EP 372 - How To Finally Choose A Niche For Your Coaching Business

MarketingCoaching Lifestyle
Written By Debbie Shadid
 

If you want to choose a niche for your coaching business, watch this video to learn how to choose the best niche for your coaching business.

If you're a new coach struggling to find your niche, or an existing coach looking to niche down, this is for you.

Choosing a profitable coaching niche is crucial for the success of your coaching business, with the right coaching niche, you can create a thriving business that brings you financial freedom and personal fulfillment.

Ready for the next step? Grab My Launch Sequence masterclass to validate your niche, and build an offer people will actually buy: http://debbieshadid.com/launch

If you're new to my channel, my name is Debbie Shadid. I'm a Business Growth and Life Coach and the founder of the Business Building Boutique. For over two decades, I've helped women learn how to become coaches, get clients, grow their businesses, and create meaningful income doing work they love.

Helping women find their niche is honestly one of my favorite things to do, because people are always surprised by what comes out the other side. In this video, I'll walk you through the exact self-assessment I use, so by the end you'll have a clear picture of the niche that's meant for you.

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TRANSCRIPT

Niche. If you're a coach, I know that you have drama over your niche. If you don't have a real drama, at least you have questions. Let's talk about what the most profitable niche for you could be and this would be unique to you only what I believe is the niche is already inside of you. It's probably something that you've already lived through, and I'm gonna bet that it might be something that you're not even aware of. Here's what I know after helping women for over two decades, the niche that's easiest for you to coach on, it is the thing that you have already experienced. That will be the easiest for you to market, the fastest for you to make money in and it is almost always hiding in plain sight. It isn't just what you've survived or what you've figured out, it's what you've come through. By the end of this video, you're gonna know exactly how to find what your perfect profitable niche is. I'm Debbie Shadid. I've helped thousands of women build profitable boutique-style coaching businesses. Most of them are over 50, so if that is you, you are in the right spot. I help women build businesses without paid ads, with simple tech, and without running themselves into the ground. I have to tell you, helping people identify their niche, I think, is actually one of my gifts. I don't say that to brag, but people are so surprised as we go through the niching process, what comes out the other side as I guide them through our niche process, and I'm gonna let you in on that today. So inside of each of you, there is a unique niche. That is your niche where you create your signature offer based on that niche it's often not one of those things that we can see for ourselves, but once we identify what that niche is for you, you will be able to market it with greater ease. You'll be able to make offers with greater ease, and that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna discover today what that is. I'm gonna walk you through what it would look like. The first thing I want to talk about is your life, your life experience, because so many of us have lived through so much, and I firmly believe it doesn't matter if you have a certification, if you have a PhD, a medical degree, a law degree. Honestly, all of that's great, And it doesn't really matter if you have that education or not, but all of us have education that has come from our lives like from raising kids or getting through hard things. You have education whether you signed up for it or not, and it really is the life experience that sometimes is the exact thing that you should be coaching on. Most of the most successful coaches, they're actually coaching on the thing that they know inside and out. Most of the successful coaches are not coaching on something that they learned specifically in coaching. While they are using whatever they've learned in their certifications, the best coaches are doing the thing that they know inside and out. So first, let's talk about your personal experiences. That will build a level of trust that you can't fake. If we find that thing that you have really experienced, people will sense that. They will believe you in a way that builds trust almost instantly. And you know, if you've been around very long, I talk about trust a lot. It is critical for people to trust you, and we're in a gap in the marketplace right now where there really is a lot of distrust. So let's talk about what it is that would be the easiest thing for you to succeed at. And again, I have to say, it is that thing that you know really personally. And let's be real, every one of us is here to make money, and there's nothing wrong with choosing that path that is both meaningful to you and that is a smart one to choose. So your niche probably lives in you. Through this video, you're gonna discover what yours really should be, and I'll say should with air quotes, right? What should your niche be? The way that you find that is through a self-assessment, and that's what I'm gonna take you through today. So let's look back at your entire life, and I can promise you, by the end of this video, you're gonna have a clear picture of exactly what you should do. So we're gonna go through what you have lived through, and we're gonna assess where you're at. Now, here's a better way to think about this than going just by decades. I want you to kind of think about themes of where things have shown up in your life over and over again. So let me just use an example. Let's say narcissism. A lot of you guys are like,"Okay, I was raised by a parent who was narcissistic," right?"And then I found myself in a marriage." Or maybe you weren't raised by a parent that was narcissistic, but you saw that in your current spouse. Or maybe you worked for somebody like that. Can you see there's a thread there that ties everything together? Any one of those individual things, at whatever decade in your life we're talking about, 'cause you might have been married to somebody for over 20 years that you realize was a narcissist, right, that you're finally leaving. That would be a niche around narcissism specific to, and it's important to layer things on, specific to marriage and you finding out a way to leave, right? And, and also specific to the decade that you sort of went through this process. If we think about weight or health, we could talk about an overweight kid and, like, what you struggled with. We could talk about overweight, the person who never lost their baby weight, or as we know, all the menopausal, premenopausal, postmenopausal women that are struggling with it. All of those, the common thread is weight loss, but each one of those is identified to a particular segment of your life, and narrowing that down is gonna be the key. Like, coaching on weight loss is generic, but tying it into one or two more things, like a particular decade and some particular circumstance, that is actually gonna help you really stand out in the market. You can also sometimes see where there's a theme that's been repeating itself in your life, something that you have eventually figured out and you've eventually come through. I want to pause for a moment and share an example from a call that I had with a client, and she was talking about a particular situation that she had come through and just recently, I'll say she fell off the wagon. So it was a health situation. Like somehow she'd kind of lost her footing and her health had declined again in this one thing that she thought she had conquered. And she was like, "I don't know. Is that… Should I be coaching around that anymore? Because I've kind of…" It's like the woman who says like, "I'm a weight loss coach and I've gained some weight." I'm like, "What you are is human." So if you have been through something, like overcome it, and then you've kind of lost your footing on it, lost your way a little bit, and you're, you're sort of back on track and you're getting yourself back out of it, like you're losing the weight again, yes, you can still coach on that. That makes you a real human who's like, "Wow, I realize how important accountability and how important support is, and how easy it is for us to all fall off, you know, track of where we were going." So that is really, okay for you to be a human and to need to get back on track and still coach around that. When we think about your childhood, there could be many different things that you conquered and, you know, it could be the horrible things like abuse and trauma and illness. And I have to say, the more people that I talk to, the more I realize we all have our stuff. There just isn't hardly anyone that I don't talk to that hasn't been through something. And if they haven't, then they're the one that is the minority. The rest of us, we're in good company. We've all been through something. So whatever that is, maybe you're gonna coach, either somebody who is a parent of a child that's going through that, or you're gonna coach somebody who has been through that and that trauma that they experienced as a child is still lingering in their adult years, right? And you've learned how to navigate all of that. So that's a way to think about it. You can also think about decades. And I know I'm covering a lot here and a lot of different angles, but I feel sure that when you get done with this, you're gonna be like, "That is it. Okay, I get it." So maybe yours is in your 20s. You're like, let's look at your 20s and just assess and see what happened during those years that was really impactful, that was instrumental to where you are in your life. What did you overcome, work through? You know, maybe it was your first real relationship. Maybe it was a heart, heartache. Maybe it was, like, dating in the online dating stage in your 20s or in your 30s or in your 40s or your 50s or beyond. That could be a thing for you, too. Maybe it was a first marriage and how to navigate that. There could be even, like, some religious ties in there. Again, I'm talking about layering things on top of each other. So a woman in their 20s who's experienced a particular thing in their first marriage and who now has something to do with religion as a part of that, okay? That's a real niche. And if you wonder, like, well, who else would this be for? If you're wondering, like, who else would this be for? Trust me, my friend, there are plenty of people. What we need to do first is find the thing that you struggled with, where the pain was for you, what you overcame, how you navigated it, how you managed it, how you figured it out. That's the first place to start. Look at the few places in your life. And once that is done, once we've figured out those three or four things in your life where you are like you have risen from the ashes, then we can look and see which one makes the most sense. But in this stage, we're just looking to identify what are the key things that you struggled with and what have you overcome on your own. Again, there's gonna be health in middle age, in the older years, after retirement. There could be health of your children. There could be diagnosises that you deal with. And perfect example would be a diagnosis of, let's say, ADHD. That's different for children, different for somebody, like, going through college, different for people, you know, their executive functioning in their, early career stages. And then you add on menopause or perimenopause. When you have ADHD, that would be different. Each one of those is a niche that you can capitalize on if we're talking about creating financial freedom or wealth or getting out of debt, each one of those would be, of course, in a different category as well. I mean, a 20-something-year-old person is gonna be dealing probably with a lot of college student loan debt. So what does that look like to specifically support somebody around that? So again, you could be looking at decades as kinda one category. You could be looking at relationships, whether they are family relationships, career relationships, personal relationships. You could be looking at sibling relationships or sister-in-law relationships. Any health, I mean, that category is so broad, and then career, faith, money, all of those. What have you overcome out of each one of those categories? Then, of course, there are the things like divorce, abuse, getting fired. Yeah, have you been fired from a job and come out the other side? Have you been fired from a job and now you are thriving in your next career? Was that the best thing that ever happened to you? I was on a call yesterday with somebody who said, "Well, I've been 16 years on my job, and I've been a top performer, and I just got surprised and I lost my job," right? And she was like, "I think it's a gift I've been looking for," right? Of course, it's another coach, so she knows how to frame it, but what are those things that you could really help somebody with? What kind of goals have you, achieved or accomplished that felt impossible out of any of those circumstances? Here's something that matters. Every one of us comes through whatever that is through our own lens. While we might have experienced the same type of abuse or neglect or job circumstances, every one of us comes to that particular thing and the way that we deal with it, the way we, rise above it, and also based on our knowledge. If there is certifications involved, if you've worked with a coach, however you've come through it, maybe you have a PhD or a master's or some kind of, you know, nursing degree that has helped you be able to get to the other side of that. So what I'm trying to say to you is there is no shortage of people to be coaching the main key is we need to find a niche that you know inside and out. Like, I don't need you to read a book on this. The most powerful niches are the people who know what they know what they know i'm telling you what, I could talk about building a business all day long, 'cause I've done it for 25 years. I know what it's like to struggle. I know what it's like to be terrible at tech. I know what it's like to not wanna go in 'cause you feel like an introvert and not wanna go in and talk to somebody. Like, I could go on and on forever, and I am talking, I'm pretty sure, about all the same pain points that you listening to this have experienced or are experiencing. I know what it's like to feel uncertain. I know what it feels like to feel like the whole thing is riding on your back, like you're out there posting and nobody is listening, nobody seems to care. I get that. What is that thing that somebody else is gonna be like, "Dang, she gets it. She really understands"? And that is because I have real-life experience at this. So there is that place in you, in your life, that is gonna be the sweet spot where it's like, this is so obvious that you should be talking about this. I was talking with a coach yesterday who has done all kinds of market research, and that market research has gotten her away from what she truly knows. So instead of sticking in the lane where she has, boy, oh boy, done some things that are incredible, in fact, in a business, she's done millions of dollars, okay? But what happened was she's decided to go to ChatGPT and Claude and do some research, and she's trying to find where the place is that makes most sense. This is very common. I bet you've done it too. You're asking ChatGPT what makes the most sense. And I'm gonna tell you again, the, what makes the most sense is what you've done. What makes the most sense is you finding your place in the marketplace, right? We know that marketing, the marketing is the ATM to your business so once you really know what your space is, then it's gonna be up to marketing. The global life coaching market is estimated to be over six billion dollars. Now, you can go look up all kinds of quotes. I quoted just recently in a webinar, I quoted just recently in a workshop that I was in, that in 2026 in the US alone, it's estimated to be at $1.6 billion. Even if it was a billion dollars, this is huge opportunity, which means there's opportunities in basically every niche. My only job is to help you see what is the niche that lives in you that you've overcome and that you understand that you could talk about forever, that you could coach on forever, that nobody's gonna cause you to feel like you have imposter syndrome, right? What is that niche that you're like,"Listen, nobody can pull one over on me because I know this inside and out"? So once you know what that is, again, that's gonna be what you came through, what you survived, what you figured out, what it is that you're doing in your life that works right now. Here's another one, What do your friends and family come to you for advice on? Without you ever even saying that you'd be happy to help them. What are you the go-to person that everybody is asking you about? That's another clue of what that should be. One more category I want to talk about is your career. If you have a career that you have been thriving in, or maybe you've jumped jobs because you've been so good you've continued to get hired away from your last job, or you've always been the top performer, or you've navigated some weird situation, anybody in this marketplace who can help somebody with a career, that is a winning niche. I like to tell people, if you're gonna help somebody make money, make more money, or keep in a relationship that's really important to them, or improve their health, right? Or help them make more, invest and make money. Any of those things like health, wealth, relationships, career, all of those are incredibly winning niches, and we've all been through all of those all of us have had winning outcomes in each one of those. Okay. Now, here's the truth. When you do this, chances are you're not gonna come up with one niche. All of those questions that I just asked you, you're like, "Hold on, I gotta go back and listen to that again." There's gonna be a lot of niches that come up and that is perfectly normal. I really believe that every one of us has many niches inside of us. That doesn't mean that every one of them should be our niche though, right? I want you to find the one that is the perfect niche. So once we look at the list of niches, now we say, well, how do we pick that niche? So the first thing I want to ask you is, out of that list of niches, and this is a key question, which one of those creates the most pain for somebody? Like, what are they suffering with out of your list? Go through and sort of assess. On a scale of one to 10, who is suffering the most in each one of those, right? What is keeping somebody up at night? Which one of those is the most urgent to solve? Which one of those is unsolvable, is costing somebody their money, their health, their relationship? Because the truth is, people pay to get out of pain. People pay to end the misery they're in. really want to be clear with you about this. When we talk about people who need to get out of pain and they will pay to get out of pain, get out of that misery, and that's what you should coach on, it is not to prey on anyone's misery. This is being smart. You want to be a businesswoman who can create a profitable business and you do that by being able to solve things that people are looking for answers on. You go help the people who are asking for the help. One more filter I want to run this through is now that maybe you've narrowed it down even further because I've just asked about the pain points, I want to make sure that whatever you just came up with as the one that is the most painful, the one that people are suffering with the most, I want you to make sure that you're not suffering. I spoke with somebody earlier this week, a coach that said, "You know, the thing that I want to coach on, I realize I'm still suffering with. Like, I realize it triggers me to talk about this." And I'm like, "Okay, hold up. We cannot build a business that you are going to be triggered by, right? That's not good for your clients, but also I can tell you for sure you will hide from marketing it. You won't want to talk about it. You won't be inspired by it. You won't want to do the thing that you want to do, right? So make sure that whatever that traumatic situation is, you've come out the other side and, like, you feel really good about it. Sometimes I talk to coaches who want to coach on relationships, and maybe they want to coach on overcoming a divorce, but they're still mad about it, and I'm like, "Okay, hold up. Like, you can't bring your anger to the situation. If you're not completely healed from that or as close to healed as we can all be, then that's not the good niche for you to have." So pick the one that you feel like you've come through and that you are really ready and inspired to help somebody with. When we talk about, finding this niche, I've already mentioned that this is the thing that you need to talk about day in and day out because let's be honest, you are the person who is representing your business. You are the one who is selling your coaching. You're the one that's creating the marketing, and I want it to be easy for you. I want it to feel easy for you to have conversations. I want it to be easy for you to create a video for YouTube and talk about what it is that you are most passionate about, okay? You know, if you are not passionate about reducing inflammation or improving gut health, then don't talk about that, even if you had a transformation on that. So run down that list, the list of the remaining ideas and ask yourself, can I talk about this thing inside and out, over and over without like going to sleep stressing about it? Do I feel like I can, be emotionally engaged with your clients, but do I feel like I can be emotionally steady for them? Find that place that is the right place for you, and again, that's sort of like the second check mark that we know we're finding the one that works. Okay, probably the most important of all. We wanna find out if your niche, the one that you wanna do, now the one that we know that's painful, the one that we know you can talk about forever, the third thing is we gotta make sure that somebody will pay to get your help. Is this problem something where they're like, "Yep, I'm miserable. Yep, I can…" You as the coach can talk about it forever. You can market it. Can you ask for money and will somebody pay you, right? Once you have that right niche,'cause we've identified the pain, we've identified the one you can talk about forever, now we have to know, will people pay for it? The value of what you are going to give. Like, let's say a happy marriage. How do you put a price on that? Let me ask you, if you've been through that and you now have a happy marriage or you saved your marriage, what is the price on that? Is it so significant that somebody will pay you? And I'm not talking about paying you high-ticket coaching. I'm talking about would they say like, "Okay, we've been to therapy. I'm not gonna spend, you know, the rest of my life unhappy in my marriage. I don't wanna leave my marriage. I need to make this work. I need the help." Is that your person? Do they have the money to pay for it? What is the value of a mother who is helping their child with ADHD? Like, maybe they're helping them through the education process, like navigate through education, through learning, through the school systems with ADHD. How do you put a value on that? You could literally help somebody, and this is marketing, you could literally help somebody help their child, right? You could be the coach helping somebody who has a child with ADHD, and your help could change the entire trajectory of that child who has ADHD. Because imagine if they learned how to navigate it, and you as the parent, right, you're helping the parent. Imagine what it would look like, what the outcome would be for the child who has ADHD. You've helped the mom help the child. How do you even measure what value you can put on success of a child that was maybe gonna be once lost, that now because the mom, the parent, and the child both understand ADHD so much better, they're gonna have success in their life, right? It- their ADHD now becomes their superpower. That is coaching that people will pay for. If you have a niche that you have identified, okay, my person has a real problem that they will pay to solve, and they have the money, they have the extra money to pay you. We don't sell coaching to broke people, remember? You don't sell to a mom who is trying to get out of an abusive relationship. While that is so needed, and I hope some of you guys are giving your time and service to that, but a woman who's trying to leave an abusive relationship with her kids and who needs to set up an apartment and, like, get out in the middle of the night, she doesn't have the money to pay for a coach right then. And quite honestly, you wanna make sure that she has the money to get her kids to a safe place. So that's not your person. While that person might need your help and be desperate for help, that's not a, a business. That might be a hobby where you help, you serve, and you support people, but your business has to make money, okay? So we're thinking about the one. Who is the person, now we've identified they wanna hire somebody, but who can pay you? Who actually has the money to pay you? I'm gonna go back to career for just one moment, because anything to do with you navigating the workforce and helping somebody else navigate the workforce, there's money in that, right? Because that person is getting a paycheck, and we know that person wants to continue to get a paycheck or wants to get a raise. That's another example. Same way with health, like the cost of healing your body or not taking prescriptions or fewer doctor appointments or less physical therapy or whatever that might be. Okay. I'm gonna assume that out of all of that, you are like, "Okay, something has come up for me." I wanna encourage you, whatever your intuition is saying, However you have just gone through this episode and been like, "Yes, yes, yes," I want you to decide that's your niche, honestly. Because what happens in most cases, even with clients that I work with, they decide on a niche, they leave our coaching session, and then their brain starts saying, "Well, yeah, but, but, but, but what about this?" Like, you don't want to leave anyone behind. I'm gonna encourage you to leave people behind. I'm gonna encourage you to step into the fullness of who you are meant to be, which is an expert on this one thing. Okay? Once you get that client within that niche, and they say, "Yes, I want Debbie to help me," you can coach them on anything you want. Okay? We know that once you get into a coaching situation, we find out all kinds of other things, that people just need support with many other things. So you're not gonna eliminate all the things that you are interested in. Like, I love mindset work. I love helping people be inspired and filled with possibility. I do that every day. It's not my niche, but I do that every day when I help coaches. So now that you've found your niche, I cannot wait for you to build a business around that. And what I want to tell you is, your coaching offer will be so much easier for you to create. That signature process that you take people through is going to be so much easier to figure out what that is, and I'm gonna give you a clue as we wrap this up. Once you've decided on your niche, and we got all those kind of boxes checked that I talked about, I want you to sort of map out, okay, if I am the person who has come through this thing and had success and, like, achieved so much, or is, you know, healed my body or saved my career or advanced in my career. Again, it's a long list of possibilities. I want you to map out what that took to get there. That will be the same process that you take your clients through to get to the same result that you've had. That is it. It's that simple, okay? That's why picking the right niche is going to be so easy for you. This is the way that you eliminate imposter syndrome. There will be no doubt in your mind because you will know this niche, you will know how to get somebody to the solution. You won't be coaching on things you don't know. And then whatever education, doctorate, master's degree, certification, all those extra things, those are just the icing on the cake. Those are the extra trainings that support you in the niche that is really meant for you. Make your life mean something. All the experiences that you've been through, use those for good to help somebody else. Okay? Thank you so much for being here. I want you to pick your niche because I sincerely believe that the world needs what you have to offer because you have your unique spin. You have a brain that thinks about things in a different way. You have a entire set of life circumstances that has shaped your understanding. You have a niche that is meant for you, and there is six billion dollars being spent worldwide in coaching this year. Now, that's an estimation. I don't know how they add that up, but you can go do your own searches. billions of dollars are being spent on coaching. So that means you have an opportunity. Do not waste this opportunity. The world of coaching continues to grow every year. This opportunity is waiting for you, but it's only gonna start when you pick your niche, when you decide on your niche, when you own your niche. All right, my friend? I'm just gonna send you so much love. Make a decision, own the decision, and then, as I say to my own clients, you have to own the decision, and then when you want to change your mind, you remind yourself that you've already picked the very best niche for you. I want to bring you closer to making the decision. So before we wrap up, if you are like, "Okay, that's a lot, Debbie. You just covered a lot. I still have some questions," I want to invite you to take one more step. There is a link in the comments and it is for something called the Launch Sequence. I have just put this together. It goes deeper than anything else I have ever done. This is how you will pick your niche, research your niche, and build an offer that people will buy. This is a key piece. I'm talking about validating your niche and creating an offer that people will buy. This is part of the Launch Sequence. It is a 45-minute class that I've stripped out everything else, all the nonsense from. I only tell you exactly what you need to know, and it is bundled with our Profitable Niche Blueprint, which is everything that you need to clearly decide, okay? It is a clear step-by-step. It's an e-book that goes every step through what I've done, through everything I've talked about today, plus there is the validation process that's included in there. Grab the link right there. I believe it is the thing that will help you launch your coaching business, that will get you from this indecision to finally getting your business built. All right? The link is in the comments. Go grab that. I can't wait to see what it is you're gonna create, and I will talk to you very soon. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't, because there is so much goodness coming your way. Have a beautiful week. Bye-bye.

Debbie Shadid https://www.DebbieShadid.com
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EP 371 - The Real Reason Your Business Hit a Wall + How To Regain Momentum