Imagine a detective trying to solve a murder. He goes to the crime scene and walks around aimlessly. He asks questions of suspects like “What did you have for dinner?” and “Did you watch Game of Thrones last night?”
There’s no rhyme or reason to his search. Shouldn’t he be asking suspects questions to reveal their motives, whether they had the means to do the crime and the opportunity? We all know this is how it works when solving a murder.
But when looking for a niche, we can sometimes be a bit aimless. We can look under rocks and on the tops of trees, and we can miss good places to look that are just under our noses. Fortunately, there are three great ways to find your coaching niche that are far from aimless. They are …
A: Your background
B: A passion or interest
C: Your personal transformation
As you explore all three of these options, you’ll start on the path to niche clarity.
A: Your background
Imagine you’re about to start a race. The runners are allowed to approach the starting line. But one runner decides to start a few feet back. That choice would seem a bit strange, wouldn’t it? Why not start at the real starting line so you can have your best shot of winning? When it comes to running a race, this logic is obvious, but when it comes to coaches finding their niche, they often fail to notice that they’re retreating from the most obvious place to start.
They ignore the power of their background in helping them find their niche. And this background is a key to starting out ahead.
I recently heard an experienced coach named Mamoon help a new coach to find his niche. The new coach was a mindset coach. Mamoon asked the man about his background. This new coach had been in sales and had been a sales manager. Mamoon suggested the man consider being a mindset coach for salespeople. To this new coach, this idea was a revelation. It was something he had never considered before. Everyone listening to the call could see the logic behind Mamoon’s suggestion. But the idea had eluded the new coach.
Why?
Often when we get into a new field, we think with a blank slate. “I was a sales manager before, and now I’m a coach. I have to start from scratch and come up with something new.” But when we do that, we start the race a square or two behind the starting line. Realizing that your background can help you choose your niche puts you at the starting line or even a few paces ahead. You aren’t beginning over again. You already have relevant experience and knowledge under your belt.
This is why so many successful coaches use their background in choosing their niches. They can claim many years of experience because they chose to coach in an area in which they already had expertise. But it’s not the only way; sometimes, just a spark can get us started. I call that spark …
B: A passion or interest
When I was a kid back in the ’80s, I loved my Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the most popular video game console of the ’80s and most of the ’90s. I had a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine. When a new issue came out, I would quickly read it from cover to cover. I bought and read books about Nintendo. I played Nintendo games for hours. I learned all the tricks and strategies. So when I was invited to test video games at the toy company Mattel (which makes Barbie dolls and Hotwheel cars), I jumped at the chance. And after talking to me for a while, one of the game designers said: “It sounds like you’re an avid reader of everything Nintendo.” My interest, nay, passion showed.
And this is why it can be useful to focus on an area of passion or interest when looking for a niche.
You’re far more likely to enjoy your work, put in extra time, and have your brilliance shine through. You’ll have a natural sense of curiosity. You’ll be asking questions. And you’ll already know some things because you’ve likely spent time, energy or money in your area of interest.
But how do you turn an area of interest into a coaching niche?
Here are some examples:
Interest: Marketing
Niche: Help professionals grow their one-person businesses
Interest: Comic books
Niche: Help comic book owners grow their business while also having free time
Interest: Poetry
Niche: Help poets make a living from their art (sound far-fetched? I bet it can be done.)
All of the above are interests of my own and niches that I came up with to serve those interests. If some of the choices seem strange, it’s because they reflect my own background and experiences. If you had the same interests, you would likely see different ways to serve.
But are we limited to using our background and our interests in finding our niche? No. There’s one more area to explore.
C: Your personal transformation
When I was a kid, I took piano lessons. And when I was in the waiting room for those lessons, there were stacks of comic books, yellowing with age. The comics had old ads, including one that showed a little skinny guy getting sand kicked in his face by someone bigger. Later, the same kid had grown muscular and didn’t get pushed around anymore.
This ad helped to sell a weight gain formula.
It worked for decades. Why? Because many people love the idea of personal transformation. It’s inspiring. And when they see that you’ve transformed, they want to know if they can learn from you. This is why, if you’ve had such a transformation, you might consider using that to inform your niche.
Here are a few examples:
Skinny to muscular (Charles Atlas) – I show skinny guys how to get strong and fit.
Armless man who plays music (Tony Melendez) – I inspire people to overcome their limitations.
A man afraid to leave the house who overcame his fear (Charles Linden) – I show people with severe anxiety how to live fruitful lives.
Each of these transformations is from a real person and could lead to more than one niche.
The resulting niche would be a result of other factors like the coach’s background and interests. Tony Melendez could have taught music to people with disabilities but instead became a motivational speaker. What he teaches is how to have a can-do attitude. He says if I can do it with no arms, what can you do?
And that’s the power of leading by personal transformation. If you’re an ordinary person who accomplished something extraordinary, people assume you have something they want. If you can show them that it’s a learnable skill, they will gravitate to you and want to become your clients.
However, it’s rarely so cut and dry.
Often you’ll use more than one factor to create your niche. My niche at the time of this writing: I help coaches get their first clients. One aspect of my background is that I’ve been coaching since 2001. One of my interests is marketing. I helped a company that struggled to make ends meet, develop a waiting list of clients and make enough money to hire employees for the first time in 20 years. With all those factors, the choice of niche is still not entirely obvious, is it? I still tried out multiple ideas for niches before arriving at my current niche. And sometime later, it will evolve again.
So don’t expect that you’ll get the perfect answer today. What you want is to go from a currently vague notion, to something a bit less vague, to something a bit sharper, then sharper again until a niche comes into full focus. These ideas, your background, your interests, and your transformations, can help you attain this sharpening of focus.
And this is where finding a niche differs greatly from solving a murder. The answer to the question “Who done it?” is definitive. There is just one answer. The answer to the question “Who will I serve and how?” has no one right answer. In fact, it’s far more likely that through your persistence you make it work even if you and others have some doubts. So don’t wait for certainty, just do and do and do and you’ll learn what you need to move ahead.
