Marketing Mindset for Coaches: From Failure to Success

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What makes the difference between failure and success in your coaching business?

From my own personal experience and from watching my clients grow their own coaching businesses, there is a special ingredient that will help you with success. And that, my friend, is having a strong marketing mindset.

So today, I'm sharing five marketing mindset shifts that you can make to help you be and feel unstoppable in marketing for your coaching business.

Hello! if you are new to me, I'm Nikki Berkel. I'm a marketing and online business strategist for coaches. My first coaching business failed, but my second business was fully booked Within just two months. There were three big differences between why one failed and the other is still going strong: clear messaging, a hot target market, and a strong marketing mindset. And today we're diving way deeper into the marketing mindset and the things that I did to create my marketing mindset that helps keep my business going.

As you’re reading through this, I want you to keep in mind that no strategy or advice is a one size fits everyone's situation. So sit back, read, use your judgment, pull what resonates with you, and leave what does not.

For today', I wanted to bring in some real life scenarios of things, life experience in my business and from my own brain, and then offer the mindset shifts that have been helpful for me. That way instead of just watching and listening, if you want to, you can take what I share today and you can apply it to your business right now.

Notice, Then Avoid This Type of Thinking

The first scenario I want to share that you might be dealing with also is what I call, I need X before I can do Y type thinking. This shows up in examples like I need to create my website before I pitch my services. Or, I need to have my professional email address set up before I pitch to talk to that group for free.

I know my brain loves this kind thinking. It's organized, it's practical, it's following a specific order of something. But what it also is, is my perfectionist popping up to slow me down from making progress. For sure, as your business grows, there will definitely be cases where it's important to have a specific system or marketing process set up before you do something else like certain pieces before a launch. This totally makes sense.

But, I'm going to venture and say you're still fairly new. And so if that's the space that you're in, you're not there yet. So the strong marketing mindset shift for if, oh, I need X before I can do Y type thinking is first to notice that you're having those thoughts.

And then the second piece of it is to challenge those thoughts. I would ask myself, am I 100% positive that I need a professional email address before I pitch that group talk? Then I would come up with a few pieces of evidence to support why I actually don't need it.

So if I search in my memory, I can remember working for companies where we actually hired and paid some contractors that didn't have a professional email set up, right?

They still had, back in the day it would be like MSN or Outlook, now it would be more like Gmail, but we still hired them. They did good work for us and we paid them. Hmm. So there's a little bit of evidence to tell me that maybe I'm not quite right in my thinking.

And here's the deal with this type of thinking and this type of shift that I'm mentioning here. At some point, are you going to need a professional email address? Yeah, I would argue that you would, totally. But in the beginning, you'll end up with hundreds if not thousands of scenarios where you will have, I need this before this type thinking.

I mean, there will literally be a stack of things that you'll think you'll need to do. And so questioning yourself in these instances can really help you stay focused on the work that you need to do in the beginning to help you get clients versus work that turns into busy work and doesn't get you clients.

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So after hearing about, I need X, before I can Y type thinking, I would love to hear from you. Do you notice yourself having any kinds of thoughts like these? If so, comment below with a yes and feel free to share your story. I would love to hear it.

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Feeling afraid to put yourself out there?

Here is the second scenario. I felt scared to death to put myself out there. Now I am kind of middle introverted, extroverted. I like my quiet time, but I also enjoy being around people. But, taking a step into like online marketing land, very scary. And I think it's very possible that you could be feeling the same way too.

So being afraid to put myself out there for me showed up as procrastination. I would make a lot of plans. I would say, Oh, I'm going to come up with, um, this set of social media posts to write, or I'm going to reach out to this person to see if they want to work together or I'm going to write this email. Things like that. I would plan it. I would have it like on my journal perfectly jotted out, and then I wouldn't do it.

So for me, I went digging and I was trying to uncover if I'm so scared of putting myself out there, why? Right? Like what's underneath that? And the big thing for me, which you might share as well, is fear of judgment. So if fear of getting judged by other people as you're growing and building your business that resonates with you, then here are my mindset shifts for that.

The first piece to it is just know you will be judged. It's important to know that there will be people who don't even notice you, don't pay attention to your content. It's kind of like you don't exist to them.

There will also be people who don't like your work. Maybe they think you're wrong based on some experiences they had or they just don't like your personality. That's probably going to happen.

And then there could be a very tiny percentage of people that actually say something negative about your work. So haters, right? And for most human minds, those are the ones that your brain is going to want to focus on and like magnify and make way bigger than they need to be. Because the other thing to keep in mind is there are some people that are going to be judging you in a positive manner. The people that you are meant to serve, the people that you are creating your services for, you are going to need to show up for them so that you can help them.

So it will help if you can really focus on creating work, content, services for the people who will value you and who need your help. The other piece to this of when you're feeling afraid of putting yourself out there, is this: everything that you do, consider it practice.

Once I realized that every social media post every blog, every YouTube script, every conversation with a potential client, every conversation with an existing client, once I could reframe my mind around the fact that it was really all practice, then I could really let off some of the pressure. It helped me get through trying to be perfect for everyone, trying to be liked by everyone and trying to say and right and do the perfect thing.

Working through the fear of putting yourself out there is something that I talk about in my free guide. So if you want to get a little bit more about that plus some great other things for basics on marketing, you can
click here to grab my free download 7 Steps To Guarantee a Profitable Message and Market.

When imposter syndrome creeps in…

The third scenario that I want to offer a strong marketing mindset shift for you today is imposter syndrome.

You know that situation where you have some training and skills and you're perfectly qualified to do the thing that you're saying that you’ll do, but for some reason you just don't feel good enough, you're never going to be good enough, and you're worried that somebody is going to pull the blanket out from under you and expose you for the fraud that you are.

Well, here's what helped me when I would know it is imposter syndrome creeping up. I would ask myself this very simple question, Do I know enough to help someone? And if my answer was no, and in some cases occasionally it was a no, like if I was honest with myself, then I identified the areas that I either needed more education, more experience, more practice, whatever, and I went out and got it.

But if the answer was yes that I did know enough to help someone in this case, then it was just a matter of reminding myself so that I could get it through my thick skull that yes, I knew enough that I could help people.

And so I would use post-it notes. You could write things like “I know enough to help someone” on a post-it note and put it all over the place. I would put these in my bathroom mirror, in my car when I was driving to the place where I still worked when I was training to be a life coach. I would put it as a background note on my phone. Anytime I needed to just try to retrain my brain on something, I was making sure that I got that message front and center.

When you feel inspired, then lack action.

As I built my business and this is definitely ongoing, I have found that I will have periods of energy and excitement. I might get super jazzed up if I have a conversation with someone and we really connect that inspires me to continue doing my work.

Maybe I listen to a podcast or I watch a documentaries that talks about success and failures of entrepreneurs, something that lights me up.

And then boom, I am off to the races. I've got my journal out, I've got my planner and I'm going to town making plans, letting ideas rip, and then it's time to take action on those ideas. And it's like, whoa, where did all that amazing energy go? Why am I now not as excited as I was to do all of these things?

Most of the time, the lack of energy comes from the fact that I'm out of idea euphoria is what I call it. And then switching into the gear of doing something that's either new or uncomfortable. So switching from idea to actually making it happen. And this is a normal process for entrepreneurs. And so I think knowing this is an advance, knowing that you're going to come up against this is a very important thing to note so you don't feel like, Oh my gosh, what kind of roller coaster am I on?

And how am I going to get through this? So if this happens to you, two things for you here. The first one is to just know that this is part of the process of being an entrepreneur. You're going to have highs, you're going to have lows, and then you're going to have to learn how to work them both. The second shift I’ll offer you for this is…

Stay in the Magic of Your Vision (no, really!).

The other piece to this is something that I have been doing lately and have learned from Master Creativity coach Leah Badertscher. Leah is the founder of The Art School and The Art School Podcast. Now, this shift that she teaches that I've been doing is all about staying so super connected to your vision. So drop in, spend a lot of time picturing, visualizing, meditating, however you want to work it, staying in the energy of what you're creating.

And this is instead of getting hyper focused on all of the things that you're going to need to do to achieve the vision. And here's what I have to say about this shift, it's magical. Think about this: if you're a kid going to Disneyland and you're just envisioning your experience at Disneyland, how awesome it's going to be and you're just kind of visualizing the pretty fun things.

You know what you're not visualizing? Booking travel, standing in the long lines, being tired at the end of the day. You’re not worried about all the different things that you're going to need to do, paying for your tickets. You're not all visualizing all those details. You are staying connected and focused to the magic.

So the same thing for entrepreneurs, and it's complex because after a few minutes, your brain is going to want to jump up and down and go, okay, okay, but how? And so then it's like, okay, shift back into the vision.

And then what I find is that when you can do that, you probably have a stack on your desk, right, or in your mind or wherever of the things that you need to do in order to grow your business. Yeah, those exist for sure.

But if you can stay more connected to the energy of the vision, when you go back and you're feeling overwhelmed or stuck or just not sure what, which one of those things to do next, I find that when you can stick to that energy of that vision, the thing that you should do next either pops out of the stack or your perspective shifts a little bit, something becomes more clear and easier to work through because of staying connected to that magic.

I am a huge fan of Leah's work. She is an incredible mentor and she's modeled a way of building a dream business without an exhausting hustle approach. So if you're inspired by that idea and want to learn more about staying connected to your vision or how you can use a creative process to build your business, check her out!

What if I fail?

So here is the fifth and last strong marketing mindset shift that I'm going to share today.

Notice and reframe any thought that you have about marketing that is not helpful to you. For example, here are some of my real life thoughts that I have had about marketing.

• I will annoy people.

• People won't like me.

• Nobody will buy my services.

• I'm not qualified enough to sell these services.

• I might fail again.

When I notice I'm having thoughts, I get my journal out and I go to town and explore it. I always ask myself, what is a higher quality thought that's also available to me? So here are some of the reframes that I have had.

So instead of I will annoy people, I would reframe that to the right person won't be annoyed by this, they'll like it. Instead of people won't like me, I reframe that to the people I'm meant to work with, will enjoy my personality. Instead of nobody will buy my services, I reframe that to the right offer will help the right person. Instead of I'm not qualified to sell these services, the reframe is I have enough training and expertise to help people. Instead of I might fail again, the reframe is this business is a learning process. There really is no failure, just lessons to get better next time.

And there you have it, the five strong marketing mindset shifts that I've used in my business. So take what you want, take what you need from this and apply it to your business today. If you can make working on your marketing mindset part of the experience of building your business, it will help you achieve the success you're looking for.

Do you need more guidance on how to learn how to market your coaching business? If you've never marketed yourself before or you've tried programs and they didn't work, I highly suggest starting with some marketing basics and practicing to work through the fear of putting yourself out there. For that, you can click on the link below and grab my free guide, 7  Steps to Guarantee a Profitable Message and Market.

I cover the marketing basics you need in the beginning, how to create a clear, sellable message. And of course, there's more tips on working through the fear of putting yourself out there.

And if you’d like more mindset tips, in this video I share how to get unstuck and uncover what’s making you stuck in How to Start a Life Coaching Business From Scratch.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

How to START a Life Coaching Business FROM SCRATCH

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Wondering how to start your life coaching business from scratch?

Today, I'm sharing five things to keep in mind that will help you on your business journey including the things to avoid in the beginning and what to do if you get frustrated or confused along the way. Hello, I am Nikki Berkel. I'm a marketing and online business strategist for life coaches.

My first coaching business failed, but my second business was fully booked within just two months, so I'm excited to share with you what I learned along the way so that you don't make the same mistakes and you can have a successful coaching business the first time.

Making the leap from being an employee to owning your own business is terrifying. And unless you've ran a business before, it can be really confusing to know what steps to take to start your life coaching business.

When I first started my life coaching business, it was the first time in my life that I had ever had to sell anything. It was also the first time in my life when I didn't get that super cushy direct deposit in my account every two weeks. As you start to grow your life coaching business, you are going to have a totally different journey than mine, but there are still a few things I can share that will help you start your life coaching business from scratch and do it quicker.

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So before we dive in, I want to ask a little bit about your journey on starting your life coaching business. Is this the first time that you've ever had to market yourself or do you already have some kind of sales or marketing experience?

Just comment below and let me know, are you to new marketing and sales or not?

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The FIRST Thing to Keep In Mind As You Start Your Life Coaching Business from Scratch

The first thing to keep in mind as you start your life coaching business from scratch is that you are going to need a ton of practice. My life coach teacher, Martha Beck told us “coach your face off”. And boy is that good advice.

As a new coach, you might be so excited to think that your coaching tools are super cool and so helpful, and mix that with the desire to make money and earn a living from coaching and that can have some people kinda trying to skip through these foundational pieces that I'm going to talk about in this video.

So keep it in mind. You're going to want lots of practice. They have that 10,000 hour rule. I don't believe in the, like in the exact science of 10,000 hour rule, but I do think it's a great reminder of if you're a coach and you've been doing it for a few months, you're gonna need more practice than just a few months.

It's not that you can't get paying clients yet. It's just that practicing will help you build confidence. And it will also help you uncover who you're meant to coach and what problems you want to help them solve. And if you're someone who gets confused about how to choose a niche or find a target market for your life coaching business, I have a free resource for you. Just click here to grab my free download 7 Steps To Guarantee a Profitable Message and Market. It's the same process I take my clients through to make sure their coaching offers sell.

The SECOND Thing to Keep in Mind Before Starting Your Life Coaching Business from Scratch

The next thing to keep in mind, as you start your life coaching practice is you are going to need to learn and therefore practice to learn how to make offers. And if you haven't marketed yourself before, this is a scary part, right? This is talking about money, talking about putting yourself out there, talking about facing rejection and all kinds of things.

And so it's going to take a lot of practice for you to get comfortable with that. Your coaching services unfortunately will not sell themselves. It would be really nice if you could throw up a quick website, put a link to your calendar and just have your calendar fully booked right away, but that's not usually how it works.

It's a great idea to practice selling your coaching offer. Even if it's free and it's practice clients. That still gets you in the action of making offers and putting yourself out there. And if you're new to marketing in sales in the online space, there are things called conversion rates. So a conversion rate can exist like at a website, how many websites visit you and then turn into a lead or a client. If you send somebody to a landing page, what percentage of them entered their email address so that you can send them something. When somebody looks at your sales page, what percentage of them actually sign up for a call? Things like that.

And it can be really easy to take those numbers and percentages personally, like why isn't everyone signing up for this thing I'm offering? Why isn't everyone answering my emails for coaching offers? Don't take it personally. It really is a numbers game. And I think it helps to know this in advance.

So if you know that you are going to make coaching offers to a lot of people and that not that many of them are going to say yes, I think it's good to know that in advance so that you can have that expectation versus if you're sending out offers and you're expecting everyone to say yes, and then that doesn't happen. It's really disappointing. It can really be a big blow, big hit of rejection. So get lots of practice making tons of offers. That way you could increase the number of people saying yes and not get down by the larger number of people that are saying no.

The Third Thing To Keep in Mind as You Start Your Life Coaching Business from Scratch

The next thing to keep in mind, as you start building a life coaching business from scratch is something I call “don't create the problem, wait for it to be a problem”. Now, let me just tell you, I am a crazy organized person. I'm a planner.

I love to plan everything out. And sometimes those things can actually pop up in perfectionist ways that can slow me and maybe you too down from really doing the things that we need to do to move forward in your business. So here's an example. You might be thinking, oh, I need a website right away to start my coaching business. Well, let's figure out if this really is a problem?

Are there people right now that are waiting to go to your website or being directed to your website so that they can learn more about your coaching? Well if you're in the beginning phases, I'm going to guess, no. So unless you're sending traffic or people to a website, then that's not actually a problem yet. So if you wait for it to be a problem, and I don't mean problem, like in a negative way, but rather problem as a hint that something needs to happen next would be when someone asks, do you have a website?

When that happens, you can say, oh, I'm having it built soon. And then that is your aha that it's time build website. Also, I'm going to link to When To Create Your Website, which has four questions to answer that will help you know if you're ready to build your website.

Don’t Get Caught Up In These 5 Things In the Beginning

The next thing to keep in mind when you start your life coaching business from scratch is to not get hung up on these 5 things. Now don't get me wrong. These things are important at a specific point in business. But if you are in the beginning phases, they are not important yet. I'm talking about :

• your website

• a logo

• business cards

• your business name

• content creation

If you are the kind of person who gets really jazzed up or excited by doing one of these things or creating some of these pieces, go for it. I mean, who am I to stop you? But seriously, do not let yourself get hung up on them, spending a ton of time and money quite yet. And definitely do not let them get in the way of the things that are really going to determine the success of your business, like making offers and finding a coaching solution to sell people.

Use This Mindset Tool When Starting Your Coaching Business Gets Hard

Okay, so here's the mindset tool that I mentioned earlier. Now, if you happen to be a Martha Beck coach who’s watching this, then you have probably already learned this, but if you're not, or you're not familiar with this tool, you are going to love it.

You can use it in way more areas of life than just what I'm suggesting right now. I would really love to sit here and tell you that starting a life coaching business from scratch is easy, but I can't. There are definitely challenges and there's a lot to learn. But this framework for coaching tool by Martha Beck will really help you. Here's the general process. I'm going to break this example into these four sections.

We'll start with identifying a circumstance, then figure out what thought you might have about the circumstance. Then take a look at what feeling is being caused by that thought. And finally, see what actions you're taking because you're feeling that way. So here's the example we're using.

If things start to get hard while you build your life coaching business from scratch, let's say you are feeling super frustrated because you have just emailed a whole bunch of people with your coaching offer and nobody said yes. It really seems like nobody wants to buy your coaching services.

Then this leads to you binging a pint of ice cream and believing that you'll never make it as a successful life coach. Using the framework, let's break it down. The circumstance is you've really emailed 50 people and none of them said yes.

The thought that you're having because of that circumstance is nobody wants to buy your coaching.

The feeling that's caused by a result of that thought is you are frustrated. And the action caused by feeling that frustration as a result of that thought is over-eating ice cream and believing that you won't become a successful life coach.

So now we've identified the single thought “nobody wants to buy my coaching”. And at first it might seem like the act of emailing 50 people and having none of them respond as a yes would be the thing that's causing frustration.

But it's really the thought about the circumstance. So it's the thought that nobody wants to buy your coaching as a result of you emailing those people and nobody's saying yes. So now that you've pinpointed the thought to work on, that's where you really get self coaching involved, or you can contact another coach, maybe me and get coached around that thought because those thoughts are going to impact your results.

If you believe, if you are really convinced that nobody wants to buy your coaching, what kind of actions do you think you're going to take as a result of that? Yeah, eating the pint of ice cream and believing that you're going to fail.

So when you can work on dissolving or changing that thought for yourself, that will help you move forward much, much faster, and with a lot less suffering. So be sure to remember this, you are going to face challenges.

As you start to build your life coaching business, you can handle them. These challenges will help you grow, and they're preparing you for the next step of whatever is coming next.

Do you need more guidance on gaining clarity about who to coach or what market to choose?  Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET. It’s the same steps I take my clients through to help them make sure they have a coaching offer that sells.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Life Coach Website: WHEN to Create Yours

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When is the right time to create a website for your coaching business?

Creating a website feels like a natural next step to starting your coaching business, so you might be thinking RIGHT NOW! I need to create it right now! But in this video/blog, I'm sharing why you might not quite be ready yet and how to tell when you are ready to create the website for your coaching business. This video just might save you a couple thousand dollars.

Hellllooooo! If you're new to me, I'm Nikki Berkel. I’m a marketing and online business strategist for life coaches. I've created two different websites for my businesses. For the first one, I spent thousands of dollars on it and got zero clients in return. But with my second website, I started making money before it even launched.

So in this video/blog, I'm sharing three questions you can ask yourself to see if you are really ready to work on your coaching website.

Sometimes it seems complicated, but a website can be fairly simple to set up. Even if you're not a techie, a lot of the website providers out there now have great and very quick plug and play kind of templates. But the thing is, there's so much more to creating a strong website that gets you clients than just a quick plug and play template.

this more important than creating a few pretty pages

It is not just about buying a URL and creating a few pretty pages. And there are three questions that you want to be able to answer before you go spending your time and money on your website. And the thing is, if you can't answer these questions quickly and clearly yet as you're going through this video, then your website visitors are going to have the same experience.

They're going to get confused by what's on your website and confused people don't buy. Now, be sure to watch this video to the end, because I'm going to be sharing a quick, no brainer tip that you can set up in less than an hour that can help you get clients before your website set up.

The First Question to Answer BEFORE Creating Your Website

The first question that you want to be able to answer before you start working on your website is this: Can you say in a very short sentence, a single problem that you help people solve with your coaching?

Now, if you're still in coach training, or if you if you just recently finished your coach training, you might still be in the phase where you're really just still figuring this part out. And there might be dozens of things that you are thinking that you want to coach people on.

And that's where the challenge is. Because if you have a website that has 13 different problems that you can help people solve, that gets really confusing for a website visitor.

So after you think about it for a few minutes, if you can't quite come up with a simple sentence of the single problem that you can help people solve quite yet, that's okay. Keep practicing. Clarity will come through doing. And I suggest in this case, holding off on your website for now.

And if you are in that space of still figuring out what you want to coach people on, I have a free guide for you. You can click here to download 7 Steps to Guarantee a Profitable Message and Market. It's the steps I take my clients through to help make sure they're offering services that will sell.

The Second Question to Answer BEFORE Creating Your Website

The second question you want to be able to answer before creating your website is this: For the problem you help people solve through your coaching services, do you know the specific words your ideal client uses to describe this problem?

Now be careful here because what I'm not talking about is an assumption of what you think they would say about that problem. Instead, I'm talking about actually talking with people, interviewing people, doing online research, going attending events and listening to what conversations are happening there and actually documenting and noting the actual things people are saying about that problem.

Without using these specific words, it will be much harder to draw in a website visitor to turn them into a client.

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Now, if you are here with me watching this video or reading this blog, then I know you are a coach who either wants to create a website, or you started creating your website and you just need a little bit of guidance. And I also know that you probably have a ton more questions about it. So feel free to ask me anything! Just comment below at the bottom of this page to ask your question and I will reply directly to you!

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The Third Question to Answer BEFORE Creating Your Website

The third question that's important to be able to answer before creating your website is this: Have you validated the problem you help people solve? Meaning have you offered that specific coaching service to people and have they paid you money for it?

Now your brain will probably go nuts with this one, popping up with thoughts like, but I need a website in order to sell my coaching services. But the truth is for this stage in business, it's better to focus on the marketing activities, building relationships and making offers to make sure your coaching services will sell.

Validating your coaching services will help steer your business in a profitable direction without getting hung up on building a website or trying to figure out what to write on it.

Try this BEFORE Setting Up Your Website

Now, are you ready for that easy, no brainer trick I promised you earlier? You can set this up in an hour or less to help you get clients before your website is set up. Most of us want something tangible to be able to send people to show what we can do for them and to highlight the value of our coaching services.

So, you can create a simple one to two page document or a PDF, a marketing flyer in Microsoft word or if you want to do a little bit fancier, you can go with Canva for this. You don't have to be a designer and it really doesn't have to be extravagant.

You can keep it very simple and Canva has a lot of really great templates to start with. When you create a marketing flyer like this, you want to have at least these four things included:

• You want to mention something that gives you authority and credibility that makes it known to people why they should trust you to help them. That can be just the fact that you're a certified life coach or a line or two about experience that you've had helping people so far.

• You can also include a list of topics that you want to coach people on. This list might be really broad at first, but this practice will help you narrow in on a target market and a niche that's right for you.

• You can also include a testimonial from one of your clients or practice clients that highlights your skills.

• And finally, don't forget a way for that person to contact you. So this can be an email address, a phone number. And if you're not in a stage where you have a professional email set up yet, that's okay, just put your Gmail or whatever you have currently.

You are in a practice phase and you're getting ready to go out and do big things. And you're going to get there step by step, but don't let perfectionism hang you up. And, don't think things like, oh, I've got to have this set up before I do this.

No, just take the one next step, the one imperfect, messy next step. And that will get you there. When you take this kind of approach using a like one to two page marketing flyer, you can edit it over and over and over again in only a matter of minutes.

It really lets you be imperfect. It definitely helps keep you from getting hung up with tech issues on your website. And it gives you the freedom to change your mind about who you want to coach because you'll practice and evolve, practice and evolve, and then your message will become clear because of it.

So instead of sending somebody to a website, you either attach this document to the email that you send them, or you can hand them the flyer in person, and this will help you avoid spending thousands of dollars and quite possibly hundreds of hours of your time creating a website that you're not quite ready for yet.

Canva has a free version and a paid version, but most people can get away with just using the free version. I use Canva every day, I have the paid version. It's like $13 a month at this point and I find that it's well worth it.

Which camp are you in?

Now here's a couple things you might be thinking. Either, wow, that sounds so much simpler than creating a website right now, way better. I'm going to do that. Or you might be thinking, no that's way too simple. How could this possibly work?

If you're in that camp, I want you to know this: websites are not an if you build it, they will come situation. To get clients with a website, your website copy needs to speak to a specific person and problem. So once the person's on that website, the message resonates and they want to take the next step.

But there's something else that you need in order to get clients from a website and that's traffic. Now, there are a lot of ways to generate traffic, but in the beginning, if you don't have a clear message or know exactly who you're speaking to and what words they will be using, it is a lot harder to do.

Now, I don't want you to just create a life coaching business. I want you to create a profitable life coaching business, and if that's what you want too, then you can click here to watch this video next: Three Ways to Guarantee a Profitable Niche.

Do you need more guidance on how to creating a message that sells for your life coaching business?  Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Life Coach Logo Creation: Do THIS First!

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Thinking about creating a logo for your new coaching business?

Today, I'm sharing the biggest thing to consider before you start designing that logo, so you can attract more clients. As a new life coach, creating a logo is a really exciting part of the journey because it's a tangible thing that's going to represent your business.

But, just how important is creating a logo when you're at the beginning of your coaching business? Well, let's dive into the biggest thing to consider before you start designing that logo.

Gulp. The hard truth…

Okay. I'm just going to come out and say it.

A logo doesn't get you clients.

And in order to have success in your coaching business, you need clients. Now, hold on. I know what you're probably thinking, but Nikki I have to have my logo, my website, my business cards all done so that I can look like a legit business.

Actually, you don’t! Think about it this way.

When the first was invented, do you think the inventor focused on creating the perfect logo for their business? No. They focused on building it, testing it, fixing it each time they broke it. And again and again until it worked.

That is exactly where you are, if you have a new life coaching business and you don't yet have paying clients, or you only have a few paying clients. You're in the stage when it's important to get out there, coach people figure out what you want to coach them on, who you want to coach and make sure you can get the clients you need to have a successful business.

Now, if you are in the phase of still trying to figure out who to coach, what to coach them on and making sure that you can find people who are willing to pay for your services, you can click here or below to grab my free guide 7 Steps to Guarantee a Profitable Message and Market.

These are the steps I take my clients through to make sure they can create a sellable message and find a hot target market that's ready to buy their services.

If you’ve already started working on your logo…

If you've already started designing a logo or you're done with that, your time wasn't wasted, you can totally finish it or pause and come back to it later. Just don't let it distract you from the actions you need to take to find new clients.

So, the scary things like pitching yourself and making offers. Now, when you make that pivot from creating and designing logo, to switching to the actions that actually get you clients, here's a place you might get stuck. Your brain might be popping up with some unhelpful thoughts when you go to sell your services before you have a logo created. 

Thoughts like…

• “But I need to look professional If I'm going to be able to get clients.”

• “What if they look me up online and since I haven't created logo yet, I don't have a website?”

• “But if I don't have a logo, I can't create my business cards.” 

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What about you? What thoughts came to your mind with my suggestion of not creating your logo first? Comment below and let me know.

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Here’s how to work through those thoughts.

So about those thoughts that pop up, here's how to work through them. I encourage you to ask this question when those unhelpful thoughts appear, this is the first question from The Work by Byron Katie.

Is that true? Is it true that you won't look professional if you don't have a logo yet?

Your brain might respond with something like: Well, it feels true, but I guess there are other ways to look professional besides having a logo.

Is it true that if someone can't find your website, they won't hire you?

Your brain might respond with something like: I guess not. I mean, businesses still were able to get clients before websites existed.

Is it true that if you don't have a logo, you can't create business cards?

Your brain might respond with something like: Hmm, no. I've seen some simple business cards that didn't have a logo. Plus I know when I get a business card, it usually ends up in the bottom of my purse.

Working through these thoughts will help you get started with getting more clients. And once you've gotten some clients and you've validated your coaching business, then it's a great time to work on your logo.

Nikki, are you sure about waiting to create my logo?

When I make a video for YouTube, it's because I know how to do the thing I'm teaching or I've experienced a situation myself. So I can tell you for sure that in my life coaching for mom's business, that failed, I was obsessed with creating a logo. I mean look at all these examples.

And the sad thing was it didn't get me clients. In my second business, I didn't create a logo for at least a year. I focused on building relationships and making offers. I was even able to get clients for my new business while I still have my old life coaching for mom's website up.

It didn't impact my ability to get clients at all. Now, I know it is way scarier to focus on the activities that get you clients than it is to create a logo. It means putting yourself out there and taking big risks. But those are the actions that will determine if your life coaching business is successful, not by creating a logo.

And before you go, if you want to make sure you're choosing a profitable niche, you can check out 3 Ways to Guarantee a Profitable Niche.

Do you need more guidance on figuring out who to coach and where to find those clients? Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET. It's the same steps I take my clients through and it will really help you get some clarity.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Coaching Website: How to Write Your About Me Page

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Not sure what to write on the about me page of your coaching website?

I'll be walking you through how to write an about me page in a way that gets you clients!

I don't believe in some perfect way to write an about me page. And when you're looking online at different websites to check out different styles, it can be really confusing because there are a lot of options.

What I do suggest is writing your about me page in a way that resonates with your potential clients, highlights the problem that you can help them solve all while talking about yourself.

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Before we dive in about how to write your about me page for your coaching website, I would love to hear from you! Where are you at in the process of writing your about me page? Are you in the phase of researching and getting ready to write it? Or have you already written one, but you're not really sure about what you've written so far? Comment below and let me know.

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Writing an About Me Page Is Tricky.

And it can really help to have a little bit of guidance. So today I'll be sharing a journey story framework that you can use to help write your about me page.

Write this in the first section of your about me page.

You're a coach. So you help people solve a specific problem and get a specific outcome. So, first on your about me page, I would open with the different challenges and the struggles that you went through or experiences and scenarios that you've watched yourself and didn't like how it went all as it pertains to the coaching services that you provide. For example, in my videos and on my own about page, I share my story about how my life coaching business for moms failed.

I had spent somewhere around $7,000 on my life coach training. Spent even more to learn about branding, even more to get a website built and then even more to enroll in some marketing courses. So for my about me page, all of those things are great examples of real struggles and challenges that I was having at one time that relates to my potential clients.

Write this in the second section of your about me page.

For the next part of your story journey, you can move into talking about what you did to overcome the challenges for yourself, or how you helped someone else through those challenges.

Did you take additional training? Did you have some kind of transformation? Did you help someone else through a transformation? Or even did you find a new method for doing something that makes it easier?

I'll continue with my story journey for an example. So after spending all of that money and having my coaching business flop, I had to pivot my business and started helping other coaches with their digital marketing. So things like landing pages, creating email marketing campaigns, newsletters, that sort of thing, doing that work.

My calendar was fully booked within just two months. So really fast. So about a year into that, I really wanted to understand what it was that I was doing so right in this example, that I could be successful with this business that I didn't do in my life coaching for mom's business.

So I compared both businesses, the marketing activities that I was doing, the things that actually got me clients and compared the two to see what was the difference.

And that helped me realize that one of my main problems for why the life coaching for moms business didn't work was because of my messaging. I wasn't offering moms an important enough reason to want to work with me.

So here, in this example, I experienced the transformation on my own from having a coaching business that failed to having a business that was successful. And through reviewing those businesses side by side, I could see the mistake that I'd made, and I knew that I could use that knowledge to help other coaches find a profitable message and market.

Complete your about me page with this.

Now to complete your story journey, you can talk about what life is like for you after you've experienced that outcome or transformation or why that particular work is so important to you. So to close the story journey with my example, here's what I would say. I help newer life coaches find a profitable message and market so their coaching business can be successful and they don't have to experience the challenges like I did such as forking over thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of my time, just to have my business fail.

For my personal story journey, it is less about what my life is like after I experience a transformation and it's more about why it's so important to me, which is that if you have spent thousands of dollars and your time, and you've invested in yourself to go get life coach training and you want to have a life coach training business that's successful and profitable, I want that for you too.

And I want to shortcut any way that I can to help you get started in the right direction so that you can grow and enjoy and have that career that you have always dreamed of in coaching. So when you write your about me page in this way, it takes the reader on a journey.

The goal is to get them to see themselves in your story, in your challenges, and then get them to conclude that, hey, if that person made it through and was able to achieve this outcome, maybe I can too.

Then after you've told your journey story, if you want to include some personal details, like where you got your training or personal details about your life and your family, that's a great place to do it. I just don't suggest starting your about me page all about training and personal information that doesn't relate to your client because it's going to be less interesting for them.

Oh, one more thing to add to your about me page!

Don't forget to add a call to action here. If a potential client reads your about me page, and they're thinking, gosh, this person's been through something so similar. I think they can really help me.

You've got to let them know what you want them to do next. So be sure to add a call to action button or even text that says, email me here so that your potential clients know how to take the next step with you.

If you want to see how I wrote my about me page with this journey story style, you can check that out here. And another great example of an about me page with this journey style story is Marie Forleo’s. She does a great job telling her story in a way that's relevant to her readers while finishing it off with this vibe of like, yes, if she can do it, I totally can do. You can check that out here.

Next step: Write a first draft, then ask these 3 questions.

The next step for you here is to write a draft of your about me page. Then once you do that, I want you to ask these three questions.

1) Does your about me page highlight the struggles and challenges that your ideal client has?

2) Does your about me page highlight what you did to overcome those challenges?

3) Does your about me page talk about what life is like for you after the transformation or why it's so important for you to be helping people with that transformation or specific outcome?

You don’t need it to be perfect!

I want you to remember something. There's no perfect about me page format. So you don't have to follow this framework exactly or worry about getting it wrong. Feel free to just use it as a guide to help you get started so that you can write your about me page in a way that helps you get clients.

Now, I do have a little bit of a warning for an about me page. It will be more challenging to write if you don't yet know what your coaching solution is, what your message is or who your target market is. But I've got a little something that can help you with that. Click here to download my free guide, 7 Steps To Guarantee a Profitable Message and Market.

Taking the time to figure out the outcome you help people achieve and who you help achieve that outcome will make everything easier in growing your coaching business, including your about page.

And before you go, if you are still working on your homepage or getting ready to work on your homepage, or you don't like what's on your homepage, you can check out what to write on your home page as a life coach.

Do you need more guidance on how to creating a message that sells for your life coaching business?  Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Why my life coaching business FAILED: DON'T DO THIS

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As you're getting ready to start your coaching business or while you're building your coaching business. Do you ever find yourself wondering, “Gee, I sure hope this business thing works out?”

Because let's face it. There will come a point in time when it's time to switch from dreaming and scheming about your life coaching business, to actually building, growing your business and getting paying clients. And you've spent a lot of time and money on your life coaching training. And so of course you want it to be successful.

Well, I did a lot of things wrong when I launched my life coaching business so wrong that it failed. So in this video, I'm sharing all of the juicy  details so that you don't make the same mistakes in your coaching business.

You already heard that my life coaching business failed. So why am I here handing out advice?

Because my second business was fully booked within just two months. So I'm excited to share what I learned because today I'm a marketing and online business strategist for life coaches.

Here’s the juicy details.

In 2016, I finished life coach training with Martha Beck and I was so excited of course, to get out there and help people. But also I was ready for a new career because I really didn't like my old one. So leaving coach training, I was excited, full of enthusiasm and it didn't take me that long to get my first few paying clients.

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And what about you? Where are you at with your client journey? Are you still in the mode where you are practicing and coaching for free, or have you been able to get your first few paying clients? Comment below and let me know.

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So for me, I could remember getting that first paying client and literally falling to my knees crying because I was so happy, so excited. And I felt like me being able to get a paying client proved right, proved that I was going to be successful in business.

And then I had a long dry spell, no new clients, and it was way tougher than I imagined to get more. I had chosen a target market. I was working specifically with moms. I also had potential clients right in front of me. And lots of people that knew I had just finished coach training was a life coach and was working specifically with moms.

At that point, I had created a Facebook group, so they were in my Facebook group and they would comment on my posts. They would reply to my emails, thanking me for the inspiration. And I even had a few people show up for my free webinars. But for some reason I couldn't get those people who were followers to convert into paying clients.

And then there became a point where my contact list was just saturated. So I had already reached out to everybody I knew, told them what I was doing, asked them to invite their friends to my Facebook group. So I was also having a problem with getting new people in my audience that could become potential clients.

I was getting pretty frustrated and nearly desperate because I had just gone through almost all of my savings building my business.

And I really did not want to go back to my corporate job or have to get another job. So after working at it for almost a year full time, it was time to do something different. I had to make a decision. I had to find a way to make money right now. Otherwise, I was going to have to go back and get a different job.

So at this point I had been studying copywriting. I learned all about email marketing, uh, loved it. And then I also learned the tech behind setting up landing pages and building email sequences and things like that.

So I started reaching out to some online coach friends, and I made them very simple offers and I was fully booked within two months. I never did go back to marketing my life coaching for mom's business. But I was dying to know what I had done differently the second time that was successful versus the first time that wasn't.

So what did I do wrong the first time and right the second time?

So I went back and compared both businesses and I was able to figure out why the second attempt was successful and the first was not.

The first thing that I had wrong was…

Messaging. Messaging to me means a couple different things. So it could be how you introduce yourself, the copy that's on your website, also what you promote in social media, different things like that. But I'm going to talk about how I introduce myself because that's really where I was at that stage. So I would introduce myself as, hi, I'm a life coach for moms. I help moms get rid of mom guilt. So that message was clear, but not sellable.

The moms I talked to definitely did not enjoy or want to be experiencing mom guilt, but the way I positioned it didn't make it a strong enough or a big enough reason for them to want to spend time and money to solve it.

If I wanted to go back to coaching moms and have my coaching solution include some kind of flavor of alleviating mom guilt, I would position it with something else with a higher, psychological reason that people buy. So for example, I maybe would package it like make partner at your CPA firm and still win mom of a year or something like stop yelling at your kids so you can be a better mom. Those kinds of messages would be way more sellable.

The second thing I went wrong with…

I had chosen a target market, a defined set of people to work with, but they were not a hot target market. So a hot target market is a group of people who already know the problem that they're having and are ready and willing to pay money to solve it right away.

They don't need to be educated or convinced to spend the money on it. So in my coaching scenario, life coaching moms, they were lukewarm at best. They came into my world because yes, they were experiencing mom guilt. And I would help them alleviate that a little bit just by the messages that I was sharing, but they weren't hot and ready to spend money on that.

I'll explain with another example, let's take getting life coach training. At some point you realized you wanted to become a life coach. And once you decide that you would take the next step of going to find a school or a program to join for training. So at that point you were a hot target market for coaching schools because you knew you had a problem and you were ready to pay money to solve it, AKA get your coach training.

So that's a great example of a hot target market. Okay. So the third thing I want to share with you of where I went wrong with my life coaching business was that I just created content - so free downloads, social media posts, free webinars, things like that - based on topics I thought were a good idea to talk about. And although I do very much believe in creating content that aligns with you as a person and as, and as a coach, I also believe in creating content first that your potential clients actually want, because if they don't want or need to see it, then you can't really create a business out of creating content that you just want to create.

I talk more about how to validate your ideas in this blog, Three Ways to Guarantee a Profitable Niche.

Let’s wrap this up so that you can go out there and get yourself a bunch of paying clients for your life coaching business.

Here's what I suggest:

1) Create a sellable message. It has to be a message that somebody's willing to pay money for, for that coaching solution, not just something that they find interesting, and then leave it there.

2) Find yourself a hot target market. So people who already know that they need or want your services to solve a big problem they're having.

3) Create content that people want, not just content that you want to create.

Do you need more guidance on how to creating a message that sells for your life coaching business?  Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET.

And, if you are in the phase where you’re still trying to figure out your niche or target market, but you’re worried about narrowing it down, check out Three Proven Reasons to Niche as a Life Coach.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Life Coaches: Create a SELLABLE Offer

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Want to know how to create coaching services that sell?

There’s a big difference between creating a coaching package and creating a coaching package that sells. And when you’re first starting out, your main focus will be how to get clients as a life coach. 

It can be confusing at first to know what to include in a coaching package that will attract the most coaching clients. But, with my 3 steps, you’ll see how to create an irresistible offer that helps you get your first life coaching client and continue to get you paying clients. 

The first step for life coaches to create a sellable offer is to know what problem your ideal client is having…

…and structure your offer to solve that specific problem. 

So, we’re not even talking here about what format your offer is in - whether it’s on Zoom, in person, a 3 month package, or a workshop.

No. Your job is to find out what your ideal clients want so much that they’re willing to pay money for, and then create a coaching offer that matches. 

So, let’s start with a comparison.

If we had a conversation or you visited my website and I said to you that I can help you get unstuck as a new life coach…

Do you know exactly what I mean by that? 

No. You may have your own current version of feeling stuck, but it’s very vague and I’m not speaking directly to the specific problem you need to solve.

Now, if I said to you something like, For coaches that have finished their training, there can be a gap between coaching for practice with no paying clients to finding meaningful clients that pay. 

So, I help life coaches get their first paying clients. 

Now - do you see the difference? 

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Comment below and let me know which option you think is more clear and sellable? Is it helping life coaches get unstuck or helping life coaches find their first paying clients?

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Once you’ve identified the biggest problem your ideal clients need to solve, then to create a sellable offer.

Then, you want to break down and list the smaller problems associated with that large problem.

So, for example. If you’re that life coach who has finished training, has had practice clients and needs to get paying clients and grow your life coaching business, you probably are also experiencing these smaller problems:

• You fumble over your words when you introduce yourself as a life coach. 

• You’ve heard that it’s important to niche down and find a target market, but this whole process just confuses you and you can’t make up your mind what to choose.

• You know you need a website to grow your business, but when you think about creating one or hiring someone to do it, you feel so confused about what copy you should write.

• You’re nervous  about pricing.  Of course you’d like to get paying clients but that also means picking what to charge and confidently telling someone that’s your price.

• You know you’re meant to be a life coach and help people, but you’ve never had to sell yourself before and you’re totally freaked out by the idea of putting yourself out there. 

So, my ideal client would read or hear this list of smaller issues and identify with several of them. If we were having a conversation, they would be nodding like “yep, that’s me” - and when you can explain in that kind of detail the smaller problems that contribute to the larger problem they need to solve, that my friend makes a sellable offer. 

The third step here to create a sellable offer is to show the before and after of what working with you looks like.

Show what they are struggling with before they work with you and what their life could look like after they work with you and achieve their results. 

So, let’s go back to the examples I mentioned earlier - the smaller problems.

Before: 

• You fumble over your words when you introduce yourself as a life coach. 

After: 

• You feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a life coach and you’re so clear with your message that people understand exactly what you do and want to introduce you to potential clients. 

Before:

• You’ve heard that it’s important to niche down and find a target market, but this whole process just confuses you and you can’t make up your mind what to choose.

After:

• You uncover a profitable target market that you love to work with.  You’re sticking with it and it’s helped you get your first client!

Before:

• You know you need a website to grow your business, but when you think about creating one or hiring someone to do it, you feel so confused about what copy you should write on it. 

After:

• Know exactly what to put on your website so potential clients know right away how you can help them and you invite them into your world.  

Before:

• You’re nervous  about pricing.  Of course you’d like to get paying clients but that also means picking what to charge and confidently telling someone that’s your price.

After:

• You know exactly what you’ll charge your first or next client. You’re feeling more confident than ever with making sales offers to potential clients. 

Before: 

• You know you’re meant to be a life coach and help people, but you’ve never had to sell yourself before and you’re totally freaked out by the idea of putting yourself out there. 

After:

• You’ve gotten your first few paying coaching clients! You’re feeling confident about your skills and ability to help them and you’ve started to market yourself in a way that feels in alignment and authentic for you. 

Now, let’s wrap up with a little recap of the three absolute musts for you to create a sellable offer as a life coach:

• You need to know the main problem your ideal client is having and start your offer with that solution.

• You need to know the smaller problems your ideal client is having related to that main problem and build that language into your offer.

• You need to show before and after language. Paint the picture of what it’s like once someone works with you, the outcome of the problems you’ll help them solve.

Do you need more guidance on how to create a sellable offer? It’s so much easier when you have a clear message and a target market that wants to buy! Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET.

And, if you want to know how to find out what your ideal clients want, you can click right here to check out How to Stand Out as a Life Coach to Get Clients.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

3 PROVEN Reasons to NICHE as a Life Coach

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Wondering if you should niche down for your life coaching business?

If you've been trying to decide if niching down is right for you, today I'm sharing three proven reasons to niche down as a life coach. My first coaching business failed, but my second business was fully booked within just two months. I'm excited to share what I've learned so that you don't make the same mistakes and you can have a successful coaching business the first time.

First, if you're newer to the coaching world, newer to online business, you might still be confused about what is a niche or a niche, whatever you choose to call it. A niche is basically the problem that you help people solve. 

And then your target market is the specific group of people that you help solve that problem. Now, each of these three reasons I'm sharing today are based on real world examples of what worked for my own coaching business.

Reason number one why to find your niche as a life coach name: repetition and recognition.

When you become known for helping people solve a specific problem (AKA your niche) within a smaller pool of people (AKA your target market), people within that group will start experiencing your coaching and they will start to enjoy the outcome that you've helped them achieve. And when that happens, they're going to talk about it. They're going to talk about you and how you help them. Now let's take it one step further. If you are in communities together - that smaller group of people, then there are people, other people are going to start seeing your name pop up. 

And if you have multiple niches or multiple target markets, it's going to be harder for your name to pop up and to be recognizable. So, when you're first growing your life coaching business, a vital reason to niche down is so that you get name repetition and recognition so you become the go-to person.

I experienced this in my business pretty much by accident. I didn't know until later it was actually a solid marketing strategy. I was in life coach training with Martha Beck in 2016. And through the people I met through that training, I became friends with a lot of different coaches on Facebook. And then there were also Facebook groups in different communities that we were in together as well.

So I had this group of people that were used to seeing my name repetitively. So when my name was being mentioned, or if I was reaching out to them directly, they were familiar with it me and they were more open to having a conversation with me.

And then at some point when the time is right after we could have a conversation, I made an offer for them to work with me. Without name recognition and repetition, it would be much harder to start that initial conversation with the potential client.

And this is one of the ways that I was able to have a fully booked business within two months.

The second reason to find your coaching niche is referrals.

Referrals are one of the best ways to grow your coaching business because in order to buy your services, your potential clients need to trust you, and they need to trust that you can help get them the outcome they're desiring.

And when a friend or colleague recommends you, it gives you instant trust and authority for that potential client. You get to cut to the front of the line for building the know, like and trust factor. 

And now that potential client is more likely to hire you quicker than if you hadn't been referred. This was the other reason that I was able to build my business so quickly. I had an influencer or connector who liked my work. And whenever people would ask who she suggests, she would mention my name. So by the time that I would get on an intro or sales call with this potential new client to see if I could help them, they already wanted to say yes to working with me because they have, they were referred by someone they trusted.

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With this example of niching and getting referrals and name recognition, I want to hear from you, have you had the experience where you hired someone, maybe it was a plumber, a landscaper, a lawyer, or a coach, and you made the hire based on a referral or recommendation from a friend or colleague? 

Let me know in the comments below if you have ever had the experience where you hired somebody, that was like an easy decision, an easy yes because somebody else recommended them.

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The third reason why to niche down for your life coaching business:

Specificity. Say that three times fast. No, just kidding. Here's what I mean. When you're starting and working on your coaching business, there will be a stage when you're talking to a lot of people, you'll be practicing how to talk about your work and trying to feel people out for their responses. And when you can talk about a specific niche or a problem that you solve, it's easier to communicate the value of your coaching work.

So for example, if I'm a coach who hasn't yet niched down and I'm either attending a networking event or maybe chatting it up with somebody in the line at Starbucks, and maybe we get to chatting about what we do for work. And so I would lead with, oh, I'm a life coach.

And now this person you're talking to is probably thinking one of two things either. What does a life coach really do? Or they might be thinking about an experience they heard from somebody they know that had a life coach or maybe something they read on the internet about a life coach, whatever information they've seen so far about a life coach. They're probably bringing that into their minds while they're having the conversation with you.

And neither of those paths are the easier route to get you a new client. But what if you said something like, oh, I'm a life coach. I help moms stop yelling at their kids. That niche is so specific. It does not need anymore explanation. It is crystal clear. And if the person you're talking to happens to be a mom who feels bad when she yells at her kids, now you're having a conversation with a potential client interested in your niche.

So let's do a quick recap of the three proven reasons to niche as a life coach

Name recognition and repetition, so you become the go-to person in your niche. Referrals, so you have instant trust for helping people solve the problem in your niche. And specificity, so when you introduce yourself as a coach in your niche, a potential client knows exactly how you can help them.

Do you need more guidance on how to choose the right coaching niche? I know it's confusing. Click below to download my free guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET where I share a simple way to explore a niche for your life coaching business.

Also, if you’re wondering what to choose for your life coaching niche? Click here to check out how to guarantee a profitable niche for your life coaching business.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Life Coaches: 3 Ways to GUARANTEE a Profitable Niche

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Are you starting your life coaching business but not sure what niche to choose that will be profitable?

Today I'm sharing how to guarantee a profitable niche for your life coaching business! My first coaching business failed, but my second business was fully booked within two months. I'm excited to share what I learned so you don't make the same mistakes and you can have a successful coaching business the first time.

Okay, so there are three awesome ways I’m sharing today that you can use to guarantee a profitable niche for your life coaching business.

#1 Don’t reinvent the wheel.

If you’re feeling inspired to create a new program, package, workshop or course, you can absolutely create something new - new in the way you teach it. But what I don’t suggest is trying to create a completely new idea that hasn’t yet been sold.

Why? Because it will likely take you longer to grow your business. And my opinion is that the more friction you encounter during this start up phase, the lower your chance is of succeeding in business. 

So, here’s the deal. If you are creating something that people don’t yet understand or don’t yet know about, you’ll first have to educate them on what it is.  This means you’ll have an extra obstacle to overcome before your potential clients can even begin to understand how you can help them. This will make whatever you have, harder to sell.  Period. 

So, to help you guarantee a profitable niche for your life coaching business, I suggest first starting with areas and problems that are already proven to be profitable. 

#2 Do a validation of your potential niche (or problem you solve) online.

I first learned this process from digital marketer, Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com. So, one example of a quick validation online would be to check out blogs about a potential niche. On blogs you can see what topics and problems bloggers are creating and what their community is responding to. 

To do this kind of search, in a blank google search type the word Blog and then your keyword.

Your keyword will be a topic related to your potential niche. 

Then, you can review the responses that come up and start seeing what might be a profitable niche for you.

Another way to do a quick validation online is to check amazon book sales. Check for any hot or bestselling books in your potential niches (and you can also see what people are saying about that book in the review comments).

And I’ll mention one more way to validate your niche online. When you have a problem - where do you go to search for how to solve that problem?

Google of course! Just like from Pat’s tip earlier in this video. 

And just think about this. Billions of people around the world are typing the problems they are looking to solve right into that tiny search bar. 

And you can get your hands on that data as well and use that to validate a profitable niche - which is something I show my clients how to do in my programs. 

So, the bottom line here is that you are looking for a niche that exists already, the problems people are already looking for help with and paying money to solve.

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Okay, don’t worry - I’m not going to ask you what’s in your own google search history, but I’d love to hear…

What was the last online training, course or workshop you bought to help you learn more about growing your life coaching business? Share in the comments below! I’d love to see what you’re learning. 

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#3 Let people tell you what they want.

One of the processes I teach my clients is to connect with real people who are experiencing the challenges with their potential niche. By talking to these people, you can ask them what they most want help with and what format would be most helpful for them to receive it in. 

So, instead of assuming what people want - you’ll let those people tell you exactly what they want.

Simple? Effective? Awesome? Yes, Yes, Yes!

So, let’s recap how to guarantee a profitable niche. 

First, don’t reinvent the wheel. Create something in a niche that’s already selling. 

Second, Do a validation of your potential niche online.

Third, Let the people in a niche tell you what they want.

And here’s the deal. 

I know when you’re just starting out with your life coaching business, it can be really confusing to decide what direction to go with for your niche. 

You might worry about choosing the wrong one. Or you might have so many ideas that it’s hard to narrow down.  My best advice is to think of it all as practice. You’re on a business building journey and you will get there. Don’t give up!

Do you want more guidance on how to guarantee a profitable niche? It's so much easier when you have a clear message itself and a hot market. Click below to download my guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

Life coach website: Write THIS on your home page

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Not sure what to put on your homepage?

Today, I’m sharing the four most important things to put on your homepage as a life coach.

My first coaching business failed, but my second business was fully booked within two months. So I'm excited to share what I learned with you so you can have a successful coaching business the first time. So let's dive in.

#1 As a life coach, the first thing you want your website visitors to know is how you can help them.

What specific problem can you help them solve? I suggest taking your coaching solution, getting it as clear, as concise, as sellable as possible and using that as the header on your homepage. 

But here's the tricky part to this.

You might not yet know what your coaching solution is. It's going to take practice. And if you're still in that space of really trying to figure it out, after this video, you can check out my other video, how to stand out as a life coach to get more clients and it goes into detail about how you can uncover a coaching solution for yourself.

#2 Use your ideal client’s words on your homepage to describe their problem in more detail.

Once you have your potential clients on your website, they're interested and they're attracted because they're experiencing the problem that you help solve. Then you want to make sure you use their words on your homepage that describes their problem in more detail. One tendency we have as coaches writing for our homepage is to talk about things like empowerment or our own, the details about our own personal journey, or sometimes a lot about the training that we have as coaches, but your homepage is not the best place for that. 

It's really important to take the time to figure out how your potential clients talk about this problem. And then you can include it as a simple paragraph below your header. This will make your clients see that you really get them, and it makes you look like a mind reader when your potential clients think you get them.  That helps build trust, and it helps them want to take the next step to working with you.

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And since we're talking about websites, comment below, and let me know where you're at with your life coaching website? Are you:

A: just starting to think about it and research it.

B: you've set up your own website, but you're either confused about what to write on it or you've written something and you don't really like it.

C: you hired a firm to create your website for you, or

D: something else

Let me know in the comments below.

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#3 The next thing you want to include on your homepage is testimonials from happy clients.

Now here's the secret to testimonials. There are strong ones and there are weak ones. You want strong ones. So, to show the difference, here's an example of a weak testimonial. If you used my business, as an example, “Nikki was so helpful. She's really great at listening and really helped me through. She's great at holding space for people while they're working on their life coaching business”.

So this is a nice testimonial, very kind words, but it's weak. Am I in the business of providing listening services? Although that's certainly a big part of my work, it's not the main thing and holding space for the work and people's dreams is definitely a part of my business too. But really my work is about helping coaches uncover their profitable target market. So that's what I want my testimonials to highlight.

So here's an example of a strong testimonial. “Nikki helped me find a profitable target market for my coaching business. I've been able to get my first clients through her process. Plus we finished my website copy. I feel so much more confident about who I'm here to serve and that they're willing to pay for my services.”

So that kind of testimonial directly matches and supports the work that I do. And the problem I help coaches solve. Now, here's the challenge. You might not have these kinds of strong testimonials quite yet. If you are in the space where you're practicing or still trying to uncover your coaching solution, you might not have worked with enough people yet to collect these kinds of testimonials.

It's something that will come over time. So for now, you can exclude them, use what you do have and come back and update them with strong testimonials that support your coaching solution later on.

#4 Give them a path to follow to work with you.

Now that your website reinforces that you can help them solve their problem, that you are the one who totally gets the details of the problem they're having and you've demonstrated authority and credibility through your strong testimonials. Next, you want to give them a path to follow to work with you.

You'll do this by adding a CTA or a call to action to your website. This call to action can be a link in text, a button, or even just instructions like email me here so they know what to do next.  But you are not just going to put this call to action in one place on your homepage. I suggest putting the call to action on at least three different places on your homepage.

Some great examples could be right below your header in or under the paragraph where you go into more detail about the problem you help solve. And then again, after the testimonials, you want to make it crystal clear what next step you want your website visitors, your potential clients to take next.

Now, if you're not sure what next step you want them to take. First, I suggest picking something that's really easy and doesn't require a lot of setup on your end. So this could be a link to your scheduling system like Calendly or Acuity, or a link to your email address to invite them to chat, or maybe eventually a link to join your free Facebook community or wherever you hang out online.

You really just want it to be so clear at the next step they should take. It should be like all signs are pointing for me to do this next thing.

So let's recap the four most important things you want on the homepage for your life coaching website.

• the problem you solve

• some additional details about the problem you solve using their words

• strong testimonials that highlight and support your coaching solution

• an easy path to follow to show your potential clients what you want them to do next

All of these tips will help you avoid fluff and using confusing language so that your website, your homepage can be a place that helps you get more clients. 

Do you need more guidance on how to figure out what to write on your homepage? It's so much easier when you have a clear message and a defined target market.

Click on the link below to download my free guide, 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE AND MARKET. It's specifically made for life coaches like you. And in this guide, I also share my secret messaging weapon so you can make sure you have a sellable message on your website that can help you grow your life coaching business.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.

How to stand out as a life coach to get clients

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Trying to get coaching clients?

Today I'm sharing how to stand out as a life coach so you can get more clients! My first coaching business failed, but my second business was fully booked within two months. I'm excited to share what I learned so you don't make the same mistakes and you can have a successful coaching business the first time.

When you're done with life coach training and you're starting your business, a lot of coaches can struggle with explaining what it is that they do as a coach. They might use coachy phrases like I help heart centered women feel more empowered in life, and here's the deal. You just finished coach training. 

So you've been given this incredible gift and you're excited and you're just trying to communicate to people, the kind of transformation they can have. Just like you probably went through a major transformation with your coach training. So really you're trying to convey to others just how powerful coaching can be and what they can experience as a result of coaching.

You want it to be infectious, you really want them to experience some kind of transformation just like you did.

And I totally get that.

Unfortunately, other people don't really know what you mean when you say something like I help heart centered women empower themselves to have a better life.

Our human mind needs specifics. Without specifics, we get confused. And if people get confused about what it is you can help them with, they are less likely to buy your services.

So here's what you can do to stand out as a life coach, to get more clients. 

Number one: Talk about your coaching in terms of a specific solution or outcome.

So using the example earlier, instead of helping women feel more empowered in life, find a specific area that you'd like to help them feel more empowered in. Maybe they want to have more confidence at work so they can get their next promotion. That's pretty empowering.

Maybe they want to start dating again after divorce. Also very empowering. You can have fun with this and really think of a list of coaching solutions that you'd like to provide based on things you would love to help people with or experiences that you have had and succeeded with on your own. Also, by thinking about what kind of connection you want to have with what kind of people.

Number two: Once you have a coaching solution in mind, you're going to go out and validate it.

That means you're not just going to assume people want this solution or that it's awesome. 

You're going to go out and prove it. So you'll go looking to verify that people are actually already buying that solution. This sounds really simple, but it is a very important step because you could create something brand new and then go out to the market and try to sell it, and without knowing for sure that people want to buy it, it's harder to sell.

It's so much easier to sell a solution that you already know people want to buy. Speaking of creating something that people didn't want to buy, well only a few people wanted to buy! When I was first starting my coaching business, I wanted to create an eBook for moms and I wanted it to be around the holidays. I really didn't have many clients at this point in time and I dedicated tons of hours, tons of resources. 

I hired an editor and was very official with it. I did all these things and I created this eBook and it was a really great eBook according to me! What I didn't do though, was validate the idea. I didn't go out to the market to see the eBook that I was choosing to create, which was how to help moms was stressed in the holidays. There was a very, very, very small market for people that wanted such a book.

I sold a few copies on Amazon. I sold a few copies to my community and that was it. Not enough at all to even break even with the costs and definitely not with my time and that could've been avoided if I would have verified my idea first.

When you go out there to look and verify, don't get caught up in how much it's selling for who's selling it.  Just find good examples of something being sold that's similar to your coaching solution because even if there are other coaches that are selling it, that doesn't mean that you can't sell it successfully. And also what you deliver is going to be different based on your target market, your personality and also where you trained for life coaching.

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And speaking of life coach training, I'd love to know where you got your life coach training. So comment below and let me know. I was a 2016 Martha Beck graduate. So I'd love to hear where you went to get your training as well.

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Number three: Practice it on real people. 

Now that you have picked a coaching solution, you've gone out there and validated that it's a sellable idea. Next thing you're going to do is practice it, wait for it. It's kind of scary. Practice it on real people. 

Now this is going to be different than practicing with your coach cadets or the people that you met in your coach training and you partnered up with to practice because you are looking for people that have this specific problem so that you can practice your coaching solution with them. Now here's where you might get stuck. That's really scary.

You're definitely taking another step out there, right out there as an in scary land of doing the thing. But I want you to try to take some of the pressure off of yourself and really stop thinking about making it hard, making it a big deal, and rather just think about it in terms of connecting with new people. So, you don't even have to think about it in terms of trying to sell your coaching services at this point, but just rather that getting used to using the language that those clients would use, getting comfortable testing out, if you like working with this kind of person and what tools you, you want to practice to help bring this solution to that person.

And it's really just a way to gain valuable experience and make sure that you're in the right lane for your coaching solution.

And that's how you stand out as a life coach.

Because if you are a life coach out there with generic words or confusing words for your potential clients, you will not stand out.

They won't understand what you're saying, which means they won't pay attention. But if you can offer a clear solution using specific language that your clients would, that your potential clients would use, that is how you stand out.

So you walk by a store, your problem is listed. The solution is there and your eyes hone right in on it. And you're like, yes, that's what I need. 

You'll stand out because you're offering a specific coaching solution, your message won't be confusing, you've validated that your coaching solution is sellable and you'll practice your coaching skills and that solution on people that are actually having the problem, which means you'll get practice, but you'll also gain confidence and probably some referrals along the way too.

Do you want more guidance on how to stand out and get more coaching clients? It's so much easier when you have a clear message itself and a hot market. Click below to download my guide 7 STEPS TO GUARANTEE A PROFITABLE MESSAGE & MARKET.

FREE GUIDE!

• Feel confident when you introduce yourself to people as a coach.

• Know exactly what to put on your website so clients want to work with you.

• Uncover a profitable target market you love to work with.

• Figure out what to charge your first or next client.

• Learn how to work through the fear of putting yourself out there and marketing.