Episode Details

How do you test demand for a new coaching market without blowing up the business you've already built? In this episode of Unfiltered Solopreneur, host Nikhil Vaish sits down with MCC-level coach Roy Marriott to unpack the three market probes Roy ran when his pipeline went quiet. One failed, one went sideways, one caught a wave that skyrocketed his business in 2020.

With a background spanning Cambridge, BT, HP Labs, and a 20-year practice rooted in Solution Focus, NLP, and mindfulness, Roy gets unusually candid about the business side of coaching. He talks about why niching down actually cost him work, the moment he realized "I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm a coach," and the practical mechanics of testing a market before committing to it.

Key Topics Covered
Why product-market fit matters before leaving your day job
How to test business ideas using market probes
Avoiding analysis paralysis while managing uncertainty
Why asking "What do our customers need?" changes everything
Why "thinking like a fish, not a fisherman" is the only framing that makes coaching marketing work
How Roy tested market hypotheses instead of waiting for work to return
How catching the remote training wave in mid-2020 generated three months of booked work in a single month
The one shift every tech leader needs in the AI era: knowing when System 1 thinking fails and System 2 is required
Outcome vs. output — the distinction that separates busy solopreneurs from productive ones

Signature Advice Quote: “Don’t quit the day job until you’ve got product market fit.”

Ideal for: Established coaches who are already booking work through referrals but hitting a ceiling because their breadth makes positioning hard — and want a low-risk way to test new markets without abandoning the craft they love.

Solopreneurship #LeadershipCoaching #ProductMarketFit #TechnicalLeadership #AILeadership #OutcomeOverOutput #SoloBusiness #BoostSolo

Guest Details
Roy Marriott helps tech leaders navigate complexity, uncertainty, and change.
• Website: https://www.roymarriott.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roymarriott/
• Brief Mindfulness: https://www.briefmindfulness.com/

Resources & Links

From Nikhil

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