How to pick a profitable coaching niche in 2024!

Hi everyone and welcome to the Business Success By Design podcast where we provide practical tips and strategies to help coaches and consultants accelerate their success and build the business to support the life that they want. I'm your host James Lawson and in today's episode we're going to talk about how do you figure out a profitable niche for your business. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to break down what we think are the three main parts.

of what makes a really profitable niche. I'm going to give you my best tips, which have worked for well over a thousand coaches and consultants at this point to help them identify their own profitable niches. So, yeah, so let's dive in. to the Business Success by Design podcast, where you'll learn everything you need to know about building a thriving business. This is in theory.

It's hardcore strategies and tactics designed to help you win. Join us as top business coaches, marketers, and business insiders pull back the curtain on what really works in building the business you want and what's just complete BS. Sit back and listen to rock star host, James Lawson. He's the one with the funny accent. And Angela Inzerillo, as they go deep, cut through the crap and get to the core of making your business work for you.

Alright guys, so listen, let's jump right into this. So here's how we're gonna do it, right? We're gonna start with the definition of an actual niche. And it's important that we understand what that definition looks like. Many people have many different things or different ideas about what a niche is. I'm gonna give you mine, alright? And I think this is the best one. So, a niche is a specialized,

profitable segment of a market. So that is three things. It's specialized but profitable segment of a market. Now, that statement gives you the exact three steps that we're going to work on and break out or unpack to help identify your own profitable niche. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to work backwards. So the first

that we're going to talk about is actually the last part of that definition which is the market. Alright so here's the thing there's a lot of advice out there on how to figure out what your business idea should be and what your niche should be how to get super specialized and you know some of that advice and we've done it but there's a reason why and to whom where you you sit down and you do an in -depth study for your ideal client is

what their name, where they live, what their favorite color, their favorite food, basically we create an avatar. It's what we do, right? And there's a time and a place for doing all that. But the time and the place for doing all that isn't when you're first starting out. And the reason being is that you don't really have a lot of data about who your customer is going to be, right? What they're going to be buying from you, what they're going to be thinking.

The beginning isn't really the time to do significant deep dives in all of this. What I want to do is to keep this as uncomplicated as humanly possible, but make it effective, right? So you can get out, start having some conversations, and get paid, all right? Get some paid clients. So let's talk about the market. So when we think about a market, what does that really mean?

Business at its core, right? Business at its core is about solving a problem. That's all it is. Yeah, you know, we can put nice wrappers around it all and make it fancy, but ultimately guys, business is about solving a problem. And what we wanna be able to figure out is...

What is the problem that I can solve that people are willing to pay for? Which means you don't have to get super creative and go starting to build or create something brand new that no one's ever heard

because you're not going to do it. It's not going to happen. It's going to be highly unlikely. It's why there's only one Amazon, there's only one Facebook. All you really need to do at this juncture, at this point in the game, is figure out what are the things that I can provide that others are already paying for. So as an example, we have clients come through our program who...

have a lot of experience about building their careers, right, from corporate. So it makes sense that they might go into career coaching, right? I if you've developed a really nice career and you know the steps and you wanna help others do the same thing, then maybe career coaching is the exact thing that you wanna do. We also have a lot of people that come through our program who are in the health space, all right? One of our most favorite clients,

Um, was basis. was about 50 pounds overweight and she, she didn't get into the fad idea of dieting and all that kind of stuff. But when she lost her weight and she figured out what it was that helped her do it, she got into health coaching, more importantly, nutrition. So that's just a couple of things, right? But it's like you had experiences in your life.

are going to be a good guide in terms of where you might want to play. So, you know, for Angela and I, we came out of corporate. We didn't have a lot of success in the beginning when we started our coaching business. In fact, it was dire for about three or four years, but then we figured it out. We figured out what we're doing wrong. We corrected

and now we've got a very successful coaching company. So it makes sense for us to work with people who are wanting to leave corporate or have left corporate who have started a coaching and consulting business and are really struggling. finding that it's not the same as what it was in corporate. You don't have that level of support and guidance and all the structure that went around working in corporate. You don't have that when it's your own business. So that became our niche, right? Helping ex -corporate people.

build a successful business that replicates the success they had back in their corporate days. So those are just a couple of examples. the first key in all of this is making sure that it's something that there is an existing market for where you can contribute the skills that you have in your experiences. Don't overlook anything that you may look, well that's over saturated or

You know, there's already a hundred thousand people in that. All that tells me is that, there's a market there. All right. There's a market there. So you can be in that market. You just have to figure out how to differentiate yourself in that market. That's a whole different conversation. But it tells me there's a market there. And it tells me that there's people in that market who are willing to pay to get the help and get the results that we can offer. Make sense?

First key

Is there a demand for the help that I can provide based on my experiences and my skills? Right? Is it there? That's it. That's all you got to figure out at this juncture.

So let's jump to step number two. Let's go to step number two. If we understand that there's demand for what we have in our skills, the next question that you really want to be asking yourself is,

Is the problem that I'm solving in that market bad

that people are willing to pay to get it solved. So yeah, there might be demand in a market, for sure, but there are some markets, or what I should say guys is, not all markets are created equally. So there might be demand in a market, but it might not be very well paid. Like people might not be willing to kind of pay the kind of money that you want to charge. So we call this the $100 ,000 problem.

What we look at in our clients is, is there a strong enough emotion that is created from that problem that someone would be willing to pay several thousand dollars to get the help in order to solve that problem. Right? Emotion is a strong trigger. Right? It's a really strong trigger.

If you look at a market, and let's go back to health coaching, since it's not a market that I play in, but it's a market that many of your students play in. But if I look at health coaching and think about that market, people wanting to lose weight, who do we really want? Do we want someone who's like, you know, I could just do with losing a few pounds, right? So I can, you know, fit into my jeans a little better.

Right? Is that really someone who's maybe willing to engage with a coach, a health coach, a nutrition coach? Right? Probably not. It's not a strong enough emotion. But if that emotion is like, I can't spend another day not fitting into my genes or not looking and feeling my best and not having energy.

I just can't go another day feeling like this. That's a strong emotion. And those people are more likely to want to get help and pay for it than someone who just feels like, I've put on a couple of pounds, whatever. Same thing for career coaching.

We want people in the career coaching space who are like, hey, I just can't spend another day in this job. You know, maybe my boss is micromanaging me, doesn't appreciate me. They're promoting coworkers who does 10 times less on what I do, but because they schmooze, right? So on and so forth. So someone who feels like that and they're at the end of their rope, that's a very strong emotion. Are they someone willing to engage with a career coach to help

move out and move up. Yeah, probably. Alright, probably. When we think about our clients and who we work with, what we look at is this is business owners who, hey, I just feel I should be further along than I am and I have no idea what's going on. I don't know why I can't make any headway. Alright, I'm frustrated by the fact that I'm working all these hours.

frustrated by the fact that I'm blogging, I'm posting, I'm doing all of this stuff and nothing's happening. Those people who have that strong emotion of frustration or stress or anxiety in their business, those are people that we can help. Because we just happen to know that a lot of the stuff they're working on is stuff they shouldn't be doing, right? And we know the stuff they should be doing. So my point is is

The problem has to be bad enough and create a strong enough emotion that someone is willing to pay to fix it. That's it guys, that's all it is. That's really all it is.

So if we think about that, those first two things, is there demand? Yes. Is the problem bad enough that it creates a really strong emotion that people are willing to pay to fix it? That's our one and two. Now the third part of all of this, the third part of all of this is how specific do you want to get about your niche?

Right? So, you know, if we think about who we want to work with and we think about that problem, right? So what we really, really want to do is now drill down at this point and start to

a little deeper about who in that niche. So one of the things that, and again I told you at the beginning, that we do with a lot of our clients is we work through the ideal client blueprint and we create an avatar. This is just a theoretical individual who has a makeup that would suit the type of person that you want to work with.

So I want you to think a little bit about what would that person look like to me? What would that person be going through? And try and dig a little deeper into that niche. Try and dig a little deeper into what kind of life will this person have?

What will they be going through? And how is all of that affecting them in their business?

I want to also say, right,

Focus on the emotions. Right? Focus on the emotions. Because if you can't get into a niche where those emotions are strong, then you're not going to be able to build a business. It really is that simple. Right? It really is that simple. So, the...

The level of the problem, right, for you, or sort of the level of the problem for your prospect has to be big enough. Right, it has to be big enough.

So those are the three big things,

problem, how does it affect them emotionally? And then think about just how specific you want to get in. I'm going to say to you that in the beginning, don't get caught up in trying to create something too ultra specific. I think that what you want to do and what we've seen work best in any niche is just to focus on the problem.

and focus on how it affects people at an emotional level. And if you can do that, then you're going to find people who are willing to pay you to go and solve that problem. So guys, listen, a little bit longer than I intended, but getting a profitable niche isn't difficult if you just follow those steps.

Right? And then engage with people on an emotional level. That's the key thing. Right? That is the key thing. So listen, love to hear your feedback on this, right? What you've been working on, what maybe niche you are in, and if you feel that it isn't too profitable, get in touch. Maybe we can work through something else because there's multiple levels that you can maybe work in, in any niche that can turn a semi -profitable niche into a very profitable niche.

and we've seen that done many many times. So feel free to comment, let me know your thoughts. And yeah, that's it. So listen, thanks for hanging in. This was fun and we'll be back very very soon. Alright, thanks guys and enjoy. Bye.