Are all the business books and blogs you’ve read about finding the “perfect niche” helping or hurting your process for launching your coaching career? Is there an alternative approach to picking a niche? Does that question alone take weight off your shoulders? This article aims to share the exciting news that picking a niche is not required to get your coaching career up and running. Furthermore, focusing your energy and resources on other start-up initiatives could help you begin seeing clients even faster than the traditional roadmap of choosing your niche first.
If you’re brand new to life coaching and pick your niche today, how can you be sure it’s the right one?
How can you be sure that it will become the most fulfilling? How can you be sure that it’s going to be the one that helps you achieve your financial goals? Now don’t get me wrong, at a certain point in your coaching journey, and definitely in your digital marketing journey, picking a niche will become important, but if your first move as a new coach is choosing your niche, you might end up pointlessly limiting yourself and closing yourself off from more authentic opportunities. The alternative route to starting with a niche is actively exploring and discovering your true strengths as a coach through your active coaching practice.
What are the first steps down this road less traveled?
- Try coaching a variety of different kinds of people.
- Gain experience helping to resolve a variety of different kinds of problems.
- Find clients who have different goals for their coaching journey.
- Engage with a variety of different industries and demographics.
From this incredible accumulation of real life experience, then and only then will you discover the journey that will be most fulfilling. After you find what’s most fulfilling, you can make strategic decisions about making that path profitable. This organic approach will provide you with the research you need to ensure your commitment fits your true strengths as a coach alongside your important personal blueprint for your lifestyle and career. It’s like going on a few dates before getting married.
Camp 1: But I Want To Niche
Let’s say you already know the characteristics of your ideal client and are super excited to serve them. Congratulations! That’s awesome, but if you’re brand new to coaching and not yet investing in paid advertisements, consider the following tip for refining your marketing.
Cast a net wide enough to capture an audience you can access offline. Instead of telling your friends that you specialize in working with stay-at-home moms who have diabetes, blonde hair, and are considering divorce; consider simply telling people you specialize in coaching programs for stay-at-home moms. Then do a little digging to see these moms’ needs.
Using broad labels, like working with “stay-at-home moms,” “newlywed couples,” or “general managers,” instead of starting your career by focusing on something super specific, will help you learn more about the group you’re hoping to serve before making too many assumptions. This approach allows you to reach many different types of groups while simultaneously maintaining a similar process and communication strategy.
The point I’m making here is that if you choose one small, specific niche too early, you could be cutting off potential prospects who would otherwise work with you. Or you might miss the most important goals, problems, and advertising insights that can only be found with experience.
Camp 2: Yes, I’m Still Exploring
If you’re in the “no niche tribe,” meaning you want to start seeing clients before choosing your niche, then how will you communicate with the clients you want to work with? What if the answer to that question is more about you, than your business?
Let me explain…
What are your core values, personality traits, strengths, and ideal lifestyle goals? What kind of people do you want to spend time with? What challenges have you resolved within yourself? What unique lifestyle do you want to incorporate into your business plan? Answering these questions, and questions like these will help you start finding what clients will naturally be aligned with your offering. It’s also important to be aware of the kinds of challenges that you want to stay far away from. Build your community at Robbins-Madanes Training to be able to send referrals back and forth accordingly.
Tip: How To Become An Expert Life Coach
To save you from going two steps forward and three steps back, you can start your coaching career by becoming an expert in your own internal coaching process. How can you do this without choosing a niche? Try choosing a few strategies that you will always use in your coaching sessions, and repeat them with every new client. Become a master of a specific process instead of a specific type of person. This process will save you time and energy as you continue to explore who you want to work with.
Summary
My goal in this blog is to provide you with an alternative approach to the “choose your niche” tactic that has been so heavily popularized by the mainstream media. I want to help you start your coaching journey now in a way that will eventually lead you to find a niche that fits your marketing strategy.
The path outlined in this article enables you to test and explore your options to then ultimately make a choice that aligns with the core of who you are, your lifestyle, and your unique vision for coaching practice. After you’ve found your coaching superpower, you may choose to start focusing on digital marketing, but for now, look at your social media, blog, and any other digital marketing techniques as long-term strategies for success.
Start building your client pipeline today! Pretend the digital media world doesn’t exist. Eliminate the digital to-do list and ask yourself, “How can I start getting clients without a website or social media today?”
Take a moment to free-flow and capture your thoughts right now while they’re fresh, and feel free to share them. We look forward to hearing from you.
