Pick and commit to a target market and niche.

You may be able to create a thriving coaching practice without a niche, it will just take you several years longer!  If you don’t have that much time, then commit to a niche today.  Choose a specific group of people about whom you feel passionate (your target market), find out about their most pressing problem and offer them solutions (your niche).  For example: life balance for foster parents, stress management for new managers, business skills for fine artists, life direction for retiring executives, life skills for young adults.  While it seems counter-intuitive, the more narrow and defined the niche, the better.  Your brain will resist picking a niche.  Do it anyway.  Your bank account will thank you.  Over and over again.  With significant amounts of cash!

1. Write an eight-hour business plan.
   
   Write this plan to keep you inspired and on-track.
   Include:
   
   • Your vision and mission.
   • Your bio, including why you are the person to run this company.
   • Revenue streams – all the ways the business will make money.
   • Your target market and niche.
   • Seeming roadblocks (market receptivity, competition, etc).
   • How you will overcome these perceived roadblocks (differentiation, marketing strategies, etc).
   • How you know you will succeed (your skills, experience, attitude, etc).
   • Tools and technologies your company will need to succeed.
   • One-year financial projections (starting capital, cash flow, income, expenses).
   • State of the market two years from now and your response (new products and services, financial projections, etc)
   • Summary: an overview covering the major points from each section.  (Once you’ve written this, put it at the beginning of your business plan.)
     
     
2. Create a free, high-value, weekly community gathering for potential clients (your niche).
   
   Make it easy for potential clients to get to know you, your services and their peers by offering them a free, high-value (helping them solve their biggest problem), weekly opportunity. They will then be asking you what they can buy from you!  You can serve the greatest number of people on a tele-gathering, but this can also be done in person.
   
   
3. Print two-sided business cards.
   
   Include an invitation to your weekly community on the front with your website address and your contact information on the back.
   
   
4. Develop a website, even a one-pager.
   
   Use your home page to invite potential clients to your weekly gatherings designed to help them solve their number one problem.  Collect their names and email addresses to send them a personal, weekly invitation that includes the topic for that week along with the call-in phone number.
   
   
5. Hire your own business/mentor coach.
   
   You will want help handling fear, doubt, procrastination, illness, overwhelm, confusion, lethargy, forgetfulness and anything else the ego throws your way to thwart and slow your inevitable success.  Just as you might eventually build a successful practice without a niche, you might also eventually succeed without your own coach.  However, you will not succeed if you even begin to believe all the paralyzing ideas your ego throws at you!  Get support from someone who’s been there and can quickly and skillfully guide you through.
   
   
6. Work with an accountability buddy to stay on task.
   
   If you choose to use your coach for other high-dollar matters, then work with a peer coach to help both of you stay accountable to your plans.  Maybe you could do it on your own, but why would you want to?
   
   
7. Choose your three favorite ways to get in front of your potential clients and do at least one of them every day.
   
   
   • Write articles for your potential clients about solutions to their number one problem.
   • Speak to groups of your potential clients about solutions to their number one problem.
   • Participate in discussion groups and forums led by your potential clients.
   • Network with your potential clients and those who also serve them.
   • Join a leads group.
   • Create joint ventures with others who serve your potential clients.
   • Send individual emails, inviting potential clients to your community.
   • Write a letter to everyone you know who has a connection to your potential clients and tell them about your free, high-value community.
   • Attend association meetings of your potential clients.
   • Volunteer in their associations.
     
     
8. Practice extreme self-care.
   
   While building your coaching practice is extremely rewarding, it also takes focus, dedication and hard work.  Remember to take care of your company’s most valuable asset: you!
   
   
9. Keep this list handy and refer to it weekly.  Confer with your accountability buddy to stay on track.  If you notice you’re off track for more than a few days, work through it with your coach.  Proceed confidently, knowing you are establishing a solid success foundation!

 

About the author:
Ann Strong is the instigator and leader of the Thriving Coaches Revolution! www.ThrivingCoaches.com.  Coaching since 1997 and sick and tired of charging lots of money for serving as a brilliant coach, but still barely making it, she finally got mad and decided to do something about it!  She’s on a mission to share her hard-won victories with all coaches who want them so that they don’t have to needlessly suffer, too!

For more information about the Coaching trainings, pick up the phone and call Kris or Paul at 801-277-2014 or 800 767-6756.
E-mail us at:request@nlpca.com.

-- and ask us about payment plans -- some of which are interest free. Visa and MasterCard are accepted.

Back to HOME

Back to ARTICLES

TOP OF PAGE

This page, and all contents, are Copyright © 2005-2006 by The Nlp and Coaching Institute. All Rights Reserved.