Coaching Niches FAQ. Plus, an exclusive interview with our COO Kylie Kwon!
Nancy Levin
Certified Life Coach Trainer & Best Selling Author | A Fulfilling Life on Your Terms | Boundary Queen
In the last edition of The Practice, we covered why life coaches need a niche (hint: it’s for more targeted and effective marketing). In this edition, I’m sharing my answers to questions I often get about life coaching niches. To help you identify and hone your niche, I’ll also share some journaling prompts.?
Last but not least, we’re introducing a new segment to The Practice called How I Did It: Stories from Successful Life Coaches. We’re launching this segment featuring our incomparable COO, Kylie Kwon! Read on to learn how she got started and what keeps her thriving as a coach today!
Question 1: I like variety and don’t want to choose a niche because I’m afraid I’ll grow bored. How can I keep myself interested in a single niche? First of all, I invite you to question the idea that a niche means you’re limiting yourself. Each person who comes to you for coaching brings a totally different set of circumstances, situations, and emotions with them. Their vision and plan of action will also be unique, because we’re not dealing with where they are, but where they want to go, and what choices and actions they need to take to get there. No two clients are the same, nor do they have the same stories, or seek the same results. Every day of coaching brings something different, and that gives us coaches a healthy amount of variety to keep us engaged and excited about our work.
Question 2: What’s the most profitable coaching niche to pursue? I will preface my response to this question by acknowledging that there are many life coaching programs out there that promise a fast path to affluence and success. This makes it easy to assume that choosing a “profitable” niche is a good strategy. And we all want to earn a great living doing something we love, right? All that being said, if you are looking to enter this field strictly from the perspective of profit, you won’t find the meaning and personal fulfillment you’re seeking along with it. I suggest you begin your journey as a coach by asking a different question: “How willing am I to regard myself as a business owner first and foremost?” This work is not so much about which niche is more profitable; what makes a coach successful is their willingness to view themselves as business owners and to act accordingly. You can be the greatest coach in the world, but if you’re not willing to put yourself out there and make yourself visible and, people won't know how to hire you!
Question 3: How do I change my life coaching niche? I have a pro tip for you: Use your name for your website URL rather than the kind of coaching you do. This way, if you decide to change your niche, you won’t need to go through the whole rigmarole of changing your URL. My niche has evolved from coaching women going through divorce or leaving corporate life to coaching people who want to become life coaches. I do think whether it’s a 180 degree change or a more gradual evolution, it’s natural for your niche to grow as you do. My URL has always been my name, and? I’ve updated my messaging and offerings on my website along the way.
Here are some prompts pulled directly from my FREE guide, Claim Your Coaching Niche: Establish a Lucrative and Purposeful Place Within the Competitive Life Coaching Industry
Want to delve deeper into discovering or refining your life coaching niche?
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What started as a drive to heal chronic illness and satisfy intellectual curiosity blossomed into a fulfilling and lucrative career for Kylie Kwon. As with many great success stories, hers was not a linear path. Kylie was born in Korea and lived in one room with an outdoor kitchen and an outhouse. Her family immigrated to the US when she was 8 years old, where she went on to attend college, studying international business and finance.?
After she and her daughter were diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Kylie obtained her first health coaching certification and began exploring what would become her first coaching niche. “At first, it was more of a hobby that triggered my cravings for learning,” she says, adding that she wanted to prioritize being a stay-at-home mom at the time. As she added more trainings and certifications to her repertoire, Kylie quickly saw that life coaching skills allowed her to support her health coaching clients in a more all-encompassing and holistic way.
Kylie followed that slow but steady trajectory until her life as she knew it came to a screeching halt when her husband called to say was leaving her a week before their 20th wedding anniversary. “It was really scary,” she says. “I hadn’t worked for nearly 20 years, and I had no idea how I was going to survive.”
Kylie hired me to coach her through the divorce. She found a minimum wage job and, even though she was already a certified life coach, used her savings to attend Levin Life Coach Academy (LLCA). “I had to restart my life at 44 with two kids. I really walk the walk of reinvention and boundaries and all of the other LLCA coaching models,” she says.
Today, Kylie resides in the Boulder area and is the COO and director of LLCA. She still coaches a select number of clients, and has shifted her coaching niche from health to self-development. “I went from ‘What do I do, and how do I survive?’ to guiding?clients to understand that we get to curate the life we want,” she says. “The reality is that if you put your heart into it and do the things that support you mentally, emotionally and spiritually, the money comes.”
Are you feeling as inspired by Kylie’s story as I am? Here are some resources to guide you if you’re thinking of becoming a life coach:
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