We all struggle to find niches when trying to get into the coaching game. But is it really that hard?

Or have we been looking in the wrong places? This episode shows you how you can find dozens of niches, all of which have great power and are profitable now and for years to come.

Click here to read online: Coaching Series 2/3: How Niches Can Easily Be Found in Recurring Client Problems

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In 2010, Gillette blades dominated the market at 70 per cent.

Six years later, they were down to 54%

How can Gillette get back into the game?

Phil Masiello is one of the reasons why Gillette is losing market share. Masiello founded 800razors.com and sales at his company were up to about $2 million annually before he sold it. However, Masiello is only one among many competitors.

Harry's, Dollar Shave and other smaller razor and blade companies are all responsible for the drop in Gillette's market share. It's Phil Masiello, himself who has the best advice for Gillette.

“Gillette makes a great shave,” Masiello said. “Nobody has ever complained about the great shave of Gillette and Schick. People only complained about the price. You take the price difference out, all of a sudden they are back in the game.”

Notice what Masiello is pointing to?

It's the “recurring problem”. If you've ever bought Gillette's blades, the only thought that crosses your mind with every purchase is: how can five pieces of plastic and some metal cost $40 per pack? In New Zealand, each blade is priced at the whopping price of $8. 15 zillion shaves later; you think of the same problem over and over again when buying new blades.

The recurring problem exists in every industry, without exception

Take for instance the role of a media planner in an advertising agency. What is her recurring problem? It's ROI or a return on investment. A media planner's job is to decide where to spend the client's money. Will it be on social media? On TV adverts? Or some place else?

What she decides then trickles down to the copywriters and designers and everyone else in the agency. The teams will need to either need to make more TV commercials or instead, radio spots, depending on where the ROI is best. And the biggest problem with media planning isn't the spending of the budget, but the perception of the clients and the agency.

If you were asked: On a scale of 1/10 how high would you rate newspapers with regards to ROI?

What about TV? Or radio? Or would social media be a better choice? Perception isn't reality, and when a firm did painstaking research, they found something mind-boggling. See the figures below.

What's the recurring problem?

Yup, it's perception. And this kind of recurring problem shows up consistently when you're coaching clients. Usually, the same problems turn up again and again. Take, for instance, the Article Writing Course. All of our coaching is done online via a forum and through assignments. It's not what you'd call a traditional system of phone calls, Skype calls or in person. Even so, it's not the medium of coaching that is valid for this discussion.

What's important is in identifying the recurring problem. And the recurring problem is that our clients, at least, are keen on getting new clients, and they realise that articles are one of the better ways to create authority and hence, get clients. But they struggle with speed. Writing an article takes so long that they get exhausted.

And you know what happens when you get so tired, right? Your output isn't that great. The coaching system we have in place is therefore built around speed. By the end of the coaching program, the goal is to write magazine-quality articles in 90 minutes.

If you're training a netball team the recurring problem might be different

Nerves and pressure situations on the court is almost endemic among young players. As Leanne Hughes, once a netball player herself, says: “Playing in the circle is tough. You don’t want to miss that goal and lose the game by one point. How do you calm the nerves when you need to deliver that shot?

The recurring problem is getting the shot even under extreme pressure. This precise idea is what enables a buyer to lock into whatever it is you're selling as a coach. And in turn, it prevents you from saying something silly like: “Oh, I'm a netball coach” when asked what you do for a living.

One more example and then it's time to move on through the series.

Joseph Ch'ng runs training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Clients learn to be NLP coaches just like him. But what's the recurring problem that shows up? Joseph has found that coaches aren't always in the right frame of mind to coach others. To get into that state of mind—a meta state—as he calls it, is essential. And that's a recurring problem that he sees with many coaches.

As Joseph says: Meta State is a peak performance state. A state of being in-tuned, open, connected. Clients respond well to coaches who are in this state and as a coach you get far more impressive results. You need to learn how to move into, and stay in that meta state when working with clients, no matter how your day has been before that moment.”

See those problems cropping up time and time again?

Gillette has its price issues; a media planner tends to battle with the perception of clients. On the Article Writing Course, we have to deal with speed, while Leanne works on nerves. And finally, Joseph's client's recurring problem is the “burdens of the day” and “how to switch into meta state right away”.

Find your client's recurring problem today. Ask them. They'll tell you. Just like I would tell you why I don't like paying $8 for a single Gillette blade.

However, now that we have the recurring problem concept in play, how do we go about the important task of finding prospective clients?

Next Step: Coaching Series 1/3: How to Start Up with a Great Niche

The toughest part of coaching isn't necessarily coaching itself. Instead, it's the niche, isn't it?

How do you go looking for the right niche? And how do you know when you've found one that's rewarding as well as profitable? We go back in time with the British Cycling Team and what turned them into champions, and how their coach played a role. We also look at how Pilates went from being everything to everyone to finding a solid niche. Listen and enjoy.

Click here to read online: Coaching Series 1/3: How To Start Up With A Great Niche

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Hand washing is not exactly the activity you'd indulge in if you wanted to win the gold medal at the Olympics.

Yet, that's exactly what the British Cycling Team did at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They hired a surgeon to teach the athletes to properly wash their hands, in order to avoid illnesses during competition.

The team staff were utterly fastidious about food preparation. They even brought their own mattresses and pillows, so that the athletes could sleep in a familiar posture every night.

What does all of this have to do with coaching?

It might seem totally weird, even slightly crazy, but these were just some of the methods Sir Dave Brailsford, head of British Cycling used to turn his scrappy little bunch into world champions.

British Cycling went from a terrible 76 year record of just one gold medal, to 7 out of 10 gold at the Beijing Olympics and then 7 out of 10 at yet again at the London Olympics. They've even won three out of the last Tour de France competitions, with only Italy interrupting their successful run.

Surely Britain didn't sprout champions overnight

Something else was in play, and that something else is simply the teacher, or a coach. And there's a remarkable difference between being just someone who coaches others, and one that coaches to get precise results. The coach who works with a specific goal in mind takes great performers and transforms makes them unbeatable.

If you look at almost any great artist, performer, athlete or professional, it's easy to seduce yourself into believing in inborn talent. In almost every instance, you will find it's the coach and their methods that take the client from a seemingly ordinary level to something quite stupendous.

Without a coach, a person has to go through the gruelling method of having to figure out all the mistakes and fix it themselves. When you look at the 10,000 hour principle, what you're seeing is someone who doesn't have an outstanding coach. A coach can not only reduce the learning curve, but can make learning fun and addictive.

In this series, we'll take apart not just what makes for good coaching, but the elements of coaching. Let's get started.

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How do you define your Niche as a Coach?

Around the time of the California Gold Rush, one man, Samuel Brannan was known as the richest man in California.

Contrary to what we might believe, Brannan didn't quite make his money panning for gold. He'd decided early on that he'd never make much money in the gold mines. Instead, he was reputed to have gone down the streets of San Francisco, shouting, “Gold, there's gold down the American river”. So where did Brannan's riches arise?

His fortune arose from a strategic move. He owned the only store between San Francisco and the gold fields. He stocked his store with the picks, shovels and pans he could find paying barely 20 cents for each pan and selling it for $15 each.

In scarcely nine weeks, he had made over $36,000 (in today's terms that would be 1,080,077.47). In short, Brannan put himself in a position where it was hard, even impossible for him to fail with his insight.

When starting up as a coach, it's not easy to have such clear insight.

In many cases, you're in transition yourself. You're often trying to find your own feet, your own space and voice. You do know one thing, though. You know that you can't be like everyone else rushing off with their pans and shovels.

You instinctively know you've almost got to swing the other way and find a niche. But how do you go about creating a niche?

Let's start with luck, shall we?

When I first got to Auckland in 2000, I got thrust into coaching by accident—twice. I wasn't into coaching at all, but instead was drawing cartoons on Photoshop. A client who'd come over watched in awe as I got rid of all the icons on the screen. No tool bar, no colour picker, not even a menu bar.

“Where is everything”? He asked, amazed partially at the speed of my method, but more because I seemed to be working almost magically. I explained I was using shortcuts and he was so impressed that he offered me $1000 to train his daughter.

And I had my first accidental coaching session

“How to use Photoshop faster than graphic designers”—that was my temporary slogan. In a week, his daughter went from never using Photoshop to teaching graphic designers how to use shortcuts as well.

With my new found slogan, I managed to pick one more client—yes, another graphic designer. As a result, I was able to do my cartoons in my Superman time and had this little Clark Kent coaching operation on the side.

But why was this type of coaching earning me a fair bit of money in a brand new country?

I didn't have any testimonials, no referrals, not even a business card and most definitely no website. What I did have was a subset, or what you'd call a niche. Which coincidentally takes us to the second coaching scenario.

Around 2001, I had decided I didn't want to draw cartoons for a living anymore and started up a marketing company, instead. At first, I tried to solve every possible marketing problem and got nowhere in a hurry. Then, one day, by sheer fluke I decided to create a presentation on just seven elements.

This presentation was called The Brain Audit, and once I was done with the presentation, I was pushed into creating a book, which then sold online and guess what buyers wanted next.

They wanted me to coach them on The Brain Audit

I wish I knew what I was doing back then, but the reality is I didn't know much at all. I was desperately reading books, buying courses and finding myself spending anywhere between $1500 to $8000 for seminars and workshops. However, at the very same time, clients were happy to pay me as much as $150 an hour to help them through The Brain Audit.

If you put the Photoshop and The Brain Audit story together, you should easily see what's happening

It's the power of the subset that matters most to clients. Clients don't want to learn how to cook Indian food. They want to learn a subset, like “vegetarian food for special occasions”. They don't want to learn InDesign, but instead “how to create an ebook in under an hour”.

In almost every subset, we also find there are both—a specific problem and a corresponding solution. But the moment you get out of the subset, there's a complete lack of clarity.

Let's go back to Photoshop, shall we?

What problem does it solve? How about marketing? What problem does it solve? And Indian food? See what I mean? The problem with saying “I'm a life coach” or “I'm an NLP coach” or “I'm a boxing coach” is totally pointless.

People can't make head or tail of what you're trying to say. But the moment you pick a subset, you almost automatically get a problem and solution.

And maybe that's where you ought to start

What problems do clients have in Photoshop? Or with guitar playing, watercolours, marketing or NLP? How can you reverse engineer that problem so that you can end up with a solution?

Then, it won't matter if you have a fancy card, website or referrals, what you do have is a solution to their problem. And that's how you get started with a niche.

You start with the problem

It's not going to make you a nine-week millionaire like Samuel Brannan, but it will get you off the ground and started into the world of coaching.

How do you know you've found the right niche?

If you were asked to go to the supermarket and buy a packet of potato chips, would you make the right choice?

There are only two answers here, aren't there?

You could pick the right one, or be wildly off the mark. After all, the supermarket loads at least two dozen different brands and then there are the variations. Low fat, full fat, crinkled, plain salted, vinegar, paprika, whisky—who knows what else! The chances of getting it wrong far, far exceed the probability of getting it right.

And how do we know if we've got it wrong or right?

It depends who you're buying the chips for, doesn't it? If Renuka sends me into the market to get chips, I know I can only get the brand called Proper Crisps, and it won't matter if I get the paprika or the salted versions—because they're both the right choices.

When choosing a niche, it might seem like you're stuck in a “nightmare supermarket aisle”

Wouldn't it be better, if there were a way to make a correct choice from the very start? Let's find out whether such a task is possible, or if we just have to bludgeon our way through choices.

The reality is that the answer lies somewhere in between

No matter what niche you pick, you can almost be certain you're off the mark. The good news is that you're partially, not completely off the mark. Which means that a piano coach, life coach, breathing coach—any kind of coach is more or less going to be in the right box.

They'll still be in the broad spectrum of piano, life coaching and breathing, just like the chips are still in the broad range of chips. What makes a niche right isn't the broad spectrum that you choose, but instead, the narrow niche you choose to occupy.

You might know the story of the coach, Joseph Pilates

Pilates wasn't an exercise coach in his early years. Born in Germany in 1883, he'd already dabbled in gymnastics and bodybuilding in his younger years. In 1912 when he moved to England, he moved to professional boxing, was a circus performer and a self-defence trainer.

Notice how versatile Pilates seems to be? Well, that's the problem with a lot of businesses. They have the capacity or at least believe they can be a one-size-fits-all-type-of-coach. And it's not like Pilates was destitute. Despite this smorgasbord of doing a bit this and a bit of that, he got by.

However, it's only in 1925, that he finds a niche

Over the years, and through World War I, he developed an integrated, comprehensive system of physical exercise, which he called “Contrology”. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone who wanted to improve their well being, Pilates set up shop under a dance studio. The dancers needed to be fit at all times, plus have flexibility, strength and stamina. His focus was on reducing injuries, and to the outside world, it looks like he just got lucky to find this profitable niche.

Luck has its role to play, but when we examine the unlucky coaching businesses, there's a clear pattern

The businesses that struggle are those that stay incredibly generic. You ask the coach what she does, and she says, “I'm a writing coach”. As you can tell, her statement tells you nothing. But if we were to choppitty-chop our way a bit, she might say, “I'm a writing coach that specialises in removing writer's block.”

Notice how that specialisation gets your attention?

She's possibly good at teaching writers how to create structure, drama, flow, style and a whole bunch of other stuff related to writing. But the moment she goes wide, she loses the power of the niche.

We wonder if we've found the right niche, but any niche is the right niche. Pilates could have made a great life for himself as a boxing coach, a self-defence coach, a circus coach. But he instead he chose to focus not just on an audience of dancers, but then to “reduce injuries”.

All niches are already niches

There's no such thing as the right niche. The moment you get yourself into a category of being a writing coach, you've already cancelled out all the other things you can do. But your audience still won't care, because a client doesn't buy into a coach.

Instead, the client buys into a specific problem that needs solving. We waste endless days, weeks and months—even years trying to find the “right niche” when in reality we're already in the right niche, but haven't defined the problem we're solving.

But how do you know if the problem is the right problem?

There's no such thing as the right problem. But there is such a thing as a recurring problem. Do dancers get injuries? Yes, they do. Did they get injuries during the time of Pilates dance studio?

Yes, they did, and they still do today. If you are a fitness coach, all you need to do is specialise in how you can make the dancers get fewer injuries. You don't even have to reinvent the problem. It was done for you back in 1925 by Pilates.

You think Writer's Block is a recent problem? Or was snoring invented yesterday? Not one of these things are new, and all you need to do is look for the recurring problem. People have had these problems for centuries and will continue to have the same problems over and over again.

Where do you go from here?

Your first step is to find yourself a category. e.g. Writing.
The second step is to find yourself an audience. e.g. Small business owners who want to write blogs.
The third and final step is to find the recurring problem: Writer's block.

And there you have it—your niche—the right niche—is yours for the asking.

Next Step: How To Make The Mental Leap From a Job into Entrepreneurship

One of the biggest hurdles in writing, has nothing to do with writing at all.

It doesn't have anything to do with time, either. Instead, it's an understanding of energy. Without a clear view of how energy works, we're likely to start off strong and then find ourselves stranded.

Is there a way around this energy hurdle? What causes an energy loss? Let's find out in this episode.

Click here to read online: Writer's Block: How a Lack of Energy, Not Time, Causes Writers to Stall and Crash

 

How do you speed up your writing process and what causes it to slow down to a crawl?

Surprisingly, discussion and feedback play an incredibly powerful role in unblocking Writer's Block. The more you're stuck, the greater the reason to invite discussion and feedback. The moment you do, it causes you to explain the concepts in a way that catches you totally by surprise!

Click here to read online: Writer's Block 3/4: Why Discussion and Feedback Are A Writer's Secret Weapon (And How Professionals Use it to Their Advantage)

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C) Discussion and Feedback

If you drop me in Kyoto or Paris, I'll walk happily for hours.

However, the moment I have to exercise, I detest the very concept of walking. And yet, day after day, year after year, we go for a walk. It's healthy of course, and I actually learn stuff or listen to music, but the most crucial part of the walk is the part right up to the traffic lights.

It's about a ten-minute walk from our house to the lights, and that's when I talk to Renuka about what I've been reading or watching. And there are days when Renuka is “sleep walking”, so I'll get nods, but some days she's wide awake, and we have a discussion. If I'm lucky, she'll disagree with almost everything I'm saying.

Discussion is a great way to get prepared to write an article

I remember the author, Malcolm Gladwell drumming home this very point. He tends to find a friend either in person or over the phone, and they discuss the topic. If the friend doesn't respond well, Gladwell knows the idea either needs tuning or needs to be dropped entirely.

If the person gets interested or goes off on their version of the story, Gladwell knows the premise is interesting. It struck me that this method is what most writers tend to do instinctively, yet the ones that struggle don't do it at all, and it puts them at a significant disadvantage.

If you keep your article under wraps, it's your own secret

This secretive nature of ours tends to boil down to one aspect—and it's called insecurity. Sounds harsh, I know, but it's just because we're insecure about our topic, or that we'll be called out in some way.

Feedback rocks our boat so much that we feel happier to simply get on with the job of writing, and avoid this discussion bit completely. It's sobering to note that discussion and exposing your ideas to the world is how great science is done.

Scientists don't tend to work in a bubble

They postulate an idea, or do some research and publish a paper. That paper is examined by others in their field, and they come up with holes in the research or idea. The holes might be so large that the scientist has to go back to almost the starting point if they want to ratify their idea. Is this method frustrating? Is it a big blow to the ego?

Of course. It is

Renuka is not the only source of feedback and discussion. I'll get on WhatsApp and chatter away with a private group. I'll have discussions via e-mail or Messenger. And often, I'll post a rough idea on the forum in 5000bc. If you're wondering why there are so few holes in a lot of the articles or books from Psychotactics, then wonder no more.

Those holes existed. If you look at the courses, e.g. the Sales Page course, it's in Version 3.0. That tells you that the course material of 1.0 and 2.0 had holes. The same applies to the Article Writing Course, or any course, any article—just about everything we do.

This article too will have holes in it, and we know this to be true, because the moment I post it, someone will ask further questions or have clarifications needed. Or, as the case may be, they may disagree with some point or the other.

But feedback is about holes and the discussion is often just for the sake of clarity

When you have an idea or a topic you want to cover, it's a bit premature in your head. When you put it down on paper, on chat, or in a verbal discussion, you have to be more precise in your argument. It forces you to think of analogies. You might say: “You know this topic we're discussing is exactly like the Barbie case study. Remember how…”

And that discussion will spur case studies and examples, but it does a lot more. When explaining something to someone else, you also tend to bring up analogies. You say, “It's a lot like a roundabout, instead of a traffic light.

Both systems regulate the traffic, but one works without any punishment or and yet is far superior in traffic control.” When you explain yourself, you can't help but try and pull up a series of analogies. The discussion becomes the groundwork for all the analogies, stories, case studies and examples you could insert into your still to be written article.

Whether you choose a forum, chat, the phone or a walk in Kyoto the result is similar

You're going for a little stroll with your ideas. And along the way, you meet other ideas or even run into that snarly feedback guy from next door. You haven't started to write yet, but you're beginning to percolate, which is far more important.

It might be a good idea at this point to reach into your pocket and scribble the ideas down. I tend to dictate them into my phone into Evernote so I can access the ideas on any computer or device, later. You may think you'll remember it all. I promise you it's not a good idea.

For one, even if you have a great memory, you have to use energy to remember those points. In doing so, your discussion won't move as quickly as it possibly should. I tend to quickly save whatever I can remember and then continue the discussion even as I'm marching up or down the hill.

If you can, it's a good idea to have many articles going at once

When I first started writing, I was so pathetic that I could only focus on a single article. I'd spend days over that article, and that was my sole obsession. In time I realised it was better to have many articles all at different levels of progress.

You see what's happening, right? It feels chaotic to have many articles all on the go at once, but in fact, they're all percolating over the duration of a week or so. The one that started last Monday might be completed by the following week, or earlier. Or later.

But the discussion and the feedback move it backwards and forward. When starting out, it might take all your energy just to focus on a single article, but in time you'll find having many articles inching ahead to be a great way to get discussions going on many fronts.

Keeping secrets is mostly a terrible plan in almost all areas of life

We get bad advice from well-wishers, parents and guardians. We're told as we're growing up that certain things need to be private. In reality, it's hogwash. In many cases, secrets only seek to make us more insecure. And this kind of “let's keep it private, let's keep it a secret” usually makes work worse, not better.

Scientists prove this point, coders prove this point, and great creativity underlines this idea over and over again. If you really want to get your article moving faster, and want it to be more robust, you have to overwrite the nonsensical programming you had in your formative years. Discussion and feedback help you formulate, tear down and rebuild ideas at high speed.

It's input

Input shows up when you read about your industry's subject matter. It creates a sweet, creamy layer of creativity when you cross-pollinate with different case studies, industries and even different media. And finally, input pushes your ideas to the wall.

Your job is to make your work clearer, more robust. The more you accept feedback and discussion as part of your routine, the more volatile the process will seem at first. In time, however, you'll seek out discussion and feedback at every turn, and overwrite the “keep secret” programming that slows you down and keeps you isolated in your own dark, insecure corner.

So far We've tackled two main topics of—Why Lack of Pre-Work Almost Guarantees Writer's Block

1) The Lack of Pre-Work
2)The Scarcity of Input

It's time to go to the third one: Understanding Energy Management When Writing

Next Step: Writer’s Block Series 4/4: How a Lack of Energy, Not Time, Causes Writers to Stall and Crash

Most of us are content to learn a great deal about what's happening in our industry, but is that causing a blockage when it comes to writing? When we go into the depths of writer's block, we find that you need cross pollination not only across industry, but across styles as well as media such as video, audio and text. Find out how a lack of cross pollination could be causing your writing to freeze up.