I was a business coach in Biotech that incorporated mindset work to resolve mental health challenges to get people back on track to meet business goals. I was top-notch at helping my clients deliver business goals as a tangible result. I was also improving their mental health as an intangible result.

I decided to start my own coaching business with a mission to lower suicide rates. One route being to help people be financially self-sufficient.

When I started, I didn’t know the end-to-end process of being an entrepreneur. Instead of focusing on business process, or business building first, I chose to focus on the Mental health (“healing”) and relationship aspect.

The long-range vision was always to be able to:

1. “Heal” corporate employees (mental health & relationship challenges, team dynamics issues, and boss issues) and develop their coaching skills so they could deliver business value
2. If they chose to repurpose their “healing” into an entrepreneurial venture, I could help them transition (teach end to end process, help them manage their mental health/relationships as they got up and running)
3. My ultimate business result: develop healing coaches, develop business coaches, get their businesses up and running.
4. Host Healing retreats for 150 corporate/entrepreneur clients (my graduated healing coaches would get to offer their modalities too)
5. Host Business retreats for 150 corporate/entrepreneur clients (my graduated business coaches would get to offer their services too)

Needless to say, this is a complex business model. Especially for a solopreneur. My focus for the first couple of years is just #1 & #2.

I see this as a chicken & egg scenario. Some clients enter at step 1 and may not be an entrepreneur. Some clients enter at step 2, but haven’t had the healing part which is standing in the way of their business progress.

For my messaging & podcast, it seems unfocused as a result. Are they listening for resolving work stress? Business process? Relationship stuff? It’s like a buffet because their life has all of those components. If they want their business results they have to get everything working well together.

This makes doing 1 funnel with a specific pain point/benefit really difficult.

It also goes against one of the business principles I’m trying to teach: you only have to have 1 well-working funnel to make it work.

It also makes positioning my podcast really difficult. It can fit into any of the categories: mental health, business, relationship, entrepreneur.

Is this a niche problem (pick the chicken or the egg)?

Is this a sequencing problem (focus on the chicken until my business is really good with the chicken—>then move onto the egg?)

Or is this my own brain creating a smokescreen?