Show Notes
In this episode, Gabrielle Smith, who helps coaches stuck in “niche drama,” talks about the transformative impact finding your niche can have on your confidence as a coach. Dr. Kristin Hartjes shares her journey from being a chiropractic doctor to becoming a transformational coach and business mentor.
Gabrielle defines ‘niche drama’ as when a coach is marketing themselves but isn’t getting the engagement they want from their ideal audience, sometimes leading them to bounce between niches or balance multiple niches.
The issue, Gabrielle explains, isn’t in the niche not working – but that any niche will work if you know how to work the niche.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes shares her story, going from a chiropractic doctor into the world of coaching. She breaks down how the journey at the beginning was centered on exploring herself and how she kept at her job until she could build the coaching into a business.
Gabrielle shares the first steps she takes with a new coach trying to find their niche: listening to their transformational story. She talks about how they use the story to examine how the coach was before facing those challenges and the person they’ve become.
Dr. Kristin explains how her own experiences lead her to coaching women who struggled with emotional eating disorders. While she says it did have success, she realized she wanted to focus on helping others build their own business – like she had more than once.
She explains how she knew that transitioning into that was the right fit for her as a coach.
Dr. Kristin explains that her first step, like Gabrielle’s, is knowing your coaching story. She shares the ways you, as a coach, can look back at your journey and find the challenges you’ve overcome.
She emphasizes the importance of finding the challenge you feel confident and passionate about helping others overcome.
Gabrielle encourages coaches to be confident in their transformation and turn it into their niche. The core challenge Gabrielle discusses is owning that transformation, rather than diminishing it or feeling like it’s not big enough for people to pay for help with.
Dr. Kristin shares the second step she recommends, which is to get clear on the problem you’re helping solve and what solutions you provide for it. She points to the way you’ve overcome the problem as central to understanding and marketing your solutions.
She encourages coaches to be concrete on the way they communicate this, warning that many coaches are abstract and that makes it challenging for clients to know you’re the right fit.
Gabrielle emphasizes communication, saying that speaking to everyday problems builds trust with the ideal client.
Dr. Kristin shares the third step in her process, which is to know the person you’re marketing to and how to reach them.
Gabrielle walks through some steps and tips for marketing now that you’ve found your niche.
She really sets this up as the true testing phase, to see how it connects with the audience you’re trying to reach.
Then she shares sevearl tips for how to make yourself the expert in the field and market your solutions. Use data based on the response you get from potential customers to figure out which tactics are drawing in the ideal audience.
Gabrielle shares the story of one of her coaching clients who thought she had a niche issue, but later learned it was a marketing issue.
Living and owning experiences becomes a core theme of the story. She shares how it builds confidence and connection.
Kristin goes from finding the niche to testing the niche by discussing how she helps coaches figure out their ‘taglines’ and find the way their messaging can resonate with clients.
She shares an experience of one of her clients who realized she had a viable niche when she presented it to others and they either knew it was for them or immediately referred her to someone.
The importance of finding clients who align, rather than just any clients, is highlighted by Gabrielle as she talks about marketing, reassuring coaches that it’s okay if some clients don’t continue when you commit to a niche.
She explains that it’s important to step away from the clients who are not aligned with the coaching you want to do because you’ll get more successful clients and clients who commit with you.
You’ll know it’s working as your niche when you keep booking clients, even if some leave.
Dr. Kristin wraps up with one last reminder that your story is huge when marketing because it connects you to your ideal clients and sets you as an expert in overcoming the core problem.
Transcription
Gabrielle Smith:
When you own a particular niche, oh my gosh, there is no stopping you. I think you want to scream it from the rooftops. You will tell it to anybody who asks and anybody who will listen.
Also, the biggest piece is that you’re not looking for anyone else to co-sign on your niche. You’re not looking for any kind of outside approval or validation for who you’ve chosen to work with, who you’ve chosen to serve. And that comes across to people, right? Your confidence comes across, your expertise comes across for people, and people are drawn to you. Your people are drawn to you and they reach out for you to help them.
Shawn Hesketh:
That was Gabrielle Smith, a coach for coaches who are caught in what she refers to as niche drama. I’m your host, Shawn Hesketh, and welcome to The Coach Factory Podcast. Today the conversation builds on our previous niche episodes and talks about how to test if a niche is viable and if it’s the right fit for you.
You already know that a niche is a specific target audience you serve, but if you’ve tried to find a niche, you know it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Gabrielle Smith:
The drama comes in when a coach is out there and they are putting themselves out there, they’re doing marketing, and they are not seeing the results that they expect from that niche. So they’re not getting consultations, they are not getting engagement or likes or anything on their social media posts. People are not interested in what they’re offering. That’s what I call niche drama.
So it’s like, “Maybe I should change my niche. This niche is not working. This niche doesn’t work.” That’s my favorite one, “This niche is not working.” Because niches don’t work. Niches don’t work, we work the niche. And I always tell people that. Any niche will work if you work the niche.
And what I mean by that is you have to be able to put your perspective, your thoughts, your opinions, your feelings, your beliefs behind the niche and show up and offer perspective to the world with it.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
So I graduated from chiropractic college in, gosh, 2012 I believe it was. I had two amazing work opportunities after that and I quickly found that I did not enjoy being employed.
Shawn Hesketh:
That’s Dr. Kristin Hartjes, a business coach for coaches, discussing how finding your niche is often a very difficult and deeply personal journey.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
I decided to start my own business. I quit my job, I ended my lease and I moved back to Wisconsin where I am originally from, and I actually moved in with my parents and started my business. And like I said, first it was the brick-and-mortar business, and I was renting a room actually from another chiropractor working out of their office. And then I got an additional part-time job, so I had some income coming in while I was doing that as well.
I told myself that I would do that until I paid back my student loans and was making enough money to do what I really wanted to do, which was doing coaching and having more of an online-based business.
Shawn Hesketh:
But how do you use your journey as a tool for finding your niche? Gabrielle shares that the first step is reflecting on your experiences.
Gabrielle Smith:
The way that I explore it is I really have clients tell me their transformation story. How has coaching helped you? What are some of the obstacles that you were able to work through and overcome through coaching? And have them lay that out for me.
When we dig into it deeply and we look at what it was before, what their lives were like before, what were they thinking about themselves? What were they doing? What were they feeling? How were they showing up in the world before then? And then what that looks like now, how has that changed from then to now? So that’s what I usually take people through like, “Let’s look at your transformation. Let’s look at some of the obstacles that you have used coaching to overcome, and let’s look at the before and the after.”
Shawn Hesketh:
Sometimes that transformation is a big aha moment. Other times, it’s a smooth organic transition, more like Kristin’s.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
So I started my business with the niche of emotional eating and body image because that was something that I had personally struggled with and overcame myself in my life.
And as I had mentioned, I really focused on people who were struggling with emotional eating and body image who had a health background or health knowledge, whether they were health coaches or health practitioners, because that had been my experience on going through and learning a lot of health information and still feeling like I was struggling and not knowing why.
And because those were the people that I was working with, a lot of them started asking me about business like, “How did you start your business, your coaching business? How do you get clients?” And I started doing a little mentoring around business with those clients that I had, so it really was a bit of an organic transition as far as transitioning into the business coaching.
And then I just started seeing that I really enjoyed the business coaching and it was a huge part of my life and what I was doing, and so it just felt like a natural fit as far as making that transition.
Shawn Hesketh:
Kristin also recommends starting with your story when figuring out your niche, but really focusing on one particular aspect.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
So the first step when you’re trying to figure out your niche, your ideal client, your target market, whatever you want to call it, I think they’re all interchangeable, is getting clear on your story.
So a lot of people have various stories that they could potentially help people around. And what I recommend people doing is writing down your biggest challenges that you feel that you have overcome in your life and starting with that.
So what are the biggest challenges you’ve had in your life that you feel that you have mostly overcome or worked through? And make a list of all of them. And then I would look through them and see which of these do I feel most passionate about and most confident that I can help other people with?
And then really when it comes to writing your own story, it should be specific around that one thing. So you’re writing your story as it relates to the thing that you decide, “This is what I’m most passionate about helping people, and this is what I feel most confident helping people with at this moment.”
Shawn Hesketh:
And as Gabrielle points out, even something that seems small or relatively insignificant at first may still be worth exploring.
Gabrielle Smith:
You have more confidence because you have that lived experience, right? So you have gone through it, so you know exactly what life was like before then and you know that you had that transformation for yourself, because a lot of times the challenge for people is owning that they had that transformation. That is a challenge for people where it’s like they don’t see it as big enough or as good enough or something that people would be willing to pay for help with.
Shawn Hesketh:
Kristin’s story is a great model of how your past can shape your niche, and sharing some of her early experiences helped to inspire prospective clients to reach out to her for help.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
A lot of the coaching I was doing, a lot of what I was getting asked about was business stuff because I do think that whatever we’re helping people with, in my case, emotional eating and body image, that purpose and doing work that feels aligned and being able to do it in a way that feels aligned is a huge part of overall recovery or overall working through whatever it is that we’re feeling stuck with. And so I just saw how important doing work that feels aligned is in people’s overall, I would say, happiness.
Shawn Hesketh:
And that alignment is also really important because the more deeply you understand the problems your client faces, the better positioned you are to offer real solutions.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
Then after you’ve decided, you’ve gone through the list of the things and you’re like, “This is what I feel most passionate and confident about helping people with,” you want to get clear on what is the problem that that person is struggling with and what is the solution that you provide based off of that challenge that you’ve been through yourself. So how do you say it in a way that people get it and they see the value in it?
So it helps if you can get more concrete as saying like, “How is this showing up for someone in their life in a way that they’re aware of it?” Another way to think about it is what are they typing into Google or into YouTube and searching for answers for?
Because a lot of times when people are explaining what their niche is, they make it really abstract and they make it about, “I help you find your purpose,” or, “I help you live a happier life.” And those things are all great and people want that, but we want to get clear on how exactly is the problem that that person has right now showing up in their life and what is the solution that they most want right now?
Shawn Hesketh:
Being able to communicate those solutions is the foundation of your coaching marketing strategy. It builds trust, giving you both confidence in the work you do together.
Gabrielle Smith:
You want to speak on everyday problems that your person is experiencing and what they are feeling and then what they are doing as a result of that. And that builds that know, like and trust with people, and that is what you can use to put your message out there and then, again, evaluate.
Shawn Hesketh:
But a niche goes beyond just the problem you’re solving. It’s also who you’re helping. And shared experiences go a long way toward building trust and connecting with the clients you serve.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
The third step is really who is this person that you’re serving? So what is the problem? And now it’s who is this person with the problem?
So for example, if you help people who want to lose weight, who is that person? Is it a 50-year-old male? Is it a 30-year-old male? Is it a 30-year-old female? It’s going to be very different how you speak to that person, depending on who that person is that has that problem. And to give you a huge hint, whoever we’re speaking to is usually someone very much like us.
So for example, I work with a lot of introverts because I am an introvert myself. And a lot of the people I work with struggle with the same things that I struggle with when it comes to marketing or creating content or putting yourself out there or energy things, things that are specific to being an introvert.
Also, a lot of the people I work with are super passionate about nature and hiking and being outside and stuff like that because it’s something I’m really passionate about, and I talk about these things and they’re part of my story and part of what I bring into my marketing. And so the more you can just be you and really share from that place, the more you’re going to attract your ideal client which really usually is someone very similar to us.
Shawn Hesketh:
Getting clear about your niche and who you serve best is just the first step in building a successful coaching business. Once you’ve done the work to develop and test a niche, you can begin working on messaging and the marketing strategies to connect with your ideal clients.
Gabrielle Smith:
So to get your message out there now that you are being, just making yourself the expert and using your perspective, using your experience and putting that out there and just seeing if people are resonating with that message, if people are connecting with what you’re putting out there and then using that as data to say, “Oh, okay, so this message is resonating with people and so I want to speak more to this. I want to start using this approach.” And just trying different things.
But yeah, definitely going all in. And I don’t recommend right off rebranding yourself and changing your website and all of those things and going all in from that perspective, but definitely going all in in terms of your message and what you want to get out there.
Shawn Hesketh:
Even when you know have the right niche, marketing to the right audience can still be a challenge. Gabrielle works with clients to make sure they’re reaching the niche they’ve developed correctly.
Gabrielle Smith:
One of my most recent favorite client stories is one where my client came to me with a lot of thoughts about the word divorce and about using the word divorce, because in her mind there was a negative connotation with that.
Let me back up. So when my client came to me, she was using a bunch of very fluffy language around, “When relationship ends,” and, “The end of a relationship,” when really she wanted to be talking about divorce. So when she was using the fluffy talk, “When a relationship ends,” it was not connecting with anybody, but that’s what she was putting out there.
So she came to me, she’s like, “My niche isn’t working and nobody’s reaching out and all of these things.” And what we uncovered was that she wanted to help divorced women find love again, but she was never, ever, ever using the word divorced. And it was because she had a bunch of negative thoughts about divorce and what it meant and what she thought other people would make it mean.
And so we worked through that, through her experience. So really, I wanted to know why? Why were you interested in divorced women? So she started to tell me her story and how she went through the divorce, and that made it really plain to me and to her too as she started telling the story that those were the women that she were really connected with, but she did not want to use the word divorce.
And so once she worked through the drama she had with the word divorce and using it, she’s using it all left and right now. She owns it, her message is clear, she’s talking to women who are out there struggling with this. She’s showing up all over the place, she’s doing workshops and she is attracting the people that she want to work with.
And it makes all the difference in the world when you have a lived experience, when you own that you have that lived experience and that you are able to help other people through that experience, and then you feel connected to them and you show up that way. You show up with confidence because you feel more comfortable, you feel more confident that you can help these people. And so it makes all the difference in the world.
Shawn Hesketh:
If you’ve been a coach for a while, it can be hard to know when to step out of your current niche and fully commit to the new when you’re testing. So Kristin has a few practical steps you can take before totally rebranding your business.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
Usually what I have people do is come up with a sort of tagline, which could be, “I help blank do blank so they can blank.” Something like that. It doesn’t have to be that exact format, but you want it to be in a way that you can explain what you do simply so that people get it right away and they’re not looking at you like deer in headlights like, “What did you just say? I don’t even know what that means.”
I had a client recently who just went to a networking event, and we worked on her target market a lot and her niche and her [inaudible] everything, and she’s like, “I got there and I said it and everyone was asking me questions and saying, ‘I have someone to refer to you and it’s so amazing what you’re doing.'” And then someone else got up, or actually two other people at her event, and they said what they did and she said, “I could see how no one really understood what they did or who they worked with.”
And so how you know if you have a good tagline and niche and everything’s working is if you say it and people look at you and they’re like, “Oh, I get it. I know someone who could use your services.” Or, “I need that. I could use your services.”
And so [inaudible] get to that point. That’s usually what, when I work with my clients, I want to get to that point first so that we feel really clear about what is that tagline. And then from there, what we do is we typically will put that out and look for people to interview who fit that specific niche.
So who are that person who have that problem who want that result? We’ll put it out there, whether you’re putting it out there with people you know or on social media or however you have to get in front of different people, look to interview some people and get some feedback based on those people you interview. What is it these people are saying? Is this something that people are struggling with? Is this something that people will pay for help with? Those are all important things to get feedback on when you are looking to validate your niche.
For a lot of niches, we can kind of pre-validate them because if there’s people already out there selling successfully what you’re selling, we know it’s a niche that already works because it’s done, people are making money doing it, and people are being successful, there’s people looking for it. But sometimes people pick something that’s a little bit different or a little bit more out there, that’s really when we need to do the work. But I think it also helps you validate that this is something that you feel good about helping other people with as well.
Shawn Hesketh:
If you’re rebranding your coaching business, shifting your niche can be really stressful, and you might even be worried about losing clients in the process. Gabrielle offers some reassurance that this is actually a step towards growth.
Gabrielle Smith:
When you feel connected to your niche, the people that you’re talking to, then you’re going to just put yourself out there and you’re going to attract the people who align with what you’re talking about. And then the people who are not interested in this new niche are going to fall off, which is great news for you because a lot of us get all caught up, “Well, people are unfollowing and unsubscribing and all of those things,” and they start freaking out. But it’s good news because you only want the people who are there for what you are offering right now.
And so those people will start to fall off, so I just recommend that clients don’t get into any drama or thoughts about people leaving. Worry about focusing on the people who you want to attract in, and just start talking specifically to those people in your messaging, and just go all in on it.
I knew it was working because people were reaching out for consults. People were reaching out for consults, people were commenting on my social media, which again, I don’t get caught up in the comments and the likes on social media too much, but I do think that that could be one indication that people are resonating with your message, that people want and are interested in what you’re sharing and what you’re offering. But the telltale sign for me is that people are reaching out for consultations to work with you.
Shawn Hesketh:
And as you keep your eyes forward, your experiences will keep drawing clients to you. Now all that’s left is to get coaching.
Dr. Kristin Hartjes:
I think one of the most important things is your story. Ultimately, it’s a huge reason why people want to work with you. I think often we don’t talk about how important your story is as far as in your marketing and sharing it and talking about it, but from my experience, I have found it’s one of the biggest things that makes people feel connected to you and want to work with you.
Shawn Hesketh:
A huge thank you to both Gabrielle Smith and Dr. Kristin Hartjes for the resource they are, and for sharing some actionable advice for coaches exploring a niche.
Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode, and I look forward to hearing about your experience as you develop your coaching niche. This episode of The Coach Factory Podcast was produced with the support of Come Alive Creative. To hear more episodes, get the show notes and learn how to start, run and grow your coaching practice, visit CoachFactory.co.