Most coaches starting a life coaching business think that determining their niche (or their target market) is the most important key to how to get life coach clients.  NOT TRUE.  And here’s the problem, sometimes it IS TRUE!  Are you confused yet?  I certainly was when I first started my life coaching business.  It’s really important to know where you stand on the coaching practice niche issue when you think about how to get life coach clients.  Should I start out with a niche in my life coaching business?  Should I just coach everyone breathing?  What’s a life coach to do?

One Client of Mine Just Starting Her Life Coaching Business Asked me:

“I’m not quite sure how to establish my niche market yet. I’m wondering if I should market myself as a real estate results coach? Then I was thinking maybe something more general like a life coach?”

When You Think About How to Get Life Coach Clients, Start General And Narrow Your Niche as You Grow Your Life Coaching Business

I like to start as general as possible and then narrow my niche as I go in my life coaching business, but that’s NOT your classical marketing approach. As a coach, you’re usually trying to figure out where your strongest value is that you add to your customers (and who the heck your customers are!), beyond just thinking about how to get life coach clients.  When you have no niche focus, things will be most challenging when you first get your life coaching business started. People will not see you as credible if you haven’t yet committed yourself to a specific niche. They may not see value in what you do for them because of the lack of niche focus. If you can overcome these challenges while you are still general in your approach, then things will be quite easy later when you start to narrow your niche focus.  If things are hard at this point, remember that it’s not forever… once you find your life coaching niche, you will have more ideas about how to get life coach clients.

Life Coaching Business Niche Nightmares… How Having a Niche Can Hurt You

The downside of selecting a niche in your life coaching business is that you are nailed down a bit. If that market dries up, then you’ll need to ‘reinvent’ yourself, and figure out where to go to work out how to get life coach clients.  You COULD just tough it out in that current niche, but only do this if you’re super passionate about coaching in that area. This happened to us a few years ago when the real estate sales market crashed. Our business got cut by 2/3rds. It took about 4 months to change our niche focus. That was no joke… it really took some major work on our part to pull out of that death spiral. Some companies decided to stay in the real estate coaching market and tough it out.

They are much smaller companies now…

Nothing wrong with that, but there are consequences to every strategic decision you make in your coaching company.

The Mistake of The ‘Broadcasting Boondoggle’ In The Effort To Learn How To Get Life Coach Clients

Life coaches believe that broad markets are best because they won’t run out of customers in their life coaching businesses.  Take this quote from a new coach that I talked to the other day,

“I would like to keep myself open to a broader audience, but at the same time the real estate market seems easier to target in order to get started. I’m also concerned about personal branding in the long term. What are your thoughts on this subject?”

Tale of Two Niches:  How to Get Life Coach Clients When You’re Torn on Where to Focus

If you’re passionate about working with two different types of life coaching customers, it’s best to simply create two brands and two niche focuses. One brand could be for a business niche you’re working with, and another could be for more of the life coaching business side.  Just keep the brand and the marketing separate and when you are working with businesses, you give them brand 1, when you are working with just general life coaching prospects, you give them brand 2. Simple and clean. If anyone ever ‘catches’ you by seeing your ‘other brand’ it’s really not that big a deal. People accept that service providers can have two different businesses or divisions of a service business. Anyone that has a problem with this will be in the vast minority.  Keep this in mind when thinking about how to get life coach clients.

Why ‘Niching’ is Important When Considering How to Get Life Coach Clients… How Having no Niche Can Hurt Your Life Coaching Business

Remember that if you are serious about a particular market, that each market focus takes time from you in your life coaching business. You only have so much time, so try to avoid OVER-COMMITTING and remember that you need to put the majority of your time into working out how to get life coach clients. I’d rather see you UNDER-COMMIT your time… and then you can always do more in more target markets at a later point, rather than OVER-COMMIT and WASTE YOUR ENERGY as a result not having enough focus. More successful people fail as a result of OVERREACHING than as a result of COMPLACENCY in a life coaching business that’s trying to work out how to get life coach clients.

Jeffrey T. Sooey
CEO, JTS Advisors
Founder, Coaches Training Blog community