I was struck by a question posed recently by Susan Hyatt, a leader in the life coaching industry and the passionate and courageous author of Bare, an anti-diet book that focusses the reader on loving her body and living her life. I was listening to Susan teaching a webinar on marketing for coaches. Susan shared her belief with us that a coach’s first step should be to examine who she is. Susan’s question struck me as interesting and novel. Why novel?  Because, the typical marketing advice I’ve received since becoming a coach is to start by defining our “client avatar” (an imaginary person meant to represent our ideal client.) The client avatar concept is useful because it helps us imagine how the people we want to serve are feeling and thinking.  This allows us to write marketing copy that connects emotionally with our prospective clients. The theory is that we should focus our marketing and our coaching practice on our clients’ needs rather than what we want to offer. After all, we’re in a service business. Coaching is [...]