Coaching is an extremely rewarding profession on so many levels, and it’s also one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Through this sequence of short videos, I’m going to teach you the key fundamentals you need to know to get started as a coach, and to create a fun and thriving coaching practice that’s in perfect alignment with who you are, what you value, and what you most want to contribute to others.
In our very first video segment, we explored what coaching is; what it means to be a coach, and how many different specialties – or niche markets – are available for you to choose from (or invent yourself) within this diverse field.
To recap that segment, some of the most in-demand coaching niches at this time are:
- Life coaching
- Wellness coaching
- Leadership coaching
- Career coaching
- Relationship coaching
- Spiritual coach coaching
- Business coaching
- Executive coaching
And there are many variations on all of those themes and even more that are up-and coming.
What I want to share with you today is how after you’ve discovered your unique niche (and you can have more than one, of course), there are literally endless ways to expand on the services you offer within that specialty in order to serve different segments of the population, and in order to create multiple income streams for yourself at the same time.
Here is a very common scenario that I’ve seen play out many times, first with myself, and later with the coaches I’ve trained:
You start out coaching one on one, whether in-person, or – as is much more common – over the phone. As we’ve already discussed, this one income stream can easily generate a salary of $60 – $75,000 dollars per year if you’re doing it part-time, and much, much more if you decide to coach full time.
As your practice becomes more successful, the next logical step is to extend the services that you offer on a one-on-one basis to groups of people through leading group coaching classes. Facilitating group coaching classes is surprisingly similar to leading a client through a session one-on-one. In fact, the only real difference is that you need to allocate a little more time for a group coaching call – both because it’s important to provide time for a Q and A period following whatever topic you’re presenting that week, and also to provide time for participants to share about the action steps they’re taking and the discoveries they’re making. This sharing is often more valuable for participants in terms of helping them to integrate new principles and behaviors into their daily lives than the coaching distinction itself.
So with the addition of facilitating group calls in conjunction with coaching one-on-one, you have not only added another income stream to your practice, but you’ve also significantly reduced the number of hours you need to work in order to generate that additional income.
I’ve seen something else occur time and time again when coaches begin to add group coaching calls to their individual practice, and that is their confidence in leading groups of people through transformation goes through the roof. People who have a had a lifelong fear of public speaking, or who would never consider themselves articulate or charismatic enough to stand in front a group suddenly have the experience of doing it week after week. And because this evolution happened so gradually, it doesn’t occur like a big stretch.
For a lot of coaches, the combination of these two modalities – one-on-one coaching and facilitating group courses – provides work that is fulfilling and a lifestyle that works for them – and that might be more than enough for you. And of course there’s also the added benefit that those who learn about you as a result of participating in one of your group classes will choose to go deeper with you by doing one-on-one work – or vice versa.
But a handful of coaches – and you’ll probably have an intuitive sense if you’re one of them – have the creativity and the drive to add yet another dimension (and, yes, another revenue stream) to their practice. And here again, the possibilities and variations are really endless:
Some may decide to put together a press kit and begin marketing themselves to deliver keynote talks or daylong workshops in their local communities. Some will be called to develop a workshop – whether online or in person – that addresses the needs of a certain segment of the population, such as those transitioning after divorce; couples striving to improve their relationships; or teens or young adults wanting to improve their self-confidence.
The really cool thing about taking your coaching practice to this next level – and what I’m about to describe is precisely the progression that led me from being a part time life coach to becoming a New York Times best-selling author – is that in the course of developing your own lecture or workshop material, you automatically generate content – both the content that you planned to deliver and the content that your participants contribute as they strive to understand it.
A growing number of coaches will choose to use this content as the basis for developing their own original material – whether in the form of a DVD recording of a live seminar, a guided visualization, or a manuscript that eventually gets picked up by a publisher or that the coach decides to self-publish and market on his or her own.
So as you can see, not only are there endless specialties to choose from within the field of coaching in terms of the particular topics you focus on and the target market you serve, but there are endless possibilities in terms of how you package your services, and to how wide an audience. The sky is truly the limit, and it all begins with finding your unique niche within this vast industry.
In the QSCA, we not only train our coaches in the most effective, cutting-edge methodology and techniques, but we also guide them through a 3-step process to discover their unique niche within the field. I can’t tell you just how big an advantage this gives them compared to coaches who try to market their services to everyone under the sun. The more specifically you can define what you can provide and to what niche of people, the more momentum you will generate.
Like author Mark Victor Hansen said, “Pick a niche and grow rich!”
I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions on what we’ve discussed here, so please write to me in the comments below.
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