How to choose your niche as a new coach

As a new coach, you might find yourself struggling with choosing your niche. From a marketing perspective, this is a very important step. But if you are just out of the gate, you may be feeling like you can help so many different kinds of people and are confused about which way to turn.

I’m going to let you off the hook for a short time. I once heard Thomas Leonard, the founder of CoachU and Coachville say “Coach 100 clients and then you will find out what your niche is.” So for right now, you can decide NOT to pick a niche.

I do recommend that you decide on the general direction for your practice. When you start networking and talking to people about what you do, if you at least have an overarching theme it will help people get a better understanding of what you do and who you can help. For example, you will want to decide of you are a business coach, life coach or relationships coach. But within that, you don’t have to know this minute the exact niche you’ll be focusing on at first.

Sometimes people have multiple talents, skills and interests and it will take time to settle on where you feel the strongest. Giving yourself time to gain experiences with clients will make a tremendous difference in figuring this out. So, as an example, if you want to coach people on time management, organizing, health and maybe wellness, life coaching would be a good catch all.

As your practice grows and you gain experience, your niche will start to reveal itself. Once it does, let the other options fall away and focus your attention on developing that niche for all it’s worth.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

If you are a relatively new coach, make a list of all the coaching topics you feel attracted to and competent in. Then take a look at that list and see if there are any groupings that form naturally. If there aren’t, that’s OK too. Next, start getting clients for these areas and see what you discover about your coaching potential.