Many coaches just starting out get impatient when they hear the stories of life coaches and business coaches with fabulous lifestyles and 6+ figure incomes because they want that for themselves…NOW.
It’s only human nature to want to skip the hard work and get to pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But for most of us, the process looks more like a long series of baby steps. And we can no more skip the hard work up front than a baby can skip grade school and high school and get right to college.
If you have a strong business or marketing background, these four stages of the Coaching Business Lifecycle should look familiar. They’re at work in every business, every organization, every product, and every organism.
I. Birth
II. Growth
III. Maturity
IV. Decline
Birth of Your Coaching Business
Your coaching business comes into existence the moment you firmly decide to create it. It may be that you’ve experienced the ‘Entrepreneurial Seizure’ Michael Gerber refers to in his best-selling and highly recommendable book on entrepreneurship “E-Myth Revisted”. Perhaps starting your own coaching business is something you’ve contemplated for a long time and you’ve finally decided to move forward with it. Or, maybe, you’re adding coaching as a business line to an already existing business.
Regardless, your job in the beginning is to get experience and to get clients. Unless you’re coming in with strong relevant professional experience, you won’t have much credibility, probably won’t know exactly who you’re going to work best with, and probably won’t know your areas of greatest strength. (If you DO have a lot of relevant experience, this first stage will be a breeze!)
At this stage in your business you’ll want to experiment with different coaching formats, different coaching clients, and you’ll be spending most of your time working hard to get coaching clients. ‘Birth’ will probably be the ‘hardest’ phase in your development. It will require a lot of faith in yourself as you confront early challenges. And you’ll probably make the least money in your coaching career.
Growth of Your Coaching Business
Once you begin to get clarity and momentum in your business, you’ll enter the Growth Stage. At this point you’ll probably have been in business for a year (or two) and you’ll be confident in your coaching skills. If you did your job right, you will have worked with a wide variety of clients and will know who you work best with and what you’re best at working on.
At this stage of the game, you’re going to want to standardize on your coaching format or menu of options. You’ll work on developing sophisticated marketing materials and a website you can live with for a year or two. You’ll also have more clients, begin getting referrals, and be making more money.
This stage will require you to run hard. Everything will take more time than you think it will as you focus on developing the right marketing mix for your business. Have patience with yourself and with the process. No one gets to pass ‘go’ without paying their dues!
Your Mature Coaching Business
Keep at it for long enough and you’ll have developed a full marketing funnel and be a recognized expert in your particular field. To get here, you’ll probably have a line of products, services, and resources you’ve developed and effective marketing systems.
In Maturity, you’ll also be making a lot of money. You can actually take it easier at this point of the game. You’ll have figured out how to be successful and how to maintain that success, and you could spend years enjoying the fruits of your earlier labors.
OR… you could look for new opportunities to grow and expand. Because you know that all things eventually…
The Inevitable Decline
Markets and industries change. Just as psychologists who had very comfortable businesses prior to the advent of coaching and managed care, if you’re not careful, the same will happen to you.
Your coaching niche might disappear, the needs of your customers might change, or your service might become ‘old school’. Or, a super-competitor who consolidates the market you play in might emerge and steal all of your business.
Your challenge is to keep on growing, to stay on top of trends and new developments, to find new opportunities, and to continue to expand and evolve.
You’ve worked too hard to build your business, and learned too much to let it slip away by being complacent!
Takeaways
Growth takes focus, energy, and ongoing commitment. The 135 pound weakling won’t develop an Arnold Schwarzenegger physique over night.
As a coach, your job is to help move your clients through their own learning curves as powerfully and quickly as possible. And when you’re looking for a coach to help you build your business, look for someone who can dramatically cut your learning curve so you can move through the early stages of your business lifecycle as quickly as possible.
Lawrence Mortenson is a no-nonsense speaker, trainer, consultant, and coach. He helps executives, business owners, coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs grow profitable businesses through smart strategy, good management, and solid marketing.
Learn about Lawrence’s book for beginning coaches The Truth About the Business of Coaching (Tao of Business Press) or visit his website at http://www.lawrencemortenson.com