How to Niche Down Your Coaching or Consulting Business

Everyone online will tell you to niche down as far as you can go. You do not have to. But it makes life a lot easier if you do.

This guide explains why a specific niche pulls in more clients than a broad one, and how to find yours using the conversations you have already had.

What does niching down mean?

Niching down means choosing a specific person with a specific problem and building your message around them, instead of describing your service in a way that could apply to anyone.

It is not about views or looking like an authority. That idea of personal branding is outdated. It is about being very specific about what you do and who it is for. When you are, the platforms get better at putting you in front of the right people, and those people recognise themselves when they find you.

Why "I can help everyone" feels true

The first principle is the Dunning-Kruger effect: when you know a little, you feel like you know a lot.

If you think "I don't need to niche, I can help everyone", it is usually because you have not yet seen how many other people are doing exactly what you do. The more you advertise, the more obvious it gets. Once you are in business, it feels like everyone around you has one too.

A broad message does not make you available to more people. It makes you one of many.

Why narrowing creates pull

The second principle comes from physics. Freddie explained it in a recent video while cleaning out his pizza oven.

Leave the oven door wide open and the fire sits there calmly. Close it completely and it starves. Open it a little and the air rushes in, and the fire gets faster and hotter. That is Bernoulli's principle.

Your niche works the same way.

• Door wide open. "I help anyone." Referrals trickle in and nothing really takes off.
• Door closed. A market so small there is nobody to serve.
• Door open a little. A specific person with a specific problem. This is where the pull comes from.

Will niching down lose you clients?

This is the fear that stops most people, and it works the other way round.

Say "I only work with UK dads aged 30 to 45" and those dads lean in. So do the 50-year-old dad and the dad in Australia, who think, "That's not quite me, but I want that result."

Being specific does not shut people out. It gives the people just outside your niche something clear to want.

How to find your niche: look for the parachute problem

A good niche is built on a parachute problem. That is a problem so visceral that your client needs it fixed right now.

The easiest place to find it is in your own records.

1. Pull up your last 6 to 12 months of client and sales calls.
2. Look at the exact words people use to describe what they are stuck on.
3. Note which problems come with urgency, and which are only nice to fix.
4. Build your niche statement around the urgent one, in their words and not yours.

Your clients have already told you what your niche is. Most people have not gone back to listen.

Test it on ten people before you rebuild anything

Before you change your website or your content, check that the niche lands.

1. Write the problem you solve in one sentence.
2. Say it to ten people in your network this week. Set a deadline so it actually happens.
3. Ask each of them to tell you, in their own words, what they think you do and who it is for.

If what comes back matches what you meant, the niche is clear. If people hesitate or describe something vaguer, the statement is still too high up.

A niche is also a point of view

Two people can serve the same niche and still sound different. What separates them is what they believe. Freddie gives clients a 20 minute exercise for this.

1. Write down as many things as you can that your industry currently believes: the conventional wisdom and the accepted advice.
2. Wherever you genuinely disagree, write your opposing view.
3. Write a paragraph on how you came to hold that view: the experience, the failure, the moment something changed how you see things.

Then look at your last five pieces of content. If your perspective is not visible in every one of them, that is why you sound like everyone else in your niche.

Watch the full explanation

The video is ten minutes long and it is the clearest Freddie has managed to explain this.

Watch on YouTube: You have to be specific to make money online

If you found that useful, his video on how to put yourself into a growth mindset is worth watching next. Watch it on YouTube.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have to niche down to grow a coaching or consulting business?

No, but it makes growth much easier. A broad message makes you one of many people offering the same thing. A specific message gives the right person a reason to choose you.

Will niching down mean fewer clients?

Usually the opposite. Being specific attracts the people you name and also the people just outside the niche who want the same result. A broad message tends to produce a trickle of referrals and little else.

How do you find your niche?

Go back through your last 6 to 12 months of client and sales calls and look at the words people use to describe what they are stuck on. Build your niche around the most urgent problem, in their words.

Keep reading

• The parachute problem: how to find the urgent problem clients pay for
• How to get to your first £10k month as a coach or consultant
• How to price a coaching offer: value stacking explained

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