A coach in a big coaching Facebook group I belong to, asked what helped others transition from employment to full-time coaching. One of my clients shared my Nail Your Niche challenge, the original poster replied I’m not interested in finding a niche, I want coaching clients. My client said you asked what helped me make the transition, this is it, but the coach who was asking wasn’t interested.
This response perfectly captures why 82% of coaching businesses fail.
When we ask successful coaches what made the difference, we’re hoping for a silver bullet. One secret thing that opens the floodgates to endless clients. When someone gives us the actual answer – the thing that genuinely worked – and we dismiss it because it’s not what we wanted to hear, we’ve revealed the real problem.
We don’t want to learn how client acquisition works, we just want clients to appear. I call this Magic Thinking. Magic thinking kills coaching businesses very quickly indeed.
- Magic thinking tells us that we just need the first couple of clients and the rest will come by referral.
- Magic thinking tells us that good coaching will sell itself.
- Magic thinking tells us that good conversations are all we need to fill our client pipeline
- Magic thinking tells us that building a successful business is easy (if it was easy, we’d all have one, wouldn’t we?)
The Knowledge Gap
Many (most?) coaches have no idea that focus is required for marketing. None whatsoever. They’re encouraged by coaches with monetiseable credibility who say I’ve never had a niche. We fail to recognise (us and the coach without the niche) that being the former CEO of a FTSE 100 company (or whatever) IS their niche.
Without focus, here’s what our client acquisition efforts looks like:
- We network and tell people we’re a coach who helps people reach their goals and overcome limiting beliefs
- We write LinkedIn posts about the coaching process, holding space, and coaching containers
- We offer discovery calls that either lead nowhere, leave potential clients feeling ambushed by unexpected prices or lead to clients who pay heavily discounted fees
We think we’re marketing, but we’re not. We’re just making noise that nobody hears.
Why Your Message Vanishes Without Trace
A coach recently asked me to share her ‘vulnerable’ post about returning to LinkedIn, ready to take clients. I suspect she sent this request to all her connections. I explained that mass-messaging isn’t marketing and offered her a copy of my book for free.
Her post got thousands of reactions – all from other coaches. Within 24 hours, she was back in my inbox offering me free coaching. If she did that to everyone who engaged, she’d spend months coaching coaches for free, believing this was marketing.
This is what happens without focus. Our message only reaches other coaches because a) they’re the ones we’re connected to and b) they’re the only ones who understand what holding space means.
The Uncomfortable Reality About Getting Clients
When someone tells you that finding their niche was the game-changer, they’re telling you that learning to focus their marketing was what created clients. Not networking harder, not sharing with more vulnerability, not offering more free sessions.
Focus.
Without it, we’re invisible to everyone except other coaches. Our networking falls flat because saying I coach anyone who…. piques the interest of no one. Our social media posts disappear into the void because they’re not for anyone specific. Our discovery calls convert only occasionally because we can’t articulate value to someone when we don’t know who that someone is.
Choose Your Path
We can continue believing in silver bullets, dismissing the actual answers successful coaches give us whilst wondering why nothing works. What happens to the majority of us is that we try everything – networking, story-sharing, discovery calls – and gradually sink from view, and eventually leave the professional coaching space altogether.
Or we can accept that client acquisition requires focus. That marketing without a niche isn’t marketing at all – it’s just hoping. Hope is not a client acquisition strategy.
The coach who asked the question got the answer. She just didn’t want to hear it.
An Opportunity
If you’d like the opportunity for robust conversation about this, why not join my next free challenge Nail Your Niche? There’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me – which gets my eyes, and my brain, on your thinking
Are you ready to challenge your thinking around focus, and find where your best focus lies? Register for the challenge by clicking here.
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