Focus!

Having a clear niche for your coaching business is wonderful. Your niche helps you:

• Focus on a sub-set of coaching topics and therefore, become an expert faster.

• Decide what products you should develop, for who.

• Spend your marketing budget more wisely.

• Decide what types of articles to write and where to guest-post.

• Tells you what is out of scope so you can so no and use your time wisely.

Believe me, once you have a niche and you start going down the path of product development, you will be grateful for everything that is out of scope. It means you don’t have to cover it/teach it/write about it. Instead, you can focus on becoming amazing at your best and favorite topics.

Find Your Niche

To create a solid niche that will make you happy, you can try on some of the most common niche areas or you can uncover and consider niches that are specially tailored to you.

To discover what coaching niches are the most likely to be a good fit, give this formula a try:

This means that instead of being everything to everyone, you become a perfect fit to a distinct segment of the market.

The Perfect Fit

Here are 14 questions to help you flesh out the niche formula and come up with some interesting coaching niches you may not have considered in the past but should.

Part 1: My Skills/Expertise/Passions

1. What do you love doing?
2. What topics get you the most excited when you talk with other people about them?
3. What things make you totally happy?
4. What things really piss you off?
5. What skills have you been naturally gifted with?
6. What skills are other people are always complementing you on?
7. What professional experience do you already have?
8. What are your hobbies?
9. What are you already an expert in?
10. What are you most proud of having achieved in your life?
11. What experience and expertise do you have that aligns with what you most love doing?

Look through your answers and create a list of your top skills/expertise/passions. Aim for a list of about 10-20 items.

Part 2: People I really understand, who want coaching

1. What industries are you most familiar with?
2. What professional bodies do you belong to?
3. What roles do you play in your life (e.g. parent, business owner, etc.)?
4. What roles do you love doing the most?
5. Who do I really understand who is interested in each of my top skills/expertise/passions?

Go through your answers and create a list of the main types of people do you fully understand and totally relate to. For your list, focus on the people who actually want coaching (needing coaching and wanting it are two different things!). Aim for a list of about 5-10 different types of people.

Part 3: My Possibly Perfect Coaching Niches

Now it’s just a matter of making different combinations from your two lists. I recommend approaching this systematically.

Take your top skill/expertise/passion and combine it with the first person type on your list. This is one coaching niche idea to explore.

Then, take the same top skill/expertise/passion and combine it with the second person type on your list. This is your second coaching niche to explore.

Carry on until you have tried out the top skill/expertise/passion with each of your person types.
Then move on to your next top skill/expertise/passion. And so on until you have tried each top skill/expertise/passion with each person type.

There will be some stand-out ideas in that mix for sure!