In the end, when building a coaching business it comes down to this – how badly do you want to coach for a living?
Even though the highest percentage of self-employed people in the UK was 15.3% (in pre-pandemic 2019), and that number fell to 12.9% in 2022 (according to the Office For National Statistics), many people believe they know all about building a business from their position as lifelong employees.
And they’re wrong.
These lifelong employees can sit on the side-lines and make critical remarks which are hard to ignore.
But, as Brené Brown put it so eloquently, “There are a million cheap seats in the world today, filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those of us who are trying to dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism and fear-mongering.
If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback.”
Building A Business Is Hard – And Worth It
- If building a business, any business, was easy, everyone would have one, but they don’t.
- If building a coaching business in particular was easy, then the failure rate of 82% of coaching businesses in the first two years wouldn’t be valid, yet it is.
- I have never found a qualified coach whose business failed because of poor coaching skills.
- They always fail because of a lack of clients.
- They fail because they don’t have an effective client acquisition process.
Learning how to build a client acquisition process (sometimes called a funnel) is a big job. It’s also challenging because marketing (which is what client acquisition is) is utterly counterintuitive.
❌ Intuition tells us to ‘cast our net wide’ and let everyone know what we do.
✅ Counterintuitively, marketing is all about being über-focused on one target market.
The intuitive approach, known as spray-and-pray marketing, doesn’t work.
It’s never worked*.
How Much Do You Want It?
What you must ask yourself is how badly you want this.
- Enough to accept that what you’re doing isn’t working?
- Enough to have your thinking challenged?
- Enough to get out of your own way?
- Enough to learn how to market effectively?
- Enough to go through the discomfort of personal growth while you learn?
- Enough to learn and implement that learning?
- Enough to invest in the process?
Or would you rather sit with your currently held beliefs that:
- Marketing is distasteful
- Marketing is unnecessary. Coaching should speak for itself
- Marketing is only necessary if your coaching isn’t good enough
- Marketing is pushy/braggy
- It’s different for me because……. (insert any reason why you’re a special case. Spoiler alert, you’re not!)
If you hold any of the beliefs in this list, they are costing you a profitable coaching business.
But….
If you’re reading this and thinking I really want a coaching business. I want to positively impact the world, and I could do this through coaching if only I had clients to coach. Better still would be if those clients paid me a professional rate…… then we should talk.
This is the diary: https://thecoachingrevolution.com/lets-talk
*(There is a tiny subset of coaches who would disagree with the statement that casting our net wide doesn’t work. They have existing monetiseable credibility, which usually takes the form of a little black book of contacts developed over a corporate career. These contacts are the kind of people who can commission coaching contracts. This kind of coach will say, ‘But I did talk to everyone I know about my new business and got all the clients I needed!’ They need to realise that only a very few coaches have existing monetiseable credibility. Put plainly, these coaches don’t recognise their privilege.)