Nail Your Niche (Even If You Hate That Word)

Let’s talk about that word — niche. 😬

For a lot of coaches and online experts, it’s the word that makes your shoulders tense and your brain go fuzzy. You know you’re supposed to “nail your niche,” but every time you try to figure it out, it either feels too broad, too made-up, or so narrow you can’t find anyone to serve.

If that’s you, I want you to know: you’re not alone. And more importantly — you’re not broken.

In fact, one of the biggest breakthroughs in my business came when I finally stopped trying to chase the perfect niche and started looking for something way more practical… and effective.

Let me show you how to simplify this, find traction, and start connecting with real people who are ready for what you offer.

The Unicorn Avatar (And Why It’s Keeping You Stuck)

One of the most common niche traps I see is what I call the “unicorn avatar.”

This is the dream client that lives in your imagination. You’ve journaled about them. You’ve mapped out their profile. You know what they eat for breakfast, what kind of car they drive, what they want in life…

But there’s just one problem — you’ve never actually met one.

They’re not following you. They’re not in your network. You’re not talking to them. And they’re definitely not booking discovery calls.

So what happens? You end up doing tons of marketing — quotes, stories, reels — and it doesn’t go anywhere. It feels like you’re doing everything right… but no one’s responding.

Because chasing unicorns doesn’t work. They’re beautiful, but they’re not real.

Your Ideal Avatar Isn’t Imaginary — They’re Right in Front of You

What works better than a unicorn avatar?

An ideal avatar.

Here’s the difference: your ideal avatar is a real person with a real problem you can help solve. You probably already know a few of them. They might be in your audience right now.

Your niche isn’t about demographics. It’s about proximity and a painful problem they’re motivated to fix.

Ask yourself:

• Who am I already connected to?
  
  

• What painful problem are they experiencing?
  
  

• Would they want help solving that problem?
  
  

When you put those pieces together, you get a niche that’s rooted in reality — not fantasy. And that’s when your messaging finally starts to land.

My First Niche Didn’t Work — Here’s Why

Let me be honest with you… when I first started my coaching business, my niche was “corporate moms who were burned out.”

That sounded good. They liked me. But you know what? They didn’t hire me.

Because they didn’t want coaching. I was trying to rescue people who weren’t asking for help. And that, my friend, is exhausting.

It wasn’t until I turned my attention toward people who already valued coaching — who already believed in growth, transformation, and investing in themselves — that things started to click.

I realized: I was surrounded by coaches. And coaches? They already knew the value of coaching. They just needed help building a business that worked.

That’s how The Coaches Plaza was born.

Solve a Real Problem People Care About

If you want to get traction, you need to solve a problem that’s painful enough for people to want to pay to fix it.

A “nice” problem isn’t enough.

People hire coaches when something’s not working. When they’re frustrated, stuck, confused. So instead of trying to sound inspiring, try sounding specific.

Use plain language. Stop hiding behind vague transformation statements.

Speak directly to the problem. Show them you understand. Offer them a path forward.

Stop Waiting for People to Understand You

Here’s a truth that might sting a little… but it’s one I wish someone had told me sooner:

It’s not their job to understand you.

It’s your job to respect yourself for the journey you’ve been on. It’s your job to communicate clearly. It’s your job to show up in a way that people can receive what you’re saying.

When you’re a coach, especially one who’s doing powerful, transformational work, you’re already kind of weird. (And I say that with love!)

You’ve chosen a path most people don’t understand. That’s okay. Stop waiting for the masses to respect your weirdness. You don’t need them to. You need you to.

The Best Way to Nail Your Niche?

Stop thinking. Start talking.

Seriously. Go talk to five people this week and ask: “If you were going to hire a coach, what would it be for?”

See what they say. Listen deeply. Notice who lights up when they talk about growth.

And then go help them.

Your niche is waiting. Not in your journal. Not on a vision board. In the real world — where real people have real problems that you can help solve.

Let’s get to it.

Chapter List:

00:00 Finding Your Ideal Client

02:52 Overcoming Niche Challenges

05:36 Identifying the Right Problems to Solve

08:20 Building Proximity to Your Niche

10:57 Effective Messaging Strategies

13:36 Navigating Client Relationships

16:26 Understanding Change and Transformation

19:09 Final Thoughts and Action Steps

Full Transcript:

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

If you've ever said, know exactly who I want to work with. It's just they can't afford it or I don't know anybody like that, or it seems really hard to find them. Then stay tuned because in this episode, I'm going to show you exactly what I had to learn as a premium coach to get lots of clients.

My name is Amanda Kaufman and welcome to the Amanda Kaufman show. I am delighted to share with you today's conversation about how do you nail

your niche, even if you kind of hate that word. And hey, when I was starting out, I was a rebel without a cause, know, oppositional in every way, because I just didn't trust what people were saying about what I needed to do to be successful as a coach. And so my mission in this conversation is to maybe approach this from an angle that you haven't heard before so that you can decide who do you want to work with, who wants to work with you.

and feel really good about the direction that you're going with your business. if you've ever felt kind of paralyzed about who you want to choose to work with, I completely understand that because that's how I started out too. When I was trying to do it, I felt like I was always looking for this magical person, this person that unfortunately didn't really exist. And I felt like I was either just talking to nobody or worse, I would be

out there, you know, going out there into the world talking to people or talking to people online that just really didn't get it. So today I fast forward, you know, we've overcome this challenge, but today I run a multi six figure coaching business. I sell coaching courses. I have a membership and I've been able to make a living for not only myself, but my entire family by packaging my expertise and selling it without having to work for another company to do it, which

I'm incredibly proud of and I know what I have to go through to be able to make that happen. And so here's the thing that you need to know is it didn't start with a giant following. I still arguably don't have a very large following per se on social media yet. I've been in business for eight years and so I didn't start with a giant following. I had no idea what a funnel even was. I thought it was something you used in your kitchen and

I really started my business with having real conversations and real proximity to real people who really wanted my coaching. what we're going to do in today's episode is we're going to figure out how do you exactly identify that niche that isn't imaginary, it's not exhausting, and it actually gets you paid and that you're qualified to serve as well.

This is not about just simply niching down. You've probably heard like the riches are in the niches. This is about focusing in a smart way so that you're more likely to get the results that you're really after. Now, when it comes to your niching and specializing, I see two big issues that most coaches encounter. And you know, I've been working with coaches for about six years now on their marketing, their sales, their packaging, their confidence.

All of those things. And there's two major issues that I see when it comes to them appropriately setting up a niche that actually makes their business easier instead of harder. The first is what I call the unicorn avatar. So it's where they've built this amazing avatar, this amazing idea of who they want to coach, but they're living in their imagination. You know, they're your dream client, but they're nowhere to be found. You know, so it's this.

this beautiful, elusive, imaginary creature. And the thing is, is you don't see them when you're at networking events. They're not following you. They're not connected to you on social media. And so what do you do? You end up staying in this like marketing mode, not talking to anybody. And sometimes this can even look like a tremendous amount of content, like creating all these content, putting the quotes out there, sharing your life lessons and all this kind of thing. And just doesn't feel like it's actually

getting grippy, it's not actually going anywhere. It's like trying to catch a unicorn. The other side of that is the over exposed, you know, anti-avatar, you know, and that is when you're surrounded by all these faces, you know, family, friends, coworkers, but they don't actually value coaching. And, you know, I would say that coaching gets a pretty bad rap, so does generally mental health, so does...

So many things, so if you're trying to speak to the nameless faces masses, you typically find that they can't afford what you have, or worse, they just don't believe that they need help. And so now it just kind of feels like the problem is you. And that's not it, right? It's actually a proximity mismatch. So either extreme here ends up in a paralysis, ends up in...

not feeling like you can be effective with your marketing. And there's this magical middle of the ideal avatar. And the ideal avatar is going to be more special than the nameless faceless masses, but it's gonna give you a little bit of breathing room if you have identified a unicorn avatar or like such a rare person that it's incredibly difficult to find them.

We want to identify a market of people that you can help. And my favorite way to do this is instead of finding like this perfect client, you need a problem of appropriate magnitude that you can solve for people who have that problem frequently. So the ideal avatar is going to, when you're creating content, you know you've nailed it. When they go, that's definitely me.

when they're like, I care about this topic, you're getting the message that they care about it. And I believe I can make progress. So the problem of appropriate magnitude, do they know that they actually have the problem that you solve? Is it big enough that they would pay for the help with it right now? And does solving it helps them shift something about their identity, their income, their energy, or their relationships?

The key here is to speak in such a way that they're saying like, that's definitely me. And you're honoring that they are special, that they are unique. I care about this topic. know, a lot of coaches will hear from their friends or their colleague coaches. That's a great idea. And they care. The person who's giving you the feedback is like, I care about you. I care about you, the person. So I'm going to tell you that it's a good idea. I'm going to tell you that it, that, yeah, you should definitely pursue that. You know,

go you and they're being a cheerleader. But the thing is, is they don't personally see the problem. They don't personally see the challenge. So it's super, super important that you set it up that way. And I believe I can make progress, you know? I think sometimes with a lot of coaching content and marketing and so on, it can be a bit, I was gonna say dystopian, but just very plainly overly negative. You know, it's like,

You're down in the dumps and everything is horrible and it's always hard and it's really bad. that kind of content doesn't really motivate anybody. It facilitates that shutdown and that retreat. So I think it's really important that we measure that. So when I first started, I was actually talking mainly to corporate moms who were really stressed.

but they weren't really looking for coaching. And they liked me personally, but when it came to pinning them down to have a conversation, they just weren't buying. And I had to shift from that avatar, from that problem of appropriate magnitude and change the question. who do I want, instead of saying like, who do I want to help, right? And trying to rescue corporate mothers, I changed it to,

who already wants help and I am near them. And that's one of the reasons why I built the Coaches Plaza. I was surrounded by all these coaches who believed in coaching, who wanted help in a coaching container. They were already really sold on it. And I know there's a lot of negativity in my space about coaches, coaching coaches, who coach coaches, who coach coaches.

I had to work through a lot of that because the thing is, is when you're succeeding at something that other people are not succeeding at, the first thing they want to do is just throw shade. so coaches do believe in coaching. So, you know, starting there, but more specifically, there was a problem that coaches had that I could actually solve. And that's where I found the legitimacy of doing it. You know, it's not, it's not a pyramid scheme. Most of my clients, just for the record, out of hundreds and hundreds of clients, almost none of them are business coaches.

Right? Almost none of them are teaching sales. Almost none of them are teaching marketing. Most of them are relationship coaches, leadership coaches, health coaches. They're helping normies, real people out in the world with real challenges using the things that they learn in my programs. Right? And I want the same thing for you. If you have high proximity to a particular professional group or a particular community,

and they all have this problem that you're really good at solving, don't worry about other people's judgments. know, other people's judgments, that is like, there's a lot of bitter critters running around. You know what I'm saying? So like, just don't even. As I got better, my niche even evolved. So I, like I said, I, I at first didn't realize that I probably wouldn't be working with a lot of marketers. I probably wouldn't be working with a lot of sales coaches.

I learned over time that I help coaches who specifically want to sell to consumers. Right? I help coaches who are typically certified. help coaches who are typically, typically at a phase and stage of life that they can afford to invest in the coaching business, but they are not desperate to get the client. They're not desperate to make the money necessarily. Everybody wants to make more money. So don't get me wrong there, but

What I realized is I got to know my actual niche better is that I had some assumptions that I couldn't have dispelled or gotten rid of without actually getting experience. you know, I didn't necessarily find my exact perfect niche. What I did is I activated the proximity to the communities that I was a part of and I asked myself, you know, what problems are people that I'm close to facing that I can uniquely solve?

And that's how I did it, that's how I got going. And by the way, when I look at my most successful clients, those are the things that they typically are doing that make a huge difference. Now, when it comes to your messaging and you picking a niche, I would say that the most underrated and very likely to lead to success strategy is starting with people you already know.

I know what it's like to be fearful of the judgment that you might get from friends and family. And look, you don't even have to sell to your friends and family. But if you keep it a big secret what your super genius zone is, then how are they supposed to connect you with anybody that maybe they know and you don't know? And how are you supposed to grow an audience at all, right? So I would start with people that you know so that you're not...

you're not inventing problems and you're not inventing things that people are working towards and working on. And like I said, instead of selling directly to friends and family, know, maybe you're just making them aware of what you do and asking for introductions to people you don't know, but just start with the people you do know. The second thing I'd say is make sure that you are solving like solvable but painful problems. Like go for the difficult stuff.

If there's something that I see a lot of coaches struggle with is they do the nice stuff. It's nice to be more organized. It's nice to have good leadership skills. It's nice to get along well in your family. And it's just nice and it's soft and it's squishy. And the thing is is that when people are investing in coaching, usually they're experiencing a good amount of pain. They're frustrated that they haven't already achieved the goal over the long term.

They're frustrated because they've probably tried a million other things and now, know, they're feeling, honestly, they're feeling like they're, they're, they're feeling like the coach is almost the last resort because the coach is expensive, the coach requires time, their coach requires focus. It just so happens that coaching tends to be the most powerful and fastest path to transformation for personal transformation that there is.

but people, you know, kind of almost have to burn a lot of bridges before they finally cross the one that actually works. And that's just the nature of it. So don't shy away from solving painful problems. Don't shy away from them just because they're difficult. Just meet them where they're at and be a helpful human, man. Okay, so the next thing is make sure you're using their language in your content. So I found myself like even in this

podcast just correcting myself and I would want to choose a $15 word to say to say something when I could just say it very straightforward and very simply right so try to use really plain English and don't don't get too fancy because you're gonna lose people along the way so really really important especially if you've got a lot of coachy language and coachy jargon the other thing that I want you to really think about is think about the

problems in the challenges that your niche are facing as opposed to simply the demographics. So for example, in my business, I would say that my private clients over the last eight years, 75 % of the time men, right? However, in the group programs, it slips. It's 75 % women in my group programs.

And at first that really kind of surprised me, but then I realized I was like, there might be some differences in the sense of permission that people have to invest at higher levels. There might be some differences in the desire to have privacy versus the desire to learn in community. There may be some differences in preferences here. So the thing that's always been the same though is I help coaches love their business. So it doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman, I still help you with the same thing.

And, you know, I say 75%, that doesn't mean that there's not a significant population that is, you the opposite gender. So pretty, pretty cool. In terms of the don'ts, I would say, like, don't wait until the perfect person seeks you out and shows up. There's no such thing as perfect. There's just great.

And in fact, in my own system, I have a rating system behind the scenes where I just rate the fit for a coaching relationship. So it goes from like bad fit to okay to good to great, right? There is no perfect on this scale. so if you just give yourself permission to work with people who are okay, good and great.

Over time, your marketing will refine and your communication will refine and your branding will refine and you will find that where you land is very different than what you assumed 10 years before, you know. Don't bother posting the generic content, you know. There's just so much stuff out there and taking the time to really think about what is the problem that my person's facing and how can I solve it.

and what are the excuses they're gonna make, the obstacles they're gonna encounter, how would I help them through those things? Like get specific about the problems and the challenges. If you keep it all at this like really high level, know, I call it like the head in the clouds content, like if it's just like really high levels, just talking about the emotions, there's no tactics, there's no strategy, there's no logic.

then you're gonna find that people just scroll on by because it just looks like what everybody else is doing. So make sure that you are being thoughtful about the content and it doesn't have to be complicated but let's make sure that it is something that's very resonant for your perfect person. One of the biggest issues that I see in my yesteryear kind of content, so as I was coming up I had to like learn this,

But also, this is just such a common thing when I look at 80 % of coaching content out there. And that is just relying on your audience to decode what you mean. I used to get so frustrated that people didn't already recognize my genius. They didn't already recognize the value of coaching. They didn't already recognize their own personal power. They didn't already recognize the sequence of steps that they should take. They didn't already recognize the habits that have trapped them, and they also didn't already recognize

you know, what they needed to do. And as a young consultant, this actually really, really frustrated me because I just saw again and again, we would implement these big fancy expensive projects with these big fancy expensive corporations and governments. And they always really struggled with implementing the thing that we were teaching them to do. And it was like, the instructions are right there, you know, like the process steps are right there. You've got the...

You've got the expert like in the house to help you and you are virtually ignoring it. What the heck is going on? And what I realized was that change is actually so hard. It is really hard to observe yourself. It's really hard to imagine a future that is really different than your past or your present. It's really difficult to be concerned about how other people actually feel about it. It's challenging to realize that, you know,

Even really wealthy people, know that their resources are somehow limited either because they don't have the resources, so that's one thing, or it might be that they have the resources, it's just that they've already allocated those resources to goals. And so it's hard to make a change in the priority because you already went to the work to make the first priority, you know what I'm saying? So change is challenging and so don't expect it not to be.

And so you need to spell this out in your content, in your conversations. You need to have compassion for where people are on their journey and compassion for yourself that you've been on a really big journey of transformation already, most likely. Like if you're listening at this point in the video, I'm guessing that you have probably had some significant transformation that has caused you to really believe in your coaching and your method. But just remember your journey. There was a time when you did not know that you could do what you have done.

And so just have a lot of patience for coding things out and just saying it explicitly. Make sure you do not waste energy on convincing people who don't believe in coaching, don't believe in getting help, don't believe in the transformation, don't believe in the change. This is the single biggest waste of time and money that I see in most coaches in their businesses. They are so upset that their family members don't understand, that their friends don't understand, that...

that their colleagues at their old workplace don't understand. And this is just, I would say, one of those rites of passages that we go through as entrepreneurs. When you decide to become an entrepreneur and you decide to be an entrepreneur that helps people and you decide to help people through something like coaching, mean, you're making many decisions that are putting you separate from the herd.

You know, like, because most people don't do that. Most people do not pursue their own business. Just period. Most people get a job, right? Most people get a job and then and that's it. Like that's their lifestyle. And then when you say, OK, well, I want to be a coach. Well, most entrepreneurs are not coaches, right? Most entrepreneurs are building other like conventional businesses, traditional businesses. So you're already kind of weird wanting to play that role with somebody.

And then also you're probably a particular type of coach, which makes you different than all the other coaches. So like every step you're taking on your identity here, you are different. You are with love, weird and like all that weirdness. Here's what happens is then you look back at the normal masses and you go, why don't you respect my weirdness? And it's like, that's not their job. That's not their job. It's your job. It's your job to

respect yourself for the journey that you've been on. It's your job to communicate to others how you can help. It's not their job to understand you. It is your job to be somebody who communicates in a way that allows you to be understood. And I think what makes this so super challenging is you're gonna get people who would prefer that you don't, right? And I think, you know, kind of getting back to what we were talking about earlier,

with the unicorn targeting this unicorn person, I think why that unicorn person happens is because you see the rejection from the masses. Like everybody knows about the rejection from the masses, but they then over identify in this perfect unicorn person who has all the amazing traits, is just a magical human being, and has this exact perfect emotional state that would make them just an absolute treat and a joy to work with.

And the truth is, is that your ideal avatar is, like I said, somewhere in between that, right? So it's fine to have the ideals, but if you have those ideals to such an extent that you're not meeting anybody and you're not talking to anybody and you're not connecting with anybody because you're looking for imaginary people, like that's not gonna feel good either. So the way you find this ideal avatar is, like I said, it's testing the messaging, it's testing the resonant, and

the resonance of it and it's also maybe working with a mentor, maybe working with somebody who could help you to navigate it. Now thank you so much for joining me on this episode of helping you to find the niche. This week I would love for you to just write down five names of real people that you know. They could be friends, they could be followers, they could be former clients and just ask them like.

What is the problem that they might consider a coach to solve? Not necessarily saying you, but like what is something that they're working on in their life that they might consider hiring a coach over? Do they actually even want that help? Are they somebody who's more of a self-study kind of a person? Somebody who's more of a figure it out myself kind of a person and they have to warm up to the coaching? Have they ever paid for support before?

You know, these are fantastic questions that I asked in my first few months as a coach that gave me a lot of insight into the receptivity that people generally had around the kind of coaching that I generally wanted to do. So just pick one person out of the five people you've listed, reach out, just start there, have the conversation, start gathering some data. And if you're ready to stop guessing about where your next five clients are going to come from, make sure you head to nextfiveclients.com.

That's next, number five, clients.com, because we've got a free community and a free group called Clients Over Chaos. When you join the community, you're immediately gonna get access to my five video series. They're only 10 minutes each, these little videos, but they are so transformative for helping you to get out of that overwhelm, out of that feeling like I'm never gonna figure it out, into the activation. Now, whether you're a coach who is just starting out and looking for your first few clients,

or you're a coach who's had some great success with word of mouth and you're ready to systemize your client acquisition and you're ready to start really putting yourself out there on the social media and build your email list and do the digital marketing thing, either way, I think you're gonna really love the Clients Over Chaos community and so you can go check that out at nextfiveclients.com. And again, it's free, it's real, and you can ditch chasing unicorns.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode and we will see you on another and until then, do what matters.