Are you more focused on doing coaching than on running a business of coaching?
Your Success Comes From Designing a Business, Not Just in Doing What You Do
Here's the difference.
* If you find yourself wanting to coach, and avoiding marketing and sales, then you are playing at coaching and not running a business of coaching. Your chances of success are small.
* If you are wanting to coach, and not spending time designing and redesigning a business of coaching that delivers exactly the DOLLARS that you WANT, in the TIME that you want to put into this, then you are playing at coaching instead of running a business of coaching. Your chance of making a lot of money coaching is small.
I've seen that same pattern among most of the small business owners I've coached, and it's even more rampant among the coaches that I coach. Strange, isn't it, that coaches have the same problems that their clients have? But it's very true.
Are you more comfortable coaching than in marketing and selling? Do you know what needs to be done to successfully bring in tons of new clients in marketing, and getting them to buy in sales? And stepping back even further, from the 10,000 foot level to the 30,000 foot level, where you'll start designing and redesigning the whole business, that's where you'll be asking questions like, how do I go from $150/hour to $500/hour, and then from $500/hour to $1,000/hour. As long as you are working as a coach and not as a business designer you'll be stuck making $150/hour decisions and never selling many of those. So, in reality you are making way less than $150/hour.
In any business, the more focused the business owner is on "what they do" instead of building a business around what they do, the less likely they will succeed.
Coaches, who discover the principles to resolve this will be even better at helping their own clients design and redesign their business for more success and higher income.
More Time Thinking . . . Coaching . . . Than Designing and Then Redesigning the Business of Coaching
Do you spend more time thinking about coaching than designing and redesigning a business of coaching? How much time do you spend working on coaching, and how much time on building a business of coaching?
As a coach, don't you work with people to help them get focused?
So, what should you be focused on as an owner of a coaching business?
Obviously you want to focus on becoming a better coach, thinking about how you coach, however, if you never spend time thinking about marketing better, selling better, and, at an even higher level, how would you design this business to make more money, to find clients that would spend more money, and on making exactly what you'd like to be earning from your coaching business, then it's likely that you aren't finding those answers that are even more critical to your success than coaching itself. Am I right?
Let's look at one of my clients who was a cook in a restaurant. As the cook, he believed he could run a business better than his boss. However, do you want a bet that his focus was around making a better meal than in how to become successful at a restaurant business? So, he went across the street and started his own restaurant.
Where do you think he was working? In the kitchen! He believed that his success depended upon how well he cooked and what kinds of fantastic meals he cooked, yet no one was walking through the door. Does that sound like your coaching business?
It Doesn't Matter How Good You Are at What You Do If You Can't Sell Any
One of the things I preach to my clients would likely be defined as sacrilege in business schools, but it is the truth. It doesn't matter how good you are in the kitchen (or in coaching) if you aren't getting anyone to walk in the door (that's marketing), and if you aren't getting anyone to set down to buy (that's sales).
To restate that: It doesn't matter how good of a coach you are if no one is walking in to discover you, nor to buy your services. You could be the best, or the worst, and your results will be exactly the same if no one is there to buy it.
You Can Have a Successful Business If You Can Get Tons of People Walking in and Buying Even If You Aren't Good at Delivering
In fact, let's look at it from the other side. Let's say that you are absolutely fantastic at marketing and sales, and aren't any good in the kitchen (or coaching) at all. In that case you are good at getting people in the door and getting them to set down and buy, but the food (or your coaching) is absolutely horrible. The money is flowing (imagine what that would be like for coaching), yet the food is horrible. What happens is that there are a ton of people coming through the door and buying, but they'll never come back. As long as you are out there marketing and selling there are still people flowing through the door and you are successful.
In no way am I suggesting that you do it this way, only emphasizing to you that without marketing and sales you'll never be successful, and that with them you could be even if you aren't any good at coaching, so marketing (the ability to get tons of people in the door), and selling (getting those that do come through the door to buy) are critical, and the ability to design and redesign a business that includes all of the pieces of your business, marketing, sales, coaching are all critical pieces.
Coaching, and how good you are at it, doesn't even come into the picture until you've got them coming in the door, wanting what you have, and then getting them to buy. Sounds logical, however, most coaches start with coaching and never have many clients.
How to Become the Top 1% of All Coaches
Do, you know the statistics are that over 90% of all coaches and consultants will fail within months, and that, of those that do succeed, most will never make more than $20K? Your success will come only when you can get your hands around the BUSINESS of coaching, learn what makes less than 1% of all coaches the top earners, and design the business that not only works in all of those areas, and then focus on how to make that business deliver EXACTLY what you want it to in dollars and cents, and in the time you want to put into it.
One of the coaches I worked with was having problems getting enough people to even show an interest, let alone someone who would buy. She kept saying, but I'm good at coaching, but I can't get anyone interested in coaching. When I finally got her to look at how to refocus on the RIGHT customer, how to sell, and THEN even how this business was to make her more and more in less and less time, she changed everything and went from less than $10K in a year to $6,000 an hour. Yes, I said that correctly.
It wasn't just learning to market and sell, which is very important, but it also was a total redirection of what she was doing, and how she was doing it. It was redesigning her business so that it will deliver the dollars you want in the time you want to spend, and the way you want to do it.
Instead of focusing on selling at $5,000 per client, which wasn't working the way she was doing it, she developed a marketing funnel that leads people in steps toward coaching. Each step moved from giving a free taste of coaching, to a low cost group session, to full blown coaching. She's now making $5,000 an hour, not just per job, doing Intro to Coaching at $250 a month for groups of about 100, and has a waiting list for her one-on-one coaching, which, by the way, she now charges a lot more for and spends very little time doing. She spend 4 1-hour sessions a month with about 100 people, $25,000 a month total income for 4 hours of work. And that leads to a waiting list of people wanting her coaching.
Your Job Isn't Just to Coach . . . It's Designing and Redesigning a Successful Coaching Business
So, your job isn't to coach. It is to design, and redesign a business of coaching that delivers exactly the dollars you want in the time you want to put into this. And, of course go do it.
It's designing the business at the highest level around what you want to make and how you'll do it, and then breaking it down to how many leads are needed from marketing, what percentage of those will be closed in sales, and, finally the delivery, your coaching.
Do you know how to deliver exactly that many leads each and every week?
Are you delivering that many each and every week?
Is your sales process converting exactly the percentage of those leads into sales that are necessary to hit your target sales in number of customers and dollars per customer?
Do you know how to fix your marketing to make it deliver at that rate, or better?
Do you know how to fix your sales to deliver at that rate, or better?
What are you going to do next to start delivering on all of those critical goals? Those are critical in that if you deliver each and every one of them each and every week, you will get the dollars you want this year in the time you are willing to put into it.
And, if you miss even one of these goals you not only won't hit your goals for amount sold in the time you want to put into it, but you are likely going to fail in business. That's critical!
Do you know how to make marketing work to deliver the number of leads a month you need?
Do you know how to close 40-50% of those leads?
What would it be worth to you to be able to do that?
So, would you like to do a quick assessment of your critical business goals? The things that are absolutely critical to your business?
Be sure to look for the next article, "Assessing You and Your business success, The Critical Issues of Coaching Business Success" to grade just how well you are doing at building a successful coaching business.
Do you want to learn more about how to increase your coaching business?
I have just completed my brand new guide to coaching marketing success. You'll also get a free invitation to join a mastermind group of other coaches as they build their business. Hear what works and doesn't work.
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