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Building Your Coaching Business: Are You In a Practice or a Business?

As a coach, when you talk about “your practice”, it has a definition and an insinuation of one-on-one coaching. It is important to build coaching businesses that aren’t solely based on one-on-one coaching. Certainly one-on-one coaching is a component – and for some people a very large component – of their coaching business, but you cannot build a successful business when only offering one-on-one coaching.

Here are the challenges with businesses that are only one-on-one coaching: when you only build a coaching practice, it means that the only money you can earn is when you are present.

It means that for every dollar you make, you must spend a certain amount of your own time.

That’s a recipe for serious trouble for a few reasons.

#1) Building a business like this can easily lead to burnout.

#2) You are your business. If you are your business and something unexpected happens – a family emergency or an illness – you lose income if you aren’t present to deliver your service.

#3) The one-on-one model heavily limits your ability to reach and help more people.

I really come from a marketing mindset, which is to build a coaching business as apposed to just a practice. A real coaching business has multiple streams of income. It means one-on-one coaching, groups, or you may have an associate coach that’s leading some programs for you. Also, this includes products like books and ezines, audio programs and DVDs.

This means programs you lead once live and then you record those to be sold at a later time. Building a coaching business can also include workshops, seminars, and having all different types of clients from VIP platinum level clients at higher rates to lower level packages.

I always use the term “coaching business” because as apposed to “practice”.  It’s important to make this distinction as you build you business.

When you hear the word marketing, what’s the first words that pop in your mind? Pushy? Selling? Advertising? Networking?

It’s not at all uncommon that a lot of negative words pop up. That’s because people have associated marketing with sales, pushing or manipulation.

I want to share with you my approach to marketing. Hopefully it will be a relief to some of you who are worried that marketing is salesy and pushy or ugly in some way.

I wake up every day and love marketing. I really do. I wake up and think, “What can I sell today?” I love the sales process. I love the sales process because the way I look at it is it’s a sharing process.

I always trade the word sales with the word share.

If I can get up today and share what I know is really helpful, wonderful information – for me that’s marketing information and marketing coaching; for you it might be something completely different, but whatever it is – if you can share your gift today and someone purchases, you can help more people transform their lives.

That’s what I was put on this earth to do, so I love the sales process. I love marketing, because marketing means I reach more people and I make a bigger difference.

My definition of marketing is that marketing is a way to authentically share my experiences and my gifts with those who can use it to shape their lives, empower their work, and shorten their paths to success.

When you come from an authentic place in marketing, it’s so much less work. You don’t have to make anything up. You simply insert yourself into a business.

That doesn’t mean you don’t use some very good marketing tools and skills. It doesn’t mean there aren’t strategies and tactics out there to market that work better than others, but the foundation is the authentic approach to marketing. Developing a healthy marketing mindset is the first step.

It is not the tool that makes the most difference – it is how you use the tool that is important. That’s what authentic marketing is – if you approach the business building, marketing and selling processes authentically, you can make all kinds of mistakes and still help more people and achieve great success.

I’d like to invite you to learn how to help more people, make more money and enjoy more freedom with the free 5-day mini course, “Awakening Your Authentic Entrepreneur,” at http://www.helpmorepeople.com/minicourse.htm

 
icon for podpress  Building Your Coaching Business: Are You In a Practice or a Business? [5:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  Building Your Coaching Business: Are You In a Practice or a Business? [5:39m]: Download

Posted on August 31st, 2009 by admin in Business Growth | No Comments ».


The Importance of Authentic Marketing for Your Coaching Business

Many wonderfully trained coaches struggle to build their businesses. A lot of them seek out marketing guidance and find it, but then feel out of alignment with the advice and end up stuck in values conflicts.

This is where authentic marketing becomes necessary. We can help more people when we make more money and when we are successful coaches, not just good coaches.

Let me give you a bit of insight into my story. I decided to become a coach a little over two years ago. I did my coach training through Coach U and started as a life and career coach simultaneously with my coach training.

It’s very important to start your marketing early. Within about nine months of starting my business, I had over 35 paying clients. My business had really boomed. Things were going really well, and in about 14 months it went to six figures. Now this year we’re looking at a quarter of a million dollar coaching business.

I had no marketing background per se. I certainly had never run or operated a business before. I created a very systematic marketing process for my business. I started early and I marketed often.

Now I exclusively work with helping professionals (or Helpingpreneurs as I call them). These are people who make a living by making a difference. They support, help and heal other people. That’s the profession they’re in. All of my private clients, my coaching clients, and all of my groups and products are tailored to marketing, mindset and business building for the helping professional.

Do you see how clearly I define who I work with and how I help them?

It’s critical for you to have a clear message that explains what you do, so when somebody comes up to you and asks what you do for a living, you are able to explain it very quickly, effectively and clearly.

Many coaches and helping professionals struggle with ADD or ADHD, so for people with those tendencies, it is extremely important to be able to succinctly and concisely take all the things you do and put them in one message, under one umbrella, and explain that to the people you interactive with.

This is going to sound so crass, but I promise you it’s the truth:

People don’t care what you do.

People care what you can do for them.

Have you heard of the radio station WIIFM? It stands for “What’s in it for me?” Most everyone has their radio station tuned to WIIFM. You must appeal to the wants and needs of your ideal clients and customers.

You have got to focus on what your passion is. Then you must identify the group that needs you most. You must then position yourself as an expert and become visible to that group.

Remember, the greatest public servant in the world is a rich coach, and here’s why. Coaches can’t help but give back, so when a coach is succeeding monetarily and doing well, they’re going to sprinkle that giving back and coaching and love and support everywhere they go.

When you focus on what you are passionate about, work with and serve the clients and customers who need you most, making sure to appeal to their interests with clarity, your marketing efforts will be in full alignment with who you are and you will have eliminated the biggest barriers to success in your business.

I’d like to invite you to learn how to help more people, make more money and enjoy more freedom with the free 5-day mini course, “Awakening Your Authentic Entrepreneur,” at http://www.helpmorepeople.com/minicourse.htm

 
icon for podpress  The Importance of Authentic Marketing for Your Coaching Business [3:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
icon for podpress  The Importance of Authentic Marketing for Your Coaching Business [3:47m]: Download

Posted on August 25th, 2009 by admin in Marketing | No Comments ».


Solopreneurs: Do You Have Intuitive Business Vision?

One of the things imperative to know when boating is your buoy markers and shore markings. I really didn’t know what an education it would be to learn all the details to safely navigate your path.  I have been traveling the same path for the past month and I clearly know the areas to travel and routes to take as I am boating them almost daily, but what if I did it in the dark?  What if the safety of daylight was taken away?  Would I know where to go or would I sink (yikes) without my safety net?

Yep, you can see where this is going… Last week we got caught out in the boat late at night and were using a flashlight to navigate lobster buoys and dry land.  I freaked.  I was trying to remain calm, but I was really scared.  I felt as if I had been dropped onto a different planet. My heart was racing, my insecurities popped up, and it was as if I had never taken that path and had no clue what to do next.

Once I successfully navigated myself back to land, I was clear that this is what happens to so many entrepreneurs.  When circumstance change, we forget everything we ever knew and we behave just like all the times we have traveled our business paths before.

I KNEW EXACTLY where to go… intuitively.  I had done it before.  I let the one change throw me off and that is what happens in business.  We know what to do, we know where to go, we know what we need.  It is always intuitive, but we just let the hiccups and changes convince us we don’t.  The most authentic marketing strategy and the authentic approach to attracting clients is embracing our intuition and trusting ourselves to know the path.

If you feel stumped in growing your business or frustrated with what you should be doing, go back to the basics and embrace your inner marketing voice.

1. Stop believing you have to do it like “they” do.  You are your unique brand… grasp the ideas and approaches that work for you and resonate with you.  Disregard the rest and use your voice, your gifts, and your language to market.

2. Don’t make it complicated.  You know how to get clients – ASK.  Remember that you have traveled this path before.  Look to your current circle: friends, family, colleagues, and community.  Ask them to have a complimentary session with you, send a referral, or share a gift certificate with a friend.

3. Draw on your past success for the present.  Remind yourself of what has worked in the past and leverage that.  How did you get that client?  Where did those referrals come from?  And what brought in money before?  Repeat success.

Just because the sun went down doesn’t mean you forget your marketing sense and abandon your inner voice.  Your marketing success and your authentic message is within you already…you know what your path is.  Embrace your intuition to be ready for what life throws you.  That inner voice will navigate you through the business waters- even in the dark.

(c) 2009 Suzanne Evans

About the author:  Suzanne Evans is best known as the ‘action expert’ and has coached hundreds of solopreneurs to model her multiple six figure business. Learn how you can help more people, make more money and have more fun doing what you love by signing up for your free copy of the 5-Part Mini-Course ‘Awakening Your Authentic Entrepreneur’ at http://www.helpmorepeople.com


Posted on August 24th, 2009 by admin in Business Growth | No Comments ».


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