In this presentation Christian Mickelsen explains how group coaches can attract more clients by focusing on a clear niche and using a simple “ring the bell” marketing approach. He argues that trying to serve everyone dilutes the message and makes it harder to sell, while a specific niche (e.g., single women seeking a soulmate, business owners wanting to 10x sales, parents needing well‑behaved kids) creates a resonant signal that instantly attracts the right audience. Mickelsen cautions coaches against making bold guarantees they can’t deliver, noting that the promise is not to deliver results immediately but to signal the transformation they can facilitate later. He demonstrates how to phrase offers as a bell‑ringing invitation that filters in only those who truly want the outcome, turning the niche into a “dog‑whistle” that cuts through general‑coach noise. The talk blends practical positioning advice with mindset work on letting go of insecurity about guarantees, emphasizing that success comes from clear, specific messaging rather than trying to be a jack‑of‑all‑trades.
Chapters
Is group coaching all people in the same niche, or would you group coach people on a lot of different things? Depends on how you set up your business. Right. If you have a niche, niches win. Niches win. Right. And I'm not saying you can't be successful as a generalist life coach or success coach. You can be. You can be. But it's way easier when you talk about a very specific thing. When you talk about one thing that everybody. If you are coached for single women, let's say, and you're helping them find their soulmate, and you say that all the people who aren't single women who want to find their soulmate are tuning out, and you think, oh, my God, I've lose. Look, I lost half the audience. But the people who are tuned in are super tuned in. It's like the dog, they hear the whistle or something, and their ears go up. Food. What? Something's going on. Oh, perked up. So we think, I don't want to pick a niche because I want to help everybody. And the work that I do can help anyone change anything. Who here. What you do could. The kind of work that you do could help just about anyone change anything. Who hears that way? Yeah, me too. Me too. But if you want to be successful trying to help everyone do everything, it's really tough. But if you pick one group, all of a sudden, more than half the people in the room are going to tune out. When I talk about finding your soulmate, and if I'm talking specifically to help women find their soulmate, even more of the people who are here are tuned out. But the people who are tuned in are tuned in more. So you're never going to bore people into buying from you. Your job is to find the people who are already excited to make the change that you can help them make. And it's like ringing the bell. It's like ringing the dinner bell. And of course, we think, oh, my God, I don't know if I could promise to help somebody find their soulmate. What if they don't find their soulmate? What if they hire me and they don't find their soulmate? How could I offer a find your soulmate now coaching session if I don't, you know, they're gonna have this free session with me. They're not gonna find their soulmate, right? On that one free session? No. But is it gonna help lead them to them finding their soulmate? Right. You can't offer a 10x your business coaching session. What if they hire me? Well, I can't create a 10x your business coaching package. What if they buy my program and they don't 10x their business? I can't absolutely guarantee that I'm gonna get them that result. So therefore, I'm never gonna say, make a big, bold claim or big, bold promise or big bold, or name my something big and bold. Because it's like, oh, if I do that, then what if I can't get them the results? Who here has ever felt that way? Yeah, so you got to put that away for right now. I'm going to help you deal with that later this afternoon. We're going to get into letting go of the insecurities. We got a whole lot of stuff about that. But all you need to know right now is that your job isn't to actually get your clients the results right now. It will be later. We'll talk about that later. Right now, you don't have to actually deliver on any of your promises, your program, names, anything. All you want to do is you want to just ring a bell, like, ring the dinner bell. And you just be like, hey, business owners, is there anybody out there that wants to Double, Triple, or 10x your sales and profits if you do? I love helping people double, triple in 10x their sales and profits. Anybody that wants that, please come talk to me. Come on over here. Anybody who doesn't want to grow their business fast, you guys just stay over there. The fast growers, you come over here. Okay, Any single women, if you're single, single ladies who want to find their soulmate? All the single ladies put your hands up. It's like, if you want to find your soulmate. Anybody who wants that, come on over. That's who I really love working with. People who want to find their soulmate. Come on, I'll help you. Anybody? If you're a parent and your kids are driving you crazy and you want to get them to listen, I'll show you how to get them to listen the first time. Every time. Who wants that? Who wants that? Most of the time, the bigs. No, I can't even get my own kids to listen. Can't get them to hold hands for prayer for five seconds, to shoot a video sometimes. Yeah, but who wants this? Who wants well behaved kids? Well behaved kids? Anyone? Anyone want that? If you do, come on over, Come on over. I can help you. That's what you're doing. You're ringing the bell and seeing who wants what you have. And that's the beauty of having a niche. When you have a niche, you Have a bell you can ring if you don't have a niche, you have a dog whistle that humans can't hear. It's like being in a foreign country and speaking English. People don't understand you. People do not understand you when you talk in generalities. Now, here's the thing. How is it possible that someone can be a success coach or a life coach and still get clients and still become successful? Because it is possible. Here's how it's possible. When you get someone so motivated that they can interpret. When you say, I help people get from where they are to where they want to be, and they're like, oh, my God, I've been single for so long, and maybe this could work for me, right? And then they're going to end up with some clients, or if they give success stories and examples like, I helped this one person lose weight, I helped this other person find love, and I helped this other person grow their business, then that might help too. But that actually can even work against you. Because who here would rather work with a life coach to help them find love? And who here would rather work with a find your soulmate now coach to find love? Who here would rather work with the find your soulmate now coach? Okay, who here would totally prefer not to work with a find your soulmate now coach and would rather work with a life coach to find your soulmate? Okay, look around the room. Zero. Hands up. And yet, that's what most people. Most coaches are doing, is they're saying, I'm going to help. I want to help people find their soulmate, and I want to help this and I want to help that, and I can help everybody do all these different things. But then the clients hear that you can do all those things, and then instead of them thinking, oh, my God, you must be a really great coach if you can help all those different types of people do all those types of things. They don't think that. They think, oh, that's kind of like. It's kind of like, you know, if you get a cold, do you want to go to the dentist? Right? And if your dentist does auto mechanic stuff and it's like, hey, by the way, come on over. I can fix your car and your teeth at the same time. Does that make you more likely to want to work with them or less likely? So while it's possible to be successful without a niche, it's like riding a bike uphill with the wind in your face. And if you're determined and you stick with it long enough by golly you're going to end up with a six figure coaching business, right? But when you have an itch, it's like riding downhill with the wind at your back. It just becomes so much easier.
