I want to share with you a small piece of my entrepreneurial journey and how I believe it pertains to you.
From the moment I began thinking about starting Education4Life, I knew that I had the ability to be a great coach, the desire to continuously improve my craft, and the passion to continue this project for a very long time.
I also knew that as time developed I could become an even more successful coach if I found my niche. If I were to try to become an expert in every type of coaching, I would not be as effective as if I targeted one specific area at a time.
So here is what I did. I asked myself what type of coach could I be? Did I want to be a life coach, a health and wellness coach, a business coach, a career coach, a relationship coach, or an executive coach…? There were so many options.
I began by considering all the possibilities. I embraced the opportunities I had to coach people in all different situations. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to coach grad students, couples, small business owners, salespeople, hopeful retirees, network marketers, employees looking to transition to entrepreneurship, people needing help with financial organization and several other people in different situations. At the same time, I thought carefully about my strengths and weaknesses as a coach. Did I coach grad students as well as I coached couples? Did I coach my older clients as well as I coached my younger ones?
Although I am still open to coaching people in all situations, my niche has become very clear: I have decided that I am a personal coach for small business owners. I realized that my business experience and my coaching style enable me to provide a tremendous amount of value to this clientele. In serving this niche market, I help small business owners overcome personal and professional barriers and focus on the key result areas of their businesses. Through coaching, I work with them to create systems within their businesses so that they can think bigger, get more consistent results, and spend their time on the parts of the business they truly enjoy. Through coaching they discover the freedom they dreamed of when they initially opened their business.
So why does my defining my niche matter to you?
It matters because during the process of defining a niche I was reminded of three ideas I have previously written about that correlate to increased success in anything you do: clarity, focus, and efficiency.
1) Clarity – The clearer you are, the more you will see those results show up in your life. My answer to “what do you do?” is becoming clearer and more concise everyday. This clarity enhances my ability to act quickly and confidently while at the same time allowing others to have a clearer picture about whom I can help and how I can help them. As a business owner, that is very important to be able to communicate. In what areas of your life could you gain some clarity?
2) Focus on Strengths to Create Value – I chose my niche by focusing on my strengths. Sometimes to be successful, you need to specialize on your best skill. I could get by as a generalist, but by targeting my work to focus on what I do best, I’ll improve my capacity to make a real contribution.
If you want to make changes in your life, it is best to make sure that your natural strengths are being utilized to their full capacity before you begin to pour energy into improving your weaker areas. When I tutor students in the SAT, I stress this point. I tell students to make sure they get all the questions correct in the sections that they are strongest in. Then we can start to work on improving their weaknesses. What natural strengths could you better utilize to create value for yourself and others?
3) Efficiency – Efficiency leads to more time, money, and freedom. I am spending more time and energy on productive activities that will create results within the niche I coach. I am minimizing the amount of resources – time and money – I devote to pursuing markets outside of my niche. Therefore, I have more of these resources to pursue my prime target audience. And finally, I am enhancing my skills at a faster rate because I am able to spend my time studying success in a more specific area. In what areas of your life could you spend your time and money more effectively?
