2020 © Peter Makes Websites Ltd.
Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Business DirectoryDisclaimer: Use the following information in this guide in service of your own inner wisdom. These are just meant to be ideas for you to play with. I'm not an authority on anything.
While you read this, keep these questions in the back of your: do you think any of the people you're trying to serve will feel hopeful listening to you talk about thought, mind, and consciousness on the front page of your website? Do you think that they can actually even get the smallest glimpse of the power of insight from a paragraph on the internet?
Because we see the Three Principles as something so profoundly helpful, it's difficult for us to sometimes remember the space we needed to be in to even have any kind of meaningful insight. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I doubt anyone who didn't already understand the Principles resonated in any way with people talking about thought. It seems to me like any talk about the Three Principles on your, you might as well be speaking another language. To me, it seems virtually impossible to give an "intro" into the Three Principles.
Everybody lives inside their own thought-created reality. And inside that reality, they perceive a specific problem. People seek help to deal with what they think is a specific problem. Nobody thinks, "I have a relationship problem, what I need is an insight into the nature of where my experience is coming from." People think "I have a relationship problem, I need to get back to that warmth and connection we used to have."
So let's make this more real:
I help people struggling in relationships by understanding state of mind, and how your thoughts are affecting your experience. By understanding the nature of how the mind works, we can free ourselves from many relationship problems.
True... but completely meaningless who people who don't already understand the power of thought. And people who understand the power of thought don't need you.
What they need isn't an explanation of how, what they need is hope!
I help people struggling in relationships find warmth and intimacy in their relationship again. You can feel the love and connection you used to have together, even though it seems impossible right now.
Think about a person. Often times it's helpful to think of a past client. What were their perceived problems and what did they think they want?
If you take someone who has an understanding of the Principles and compare how their life looks from the outside to someone that doesn't, they often follow similar trends. We can leverage the fact that an outside-in person and an inside-out person's life generally look different. We can take those tangible changes and use those as a demonstration to give people hope.
Let me explain that better.
Our goal is to take someone who believes them to be suffering from a real problem and then bringing them up to that level of consciousness where they see that their experience is made up. When they see that their experience is made up, the perceived problems dissolve, and usually, there's some tangible change too. This isn't always the case. As we know, it's certainly not necessary. Because the dissolving of thought in and of itself brings you to a place of inner peace. But in most situations, you'll be able to find something tangible -- something you can demonstrate to them to show them you understand what they believe they want.
An example where you can't do this (in my opinion): take someone who feels financially insecure and believes they need more money. They think they want money. In reality, they want to rid themselves of the contamination of the personal thought system, but they don't know that yet. In this situation, you can't truly promise them that they'll get loads of cash (unless you really believe you can do that, I'll leave that up to you). Ethically I personally would not lure them with promises of financial abundance.
But I reckon this only applies to about 10% of cases. For most people we serve, there's something that we can tangibly show without making promises we can't keep.
In the workplace, for example, you can talk about how the general atmosphere of the workplace will change. How people will be more creative, more efficient, more understanding, more friendly, and get along better.
If you speak to how things will tangibly look and feel after having insights, rather than the insights themselves, that will instill hope in people. Especially if you have testimonials and some reputation to back it up.
Leave the Principles talk to the only place it can actually be effective: in conversation.
This is why it's important to understand who you're helping. What are they facing? And what does the vision of happiness look like to them? What do they believe they yearn for through the filter of their thought-created illusion? What does the escape from their pain look like?
After you understand who you're helping, you can limit your Principles talk to the bare minimum. The idea here is to make a page specifically for each person. Start with one person. In your imagination, step into their mind. And see the world through their eyes.
You can make a template like this for every different kind of person you help.
I find it helpful to start with notes. Just write the name of someone and write down their struggles and their hopes. Then build out from there.
Happy Principling!
Pete
I'd like to preface this article by reminding you that you have living intuitive wisdom in you. "Should" does not apply to everyone, hence the asterisk. I personally like to rely on my intuition to lead me through life as a general rule. And sometimes my intuition pulls me away from what would be considered rational or the "norm" and towards another road less traveled. This is an article about the "norm", so be forewarned.
For the most part, finding a niche is helpful. There are several reasons for this. But I'd first like to start out a situation where it's not helpful.
If you already have a steady stream of clients, and you want to branch out, that's when it may not be a good idea to find a niche. But if you already have a steady stream of clients, the likelihood of you actually reading this article is pretty slim. Most likely you're just starting out and looking to break into the field.
In terms of people organically finding your content (through the internet), the more specific you get, the less competition there is. Just as an example, pretend you were a shampoo company. How hard it would be to get on the front page of google for a search for "shampoo"? Whether you like it or not, you're competing with multi-million dollar companies most likely.
In the United Kingdom alone, there are between 10,000 to 100,000 shampoo searches per month. If you're starting out selling your shampoo, you probably don't need that many sales.
Now, let's say instead of selling shampoo, you sell organic shampoo. There are significantly less searches for "organic shampoo". So if you present yourself as someone who sells organic shampoo, you get a slightly higher likelihood of being noticed because google will understand you're more relevant.
Still, organic shampoo is pretty broad and stiff with competition.
If you were to make that more specific, for example, "organic coconut shampoo", and Google sees that your entire website is around this perfect formula for organic coconut shampoo, it's much more likely that in time you'll rise closer to that point where people can reach you organically.
While it's true that very few people will be searching for "organic coconut shampoo", the fact of the matter is people are. And so you can actually reach those people.
The same is true across all industries. Even though it may seem like you're limiting yourself, you're not. It's quite the opposite.
This is one thing I really struggled with when I first started by coaching business. I wanted to phrase things in a way that would rule nobody out. So every time I wrote something, I would judge from every angle possible, making sure that nobody would find it too spiritual, or too intellectual, or too this or that.
When you have a niche, you understand how those people think. When you understand how those people think, you don't have to worry about other people thinking it's stupid or not relevant to them - because they're not the people you're trying to reach!
It's simple, but it allows you to get out of the self-judgmental headspace when it comes to putting yourself online. You only have to worry about what one person thinks.
If you don't have a niche, and you're trying to appeal to everyone, the moment someone says, "this is dumb and doesn't apply to me," you might take that personally because they are someone you're trying to serve and so their opinion matters.
There is actually, counter-intuitively, huge freedom in ruling people out. Their opinions really don't matter. If your niche is spiritual people, for example, you can use spiritual terminology. If that doesn't resonate with 90% of the population, and they think it's stupid, that's totally fine! They don't represent the people you're trying to sell to.
Here's the flip side of the above, which is even more awesome. The people who you're speaking to will really resonate with it. They'll feel that it really applies to them - because it does!
When you are able to use language in such a way where you don't need to worry about people that don't matter, you can use it in a way that specifically hits home with people that do matter.
People will begin to say, "hey, this is for me!" And they'll feel like they matter. That's what we want. Because when people feel that something is relevant to them, they're much more willing to connect, listen, and eventually have their lives transformed for the better.
So how do you find your niche? In my experience guiding people through this process, a lot of people have raved about using this heart-centered approach to finding your niche.
Finding the perfect niche for your coaching business can seem like a difficult process at first since there's so much to choose from. We all know by now that it's a really good idea to find a niche. Niches help you really impact certain people at a deeper level, and they help those people find you. But how do you do it?
If you're new to my blog, you'll find that I'm all about connecting with people's hearts. The heart is the doorway to heaven on earth. This isn't a money-centric get-rich-quick blog. This is about impacting people and changing their lives. This is what your coaching business is in service of. And only through that heartfelt intention can you actually find the perfect niche.
If this is your goal, keep on reading! If you're only in it for the money, please hit the back button.
Instead of looking outward for people that you can help, or how you can help them, look inward to find that moment in your life where you felt you really needed help.
This is something I echo throughout my website... I like to say, "if there was a moment when you wish an angel would have whispered something to you, which one would it have been?"
When I'm guiding people through this process, there's often one moment that really stands out. I'm sure if you get quiet now and look for it, it'll be obvious.
That one moment you really needed someone.
Because you can relate to that experience, having been through it, it means you can really connect with people who are going through that right now. You speak their language, you understand their pains and their hopes and how those appear to them.
It may not seem like the most profitable, but I like to remember an old mantra, "help enough people, and money will look after itself." We're in the business of being of service.
If you have a genuine intention to actually reach out and help people, then you can connect with that person in yourself. Not only that, but choosing a niche that really hits home for you will instantly dispel any kind of feelings of being a fraud. I also find many people get really passionate in those situations. Their clients don't feel like strangers so much.
If you genuinely struggled with something, and you genuinely got through it, that means you can help. Period.
Now that you've found that moment, relive that experience in yourself and ask yourself what you were looking for. What's something that really would have sparked hope in you? What were you looking for?
The more you can connect with the heart of the person you are helping, the more you can understand them and their uniqueness. It's that uniqueness that you really want to capture. It's that uniqueness that actually makes them the perfect niche for you.
This is getting to be almost a meditation exercise. This is about really getting so deep into that experience that it's as if you're reliving the experience. You're uncovering a seed within yourself.
Let everything related come to the surface... what were the thoughts you were going through?
The closer you can get to the heart of the person, the more impact you'll have when they stumble across. The more they'll feel like, "this is the person I really could use right now."
If you can touch a heart - even just one - that's the perfect niche.
There's a ton of stuff out there, lists of things to do to promote your life coaching business. That's not really what this is about. We're getting back to the basics here. This entire article can be summed up in two sentences:
First of all, don't lose sight of your main goal: changing lives--helping people discover the beautiful freedom that already exists inside them.
Your life coaching business is a medium. It's a tool. Its purpose is to help you to reach the people who are asking for you, whether they realize it or not. Its purpose is not to be a money-making machine for you. Its purpose is to raise the level of consciousness of humankind. Money is the lubrication that keeps it going.
The joy is in sharing.
If you're in it for the money more than you're in it to help people, this place is not for you.
Let's get to the practicalities of the matter:
There is a counter-intuitive science to promoting your life coaching business. Because life coaching is so broad and generally applies to everything, and because it's something that can actually help with anything, often what happens is we innocently try to accommodate everyone.
It's tempting to describe your business as something along the lines of "I help you overcome life's challenges". Or a sort of big three all-encompassing categories: business, relationships, health. Mostly because we think by not doing that we're ruling people out.
It's not impossible to reach people in this sort of broad context. There are many that have. But when you're starting out, the helpful rule is that if you try to reach everyone, you appeal to no one.
Start small and specific, something you feel personally connected with.
When people encounter life struggles, it doesn't occur to most people that they need a life coach. They are attached to the particulars of the situation.
When you're having relationship problems, you don't think "I need a life coach." When you're having health problems, you don't think "I need a life coach." When you're having... you get the idea.
When you're having relationship problems, you actually think, "I wish I could make my relationship what it used to be."
This is why you need to be very specific in who you're helping. What are they going through, specifically? You need to embody the language of the one person you want to help.
Only then can you actually touch their heart and make them feel like you understand them.
I was recently discussing this with someone I was helping reach people. She started with a vague, "I want to help people who are suffering find freedom." We played that for a bit. But then I prodded deeper, then she told me she lost a loved one to suicide.
Because she's lived through it, she knows the language. She's familiar with the thoughts those people think. She's familiar with those fears and hopes. She can speak the language.
What was offering can profoundly help way more than just people who have lost loved ones to suicide, but because this was something she personally connected with, if she focusses on touching those people (and let me tell, whatever you think is "too specific", there are likely several million people in the world struggling with exactly that looking to connect with someone), she really hit home.
She eventually understood that rather than being a counselor, she could be someone who helped people who lost a loved one to suicide.
Reach into your past and choose the dark moment where you felt like you could have really used an angel (there's usually one that sticks out).
What did you think was causing your pain? What did you need to hear? What thoughts were you having? What was did you think you needed? What were the words that would have touched your heart, and made you feel that someone truly understood you and could truly help you?
Forget life coaching, make your entire business around that. Helping people move through that experience.
You are not ruling people out by being more specific, you are touching people's hearts who you can truly help at a deeper level.
Assuming you've found that experience, that specific person to who you can really relate to, write. Just write. If you don't know what to write, just write anyway. Even if it's nonsense. Write anything. Eventually, you'll feel clearer. Something will occur to you, something helpful.
Imagine you're that person searching on Google. What would they search for? What did you search for? Because ultimately you're reaching back to your past self and helping another human being going through what you went through. Frame your writing in a way that you feel is genuinely helpful to the person you're trying to reach.
Publish your writing on your website (I can help if you don't have one).
Google loves quality content.
Google loves quality content because its engineering team is dedicated to helping people find quality content. They are constantly modifying the algorithms that many are trying to cheat, but one thing is always consistent: their goal is that people find quality, relatable content.
If you create quality content, Google will revolve around you. Google will defend you. Google will work to remove the noise and serve you on a silver platter to the people looking you are trying to help.
Create helpful content for people. Create a lot of it. Be in it for the long run. You might not reach many people while Google is building a reputation for you. But imagine once you get some momentum going with helpful articles over the period of months or years. Three things will happen:
It takes time to properly and organically promote your life coaching business. I don't know anyone who was able to live sustainably off of a life coaching business overnight. It's an unrealistic expectation, and it generally breeds anxiety more than anything. It creates a sort of desperation, which repels people.
If you don't have something already, do something on the side to make ends meet. If you already quit your job, that's okay. You can find something else cool. It doesn't have to be a full-on career, just something to keep you on your feet.
If you're in it for the long game, you can create a very powerful and solid foundation that you can easily branch out from if you choose to down the road.
I wish somebody told me this when I first started my coaching business.
At the same time though, everything in life is practice. Everything has a learning curve. The more you do something the easier it gets. I’m grateful for all of the times doors have been closed on my face (literally) for how it's taught me to live more heart-centered, learn to speak to people in ways that resonate with them - human-to-human.
I feel like there’s an innocence to trying things out for the first time. There's something really fun and playful about throwing yourself into a new environment and seeing how you fare.
Sure, you’ll fall flat on your face a few times, maybe a few hundred, but whatever meaning you make of that is up to you. You can get hard on yourself and tell yourself it's because you're no good, or you can just see it as a learning experience.
I had a guitar once. When I first picked it up I thought, “this is so much harder than it looks.” And it’s true. Good guitar players make it look easy, don’t you find?
I had an idea of one day being a skilled guitar player. But through that experience of course I was quickly humbled. That humbling didn't shatter my dream of being an amazing guitar player, though. Instead, it brought me to a point where I started to play the guitar just for the sake of playing it - not to become someone one day.
Every so often I would pick up that guitar and just fiddle with it. I had no agenda to accomplish anything. And guess what? Several years later, I’m half-decent at it. I don’t remember the moment I was able to play half-decently. To me, the whole thing was just fiddling. And to this day I continue to fiddle.
Right now, my favorite instrument to fiddle with is the heartstrings. The heartstrings of the people whose lives are on the cusp of a beautiful transformation, that is.
Words are amazing. Words convey ideas, and ideas evoke feelings. To play the heartstrings is to be able to use the words that convey a meaning that makes people feel alive, hopeful, inspired, and open to possibility.
There’s such a beautiful feeling when you land the right note. Whether it's the perfect chord on a guitar or a heart cracked wide open to possibility.
Honestly, sometimes I feel on the verge of tears when I get just the right sentence. Just that exact sentence that resonates with one particular person at one particular moment.
Another beautiful thing about playing the heartstrings is that you get instant feedback on how good it is by how you feel. Rather than following a prescription or a formula, and using sales or profits to gauge effectiveness, you’ve got your own heart to let you know when you really hit home. And your own heart can crack open too when the words are just right!
Here’s a fun little exercise if you'd like to practice: imagine the human being whose life you want to change. Mentally become that person. Step into their reality. See life through their eyes.
Can you create a string of words that convey such a strong feeling of hope and possibility - just exactly right for that person - that you can make yourself cry?
That’s your homework.
Because we're all living inside of our own thought-created reality, each of us is unique. We each have different things that resonate with us, different things that spark hope and possibility.
For example, one person might find happiness in really delicious cooking. And so, they'll get excited over the idea of having a delicious meal that night. They may spend their free time learning how to cook well. Another might find joy in painting. Maybe another from the accumulation of money.
When we're looking to change people's lives through deep transformations, it's tempting to talk about the transformation itself. But for most people, the details about the transformation sound too ethereal and sometimes seem completely irrelevant. It doesn't seem real.
And so, it doesn't really connect with people's hearts.
Rather than speaking about the deep insights themselves, we have to talk about the impact it has on their lives using symbols that speak to their heart - symbols that resonate with them.
Sue recently experienced a deep transformation. She feels so much happier and lighter in her life. She wants to share this with others because she knows how beautiful life can be. Sue doesn't want to limit who she can share it with, so she creates a website that applies to everyone:
Sue's Coaching
I help facilitate insights that lead to a life of more ease and wellbeing
Here's the problem though: because it speaks to everyone, it also speaks to no one. It might get into midfield for everyone, but it doesn't hit home for anyone.
If you were to corner me, as a representation of someone you want to serve, and ask me if I wanted to live with more ease and wellbeing, my answer would be yes.
But it just doesn't turn me on. It doesn't make my heart sing.
There is a simple way to navigate through this predicament.
If I were Sue, I would first start by thinking about one aspect of my life that changed after my transformation. Just one. What really transformed? What was I really struggling with that I no longer am?
Let's say that one thing that I really related to was relationship problems.
I would engulf myself in that experience of the shroud of problematic relationship thoughts. I would bring myself back to the experience where I really wish someone would have reached out to me.
Here's a question to get you thinking: when in your life did you most need an angel to come to you?
At that moment, what were your fears? What were your hopes? What did you, in your own world of thought, identify as the thing that was really hurting you?
From there, connect with the symbols. In that shroud of thoughts, there is a symbolic representation that can capture those hopes.
What's the thing that would have plucked a heartstring?
Beautiful Relationships
Your love is not falling apart, it's coming together in a whole new way.
I'm Sue, And I want to show you how that's true.
Plus, it rhymes!