Purposeful Branding & Niche for Life Coaches

June 10, 2022

Lumia

The Everything Life Coaching Podcast, featuring Lumia Coaching founders John Kim and Noelle Cordeaux, is a deep dive into the experience and business of being a life coach. Subscribe to get new episodes weekly!

A conversation with Lumia Coaching instructor, Joyce Chen

‍Joyce Chen helps purpose-minded individuals feel empowered through their stories. She is a passionate storyteller, wanderluster and professionally trained Brand Marketing Professional who lives life through the lens of curiosity. She has a fondness for developing brand strategy, an insatiable curiosity for understanding how people engage with brands and is passionate about helping individuals grow into their Personal Brand of self.

‍With over 15+ years of corporate Brand Strategy & Marketing Experience, Joyce has launched and developed a variety of commercial & lifestyle luxury brands. She grew up in California after moving from Taiwan to the U.S. and attended the University of California Berkeley studying Mass Communications & Public Policy. To learn more about Joyce’s work, visit https://joyloveandwanders.com/.

‍‍What does Joyce teach in the Lumia coach training program? Intro to Branding and Exploring a Niche

Business Branding for Life Coaches

For Part 2 of this conversation, you can tune in here!

So often as entrepreneurs, we think that branding is just a logo or the visual identity of our coaching business. But branding is so much more! It’s rooted in a deeper mission, strategy, and identity that can support your coaching practice and its growth.

So what makes up a brand?

Your brand identity is the outward expression of your coaching business. This may include the tone and voice of copywriting throughout your content, the look and feel of your visuals and imagery, the choice of your logo and colors, and anything else that brings your coaching business to life through the senses.

A personal brand is made up of four essential components:

‍Your Beliefs: Your philosophy, what you care about, and how you show up for others‍
Your Personality: How you behave, act, and feel; how you dress and speak; how you carry yourself‍
Your Promise: What sets you apart from other coaches; the benefits you offer‍
Your Legacy: Your impact; what you hope clients say about working with you; how you want to be remembered

‍Understanding Your Why

Have you spent some time considering why you do what you do as a coach? There are two reasons why this question is important in the process of building your coaching business.

‍On a personal level, knowing your ‘why’ inspires you to nurture your vision. It also gives you strength on the days when it may feel really hard to keep going. Knowing your ‘why’ helps you make smart decisions for your coaching business. It makes your work feel significant. Ultimately, knowing your ‘why’ is the difference between having a job and following your true purpose.‍
Knowing why you do what you do helps you connect with the people who need what you do. Knowing your why helps you build rapport, trust & resonance with your audience. In the words of Simon Sinek, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Who cares about your why?

When you share the core beliefs behind why you do what you do as a coach, one of two things will happen. Either a prospective client immediately resonates with you and thinks, “Huh, I believe that too.” OR they will realize they don’t share your perspective and walk away.

Either way, this is a good thing.

You want to work with people who believe what YOU believe. People who believe what you believe will become your best clients and most loyal ambassadors.

Sharing your ‘why’ builds trust with your audience and taps into a prospective client’s gut decision making process. When it comes to making buying decisions, here’s an important fact to remember: The majority of consumer choices - including the decision to hire a life coach - are based on feeling rather than reason.

The limbic brain is responsible for all of our feelings, such as trust and loyalty. It is also responsible for human behavior and decision making. When you communicate from your Why, you are talking directly to the part of the brain that controls decision making.

So how do you figure out your ‘why’?

This concept is not about your coaching business per-se. It isn’t about the services you offer, or coming up with a tagline or mission statement that you think will sound good to your coaching clients. Knowing your why involves tapping into your core beliefs.

Consider the question: Why are you a coach?

Most life coaches have a default answer for this one, and it often sounds something like this: “I’m a life coach because I want to help people.”

That’s a fine answer on the surface, but it usually isn’t the whole story. To build a resonant personal brand as a life coach, you’ll want to dig a couple layers deeper! Give yourself time to really mull it over.

What do you believe?
What’s the one lesson you think the world needs to learn?
What one thing do you believe in so strongly that you could sit up all night talking about it?
What is the one belief, that if the whole world started acting on it, would make it a better place?

Crafting Your “Why” Statement

Things to keep in mind when creating your Why:

A resonant why is simple and clear
A powerful why connects to the greater good of humankind
Your authentic why comes straight from the heart. It needs to inspire YOU first and foremost!

There are a variety of ways to put together a statement that captures your personal Why. Here’s one formula for articulating it that can help kickstart the process.

Formula: To (Your Contribution) so that (Your Desired Impact)

Examples:

To uncover the strengths of others so that they can share their greatness with the world.
To inspire confidence in others so that they can believe in themselves.

Knowing Your Audience

It’s worth taking some time to think about WHO your “why” connects with. Knowing your audience can make the difference between 2-3 coaching clients to a fully booked roster with a waiting list!

Identify your coaching niche

To succeed in the life coaching industry, you’ll want to determine the specific problems or challenges that your ideal client wants to solve. From there, you need to define how you are uniquely positioned to help them meet those goals. The most direct path to achieving this is by narrowing down to one or two coaching specialties to serve as the focus of your practice.

When you get clear on who you want to work with, that’s when the fun really starts. Once you have an idea of your coaching niche, you’ll be able to build products and services that are the absolute perfect fit for one type of person. Creating content and writing social media or blog posts will be less vexing because you’ll know exactly who you’re writing it for. You’ll start attracting your dream clients and turning away those who aren’t a good fit for you.

This is where it’s helpful to understand the psychographics of your ideal client. This includes a consideration of factors such as:

Knowing their values and belief system
Understanding what keeps them up at night
Recognizing what their biggest dreams are

Through psychographics, you can recognize what’s showing up in their life at the point where they are looking for someone like you. And being able to speak to what that place feels like with precision is how you market effectively and successfully. This is how you can build rapport, trust and resonance. It’s also how you end up receiving emails from people saying, “I just read your newsletter, it’s like you climbed into my head!”

If you’re not sure who your ideal client is yet, here’s some resources that can help!

‍Want to Become a Coach?

One of our values at Lumia is that we dare to be different. Our coaches like Joyce ignore the expectations society tries to impose on them, and seek to live from their own truth instead. If you are ready to step into your power as a coach, come check out Lumia Life Coach Training. Grounded in science, our ICF accredited program features authentic instructors, a robust curriculum, and business instruction to prepare you for liftoff.