What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from What Color Is Your Parachute
You spend your working life helping other people get clear on their strengths and take the next step in their careers — which makes it almost funny how often you skip that exact process for yourself, growing your own practice by taking whoever shows up rather than getting clear on who you're actually best positioned to help. The book's core moves apply as directly to building a coaching or mentoring practice as to finding a job: know what you're good at, reach out to real people, and pitch the specific problem you solve.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Get honest about which problems you're actually best at solving
It's tempting to market yourself as a generalist who can help with anything, when your real strength is probably solving a narrower set of problems better than almost anyone else.
A career coach who is unusually good at helping people through mid-career pivots keeps advertising as an all-purpose life coach because it feels safer to cast a wide net, and ends up with a client roster that scatters her energy across problems she's only average at solving.
List the five client situations where you've had the clearest, fastest impact, and name what they have in common — that's closer to your actual specialty than your marketing copy.
Reach out directly to the people who could refer or become clients
Waiting for referrals to arrive passively is slower and less reliable than having direct conversations with the people most likely to know someone who needs exactly what you offer.
A mentor building a private practice posts occasionally on social media and waits, while a colleague who reaches out for a genuine coffee conversation with three former clients a month steadily builds a fuller calendar.
Reach out to three people this month — a past client, a colleague, a former supervisor — not to pitch, but to ask genuinely how they're doing and what they're working on.
Present the specific problem you solve, not a general description of coaching
"I help people reach their potential" tells a prospective client almost nothing; naming the specific problem you solve, for a specific kind of person, tells them immediately whether you're for them.
A mentor's website describes broad, aspirational benefits that could apply to any coach anywhere, and a prospect who badly needs exactly her specialty scrolls past because nothing on the page names her actual problem.
Rewrite your one-line pitch to name the specific person and specific problem you solve best, even if it narrows who responds — a sharper pitch attracts fewer but better-matched people.
Keep re-clarifying who you most want to help, as your own experience grows
The kind of client or problem that suited your early practice may not be the one that suits you now — revisiting who you want to serve and why is an ongoing part of running a practice, not a decision made once when you started.
The instinct to say yes to anyone who reaches out can pull against staying focused on your actual specialty; it's fine to take on some work outside your sweet spot for income or relationship reasons, as long as you keep protecting time for the work that's genuinely yours.
Name one thing, honestly
If you could only take on clients whose problem matched your single greatest strength, who would you have to stop working with, and who would you finally have room for?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Rewrite your one-line pitch to name the specific person and specific problem you solve best, even if it narrows who responds — a sharper pitch attracts fewer but better-matched people.