Hannah McNamara
What do you want to be when you grow up? I remember this question being asked in school and the boy next to me telling me he wanted to be a burglar. Interesting career choice when you’re 7. Makes you wonder what his family life was like. When you’re that age and people start asking you what you want to be, you don’t really have any idea what the possibilities are. I looked around, remembered that the house opposite was having building work done and said I want to do that – to be a bricklayer, I meant. You could think “Go Girl!” and say that in this day and age (it was 1980) girls could grow up to be whatever they wanted to be or you could ponder on whether that was really the right career choice for a little girl who was the smallest in her class.
Then I found mud. More precisely I started digging and found things buried in the garden. Nothing valuable – an old tin can, a wrapper from a cake and some twisted wire, but it was exciting to uncover things that I didn’t know were there. As soon as we covered ancient Rome in school I was hooked. I wanted to be an archaeologist and when I watched Indiana Jones for the first time I was even more convinced! This continued for a number of years – I even studied Latin – until my dear grandfather told me there was no money in it. Back to the drawing board.
Faced with the uncertainty of having to choose who I was going to be (which I thought meant for the rest of my life) I consulted the careers advice service in school. They did a personality profile. Apparently I was perfectly suited to either being a gardener or a prison warden. How they came to that conclusion is a mystery, but suffice it to say that wasn’t much help. So for a few years I meandered around and at the age of 16 decided to choose Business Studies at A’Level. Bingo! Over the course of the next few years I went to University to study business, worked in Marketing and learned as much as I could about not only how business worked, but also what made people tick. It fascinated me that there were subconscious decisions going on all the time and I was intrigued to know the answers to questions like, “What makes someone choose that brand of shampoo over another?” and “What impact would a price change have on customer perceptions?”
I came to realise that much of what happens in the world today is connected to how you see yourself. We know that people have various filters which influence perceptions. It impacts on the paths we choose for ourselves and it impacts on whether people decide to choose one coach over another.
Lots of people talk about choosing a niche and it’s seen as something that’s quite straight-forward – something like, “Well, once you’ve chosen your niche, you create products for that niche and target the media catering for that niche”. Yes, this is all true. But too often we get completely stuck at the point of choosing a niche because we think we’re being asked that “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question without knowing all the facts.
Just as when you’re 7 you simply don’t have enough information upon which to make an informed decision, when you begin your journey as a coach you may feel pressured to choose a niche – to decide who you are going to be.
As the author of a book on Niche Marketing, you might expect me to wax lyrical about the reasons you should choose a niche and how you’re somehow naughty or not a real coach if you haven’t decided on one yet. In fact, I’m going to encourage you not to stress yourself out over it.
If right now you want to be a bricklayer (to use the example above) then focus on being a bricklayer. If you’re working as an independent coach, you have the freedom to change course as appropriate if it doesn’t work out. You can reinvent yourself according to what the market tells you they want.
You do need to trust your instincts. Don’t worry too much about trying to ‘be coach-like’ or being ‘non-judgmental’ when you’re making decisions about what kind of coach you want to be. You need to use your judgment and you need to be yourself. If you try to shoe-horn yourself into being a particular kind of coach because everyone else seems to be like that you are not being true to yourself and your coaching practice may suffer. Equally, don’t knock yourself out trying to be unique or choose too tight a niche – I only coach one-legged accountant called Marjorie. Being a business coach specialising in leadership, for example, is often enough to get you going.
I’m going to make a confession. I’m not a nice person all the time. I get annoyed with things. I’m a stickler for professionalism and when people behave in an unprofessional way it winds me up. I don’t like B.S. I like business suits and don’t wear tie-dye (a personal choice). Sometimes I utter a naughty word – usually a four-letter one when I’m in the office and I can’t find something. Sometimes I make snap judgments about people I meet (and the more I’ve learned about people through being a coach, the more I learned to trust my instincts). Does that make me a bad coach? Well, let me tell you this. When I gave up on trying to be what other people wanted me to be, my coaching practice got a whole lot busier. I sometimes utter a naughty word in coaching sessions for emphasis or to break the ice. My clients seem to like it. This might not work for everyone, but it works for me.
When I tried to get clients as a life coach it didn’t work. I used to hear comments like, “You don’t look like a life coach” and “You’re different from other coaches I’ve met”. I came out of the closet, so to speak. I’m loud and proud – I love business! I love the buzz of it. I love making money – it’s the tangible proof that I do a good job. I love helping business people to sort out their issues with their staff (and themselves). I love showing people how to manage their time better and be more efficient and effective at work. I love brainstorming ideas and seeking out new opportunities. I love being the person who challenges them to think outside the box – and rein them in when they go off at a tangent. I especially love small businesses because the people you work with can implement their ideas almost immediately without putting a proposal in, waiting for the quarterly meeting, running the gauntlet of office politics and then, maybe, just maybe being given the go ahead to make a simple change which has a huge impact.
I’m a business coach. What about you?
Hannah is the founder of www.marketinghelpforcoaches.com and the author of Niche Marketing for Coaches.
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