ideal client, crafting your offer, picking the marketing strategy you're going to have the most fun with, and structuring your pricing & delivery model so the business can provide you the income you desire in the hours you want to work.

If you're interested, shoot me a DM and we can have a chat over Messenger to see if it makes sense for you or not. If so we can get you started within one week.