As Simon Sinek famously said, start with why.
Why The Coaching Revolution Exists
As The Coaching Revolution approaches its eighth anniversary, I’m reminded to think about our why. Three of us started The Coaching Revolution because we believed in the power of coaching. We had each been transformed by coaching and we were passionate about the possibility of the positive impact coaching can have on the lives of everyone. We were also very aware that coaches, in the main, are lacking client acquisition skills.
Within a few months of starting the business, one of us was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and he sadly died in 2019. In 2020, the remaining one and I parted company and since then, The Coaching Revolution, and its vision belong to me, and it’s a responsibility I take very seriously.
I believe that everyone can benefit from great coaching. I also believe that to experience great coaching, we need to be coached by those with a coaching qualification. It doesn’t have to be a particular ‘flavour’ of credential specifically, but it does have to be a ‘proper’ qualification – not a $27 Udemy course for example. Therefore we don’t work with anyone who hasn’t at the very least completed 60+ hours of coach-specific training and is building their coaching hours.
Why We Only Work With Qualified Coaches
When I’m quizzed on this eligibility criteria, the question tends to be ‘how do you know that those without a qualification aren’t great coaches?’ and of course, I don’t. What I do know however, is that over the eight years I’ve been running The Coaching Revolution there have been more than 50 people who have asked me to recommend a coaching programme to them, because – they tell me – they’ve been coaching informally for decades and would like to get a formal qualification. I have followed up with every one of them, and without exception they said ‘what I was doing wasn’t coaching, it was mentoring’ and so we don’t work with anyone who isn’t trained.
The world is full of coaches who don’t have clients, but desperately want them. That’s an incredibly sad thing to say, but it’s true.
Some coaches train and walk into lucrative coaching contracts in corporate, because they had monetisable credibility before they trained to become coaches. By that I mean that their network contains people who already know, like and trust them, and are in a position to commission coaching. Lucky them! We don’t all start from this privileged position.
Other coaches apply to one of the platforms (CoachHub, Ezra, Lyra, BetterUp etc) and deliver their coaching to the clients’ of others. The platform is responsible for the client acquisition, the coach simply shows up and coaches. Some associate coaches deliver coaching for a platform (More Happi) that charges its clients, but doesn’t pay its coaches. Instead apparently, it offers a community, and some supervision. The shortage of proper, paying clients is such that many coaches are willing to work like this.
Why Most Coaches Struggle With Client Acquisition
Not everyone who would like associate work – even pro bono associate work – has it, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to get into. As more and more people qualify as coaches, the competition for even unpaid work is significant.
The rest of us struggle to find clients to coach. We struggle because no one understands what our kind of coaching is, but they think they do, and they’re wrong. What this means in reality is that people don’t understand when coaching could be the answer to the thing they’re struggling with.
But we have a world full of people who could benefit from coaching, if only they understood what it was – which feels like a huge opportunity doesn’t it? Sadly it’s not quite the opportunity it appears to be, because in order for them to understand how coaching could help, there needs to be articulate conversations happening, and they are not happening in anywhere near enough numbers.
Why? (Another why!)
Because coaches are notoriously bad at articulating the benefits of coaching in ways that ordinary folk can understand.
We talk about co-creating environments, or partnering with the thinker or even shining a light on limiting beliefs all of which makes perfect sense to us, but means less than nothing to non-coaches. The reason it’s less than nothing, is it can sound a bit patronising to the outsider, when of course it’s anything but – and who wants to feel patronised?
Why The Coaching Revolution Exists (2)
The Coaching Revolution exists to bridge the gap between fabulous coaches and fabulous coaching opportunities. Paid ones. Not just “paid” by which I mean “an exchange of value”, but actually paid – in money. We are the only profession that counts “paid” hours as a thing by the way. The reason we do is if we didn’t, then many coaches wouldn’t ever reach the minimum hours required for a credential. The reason More Happi gets away with charging clients, but not paying coaches, is that those hours count as “paid” by our professional bodies for the purposes of our coaching hour logs is because there is and exchange of value for the coach.
The Coaching Revolution turns qualified coaches into well-paid professionals, we do it well and we’ve been doing it for nearly eight years. How do we do it? By teaching coaches how to talk about coaching in accessible ways, and then teaching them where they need to be having those conversations, both online and offline.
Marketing the way we teach it means that our coaches have a positive impact on the lives of their potential clients long before a coaching contract is signed. The conversations they’re having online and offline demonstrate empathy as well as knowledge and understanding of their potential clients’ struggles, and offers hope that there is a way out.
By the time a potential client ends up booked into the diary of a Coaching Revolution coach, they do indeed know who the coach is, what they do and for whom, and what it costs. The conversation is truly a chemistry call – an opportunity for the potential client to check out the coach and to reassure themselves that the coach is indeed who they appear to be. Which of course they are, because our coaches market ethically and authentically.
Why? (Another why!)
Because coaching only can transform lives, if the people living those lives understand that it’s possible. They don’t get that knowledge from coaches talking about their qualifications, or saying that they co-create an environment for growth, or that they build a coaching container in which they can be a thinking partner.
The gap between the person with the problem that coaching can help resolve, and the great coach who is keen to find more clients is bridged by the ability to articulate that they can help, in words that are intelligible to non-coaches.
Our why is to teach coaches to build that bridge.