Coaching Model: INSPIRE – A Niche Finding Tool For Coaches

A Coaching Model Created by Nick Bolton
(Executive Coach, UNITED KINGDOM)

Over the years I have coached many coaches to create private practices and businesses.

The process has always been fun and almost inevitably the coach starts full of excitement and possibility.

Typically, when I ask them who they want to coach, they answer:

Anyone who wants change in their life!

Admirable as this is, it’s not a useful starting point.  It’s too big.  It’s like walking into a huge football crowd and shouting,

You’re all my clients!

Nobody will take any notice as by talking to everyone, you talk to no-one.

A second question I ask is, what change would you like to bring around?  And typically the answer can be boiled down to:

To help them get what they want from life!

Again, admirable, but very hard to market and sell.  It’s too slippery and clients can’t get a hold on it.  How can we be all things to all people?  We, of course, as coaches, know that coaching has this flexibility since it’s not led by expertise of the subject.  But we also live in a real world where someone who’s paying you money wants to feel you’re the right person for them.

I don’t believe having a niche is absolutely compulsory for a coach since working locally can be all the niche you need, but it helps to know where to narrow your search and for this, I created a coaching tool called the INSPIRE niche finder.

The model is not a journey based coaching model in which ones starts at the beginning and moves through towards a conclusion.  Rather it’s a series of prompts to help a coach explore areas they may be missing or not yet thought about for a niche or area of work.

The model stands for:

I – Interests

N – Networks

S – Similarities

P- Passions

I – Irritations

R – Relevant Experience

E – Expertise

Let’s explore these in a little more detail.

I – Interests

In this area we explore the coach’s interests – what do they like to read about, listen to, attend?  What do they do for the fun of it not because it’s their job or an income generator?

We can also look at their interests within coaching itself.  What aspects of coaching interest them?  What kinds of coaching?  What thinkers, authors or practitioners grab their interest and why?

If they are drawn to coaching that deals with being rather than doing, then there’s a clue to the kind of client they’d need to attract.  If they are fascinated by music and musicians then again perhaps there’s a clue there.

Interests offer the coach an opportunity to develop a coaching practice in which they can delve ever deeper into an area that intrigues them.

N – Networks

Here, we explore whom the coach already knows that they can leverage for their practice.  This may be as simple as listing all their existing contacts or it may be harnessing the power of a professional body they’re part of or noticing one person they know who can help them access many others.

Essentially, the question is whom do you already know or have access to that would support you in your business growth either as potential customers, introducers or partners?

S – Similarities

In this area, we explore what makes the coach who they are and who can they relate to on that basis.  This might include things like age, race, sexuality, religion, parental status and so on.  It’s simply exploring all the aspects that could help a coach say, “I’m like you.”

P- Passions

In passions, unlike interests, we explore what the coach is passionate about achieving for people.  What do they really care about?  What drives them to make a difference?

Perhaps they care passionately about bringing kids up well, or brining authentic leadership into the workplace, or even something as broad as living on purpose.  There’s still big difference between caring about someone living on purpose and taking on just any client regardless of what they’re after.  It offers potential clients a sense of who you are as a coach.

I – Irritations

Irritations isn’t a great word for this area but it wouldn’t have spelled INSPIRE if I didn’t use it!

What I’m really asking here is what would you really like to put right in the world.  It could be something small or something huge.  It’s an issue that bothers the coach and that galvanizes them to act.

R – Relevant Experience

In this area, we’re looking at any experience that builds a bridge to potential clients.  This might include things like having gone from bankruptcy to wealth, from multiple divorces to a wonderful relationship or from employment to self-employment.  It might include experience such as travelling the world whilst running a business, surviving as an ex-pat or overcoming cancer.  These are all experiences that offer a starting point for a fine coaching business.

E – Expertise

Lastly, we explore areas of clear expertise such as financial knowledge, training skills, complementary health skills – in other words, areas of clear, recognized knowledge as opposed to the former area, Relevant Experience, which is a more subjective field.

By exploring each of these six areas, we dig deep into the known, unknown and forgotten areas of the coach’s life to find where a niche can be developed.

When I work with a coach on their business I explore each of these, sometimes jumping to the most obvious and clear, and sometimes moving sequentially through.  But in each case we explore the area and, in particular, I ask questions such as:

• What’s in this area that could work for you?
• Which ones resonate with you?
• Where is a prospect type appearing in more than one area?
• How might they relate across the areas?
• What value does the change you offer in that area hold?
• How committed or excited do you feel by it?
• What might you offer?

An example of this process that worked beautifully was a coach who approached me saying she didn’t know what her niche would be and was stuck.

We went through the areas and very clearly she say the following:

• Interest: Education; leadership; mediation, travelling, training
• Networks: Some teachers from her past life as a teacher, corporate leaders from her last career, Indian community where she lived
• Similarities: Female, UK born Indian in London, 30s age bracket, young executive, voluntary redundancy
• Passion: young people’s education and success; honest and authentic communication between people
• Irritations: Wasted potential, dishonesty
• Relevant Experience: Crossing over from education to private sector with leadership skills
• Expertise: leadership training, some basic teaching skills

As we explored the questions above, it became clear that she wanted to develop her leadership skills but with education supporting head teachers to achieve their vision for their schools.

This coach has since gone on to create a wonderful business which combines coaching head teachers on vision, running workshops on difficult conversations and running conferences on UK educational policy.

In her second year she made nearly £100,000 turnover as a coaching business and took her mum travelling around the world.

INSPIRE is a useful tool but it is just that, a tool, and a business only thrives when you take an idea and commit to it.  That’s what this coach did and it’s what we can all choose to do if we really care about succeeding as a coach.