Here’s my comment on this blog post http://activatelearning.com.au/2014/07/niche2/
This is a topic close to a lot of people’s hearts who are on the
road to independant working.
I really don’t want to bring you further turmoil but in my
experience, when I told someone I wanted to start coaching our
customers, his reaction was that coaching is for sports people
not engineers.
I think the word coach defines a format of information transfer,
along with mentor, trainer, instructor etc. To me the word coach
means guiding someone toward a goal, faciltating improvement
through different customised methods and assessing progress. So
I think using it could limit your services.
If you’re looking for something to put on your business card you
might consider something less concrete e.g Problem Solver or
Executive Trainer. This would hopefully lead to further enquiry
at which time you could deliver your 30-sec elevator pitch.
One way to think about this message is to say who you help, what
you help them with and how you do it. For example, I call myself
a Customer Service Engineer; I help mechanical engineers,
designers and draftspersons design better products more
efficiently thereby improving their profits by providing first
class learning facilitation, coaching and mentoring. By working
with me, my clients maximise their investment in their
engineering staff, systems and software.
My advice would be to think about what the biggest problem is
that you solve and what value this has for your clients.
Two books that I’ve got a lot of help with this task from are
Power Stories by Valerie Khoo and Book Yourself Solid by Michael
Port both available on Kindle