Successful Secrets to Starting a Super Successful Coaching Business
By Terri Levine
Have you always dreamed of being your own boss? Have you wanted your own business?
Each year, thousands of people are entering the fast growing field of professional coaching. Some continue working their full time job and coach on the side, others take their professional skills and move into coaching full time, and others who have been downsized, or have retired, are also called to coaching.
If you want to start up coaching fast and with extraordinary success, here are some tips:
- It starts with a vision. You must know what it is you want and you must be able to see, feel, touch, taste, hear, and smell your business as if it is already there for you. Think about what you already know from your previous work and life experience. What are your skills, talents, and values? What are you an expert in? What kinds of people would you want to work with? See your clients. What would you be coaching them about?
- Create the image. Decide the name of your business. You can use your name or a more creative name to describe what you do. Always have a sub-heading that clearly describes what you are in business to do. For example: Comprehensive Coaching U: The Professionals' Coach Training Program.
- Select several niches to work with. Don't choose just one type of client to focus on. Diversify. Perhaps you can coach entrepreneurs, and if you also have a background in sales, you can coach sales professionals, and if you are also a woman who has created a great life/work balance, you can also coach women who want life balance. Take what you already have experience with and what you have done in your own work/life to create many markets that you can coach.
- Every business owner must do sales and marketing. If you were wishing that I'd tell you to put up a shingle and they would come, that simply would be a lie. It isn't hard to get clients if you are willing to do some sales and marketing to attract clients. These aren't dirty words. Selling and marketing means that you are willing to share your mission, your vision, your services with others by letting them know you are in business and how you can serve them.
- Inspired Actions. Each day you must take some type of action to move your business forward. It could be meeting with people to tell them about your coaching services, or doing some networking at an event, or speaking to a local chamber, or writing an article, or sending out emails to people you know. Action that feeeeeeeeeels good to you -creates business for you.
- Mail often. Let people know you have begun coaching and continue to keep them posted on your business and your clients' success by sending letters, postcards, articles, testimonials or tip sheets. Keeping in touch by mail is easy, inexpensive, and will serve you better than money spent on brochures or other expensive literature.
- Increase your database. Get out there and get names. Send out a weekly or daily e-zine on the Internet so people can subscribe. Join clubs, organizations, or professional associations. Attend seminars, workshops, and training. Offer to speak to groups. Once you have 500 people in a database, you are set for business to flow to you. You can start with 10 people and build to 500 fast.
- Price your services well. Most coaches start out charging too little or offering to coach for free. That is a big mistake. Think about the time to spend to find a client, coach a client, and care for a client. Decide what you want to earn (example, $100,000) then add 20% to cover your benefits and divide that by 2,000 (the number of working hours per year). In this case, that is $60 per hour. I then suggest doubling that number to cover your marketing time. So, $120 per hour would be the client charge - and that is realistic in coaching.
Terri Levine The Guru of Coaching SM, Ph.D., MCC, is the best selling author of several books including the international bestseller Work Yourself Happy, Coaching for an Extraordinary Life, Create Your Ideal Body, the international bestseller Stop Managing, Start Coaching! and her newly released book The Successful Coach co-authored with Larina Kase and Joe Vitale was just released by Wiley.
She is the founder the international coach training program: The Coaching Institute, www.CoachInstitute.com. She can be contacted through the web or by phone 877-401-6165.