Why College Coaches Are an Underserved Niche for CPAs, Attorneys, and Advisors

In the last post, we talked about the different needs of athletes and college coaches, and how lumping the two together is lazy thinking for financial services professionals. Now, let's talk about how you can serve college coaches better.

You don't have to understand every weird detail of coaching to understand the opportunity that exists to serve coaches. You just have to accept the basic premise: college coaches are not generic sports clients, generic high-income professionals, or generic W-2 employees with busier travel schedules. They are their own class of client, shaped primarily by inherent instability.

Once you understand that, the most common assumptions start to fall apart.

Three Bad Assumptions About Working With College Coaches

Bad Assumption 1: College Coaches Are Just "High-Income Professionals"

If you want to work with college coaches, you have to stop looking at income. You have to understand the environment that they operate in.

Some coaches make a lot of money. Some don't. I'm not going to pretend that a Power 4 coordinator and a small-college assistant are working with the same set of financial tools.

Income is not the thing that makes a coach a coach.

Income is all about available resources. But income doesn't tell you anything about the mindset of the human being that wields those resources. You might find a surgeon, a software executive, a business owner, an athlete, and a Power 4 coach that all make similar amounts of money. That doesn't make them the same client, not anywhere close. It just means they're in the same tax bracket.

I'll borrow surgeons here to make a point. If you were a surgeon, you'd probably have a specialty. That specialty is almost certainly something like "cardiac surgeon" or "orthopedic surgeon." It's almost certainly NOT "surgeries that take five hours" or "surgeries on men who are six feet tall." That's the difference between understanding the problems and nuances versus a categorical sorting label.

If you're focused too much on the income, you miss what it is that makes coaches tick, and how you can help them.

Which brings me to the next bad assumption.

Bad Assumption 2: Small-School Coaches Are Not Worth It

I can already hear your exasperation.

"Jake, you want me to focus exclusively on college coaches, not high-income earners? How am I supposed to stay in business? I know some coaches make money, but most don't, right??"

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every small-college coach is secretly wealthy. Some coaches simply might not be ideal clients for every professional. That's fine, and also true of many other occupational focuses, to be frank.

But if you're not willing to put in the work to understand how college coaches think and operate, that kinda proves the problem I've been talking about this whole time.

Some coaches save aggressively. Some coaches have spouses that have strong income. Some coaches inherit money. Some coaches own property. Some coaches live lean for decades, then realize they're accidentally a millionaire. Some coaches move from a small school to a big one and quadruple their income seemingly overnight. Some coaches may not be huge revenue clients today but are still a part of the broader coaching ecosystem. Coaches move around, join new staffs, make new connections. It's a complex, intricate web with a lot of touchpoints. You never know what the future of any coach may hold. When you get too narrowly focused on where they're at right now and dismiss lower-income earners at smaller schools, all you're doing is demonstrating that you might not understand coaches well enough to serve the niche as a whole.

Which is important, because of the third bad assumption.

Bad Assumption 3: Top Coaches Are Already Taken Care Of

This one's just lazy thinking, frankly.

Sure, you're right that many of the top coaches probably already have professionals around them. But it's not like that's just a "college coach" thing. Plenty of high-income earners and high-net-worth households already work with professionals too.

Now let's apply this to high-net-worth coaches. Remember that my whole beef that started this article was that the industry is bereft of professionals that focus specifically on college coaches. So who the heck are all these professionals surrounding college coaches?

Why, they're the folks who focus on groups like athletes, entertainers, business owners, executives, and other high-income professionals and wealthy families.

The fact that there are already existing professionals in a top coach's orbit proves that there is complexity in that coach's life. But, as we've already established in this post, that doesn't prove there's a fit.

Don't confuse a coach's access to professionals with access to professionals who understand the collegiate coaching landscape.

If you're truly dedicated to serving college coaches, and you position yourself in the market as someone who understands, works with, and loves college coaches, don't you think that some of those college coaches who already are being served by generalist professionals might start to gravitate towards you?

Marketing Is the First Proof of Seriousness

This might be the most important section, so pay attention.

If you want to work with college coaches, your marketing has to speak to college coaches.

Say college coaches.

Talk about college coaches.

Talk about their lives. Their contracts. Their moves. Their families. Their uneven income. Their uncertainty. Their staff changes. Their weird career timelines. Their pressure.

Put it all out there on your website, on social media, in your emails, in your presentations, in your ads, or anywhere else you try to explain who you serve.

If you don't want to limit yourself to just college coaches, that's totally fine! But don't lump the word coaches in at the end of a sentence and pat yourself on the back. You actually have to speak directly to coaches with your marketing.

Once you start truly marketing to coaches, the rest of your practice will be forced to follow.

Marketing to coaches specifically and unapologetically is like holding your business accountable. It's easy enough to say "we work with athletes, doctors, astronauts, business owners, retirees, and coaches," and not do anything specific for any of them. But the second you start talking about how a coach lives and operates, it forces you to handle them with a level of specificity that right now isn't seen in the industry.

This is a Real Business Opportunity, Not Charity Work

I want to be extraordinarily clear here. This is not a bleeding-heart missive about college coaches because I love them so much. This is a real opportunity for you to make money. And it's not because college coaches are some sort of cash cow, waiting to be milked.

College coaches are extremely underserved. There are very few people in the financial services industry who are oriented to specifically serve college coaches. They have real needs, they value trust, they talk to each other, and they will pay for competence, care, and value.

If you understand coaches, you can build a meaningful practice around serving them. If you deliver real value, that practice can pay you well. And if you become trusted in this world, you can build long-term, fruitful relationships.

We live in a capitalist society. And one of the features of capitalism is that people can pay for whatever they want. If you can demonstrate value, competence, and care for college coaches, you deserve to be paid commensurate with the value you provide. There's nothing wrong with that.

You Don't Have to Be a Former Coach, But You Do Have to Be Coachable

Frankly, I have a bit of an advantage here because I used to be a college coach. I've lived the life, I know some of the nuances, I had already spoken to a lot of coaches before I started as an advisor. But the great thing about this market is that you don't need to have been a former coach to earn credibility.

Coaches are used to people starting from scratch. It's not like most coaches go to school to earn a coaching degree (I'm aware that some do, miss me with that lol). Even when it comes to athletes on the team, many coaches have stories of working with players who had never tried the sport before and having to start their development from scratch. In all instances of starting fresh, there are specific traits that are valued highly:

Humility. Curiosity. Repetition. Genuine seriousness.

All of the ingredients one needs to be considered "coachable."

If you are coachable, you can learn the coaching market. If you are humble, you can listen to coaches and ask questions without a need to demonstrate your knowledge. If you are curious, you can soak up everything you can about coaches like a sponge. If you put in the reps, you'll grow more and more comfortable with how to talk to coaches and handle their problems. If you are genuinely serious, you'll keep showing up. Coaches value all of those traits, and by demonstrating your coachability, not only will you gain credibility with your new coaching audience, but you'll also get more and more competent at serving them.

You don't have to be a former coach to serve coaches well. But you do have to be willing to be coached by the market you claim to serve.

Now, I'd like to speak directly to the early-career professionals who may be reading this piece, wondering if it's worth working with college coaches.

It is. If you're ready to take it seriously.

Not because working in sports sounds cool, or because NIL is the hot trend these days.

But because coaches are an underserved client class with real, recurring problems.

They require professionals who understand the job, the life, the instability, and the pressure.

If you build around coaches early, you can become valuable well before the market gets crowded.

Don't become another professional who says they serve coaches. Become one who proves it.

Conclusion

It's not fair to expect a college coach to have to explain the ins and outs of their entire profession every time they meet with a professional.

They shouldn't have to explain why a raise doesn't make them automatically feel more stable.

They shouldn't have to explain why thinking about buying a house gives them heartburn, despite seemingly having the financial means.

They shouldn't have to explain how and why a job change affects their spouse, kids, school calendar, tax situation, insurance, benefits, retirement accounts, moving budget, and sense of identity.

The professional world has built specialties around athletes, executives, physicians, dentists, business owners, entertainers, and all sorts of other occupational groups.

College coaches deserve the same seriousness.

They aren't impossible to serve. They're just under-understood. A professional who takes the time to understand college coaches can build practices that are useful, meaningful, and profitable. But it starts with treating coaches like their own class of client, not as the last two words in a sports-and-entertainment sentence.