#233: How To Know Exactly Who You’re Meant To Coach(And Stop Attracting the Wrong Clients)

Have you ever looked at your discovery calls and thought,
 “Why do the wrong people keep showing up?”

Or maybe people book a call… and then disappear?

In this episode, I’m breaking down how to know exactly who you’re meant to coach—and why creating content for everyone is one of the biggest reasons coaches struggle to attract clients.

I’m sharing real lessons from my own journey, including:

• Why my early content attracted all kinds of people—but not the right ones
• The moment I realized I needed to be more intentional about who I wanted to work with
• How your content should quietly pre‑sell the right clients before they ever book a call
• Why niche clarity is allowed to evolve (and why that’s actually normal)
• Three powerful questions to help you identify who you’re truly meant to coach

📩 Want my Ideal Client worksheet?

Email me at michelle@elevatelifecoaching.org, and I’ll send you the same worksheet I use with my private clients.

💬 I’d also love to hear from you—are you creating content just to stay visible, or are you being intentional about who you’re calling in?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Why Clients Disappear
• 1:46 Evolving Niche And Permission To Pivot
• 4:28 From “For Everyone” To Focus
• 5:33 Firing A Misaligned Client
• 7:10 Intentional Content And Ideal Fit
• 8:43 2026 Format And Focus
• 9:42 Content Should Pre-Sell Discovery Calls
• 11:23 Ignore Vanity Metrics, Aim For Fit
• 12:25 Worksheet Offer And Clarity Work
• 13:08 Conversations Create Relevant Content
• 14:02 Three Questions To Find Your People
• 17:04 Past-You Lessons As Content Pillars
• 18:17 Lead With Problems, Not Just Solutions
• 19:44 Energy Fit And Leading With Your Light
• 21:15 Show Up Brighter And Model Change

Transcript

Michelle Kuei: 0:00

So, today's topic, I'm going to talk about how to know exactly who you're meant to coach. And this episode is coming out because in the beginning of the journey, I realized that a lot of who I attract was not the right type of client. And you might notice this too that if you've been creating content and you're putting it out there, and people hop onto your discovery call, and if they're not signing up or they signed up, they grab a call and they somehow just disappear. And in this episode, what I want to share is the fact that over the last seven and eight years, I have evolved as a coach. And one of the mistakes that I have made early on was I was trying to create my content for everybody. Hey coach, welcome to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, your visibility marketing coach, and I help female life coaches to get seen in all the right places, attract happy paying clients, and build a coaching business that actually feels good to run. Even if you are still trying to figure things out. Each week I'm giving you visibility tips, simple marketing strategies, and showing you how to create the kind of content that connects with your audience so that you can stand out, build your authority, and attract clients who's already feeling like a yes before they jump onto your discovery call. So grab a notebook, pour yourself a favorite drink, and that's make your coaching business visible. Two days before New Year's Eve, and I was sitting in my office and thinking, what can I possibly talk about in the first episode of the podcast for the year? And I thought, there's been a few things that had led to my own evolution as a coach and also as a person. And there's been a lot of mistakes I had made when I first started out. And one of the big mistakes that I realized was that just a lot of you who's trying to figure out how do I do this business thing, what is my niche, my niche statement doesn't sound right, and I go back and I change it. If you notice, I still change it from time to time. It just doesn't feel right. Which was totally okay because one of the articles that I recently read from the International Coach Federation, and they published these report, global study report, every two years. And in that report, it talks a lot about the different type of niche that's currently out there in the market, and how many percent of people are in this niche and that niche. The majority of the coaches, based on that report, Lamb basically in the leadership, corporate, business sector, these are the popular niche on the top, I would say more than 50%. And then you have life coaches, you have relationship coaches, and coaches who falls under different niche. So they're very diverse based on that report. And what I took away from that report was the fact that, hey, if you don't have a niche from last year, it's okay because your niche is going to evolve. So don't feel bad about, oh, I've been telling myself that I need to put myself out there, and I've been like working on this niche thing forever, and it still doesn't feel right. It's still not in a sweet spot. I'm here to give you a permission slip, and I know that's an overused word nowadays, giving you a permission slip. What? We're in the high school, we need a to get a laboratory pass of some sort. Regardless, I'm here to give you a permission slip to give yourself okay, like permission to not feeling the pressure of having to narrow down to a niche that you think that, oh, this is it. This is what I'm going to land on. It's totally okay to let it evolve. And in this episode, what I want to share is the fact that over the last seven and eight years, I have evolved as a coach. And one of the mistakes that I had made early on was I was trying to create my content for everybody. So I started this podcast, for example. It has a name Perfectly Normal. It went after my memoir when I first published it because I thought publishing a book, I also need a platform to talk about the book and talk about the content and talk about how it inspired me to be on this life coaching business journey and how I'm looking for life coach clients. And that was the whole reason I started the podcast. I needed my own platform to have a voice to share with the world that here I am. That initially worked out great, but what I didn't realize is that in that process, I was also doing a lot of content creation basically for everybody. It wasn't specific enough. I had gentlemen who come to me looking for more confidence in their career, in their life, in their relationship. I have women who come to me and they're introverted and they wanted to find their voice. So I was creating content for a lot of different varieties of people. And I was able to attract a lot of variety of people. But what really changed that whole mindset of creating content for everyone was pretty much in my second year, where I started to realize that there's certain individuals that I just don't want to work with. And that came from an experience that I had after a client signed up and it was a he. And he brought a lot of anger energy into our session, and which makes me feel drained every time after a session with him. And that was the moment. So I end up terminating that relationship with that client, and I had refund 100% back to that client. We had a discussion. I said this is probably the best for both of us. And I said, it was great working with you, but I don't think we're a good fit, which is totally okay. And you're going to come across clients where you're not 100% resonating with, and you would much rather find those who resonate with you. After that client relationship, I decided that I wanted to be more intentional about the type of clients that I'm going to attract and the type of clients that I am willing to sign up with. Your client is looking for you, but you're also looking for the right clients that you're happy to work with. So if that is not a good fit, it's not a good fit. And you just move on to the next client or next prospects. And there's nothing wrong with it. But you need to be clear in terms of who you are and what type of clients that you're happy to work with, what type of energy they bring into the session. Are they excited? Do you have to drag their feet? Do you have to keep being that accountability partner and watching their steps every step of the way? Or are they somewhat more independent? And these are the important things that you wanted to consider, especially early on in your coaching business journey, so that you can attract the right type of client into your business. So as I was there sitting there and thinking about, okay, so what do I want to put out this year in terms of on my podcast and how do I want to present and show up for all of you who's been so loyal and you've been listening to my episode pretty much on the schedule every Tuesday. So I wanted to do more for you. And this is the kind of format that I'm thinking moving forward in 2026. It's going to be a little more about sharing my own process of what I have learned from my journey and also give you some guidance in terms of how do you build your own coaching business. So today's topic, I'm going to talk about how to know exactly who you're meant to coach. And this episode is coming out because in the beginning of the journey, I realized that a lot of who I attract was not the right type of client. And you might notice this too, that if you've been creating content and you're putting it out there, and people hop onto your discovery call, and if they're not signing up or they signed up, they grab a call and they somehow just disappear, that's a sign that there's something that needs to change in your content. Because the type of clients that you're attracting who's jumping onto your discovery call, those need to be the client who are already sold by consuming your content. Majority of what you do on social is to help that person to go from a complete stranger, not knowing who you are, and walk them on this journey of, hey, I'm a coach and this is what I do. This is how I can help you do this. And once we work together, here are the changes that you're going to experience. You don't do it in one single post because it's going to be a long post. And nowadays the attention span is so short. You wanted to sprinkle that journey of how to walk someone from a complete stranger into someone who becomes a loyal fan, who just waiting for you to put out every blog post, every podcast episode, who's really on your corner, even though they don't show up in every single comment. So you want to be more intentional about the type of content that you're going to create. Now I know it's very easy to let that negative self-talk to creep in, especially if no one commenting on your post, or maybe you put out a video and there's not a whole lot of view, there's not a whole lot of engagement. Don't let that be a sign of your success or failure. Okay, I say this with love because I am that person who sometimes I will compare myself to those who have higher views, bigger view, bigger audience, they have bigger numbers. But you don't want to do that because instead of comparing yourself to all these other coaches who have greater views, more comments, what you want to do is you want to look at your own content and be intentional about what you're putting out, who you're putting out for, because that is going to set up the stage for you to attract the right type of clients who are interested in the topic that you are going to share. The bottom line is how do you know exactly who you're meant to coach? You sit down, you do your ideal client work. And I do have a worksheet for this. So if you need it, just hit reply to my email or send me an email at Michelle at elevatalifecoaching.org. I'll be more than happy to send you the worksheet that I use for my clients. Don't get trapped into doing that work. Because what is going to happen is when you create content, you want to create content for the real person who's interested in the topic that's relevant to them. So how do you decide on which is relevant to them? You need to go out there and start having conversations. Your content is going to come from the conversation that you have with different varieties of different people. And I'm saying different variety of people, assuming that you don't have a niche yet. Now, if you have a niche already, it's probably easier because then you know where to look for these ideal clients, what type of characteristics or features that these people have. So you're probably going to place yourself in a situation where you can have conversations with those types of specific people. But let's say you don't have a niche yet and you're just still trying to figure out what your niche is. So your content is going to come from the conversation that you have with individuals and understanding what are some of the topics that they are interested to hear. Now I use the word interest twice because with all the things that we see on social, what's really going to stop them from listening to you is something of interest to them. So how do you get started? Let's say you don't have any conversation, and which is where I was eight years ago. I had no conversation, my background was in the corporate, it's in a hospital setting, academic, and I don't have any conversation to begin with. So how do you start? There's a couple of places that you can start, and I have three questions, three very important questions that you can ask yourself that's going to help you to narrow down how do I know exactly who I am meant to coach? Three questions. Okay. So the first question is think about, forget about all the people that's out there. If you want to create conversation that would interest people, think of your own journey because we all have this shared hero journey in our lifetime. So your story is going to be very different than mine, but there's all some fundamental similarity between our hero's journey. Now, how do you know what your hero's journey is and how do you dissect what to talk about and who you're meant to coach? You want to think about who was that past you maybe a year or three years ago, before you became a coach, before you became certified, or before you came across coaching in the first place. Who was you in the past one to three years? There's an older version of you. Now, sometimes I hear my clients say, Oh, my ideal client and avatar is me, the same me. Not exactly right, because your client is never going to be you. It's going to be an older version of you who doesn't have the resource and the tools and the skills that you currently have. So it's not you, it's the older version of you who don't have those skills. So who was you? Who was the past you one to three years ago? And you wanted to pick out from that journey maybe one to two to three most important lessons that you have learned. And those becomes your foundation of what you create on your social media. Okay, so so that's a take for example, my journey of how I conquer Machu Picchu with the physical disability. One of the topics of interest was the negative self-talk. I was doing a lot of negative self-talk, which the imposter syndrome, which is huge. That might be it, the imposter syndrome or the negative self-talk. That might be a point of interest that you can start focusing on and creating content that other people who want to learn more about the imposter syndrome are going to sit down and start reading about the imposter syndrome, content that you are putting out. So see how you go back to the past you and pick out the lessons, the big lessons that you have learned, and those becomes your foundation in creating content that's going to help you to attract the right type of clients to come to you. So that's one of the questions that you can ask. The second question is what problem are you naturally obsessed with helping people solve? Now, I know this one can be tricky because a lot of coaches that I work with, they don't think in terms of problems. They think in terms of solutions. And this is probably because the training that we have received, we've been taught to see everything as a solution base rather than problem-based. And it's hard to reverse engineer to think about okay, so I have the solution, but what was the problem that I was trying to solve? So you wanted to think about the problems and not so much about the solution that you're providing. Think about what the solution is going to help people solve that problem. So, what is that problem? And this one you might need to mind map it or draw or Venn diagram or something that would help you visualize if you have these solutions, what would be the problem that you are trying to solve? So you reverse engineer a little bit, and that's going to help you to address the problem that people have. And now when your potential clients or your audience come across your post, what they're going to see is, oh yeah, I do have this problem of talking poorly about myself. And that would be my problem. So what would be the solution? You're helping them to recognize that some of these are condition patterns that condition us to see the negative and not to see the positive. So those would be the solution that you provide them with the problem that they have, that they're talking poorly about themselves. So that's the second question. What problems are you naturally obsessed with helping people solve? Now, the third question is it goes back to my original story about this client I signed up, and he brought a lot of energy, the anger energy into our session. So the third question you want to ask yourself: who are you exactly meant to coach? Is that who lights you up when you're talking to them? Now, I don't know about you, there's a lot of people that I talk to on a day-to-day basis, and not everyone brings out the same type of energy that I would with certain individuals. I'm excited to see them, I'm excited to hear their voice, I treat them all the same, but they're just some individual that's just light up my world versus others. They're just genuine connection. So you wanted to think about their energy. Is it easy to talk to them? Do you feel excited from your point of view? I think it's easy when you are in that space of you want to get a client, you want to attract a client, you want to get seen by a client. We start that version of ourselves as soul outward facing. We forget that there's something that we like about ourselves as a coach, as a person, as a human, that would naturally just attract the people around us. You yourself is the light source. Just because you're trying to get client, it doesn't mean that you have to deem your light in order to get client. In fact, it's actually the opposite. You want to shine brighter so that the clients that's out there can model your leadership, they can model what you have, and that is going to naturally attract the people that you are meant to coach. So that was me thinking about okay, so what do I want to talk about moving forward in 2026 on this podcast? I thought, why not going back to the basic, be more conversational, and just really share what had worked for me? And one of the mistakes I had made early on was I was trying to create content almost for everybody. I was that person who dimmed my light. It's all about my clients who's a hero. It's all about giving them the Light, giving them the fire, giving them other light source. But I forgot that there's something about me just naturally attract others to come walk towards me. And when you are a coach, you're also a leader. So it is your job to get out there and shine brighter than ever. So that those who really need your work is going to see you, and that person is going to model what you have because you, as a leader, you gotta set an example of this is a problem that I had in the past. And look, I'm not saying that it's going to work the same way it is for you, but this is what I was able to do. And you would be the perfect person to do that. So be more intentional about the content that you're putting out in 2026 because a lot of the AI and social media algorithm is also changing, moving towards that. If you do nothing at all this month, at least sit down and really thinking about who you want to show up as and how you're going to show up and what kind of people are you looking to attract. That would be your first step before you create and putting out any type of content out there because what you put out is going to set the tone of who you're going to attract in 2026. Let me know. Hey, reply to my email, Michelle at elevate lifecoaching.org. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Are you creating content because there's just a need to create content, or have you been more intentional about what you're putting out out there? Thank you for listening to Make It Visible Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevate lifecoaching.org and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever without wasted time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to elevate lifecoaching.org and grab a free strategy out of it today.