There’s a term that gets tossed around in entrepreneurial circles, often derisively: wantrepreneur. It describes the person who endlessly consumes content about starting a business, talks about their big idea, but never takes the leap. They’re always dreaming. For many established business owners, this group is seen as a dead end, all talk and no action. But as a coach, I’ve discovered a counterintuitive truth. You can build a thriving, sustainable practice not in spite of wantrepreneurs, but because of them. This isn’t about exploiting a cycle of inaction; it’s about understanding a consistent need.
The common mistake is viewing the wantrepreneur as a failed client. If they don’t launch, they’ve failed, and so had your coaching. This perspective misses the entire point. The wantrepreneur’s primary struggle is rarely a lack of information. The internet is bursting with free tutorials on business formation, marketing, and sales. Their struggle is almost entirely internal. It’s a battle with fear, with perfectionism, with identity, and with the terrifying gap between a comfortable dream and a risky reality. This gap is not a business problem; it’s a human problem. And human problems are the absolute bedrock of coaching.
Your service, in this case, transforms. You are not selling a “launch your business in 30 days” package, because that sets you both up for frustration. Instead, you are selling clarity, confidence, and emotional scaffolding. You become a guide not just to a business plan, but to the self-awareness required to execute one. The work is in untangling the mental knots: the fear of judgment that keeps them from sharing their idea, the impostor syndrome that has them taking “just one more course,” the paralyzing need for a perfect brand before a first sale. This is deep, meaningful work that has value whether they ever file an LLC or not. The outcome you provide is forward motion, a stronger sense of self, and the dismantling of limiting beliefs. For many, that progress is worth the investment alone.
There is a built-in sustainability to this model because the journey itself is the product. A person who overcomes their initial fear and launches a simple service has not “graduated” from needing you. Now they face the fears of pricing, of selling, of managing client expectations. The landscape of internal hurdles simply evolves. The dreamer who becomes a doer now dreams bigger, encountering new levels of self-doubt and complexity that benefit from a coach’s support. The relationship isn’t transactional with a clear end date; it’s transformational and can adapt through different chapters of their personal and professional evolution.
This approach requires a shift in your own marketing and messaging. You are not shouting into the noise of “get rich quick” schemes. You are speaking calmly into the silence of the late-night browser, the person scrolling through success stories while feeling stuck. Your content addresses the itch behind the dream: “Is it normal to be terrified?” “What if you’re not a born salesperson?” “Navigating the loneliness of a solo dream.” You attract clients not with the flashy promise of a Lamborghini, but with the empathetic promise of not having to walk the path alone. You become a safe harbor for ambition, not a drill sergeant for it.
Ultimately, building a practice on wantrepreneurism is profoundly human. It recognizes that before anyone becomes an entrepreneur, they are a person with hopes, fears, and psychological barriers. By choosing to serve the wantrepreneur, you commit to the most impactful part of the journey: the moment a thought becomes an action. You witness and facilitate the fragile, courageous process of a person stepping into a new version of themselves. And in that sacred space, you’ll find not just a business model, but a job filled with purpose and connection, along with the privilege of watching dreams take root in the real world.
