A Coaching Niche To Make You Rich

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right!”

– Henry Ford

The best guarantor of success

Like with pretty much any new venture in life, there are no cast iron guarantees of success when it comes to life coaching. Success itself is a very subjective concept, meaning very different things to different people … but that’s the topic of a different post!

Rather ironically, the best guarantor of success in life coaching is to undertake comprehensive training. You cannot be effective in applying tools and techniques to assist others to lead their best lives if you haven’t mastered those tools and techniques in your own life.

The great majority of people who complete our training attest to the fact that their own lives change substantially for the better as a result. We would offer this as sufficient endorsement for an investment in training, regardless of whether one continues on to take up a full time career in coaching.

Nevertheless, let’s get back to answering the question we raised at the beginning.

Success and money

Rightly or wrongly, most people, if pressed to explain what they mean by success, would bring up the issue of money and whether they could make enough through coaching to live comfortably. This is fair enough. After all, money is the chosen currency of exchange for humanity and we need it to survive and, preferably, prosper.

I could rabbit on about the subjective nature of what it means to live comfortably but in doing so you might think i was trying to avoid the question, so let me rather be upfront with a very honest answer.

Keep off the vanilla

“Yes, without any doubt – provided that you stay committed and keep off the vanilla.”

“What on earth are you getting at?” I can almost hear you grumble.

Before you think that I’m finally losing my coaching marbles, let me explain by way of an example.

Brett and Brittany

Brett and Brittany are two newly certified life coaches. With a view to developing their practices both embark on a campaign to promote their services within their in their local communities.

Brent reasons: “The more clients the merrier.” It makes no difference to him who they are or what their backgrounds or interests are.  He’s happy to take on anyone who can see the value of life coaching. After all, he’s been taught that, at least in theory, every person could benefit from having a coach.

Brett takes the shotgun approach to marketing. He places a bulk order for a thousand business cards and flyers, buys a mailing list of people living within a 30km radius of his home and sets up a basic website. He promotes himself as a general life coach, working with all types of people and he summarises his offer as ‘Helping YOU lead your best life.’

Brett spends the next month working tirelessly to distribute his promotional material throughout the community via bulk emails, mailbox drops, pinning leaflets to community bulletin boards and handing them out in shopping malls.

Brittany takes a very different approach. She decides to narrow her target market to a field that really captures her interest and that she can relate to, namely career women who are first time mothers or mothers-to-be.

Brittany takes a two-pronged approach to her marketing. She gets a list of medium to large companies from her local chamber of commerce and writes to the HR managers to promote her services. At the same time she books a modest but centrally located venue that will accommodate a talk for 40-50 people in a month’s time. She also creates a small but attractive website designed to take bookings for the talk.

Brittany promotes herself as an expert in work-life balance for corporate mothers, and her catch phrase is: ‘Love life as a working Mum’. Her plan is to offer a free one hour talk on work life balance for a limited audience and she will use that to sell her ongoing coaching services.

Who would you bet your money on?

Ok, so assuming both Brett and Brittany are fully committed and work equally hard at their plans, which one do you think will attract more clients after a month or so of promoting their services?

I can tell you through experience that Brittany’s chances of success are a serious order of magnitude higher than Brett’s.

But why?

The vanilla trap

Brett has fallen into the ‘vanilla’ trap, a common marketing mistake made by many, if not most, new life coaches.

By trying to appeal to everyone and anyone, he will likely end up appealing to no-one.

Also, by promoting himself as a ‘life coach’, he is making a very dangerous assumption that (a) his potential clients will automatically understand what he is offering and somehow appreciate the benefits of his services and (b) that he will stand out from other life coaches in his area.

Niche marketing

Brittany, on the other hand, has cleverly identified a niche market and ways to zero in on that market through employers who have a vested interest in nurturing their talent. Her free talk offers her prospects a no-risk way to test her claims.

In the US, the word niche (of French origin and pronounced ’neesh’) is pronounced ‘nitch’. American marketers are fond of using the rhyme: “It’s the niche that makes you rich”.

Choose a niche

In my opinion, life coaches (and, in fact, anyone appealing to a potentially broad market) would do well to heed this.

It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to come up with a variety of different niche markets that life coaches can exploit, such as young adults,  newlyweds, people entering retirement, stay-at-home mothers, business executives … and even other coaches!

Choose your flavour – just not vanilla

Once the niche has been chosen, time and energy can be devoted to re-inventing the vanilla term ‘life coach’ to be more appealing and appropriate to the respective niche.

After all, if your aim is to coach people who want to manage their finances better, which description of what you do will best hit the mark:

‘Life coach’, or ‘Financial Freedom coach’?