Avoid These 3 Coaching Niches At ALL Costs

Picking a good coaching niche is one of the most important steps that you can take because no amount of marketing offers, speaking, ads, or anything else is going to force people to buy from you if they don't understand what you do. So today I'm going to share 3 common coaching niches that you should avoid at all costs if you want to actually make money online coaching people. Before we get into the 3 niches, what exactly is a niche or niche? I'm going to call it a niche. So the definition of a niche is a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment. And I think that's a very important thing to understand. A niche is simply a problem that you specialize at solving, and that's it. And looking at that definition, it means that you are comfortable and it's suitable for you, meaning that you have actually solved this problem yourself and now you're helping other people do it because you are comfortable, you know how to solve the problem, comfortable in yourself and confident that you can do this and that you are open and willing to teach other people how to do it themselves. I talk with coaches, consultants, and experts literally every single day. It is my job. And the problem that I see most coaches make is that they pick a topic that seems like it would do well on the internet. It sounds cool with marketing, but it's not something that people actually care about. A lot of coaches lead with how they help people, not what they actually help them do, which is why they struggle. They'll say something like, I help people unlock their full potential and create a life that they truly want. What does that even mean? People pay for solutions to problems, not things that just sound cool with marketing. You know, if your car breaks down and you can't fix it yourself, you hire a mechanic. And even more, if you have like a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz, then you go get a mechanic who specializes in BMWs or Mercedes-Benz. But why do you do that? Because you know that they're not just gonna work on the car, they actually specialize in this vehicle. And that's why being a BMW mechanic, for example, who only focuses on BMWs is going to weed out a lot of people but you can charge a more premium price point because you work on this specific type of vehicle and you specialize in that. You have connections to get the right parts. You understand how these specific vehicles work versus all the other cars out there, and that's what makes you more attractive to the right buyer. Coaching works the exact same way. So helping men over 40 get lean and stay lean year round, that is a niche. Helping men get better at online dating so they can find their dream girl or just get more dates using apps, That is a niche. But I help people find happiness and reach spiritual enlightenment. That is not a niche. Rory Vaden said, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person that you once were. Best coaches in the world specialize in helping other people do what they once desired to accomplish themselves. You are so much more valuable when you have walked the path that your people want to walk as well. They can look to you as their guide, as their sherpa, if you will. I'm sure that you would want to hire a mentor who has walked the same path as you and who has the result that you desire. So we just need to figure out what that is for you when you're coaching your people. So now that you understand what a niche actually is, let's get into our 3 problem niches that you should avoid at all costs. The first one is life coaching. Most people start here because it's a very low barrier to entry, and a lot of people just see it as an easy way to get into the coaching space because maybe you don't really know what the thing that you are gonna specialize in really is. Many people will read a book like You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero and assume that they're going to build a successful coaching business themselves, just kind of regurgitating information like that. I was a 22-year-old spiritual life coach when I started who helped everybody just live their dreams. And I genuinely thought that once I start this, I'm gonna make six figures in that first year 'cause I had a certification, I went through all this training and had all these resources and things like that. But it took me about 4 or 5 years to have my first real 6-figure year. It wasn't until I moved into the productivity niche that I started to actually make more consistent money because my message was a lot clearer. Instead of helping everybody live their dreams, I was helping entrepreneurs and business owners focus on high-priority tasks, streamline their tech, and get their time back. So we have to start by asking yourself, what have I done in my life that actually changed it? Was I in a crazy amount of debt and student loans and all that kind of stuff, and then I got out of it and now I'm super dialed with my finances? Were you overweight at some point for a long time and then you found out how to get into shape without only eating chicken, rice, and broccoli every day? Did you suck at online dating and then you got really good at it and now you want to help other people understand how to do online dating? To help you figure this out, I'm going to share with you something I call the income intersection. So think about this like 3 overlapping rings, and when you can get all 3 of these pieces together, you know that you will have a profitable niche. The first thing is that you have experience with this thing, this thing that you're thinking of helping people with. Let's say it's just helping guys get better at online dating. Do you have experience with that? Did you suck at online dating for a long time, like me, until you finally figured out how to get more consistent and higher quality dates? A really good indicator here is that people actually come up to you and ask you for advice around whatever this thing is. The next thing to consider is, are people paying to solve this problem or learn how to do this thing? Do people pay money to get better at dating? Absolutely. They'll pay for apps like eHarmony, for example. People will hire coaches to help them in approaching women. People will seek advice from their friends, go to the internet. Like, people want to figure out how to do that. So it is a very good niche, but it could be playing guitar, it could be learning how to speak on stages. Like, are people actively paying money to figure this thing out? And a great indicator here is, have you paid money to figure this thing out? Did you invest or go to the internet to try and learn how to get better at dating? Did you consider buying someone's course on how to do it yourself? Or maybe you actually bought it. Maybe you even hired a coach to help you do it. And the last piece to the income intersection is do you enjoy learning about this thing and teaching it to others? You could think that you have this awesome niche, you have experience with it, you know that people are paying for it. But when you start working with people, let's say that you start working with guys on how to actually get better at online dating and you realize, "I actually don't like working with these people." It's okay, it's not a bad thing. But your perfect niche is something that you're going to stick with for easily 10 years. For me with Profit Your Knowledge, I love teaching people about how to better market their expertise. I know you have something valuable in you, you just have to learn how to get in front of more people and make it more enticing to where they actually pull out their wallet and pay you. I'm always learning how to get better at this myself. I hire my own coaches and mentors to improve my skills in this. and I love teaching other people how to do it. And that's what you want from your niche. So when you have experience with this thing that you want to help people do, you know that people are paying money to solve this issue or learn this skill, and you enjoy growing in this area yourself and teaching other people how to do it, that is when you have a profitable idea, my friend. And by the way, if you like that framework and you're serious about landing consistent high-paying coaching clients, then I want to invite you to my Get Paid Clients Challenge. This is a 5-day live coaching experience where I am personally going to coach you on nailing your niche, creating a high-ticket coaching program and getting your next or first paid clients. You're going to get workbooks and recordings for each day of the training, and you're going to have me in the room with you actually coaching you live. It's not prerecorded in any way. I am sitting in a Zoom room with you actually looking at your offers and helping you out. To get all the details, visit ProfitYourKnowledge.com/challenge. Now, problem niche number 2 is confidence coaching, or even mindset coaching could also fall under this kind of vagueness. I once had a conversation with a guy who just got out of this whole speaker training and he told me, I'm going to be a confidence coach, motivational speaker sort of deal, which is fine. Les Brown is someone who has crushed it and made millions of dollars as a motivational speaker, but he's also just an award-winning speaker in general. And he has a school where he actually coaches people on how to do public speaking. On top of that, you can't help but get motivated when you listen to Les Brown. So this guy had potential here, but he was really wanting to be a confidence coach and helping people with general confidence. And I know from experience that that is a rough road. Fun fact: between me being a spiritual life coach and being a productivity coach, I for a short period of time was also a confidence coach. And I had a mentor who was like, right, but what is like confidence? What are you actually helping people do? And it just wasn't clicking for me. So this guy I was talking with who wanted to be a confidence coach was passionate about arm wrestling. He went to an arm wrestling gym. The dude's forearms were jacked, and he literally coaches people in his arm wrestling gym on how to win more matches, get into competitions, and be an arm wrestler. He had experience with it. He knew that people would pay money to actually go to this gym and want to learn how to be better at arm wrestling. And he loved teaching people about it. That's the income intersection. I was like, dude, why don't you just coach people on how to do arm wrestling on the internet? Confidence coaching or mindset coaching. It's not, it's not that they're bad. They're both very important. Like everybody wants to be confident. Everybody understands that having a strong mindset is important or being a mindset coach is hard to market because there is no clear outcome. People want confidence in certain areas like speaking on stages, being in sales, or dating. All those are prime examples of outcomes that people would pay money to actually achieve. And confidence is a huge piece to every single one of those. But most people don't wake up and say, I just generally want to be more confident. I'm sure there's some people like that, but they're probably not going to be really high buyers compared to someone who says, I just want to crush it on stage. So I can impact more people's lives, make more money in my business, grow my nonprofit. They want to master public speaking and they're insecure about being a public speaker because that is a real genuine fear. Same applies to approaching women or to doing sales calls or starting a business. Like all those things require confidence, but that's the outcome that I'm paying for and that's what the niche is really all about. Speaking, sales, coaching, those are all separate niches. That require their own dedicated coach. What would make confidence coaching work is taking the principles of building confidence and applying it to a specific outcome that you have experience with. If you were incredibly insecure about speaking on stages where you're like, I couldn't even step on a stage without having a panic attack, and now you are a very powerful, confident speaker, that is an outcome that people would pay money for because it supports them in growing their business, getting their message out there, whatever it is. Don't lead with confidence, lead with the outcome that you helping people get, and confidence is how you're going to help them get there. Problem niche number 3, and this is a big one. It is the I coach coaches on coaching coaches niche, if you even want to call it that. Not going to lie, I was terrified of getting into this space and being associated with the bro marketers. I felt a calling to help people monetize their knowledge, their skills, and their expertise. And I had experience monetizing my own skills and expertise and my knowledge. I was even being asked by my clients on how they could better do it themselves. Because they saw me as someone who had more experience than them. Again, I started out as a spiritual life coach and then was making money, and then I went into the productivity niche where I learned more about selling digital products, making passive income because I wanted to make more money and scale my time. And people seeing me selling digital products is what really kickstarted Profit Your Knowledge. But I was so scared to actually get into this because I didn't want to be the coach who coaches coaches on coaching coaches. I didn't build some 7-figure business doing this stuff. And quite frankly, I still haven't. But that hasn't stopped me from helping people all over the world monetize their expertise. Now, you might be thinking, James Allen, aren't you a coach who coaches coaches? Yes, but it's that last piece that is the part that really irks me. I'm not coaching coaches on how to coach other coaches and tell them to coach more coaches because it's like, oh, just coach coaches on how to coach coaches and then you're going to make a ton of money. This is a problem and I do not like this niche. So while I do coach coaches, you have to understand that I have probably worked with a coach who coaches another coach or coaches maybe once or twice in my entire career. I've helped coaches in all different types of niches, from speaking coaches to futures trading coaches, credit repair coaches, notary coaches, leadership coaches, fitness coaches. All of these are people who are helping other people with completely different things, and I have proof of helping them earn a legitimate income impacting the lives of others and even quitting their jobs and going full time into entrepreneurship. Coaching coaches on coaching coaches is a massive problem niche, in my opinion, because it's okay if you're a coach and you are going to work with other coaches. I mean, coaches understand the value of coaching more than anybody else, so every coach should have their own coach. But it's the, it's the rabbit hole of like me telling you, oh, just go coach coaches on how to coach coaches. And it just keeps going down the line of coaching coaches on coaching coaches and it just gets really spammy. I also think that people just get into the space of being a coach for coaches way too soon. I always wanted to help people monetize their knowledge, which just happens to be coaches and consultants and experts. But again, I didn't have a lot of proof in doing that. So in the beginning, as a productivity coach, I was working with these coaches on the side to help them monetize their knowledge just to get some proof that I can actually help somebody else do it. And when they started getting results, I realized that, wow, this is really fun. I do have the expertise and I can genuinely help people do this. So once I started getting proof, then I started calling myself a coach in this area. And with any niche that you choose, if you have proof that you can deliver on the thing that you claim you can do, you will win because people want to hire experts. They want to hire people who actually know what they're talking about. This time in the world is really crazy because you can become a coach so easily. I saw some ad on Instagram that you pay them $7 and then they're going to certify you as a coach in a weekend. Like that doesn't make you a legitimate coach. What does is your past experience, the things that you've actually been able to do, problems you've genuinely solved for yourself, and now you're helping other people solve those problems as well. I know this isn't as easy as like, just become a life coach, but that whole thing is just easy barrier to entry. But when you get into it, you quickly realize that, whoa, this is way harder than I thought it was going to be because you're not in the coaching business. You are in the sales and marketing business once you become a coach. And that's why a lot of people end up falling off and quitting even when they have something great that they can offer. So now that you know which coaching niches to avoid at all costs, watch this video next and I will help you nail your perfect coaching niche in 10 minutes or less. If you have any questions or comments from this video, please comment it down below. It helps push the video to more people in the algorithm. Also, I just like answering people's comments. If you enjoyed this video, please like it and share it with someone that you think it would benefit. And as always, take what you learned here, get out there and make something happen. I'll see you in the next one.