Welcome back to the podcast. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous for this episode because I'm gonna talk about some things that are a little controversial, not controversial in like, people might not like this, but people might not resonate. And so I wanted to give a little, I guess FairWarning.
This podcast is gonna resonate most with coaches who have a broad niche or identify as a general coach. If you have a super clearly, defined niche, this probably isn't for you. I'm gonna be really honest. Because the title of this episode says, I called it If You Love One-on-One Coaching, You Are the Niche.
And so this is more of the kind of person who really loves going deep with their clients, who, like I said, identifies more as a general coach than a super, defined niche or niche, however you wanna say it. And I'm not against niche-ing down. I think that it can be really powerful, especially for groups.
You guys know I run groups. And I always niche down for a group, so I know the kind of person that I want in there. But for one-on-one, and this is specifically for coaches who love one-on-one, who wanna keep one-on-one, and resonate more with the book, the Prosperous Coach, who like having high level, high value, high ticket, high touch points with their clients.
Maybe you only work with a handful of one-on-one clients like me and you love it. This episode is for you. And the reason that I wanted to create it is because I've had lots of conversations recently with private clients, with clients in the Miracle Mind, about the power of general coaching, but there's this myth that is described in the marketplace where like the riches are in the niches.
Like you've probably heard that. I've heard that. I've been taught that. And I wanna put a comma, for certain people. The riches are in the niches for certain people. Or the riches are in the niches for certain kinds of offers.
And this is just really powerful to know. I don't think everyone should scale their business, like infinitely scale. We're talking about like these massive communities of people, or massive groups. They're not bad. Like I have nothing against them except sometimes people think that they want them because that's what was modeled to them and they haven't critically thought through, do I want this business model?
Is this the work that I love? And so you're really gonna love this episode one, if you love coaching, if you want your own coaching business, if you identify as a general coach or you really like that, high level coaching where you can coach on anything given the client. That's how I see my one-on-one coaching.
When I work with a private client one-on-one, the kind of coaching can vary, right? One week we're talking about money mindset. The next week we're talking about motherhood. The next week we're talking about marriage. The next week we were talking about their launch. I really become the person in their corner and I am just their coach. While on Instagram, I might have niched down and you know, I speak mostly to coaches or people with an online service business. My one-on-one is not like that, and I wanted to speak to that because this isn't something that I've really exposed or talked about a lot in detail.
But I wanted to shine a light on it because this is a valid career. And if you are a general coach or you love general coaching and niche-ing has always felt constrictive to you, this is gonna be a really powerful episode. Like I said, if you do have a clearly defined niche and you love it, this probably isn't the episode for you, and that's okay.
I'll see you in another one. Because I think this misconception is that we have to niche down in order to make money or to attract our clients, and I think that works in a certain way if you think of your business like a funnel, which funnels are great for certain things. For one-on-one, I've always taught that one-on-one is built off of relationships and conversations, and I learned this through obviously the book, the Prosperous Coach, which I'll reference a lot cuz I love it.
But also just my own experience. Like when I've signed one-on-one clients at T-Ball game. I've signed one-on-one clients from speaking at workshops. I've signed one-on-one clients from Instagram for masterclasses from people who have been in my groups, from word of mouth, and referrals. And there's not one way that I sign private clients, but I will say the principle that is true is that I always sign clients based on the relationship that I've created with that person.
So it's not really like a funnel based on how we teach it in like online business, right? It's not like they opt in and read my emails and then want to work with me one-on-one. It's a relationship that I build over time. And a funnel is one way to build a relationship, but there are many ways to build relationships.
So if you're a coach who doesn't love email marketing, this is good news. If you're a coach who doesn't love creating content, this is good news because I really feel like you can decide how to build relationships with people no matter what method you choose or what context you choose. Either that's through content or conversations, whether that's through your website or going to events.
I don't think it matters. The details of how you sign clients. I think the principles behind how you sign clients is gonna be very personal. And so I don't think a niche is required. In fact, there's a book that I read and I recommend you read, it's called The Millionaire Messenger by Brennan Burchard.
It's kind of an older book now, but he gives the history of where the niche idea came from and he gives us example of a vacuum and how in mass marketing, you have to choose a niche so you know what message to present to the person and then you target them so that the ROI on the marketing actually makes sense.
So if I was gonna sell a vacuum to a stay-at-home mom, the messaging would be different then selling a vacuum to someone at a corporate office. The imagery's gonna look different. The message behind why they need a vacuum is gonna look different and all of it, which it creates the need for a niche.
And you're gonna notice I go back and forth between niche and niche very intentionally because I think both work. Anyway, so I think when we apply this to coaching, this is very powerful information. The way that I talk about coaching depends on who I'm talking to. If I talk to you guys, and most of you guys are coaches, I can say things like a mini-session or consult and you get it.
I can say things like I Voxer my clients and most coaches understand what I'm talking about. Or limiting beliefs, upper limits. Some of the coachy talk that we use with each other. I can use to explain how coaching works, but if I'm talking to someone who has never been coached before or is new to coaching, I'm not gonna use those words, I'm gonna try to give them the experience of coaching.
And so I wanna tell a story about one of my clients I worked with. She was a mom. My daughter was playing T-Ball and her son was playing T-ball and we were talking at our T-ball game. And we just got started talking about what we each do. And she was a real estate agent and I told her I was a coach and she was interested in what I was doing.
I was interested in what she was doing, and I shared the concept of like an upper limit with her and self-concept because she wanted to start selling luxury, real estate. And anyway, the only reason I'm even telling you this story is because you probably didn't even know that I coached real estate agents, and that's okay.
Because my private coaching is general. What I do in my groups is for coaches, I think of like mentorship for coaches and that's why my content is targeted towards that because that's where I want you guys to kind of come into my world is into my groups. Not that we can't work together one-on-one.
Of course. If you're looking for a one-on-one coach, send me an email, or, you know, send me a DM on Instagram. But the point of this podcast to me is to help coaches build their business in a way that feels good to them, in a way that helps them be profitable, in a way that is in integrity. But my one-on-one coaching offer, it depends on who I'm talking to.
And that sounds hard to teach and it is. And I think this is why most people teach to niche down because it's easier to explain how to create a business this way. One-on-one coaching, the way that Rich Lipman teaches it, the way that I resonate with, is especially for the general coach who like has multi multifaceted, right?
Like lots of different interests, lots of different passions, lots of different things that they like to talk about and study, like I do. This podcast is for you. You are who I'm thinking of when I've made this podcast episode. Specifically people who I've talked to in the last few weeks about being a general coach, cough cough, you know who you are. Hopefully you're listening to this episode.
I think there's this almost like superstition that if you don't itch down, you can't be successful. But I want to share that there's this whole world of general coaches. They're probably not on Instagram because they don't have huge followings because they're not trying to target a certain person.
They work privately with a small handful of clients, maybe high ticket, but maybe not. Maybe high ticket doesn't resonate with you. I don't think it matters. The principle behind it is that you need a handful of clients and they can maybe fall in certain psychographics, and I wanna talk about psychographics. The way that they think might be similar, but they don't necessarily have a unified niche.
It's not stay-at-home moms who want to lose weight. The psychographics is how they think, right? It's someone who wants to grow. It's someone who wants the next level in life. It's someone who understands, they want their blind spots to be looked at. It's someone who wants, you know, maybe higher levels of success or performance.
It's someone who wants to feel better, to have more joy, to have more money, to have more, right? They're working on growing in abundance, and they know that they need support. That's a psychographic. That is not a niche. And so I think if you're a general coach, that's where you have to go is like, what do my ideal clients think about? How do they think?
What do they want out of life? That's the question. It's not how do I niche down? And I think that this is a more advanced topic because I think it's really easy to teach how to sign clients if you have a niche, right? You talk about their problems, you talk about what they want, you talk about how coaching bridges the gap.
Right, that's marketing. But when one-on-one coaching, especially the kind that I'm describing in this podcast episode, where it's more relationship based. It's complicated, right? It depends on who I'm talking to. It depends on my stage in business. It depends on where they're at in their life in business. And how I can fit into their life, if I can at all.
And that is relative. It is unique. It has to do with our relationship. How long has this person known me? Do they know what coaching is? Do they know my style of coaching? Do they like my style of coaching? Do they trust me? Do I have a, you know, a history of getting people results? Am I who I say I am?
Like those kinds of things come into question. And this is where I love this is cuz like, this is what blew my mind. When I started, I read the Prosperous coach and I had heard this name, Steve Hardison thrown around, like people have referred to him. Steve Chandler referred to him and I was like, who is Steve Hardison?
And so I like looked him up on Google and I was like, oh my gosh. This guy charges $200,000 for one-on-one coaching. I've never heard of him. And at the time, that business model really landed with me. It still does. I still operate one-on-one this way, where it's relationship based. I can coach anyone.
He calls himself the ultimate coach, and I was like, I resonate with that because he coaches people on everything. And if you were to look at my bookshelf, I read about everything. I read about spirituality, I read about habits, I read about business, I read about money. I read about the quantum field. I read about self-concept and upper limits.
I read about money management and direct response marketing. I read about like the stoics. I read, I mean I just like, I'm all over the place and that's why I love one-on-one coaching is because I can use my arsenal of information and experience and coaching savviness at any given point during a client conversation so that it's relevant and useful for the client at hand no matter what the topic is, no matter what the problem is.
No matter what my client wants to create, I feel like I can be of service to them because I have such broad knowledge. And I think there's this idea that specialists make more money. And I wanna really challenge that especially if one on one coaching, I think generalists can make more money if you're a powerful coach.
And like I said, this is kind of like counterintuitive advice, in a counterintuitive way of looking at things. And so I wanted to just share this because I've coached, and specifically mentored, many coaches who struggle with the concept of a very narrow niche, right? And they like going broad, but they're afraid that they're not gonna be successful.
And I'm like, there's a whole world of coaches who are making money as general coaches. And no one's talking about it because they build their business word of mouth, renewal and referral only, and you don't know who they are. And so in my opinion, more people need to know that this is a valid career.
Not even career, like a valid way to grow a coaching business. You don't have to do it this certain way, which like a clear, defined niche. And they have like, the value ladder and I teach the value ladder if you want a different kind of business model. And so that's why I wanna share, like I have two business models.
Actually, my friend, Mark Butler, he has a great podcast that I recommend you go check out if you're a coach called The Beautiful Business. It's all about this conversation about basically just one-on-one coaching without a niche and just growing word of mouth and relationship based and I really love it.
So definitely took it out. But he has this distinction between training businesses and coaching businesses. I have both. I have a training business where I teach coaches how to build their business in the Matrix, word of mouth, and where I help them create content, and work on their own beliefs and mindset about success, and money, and boundaries with clients, and making powerful decisions about their offer, and pricing, and building their own business model that feels good to them, and being in integrity, and all these things. And then I have one-on-one coaching, which is like no rules.
I help people do lots of different things and I mostly talk about my niche in my quote training business, because that's who I want to help in those offers. So like if you're listening to this podcast, you'd probably love The Matrix. That's very intentional. Right? But that's a very different business model than when I'm at T-Ball talking to a real estate agent who ends up working with me one-on-one.
And I don't talk about that because it's not relevant to you, until now, until I'm piercing the veil of like what's available to you. And I think more people need to know that this is available because one-on-one is about relationships with the person that you're talking to and if you're a good fit to be their coach.
This is why when people ask me like, are you a life coach or a business coach or, and only coaches ask me that question, no one in real life asks me like, what kind of coach are you? But coaches will ask me what kind of coach I am, and I don't really resonate with any word that comes before coach because I just see myself as a coach.
And this is exactly the conversation that we're having right now. If you don't have a niche, I'm not a business coach or a life coach. I am so-and-so's coach, right? And depending on what my client in front of me needs, that is how I coach them. And so there's this line, I think it's from the book, the Ultimate Coach. I mentioned his name, Steve Hardison.
Just who he is in the world has inspired me a lot because he has this quote that's like when people ask him, how many clients do you have? His answer is one, the one I'm with. How many clients do you have? One. The one I'm with. That is a general coach, and there are people who have built amazing businesses who are anonymous.
Who are successful in thriving doing this, and they're not Instagram influencers. They're not these huge names because that's a different business model. It's not bad, it's just different. And so I wanted to give you this information because some of you don't want a huge business. You just wanna coach.
And whether you charge high ticket or not, I think you can decide pricing that makes sense for your goals and experience and where you're at in business. I think you can have a beautiful, anonymous, successful, word of mouth coaching business one-on-one. And I know for me that's like a huge part of what I do.
I have this one-on-one that is mostly anonymous. It's mostly relationship based. I don't talk about my one-on-one a ton anymore because I have clients right now that I love serving and my focus is growing this other part of my business. Which is more of like the training side, my groups. So if you have a group, I think niche-ing makes sense, right?
Then you know what to put in your emails. Then you know who the group would be for and who'd get the most out of it, and the pricing, and the structure, and how you're gonna deliver results. But one-on-one is so personal, and this is why I like to say like you are the niche.
Because one-on-one, it just depends on the person in front of you and what they're struggling with and what they're wanting to create and how it lines up with your experience, your knowledge, the clients that you've coached, the things that you've studied, and can you help them or not? And so I wanted to make that distinguisher because some of you do have groups and one-on-one, and I wanted to just offer, you don't have to run one-on-one like this, but it's a possibility that it could just be people that you meet and they want coaching.
It could be more based on their psychographics, right? What they think about what they're wanting, what they're struggling with, versus like the topic of what they're struggling with, if that makes sense. And so I also wanted to actually mention, Mark Butler differentiates between training businesses and coaching businesses. I wanted to make the distinguisher between coaching businesses and mentoring.
I see one-on-one can be both. One-on-one can be mentoring or coaching. I do both in my one-on-one, especially if I'm working with other coaches in my one-on-one. It's more of a mentorship based. An easy way to understand the difference between mentor and coach is like a coach is like, I can help you blank.
A mentor would say, here's how I created blank. And so I think both are valuable, especially for my clients who are coaches themselves, I'll share a lot of stories and anecdotes to help give context to their decisions or what they're processing or what they're going through. But if I have a client, like I mentioned earlier, like a real estate agent client, that's not necessarily useful for her.
So I'm just pure coaching. Or clients who have had more success than me in business. They don't need me to tell them what to do in their business. They need me to show them their blind spots. And that's a different kind of relationship and a different kind of part of like advice and way that I challenge their thinking than someone who I mentor.
And so I think it's valuable for you to understand that you can do both. I just am very clear about what I can do based on the client at hand. And so when I think of mentoring, I think of the Matrix where it's like the Matrix is full of coaches who want to build their business one-on-one or group, like small group.
And I help them make decisions about their offer and their pricing. I can tell stories about when I struggled or how I had to make those kinds of decisions. I can share ways of thinking about things and give them frameworks. With my one-on-one clients, it's more like challenging their thoughts about themselves, their self-concept.
It's identifying their blind spots, right? Two very different experiences. But I don't make one less than the other. Like this is not me dissing group or mentorship or training businesses. I just wanted to speak to this one-on-one coaching model that I don't think gets enough credit because a lot of people do this very successfully, but you probably just don't know them.
They're not famous, right? They're not celebrities, but it's still a valid way to grow a business and to make money and do your work in the world. And so I wanted to speak to it and so I just have some questions for you. If you do resonate with the general coaching model where it's like, I work with a handful of clients.
I build my business, word of mouth only. I don't really have a defined niche for 101. That's who I'm speaking to in this episode. Here are some questions for you to just get your wheels turning, because you are the niche. What have you overcome in your life that you feel confident that you could help someone else overcome with your coaching?
What results have you gotten other clients? What results have you gotten yourself? What's your story? If I were to sit down with you. And you and I just were chatting in my office for three hours, and I asked you like, tell me the story of your life. What is your story? And what places in your story can you identify that like this could help someone else? And not into a niche, just general life for other people.
What could you help them with? Cuz even general coaching has different flavors, right? So like my flavor of general coaching is entrepreneurial. Not that I only coach the entrepreneur part of things like the business side of things, but I think the people who resonate with my kind of coaching are building something. And they want coaching about their marriage, and they want coaching about money mindset, and they want coaching about leadership, and they want coaching on abundance.
Things like that. But the flavor is entrepreneurship. And I know other coaches who, their flavor is more like mindfulness. So they coach in general, but they coach on like the mindful living, mindful eating, mindful body movement, mindful marriage, mindful parenting or homeschooling or you know, things like that.
But I would say it's still general coaching, but there's like a flavor. And so this is what we're looking for is like, what's your flavor of general coaching? What do you love is another way to figure this out. I'm not searching for an answer. Just what do you love? What's on your bookshelf?
What books do you read is a really good indicator about the things that you probably are good at coaching on. Because that's what's in your mind and heart. So it makes you probably a really powerful coach for them because you have distinctions, stories, frameworks that are relevant to them in the moment.
And I think another thing I wanna say is that this is an evolving process. This isn't like one and done. The kind of coach I am today is not the kind of coach I was three years ago. And that's a good thing, right? It means I'm growing. And so I've outgrown some of the things that I used to talk about.
And that's good because that's my natural process. And so if you feel like I used to resonate with this kind of coaching and now I don't, that's good. It means you've grown. But one of the questions that I do think is interesting to pay attention to is like, are people asking you about? Or what comes up in conversations that you could be really useful or helpful for?
That's another indicator of your flavor of general coaching. If that doesn't resonate with you, you can toss it. I want this to be helpful to you, not something that holds you back or makes you confused. So if any part of this podcast was like, this isn't for me, toss it. You can stick to the niche and do what you've done and really, truly just commit and that's okay.
But I wanted to speak to the people who like don't totally fit into this niche idea. Or especially people who like, I don't think I want a group, I just want a one-on-one coach. Like this is for you. You can be a general coach and really think about what we talked about, like the psychographics of the kind of person that would resonate for high level one-on-one coaching, where you can coach on anything that they bring you in your sessions.
That you're not afraid of any topic, that you're not afraid to go into the depths. I think that's what makes me a powerful coach is I can meet my client at any level of depth or vulnerability. What they're afraid to talk about, I'm just there for. And I think they can feel that. And so I coach on everything. And so I consider myself a general coach for one-on-one.
I don't think I've ever said that on this podcast. Maybe I have a long time ago. But that's not necessarily why you're here, right? You are probably here to build a coaching business. And so that's often my content, and my private clients can attest to this. We talk about everything and that's how they like it.
That's why they hire me is because I just meet them where they're at in life, parenting, marriage, business, finances, money, spirituality, faith, body stuff. Like anything, I'm there for. I just am in their corner as their coach. Right? It's a relationship, not a niche. And so I wanted to share that insight because some of you, I think this will be a breath of fresh air. You don't need my permission, but sometimes it feels like that, right?
Permission to just coach the way that I coach, to build the way that I've always built, right? Just word of mouth, building relationships, talking to people, inviting them to coach. That is a business model. It's just different than what's modeled to us online. If I go to an influencer who has a membership, that's a very, very different experience of coaching than an hour long conversation with me where anything is on the table and we go deep.
I've always resonated with deep, personal relationships. I like to work with my clients for long periods of time. A lot of my clients work with me for 6, 12, 18, 24 months because we do life together. I'm just in their corner as they're growing because I grow, it's a good fit. I never want my clients to feel dependent on me.
I do believe in interdependence, right? So like, they like my coaching, they like what we do together and they're growing and so am I. So we grow together. And I think it's just a beautiful business model. And I wanted to share my thoughts about it because I think it could serve a lot of you who feel stuck trying to decide your niche or feeling like it doesn't totally fit in how you think about life and business.
Especially if you study human design. I'm a manifesting generator, and so I love learning about lots of different things. I go in and out of my passion projects and so I have a wealth of knowledge about a lot of things. And this is the other thing I wanna say.
There's this like phrase, like “Jack of all trades, master of men.” And what I love about coaching is that becoming a jack of all trades, makes me a better coach because I can use insight and knowledge that's relevant for my client. And it could be about a lot of different things and it serves them. As long as it serves the client.
I think that's the underlying truth, is this is all in service of the client getting the results that they want. This is not about the you show. This is about you being a guide for your clients, but I think it's a really great way to build a business if this kind of thinking resonates with you.
Where you like to study about a lot of different things. You like to coach on a lot of different things like. This is an incredible way of thinking about business, as a coach. So some resources for you. I would read the book the Prosperous Coach by Rich Levin and Steve Chandler. I mentioned that all the time.
I would read The Ultimate Coach written by Amy Hardison about her husband, Steve Hardison, who I mentioned in this episode. And then just a shameless plug, if you're not registered for my masterclass coming up called The Abundant Coach Success Secrets, it will be a lot of this and more, over three days. And you can just find that on my Instagram or I'm gonna link it in the show notes so that you can register for it.
It's happening on June 26th. Again, that's the Abundant Coach Success Secrets where I'm gonna talk about this and more about building a one-on-one coaching practice without needing to go viral, without needing to blow up on social media, more of like the how. So I talked about like what it means to be the niche and be a general coach, but I want to show you how to actually do this, how to build a business word of mouth.
Because I don't think you need to be an Instagram celebrity. I don't think you need to even be popular. Like I have 2000 Instagram followers and I'm a fully booked coach with a group program and a mastermind that's doing great. And I just live a life that I'm really proud of and feels good, like my business feels good and it makes the money that I want it to.
Of course there's more like, I feel like abundance is I love what it is, and I want more. And I feel like I'm in that zone. And I want more people to be in the zone where they're creating the results that they want and loving what they do as a coach. Not as a social media influencer, not as a celebrity, not even as like a content creator.
Content creation plays a role, and I'm gonna talk about this more in the masterclass, but it's not the only thing that I do right. Most of my time is spent thinking about my clients and how I can serve them because I have the clients to serve in a high level way.
And I think it's a really underrated way to have a coaching business. And I think a lot of you are gonna resonate with this. If it does resonate, let me know. I'd love to hear. If you think this will resonate with a coach that, you know, go ahead and send it their way. And again, click the link in the show notes to join the masterclass starting on June 26th, Abundant Coach Success Secrets.
All right, you guys, I hope this was helpful. I'll see you in another episode. Bye.
