WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS - Blog

Coaches - Think Like a Business Owner!

The single biggest shift I had to make in order to be successful was to start thinking like a business owner, instead of just thinking like a coach. It’s fantastic when you complete your coach training and celebrate your achievements, but now the real work begins.

How are you going to get your first clients? Coaching is no different to any other business – in order to get clients you need to market your business. The sooner you can make the mindset shift to “business owner,” the easier it will be to get your first clients.

Every coach is advised to go out and offer free trial sessions in order to get clients and I did that too in the beginning. The drawback is that lots of people will take up your offer because they are curious about coaching, not because they are serious about hiring a coach. This method is not likely to give you a high conversion to client rate and every other coach out there will be doing the same thing. Of course it’s a great way to gain practice and confidence in your coaching abilities, but there comes a point when you will need to start charging for your services.

Advertising generally doesn’t work very well to get coaching clients either. The good news is that most of the best ways to market your coaching business are no cost or low cost. I’ll share some of these in up-coming blog posts.

So what does thinking like a business owner mean to you? And what methods are you going to use to get these first few paying clients? Don’t be put off by the fact that you may need to spend a lot of time marketing your business, especially in the early days. Once you figure out how it works, marketing can be fun. I still find it really enjoyable even after more than seven years in business!

So I’ll leave you with this thought for today. Try writing several different endings for this sentence: “As a serious business owner I am willing to market my coaching business by ..........................................................”

(c) Shona Partridge, Women Mean Business www.womenmeanbusiness.co.uk

Coaching debate - do clients have all their own answers?

Dave Buck, a key figure in the coaching world as the leader of Coachville, has been talking off and on for some time about the absolutes of coaching.

He's now renewing the debate about whether coaches should ever advise coaching clients.  I did my original coach training more than seven years ago and my business has evolved over that time from life coaching and business coaching to mentoring, advising and training. Basically, my clients pay me because I do have answers and information they don't have!

The world is changing and the question is, will coaching change with it? As more and more people train as coaches, the market becomes flooded. How is someone supposed to choose a coach?

I would argue, from more than seven years' experience, that people don't buy coaching. People don't even care about coaching. Unfortunately, most coaches don't seem to get this vital point! I know this may shock some people, but people buy change, results, advice and solutions. They generally don't pay to be told they have all their own answers!

And in case you think I don't believe in the value of coaching - I have trained with Results Coaching Systems; withThomas Leonard - who invented coaching as we know it; with Laura Berman Fortgang - and I was even on the UK board of the ICF (international Coach Federation) in 2005-2006. I use my coaching skills almost daily, but that's not what my clients are paying me for - even if that is where a huge amount of the value originates. I believe the coaching profession is trying to sell the wrong thing!

And I reckon I've got something right because I've never been without multiple paying clients in seven years.

I'm doing another post soon on why free sessions could be hurting your business - look out for it.

(c) Shona Partridge, Women Mean Business 2009

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