#245: When Your Dream Client Is the Version of You From 5 Years Ago

Your coaching niche probably isn't broken. The way you're describing it is.

In this episode, Michelle walks through a session with a client who'd been rewriting her elevator pitch for weeks, only to discover her real coaching niche had been sitting in her own story the whole time.

If your niche statement sounds good in a workshop but lands flat in real conversation, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn:

• The one question that reveals your real coaching niche in five minutes
• Three signs your niche is too generic (and what each one is actually costing you)
• Why your dream client is almost always the version of you from a few years ago
• The identity work hiding inside what looks like a marketing problem
• A 10-minute exercise to rewrite your niche statement

Quotable moments:

"Most coaches think they have a niche problem. They almost never do. They have an identity problem."

"The discomfort of claiming her is usually the discomfort of admitting how far you've come."

"You don't have to invent her. You just have to name her."

Mentioned in this episode:

• The 10-minute niche exercise (full version on the blog)
• Dear Coach Letter on Substack: weekly letters on building a coaching business that pays you on repeat
• The Make It Visible podcast archive

Resources & next steps:

• Subscribe to the Dear Coach weekly letter
• Want help finding your real niche? Learn about Coaching Biz Builder

About the host:

Michelle Kuei is a business and marketing coach for coaches. She helps women coaches across all niches stop chasing clients and start attracting them using her Client Enrollment Method. She's the founder of Elevate LifeCoaching, the creator of Coaching Biz Builder, and the host of the Make It Visible podcast.

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Transcript

Michelle Kuei 0:00

I had a session recently with a client that I cannot stop thinking about. So my client came in frustrated and she's been working on her elevator pitch for weeks. She reworded it, she tweaked it, she brought it to a networking event, and she finally said it out loud. And the whole entire time she was thinking, This sounds like an elevator pitch. It felt stiff, scripted, and it doesn't sound like me. So her pitch was something along the line of I help action-oriented women building their dream lives. Not technically wrong, but that feeling when something is grammatically fine and still completely off. Yeah, that. And if you're nodding your head right now, this episode is for you. Hey coach, welcome back to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, a business and marketing coach for coaches. And if you're new here, I teach coaches how to build a coaching business and get their first and next paying clients. You became a coach because you are good at this. Really good. And the world needs what you have. But being a great coach and knowing how to build a coaching business, those are two complete different skill sets. That's what we fix here on this podcast. Every week I'm breaking down the what stops you from being visible in front of your audience, giving you simple marketing strategies that works, and showing you exactly how to show up so the right client feels you're already reading their mind. If you're ready to start building a coaching business that pays you back, grab a drink and let's get into it. Hey, welcome back. I'm Michelle and I am a business and marketing coach for coaches. And today we are going to talk about the stuff that keep most of you invisible, scattered, and also doubting whether anyone will actually want to sign up with you. So today we're going to talk about your niche. Specifically, why it sounds like every other coach's and why you can't say it out loud without that cringy feeling inside, and how to find the real one that has been sitting inside of you this whole entire time. So back to my client. So she came to the session feeling frustrated, but she was not mad at herself nor our progress, our work together. She was actually proud. She's been closing the loose ends from years now that when she first started out in her business, and she finally got clear in terms of what my niche is, what my offer looks like, what do I want to do moving forward? So I asked her one question: Who is that woman you keep pulling towards even when you are not even trying? And she paused, she thought about it, then she described someone in great detail. She said, This is a woman who is mid to high-level management, running a small to mid-sized company by herself, going from one fire to another and accomplished but feeling exhausted. This is someone who gets it all done and never gets a thank you. And she doesn't even mind that she doesn't get thank you. She's the one who keeps saying, I'm fine, and when in reality, she is absolutely not fine. And then my client got very quiet for a minute, and she said, That was me a couple of years ago. That's exactly who I was. And there it was, her real niche, her real dream client. She's been sitting on her own story the whole entire time. She just didn't want to claim it because she's not that same person anymore. She doesn't connect to that old version of herself. So she doesn't realize that old version of herself, that's the person who needs her help the most because that person has been stuck just like she did for years. And somewhere in her brain, claiming that woman as her ideal client means that it's going backward. But in reality, it's not. So I see this all the time when coaches come to me and say, I want to work with this kind of person, and when I ask why, they can't really tell me exactly why. They've been hunting for their ideal dream client out in the wild, but and when you ask them, where does she hang out? What does she do? What's her title? What's her income bracket? They're searching from the external world of this dream ideal client. But I think of it like this there's two ways that you can find your niche from the outside with the skills and the expertise, maybe the authority you have built from the past. And some of us, we approach it from a strategic point of view. But majority of you who's out there trying to find a niche, if you struggle to find a niche, there's actually an inside-out approach that you can use. The outside seems to be the very common one where most coaches would start. You try to figure out who this person is by building a demographic profile, the age, the income, the profession, the problem, the hobby, and you go in circle because you never really connected to that person, because simply you don't want to box yourself in and you don't want to slap a label on that person and box that person in. So you find yourself keep going in circle and spending years or months just trying to figure out where is that person and how am I going to connect with that person. So I feel like my whole approach has always been this inside out approach where you stop hunting and you start remembering who that person used to be. When you look back to who you used to be, that version of you who needed exactly what you do now. And that woman is very specific. You already know what she reads, what kind of books she goes to, where does she hang out, and when she's not on social media, what have she tried in the past that didn't work? What will she say? What will she not say? And what are some of the things that she's waking up in the middle of the night and thinking about? And sometimes it could be your best friend, or it could be your sister, your neighbor, someone that you have spoken to. You're not reinventing an ideal client, you're not inventing someone out of the air. You actually gave that person an identity, and that identity is someone you used to be. You just don't remember it. So I wanted to give you something you can use this week, and this is something that I had clients do all the time. It's an exercise that you can practice. So there are three ways that you can tell if your niche is a little too general. So first do the assignment and say hello to Toby. Three signs that your niche is a little too general. And by the way, my podcast is now available on video as well. So those of you who subscribe to the podcast, there's a video version that you can join me and enjoy my behind the scene where I do the recording. Nothing fancy. This is where I do most of the podcast recording. So three signs that your niche is too general. Sign number one is when you say your elevated pitch, it sounds like an elevated pitch. And you can hear yourself reciting it. You probably wrote it somewhere in your notebook or in your computer. It sounds like something that you memorized of what you have written down, maybe at a workshop, or maybe another coach who had helped you come up with that niche statement and you said it word for word. And somewhere underneath that, you feel like it's not quite landing, it's not there. And when you say out loud, your audience may feel that too, because they can sense when you're reading from an internal script, even though you don't have it holding it in your hand, but they can feel that internal script that you're reading it off. So here's how I test it. I usually go to networking events and I don't change my niche, I tweak how I describe it depending on who I'm talking to. So if it's business owner, they get one version, if it's a room full of single mom, they get another version, but it's the same niche, I just say it differently. Now, a quick challenge for you this week is to go and try this out when you meet someone, not changing your niche, but you want to use a different version of saying the same thing. And when you do that a couple of times, you get comfortable in whichever version that you land on. If you are saying the same memorized sentence to every room, then your niche is living on the paper, not within you. So you want that niche statement to be part of you, and the way that you test it is you say it out loud and you go and observe what people's reaction is. So sign number two is when you say it out loud, you wanted to observe and listen for the follow-up question to see if it's too general. So when someone hears your elevator pitch and say, Wait, what does that mean exactly? And you pause, or they ask you, what kind of women exactly? Or they have this puzzle look, read the body language and listen to the question that's being asked, but not say it out loud. Or maybe it's something like, What does dream life look like exactly? So if you find yourself having to over-explain, or you're stumbling, you're uh trying to go in back and explain what you have just said, that's usually a sign that the statement is a little too vague. Words like high achieving, high performance, or dream life, or sometimes even the next level without the context, they sound good, but it means nothing to the person who's listening. The third sign that your niche is a little too general is when people hop on discovery call but you're unable to close them. This one is a little tricky because ideally you want more people to be jumping on your discovery call. But when you notice that people are booking a call with you, but they're like they found you, they like you, they booked a call with you, but somehow by the end of your conversation, they're like, I have to think about it, or this is not for me, and you message people and they're not showing up, or they disappear, they ghost at you, then chances are your niche is a little too general. So you want to narrow down as well. Now, how do you narrow it down? How do you fix this? I'm gonna tell you the three, this would probably take you 10 minutes to do this. So grab a paper and because you're gonna need to write this down. So it's a 10 minutes exercise. You're gonna open your Google Doc or your notebook, and the three questions are one is who is the woman I used to be who would pay me for exactly what I coach? The woman that I used to be, but willing to pay me for exactly what I coach now. And some of the answer might be at the age, due to the age, a life stage, or maybe the work, things that she had tried and she's tired of. It may be a woman who keeps second-guessing herself or having a lot of internal dialogue that's going around. So, who is that woman I used to be, but willing to pay for what I'm doing now? The second question I want you to answer is what was she searching for? What were you searching for before you became a coach? Before you even getting close to learning about these coaching skills, what was she searching for? Maybe on Google or maybe asking friends or signing up to more classes, what was she searching for? The third question is: what does she get from working with me now? If we were to sign up, if your old version was signed up with you now, what would she get from you? Be more specific. Okay, what is she walking away with? Not the feeling words. I know a lot of coaches give me a lot of these feeling words. Feeling words are great, but there's something that's attached to the feeling words. If I can stand up in front of an audience and giving presentation, of course I'm going to feel confident. So you're the outcome what she gets from working with you is not that she becomes more confident, it's that she's able to stand up in front of the audience and do a presentation without reading her script. That's what confident looks like. So that's what you want to include in your answer. Now, if you go through this exercise, I promise you that you're going to come up with a better niche statement. The who I help with what, and so they can do what. So, three questions. First question is, who is the woman I used to be that would pay me for what I do now? What was she searching for? The third question is, what does she get from working with me now? So those are the three questions that you want to be able to answer to rewrite your elevator pitch. Now, one last thing before I let you go. The coach who's trying to sound like every other coach is not the one who's getting client. So if you are popping into ChatGPT, ChatGPT is going to give you a very generic niche statement that sounds great on paper, but you have to realize it's working along with a big database. Everybody who's asking ChatGPT to come up with niche statement, it populates all these data and it's spilled out what is logical, but it's not something that was result driven. So you wanted to keep that in mind, and you don't want to use that for your own niche because your niche is going to be personalized, it's going to be something uniquely about you, right? What you have to offer. So you don't want to sound like everybody who uses Chat GPT. You want your own version of it and that you feel comfortable in saying out loud every time you meet a complete stranger. The coach who actually gets the client are the ones who's able to articulate that niche no matter who she's talking to. So she's able to describe and articulate if I'm talking to the business owner, if I'm talking to the single mom in a group. She can pivot depending on which group she's going to talk to. So it's not something very scripted, but it's something that you can use to position your authority. You can use to position the outcome that you're providing for your dream clients. It doesn't have to be sexy words, it doesn't have to be like a super fancy way of describing what dream life is. I gave you the example of getting up in front of the audience and being able to present. That is another word for confidence. That's what confidence looks like. So don't use coachy words. Try and eliminate all those coaching words. Use everyday layman language that people can understand. So if you found this episode helpful, I would love, love, love for you because I know so many coaches out there spending years and if not at least months trying to figure out what is their elevator pitch. I would love for you to share this episode with them because the three questions that I asked you to write down and work through, those are your goal. It's going to help you to write a better niche statement or your elevator pitch. And in the meantime, like I said, it make it visible podcast has a video version now. So if you have not subscribed to the podcast already, be sure to subscribe. And also take a couple minutes to leave me a review and let me know what your takeaway is from this episode. And I would love to connect. Until then, see you next time. 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 wasting 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 audit today.