I love the stop, start, continue exercise. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s useful when coaching because it offers an alternative way of observing our own behaviour.
It works like this: Out of everything you’re currently doing with respect to [insert whatever’s relevant] what could you stop doing, start doing, and continue to do in order to reach [insert goal or desired outcome].
Let’s Play A Game (The Exercise!)
Let’s think of this stop, start, continue exercise in the context of marketing your coaching business. What might fit into each of those categories?
Stop
This is the first part of the exercise!
Some of the things that our mentees have said that they want to stop (and therefore you might too) are:
- Chasing the ‘next thing’ – also known as bright shiny object syndrome. Don’t hop from thing to thing, because what you’re doing doesn’t work in 5 minutes flat. Marketing is a long-term game. Your potential clients need to become aware that you even exist before they will even think of buying from you.
- Overthinking, especially in terms of what to say in your marketing. Our mentees learn that simply using the marketing message that they have crafted with our support will give them everything they ever need in terms of what to say. Craft a good marketing message and stick to it!
- Thinking about things from your own perspective. The star of your marketing is never you. Never. It’s always the client. Stop thinking from your own perspective and telling your potential client what they need, start thinking from theirs and explain to them why your coaching is exactly what they want.
Start
On to the second part of the exercise.
What might you start doing in respect of marketing your coaching business? These are some things I gleaned from our mentees:
- Become visible. Make sure that you are actually visible to those that you want to work with. Still, be you, still stick to your values, but be visible. It stands to reason that if people can’t see you, they can’t ask to work with you.
- Be consistent. Posting once a month and then getting upset that your effort doesn’t lead to inbound enquiries is pointless. Your potential clients need to move from having an awareness that you exist to being interested in what you do. Marketing sporadically doesn’t give them an opportunity to do this.
- Show up (even when it’s hard work!). 80% of the marketing is showing up. Consistently. Show up in the places where you know that those people who look like the kind of client you can help the most hang out – online and offline.
Continue
The final part of the exercise.
Some things that you might want to continue, according to our mentees, are:
- To stay optimistic and forward-looking. We all have bad days. We all have days when it’s hard. Remember that these days happen, and don’t let them derail you. (Belonging to a community of other coaches who are on the same journey as you can help here. Message to me if you’d like to find out more about ours?)
- Giving great value. You can never give away too much. I know that many coaches worry that if they give away too much, their potential clients might not need them any more. Think about this though. A book is a collection of all of someone’s knowledge on a particular topic. If simply reading a book was enough to move people forward in life, then we’d all have already reached our destinations, wouldn’t we? People will always need support in implementation.
- To love the process. Moving from a qualified coach to a busy coach is a journey. All the points in this journey are along the same road; first client, first £10k (or $10k or €10k) in the bank, six-figure business…. these are all stops on the same road, the road to your own coaching business.
If you’d like some help with any of this or to discuss the exercise further, why don’t we talk? This is my diary.