Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Greatest Coaching Taboo

Did you see the first episode of the new series of The Apprentice (UK) last night? Good wasn't it?

Even though the girls went a bit overboard with the flirting (and may have done themselves more damage than good in the long run), one of them said something that struck a chord. I can't remember her exact words, so I'll paraphrase 'when you're starting a business, you do whatever it takes to get going'.

Whilst doing a bit of surfing this morning, I came across a top tips section for entrepreneurs on www.msn.co.uk and there were two points that really hit home:

6. Be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever done before
7. Do something you love

I think we'd all agree that number 7 is a given when we start a coaching practice, after all if we didn't love coaching people we wouldn't do it! But number 6....

Last week I got a call from someone who'd found me online and wanted to talk to me because he was thinking about changing career and becoming a coach. He was asking for some tips. He'd heard about Life Coaching and thought that it sounded like a good job.

I had a choice, do I perpetuate the myth (coaching's growing so fast that people are falling over themselves to hire coaches, all coaches make £100 an hour coaching 20+ clients every week - that's £2,000 every week or £100k per year!!, all coaches work part-time, have a fantastic work-life balance that millionaires and royalty would be jealous of and earn mega-bucks as soon as the diploma is hanging on the wall, blah blah blah) or be absolutely straight with him.

I decided to be straight.

Firstly, I asked him whether he'd worked with a life coach himself. No.
Secondly, we talked about life coaching as a 'career choice'.
Thirdly, I challenged him on coaching being a 'good job'.

I explied to him that he was unlikely to find a full-time job as a life coach. Yes, there are a few jobs as internal coaches within large organisations, but the vast majority of life coaches are self-employed and responsible for all of their business functions - including finding work for themselves, managing their finances and administration.

Coaching is supposed to be based on openness, honesty and setting SMART goals. So why are there so many coaches sitting alone in their spare bedroom/office thinking that because the phone wasn't ringing like mad the moment they'd framed their diploma that they'd failed?

Starting a small business takes hard work and why should starting a coaching business/practice be any different? People need to know that you're there and to trust you enough to invest in hiring you to coach them. To do that, it does take hard graft and determination. Recently I've taken on a few clients that I first started talking to a year ago. Had I tried to 'sell' them coaching a year back, I'd have lost them forever because they weren't ready. If there's one thing that I've learned in running my own coaching practice, it's that you cannot and should not 'sell' coaching to anyone. The only way to do it is to present it in a way that they want to 'buy'. But that's not to say that you shouldn't learn how to move the process forward, otherwise known as 'closing' - that's a skill that is absolutely essential.

It's even more essential when you're marketing on the internet. You know what? Of all the clients I've had via the internet, I would reckon that the primary reason I got the business was that I followed up with them and kept in touch. This works with people you've met too. As an example, last year someone called me out of the blue and said, "I don't know if you remember me, but we met briefly at a networking event about 6 months ago and I've been getting your newsletters. Normally I'd only ever take on new suppliers (Notice that he treated a coach as a supplier) that had been recommended by other people, but I've been impressed with how you kept in touch and I'm ringing to say that I'm ready to start working with a coach."

Have you had any experiences like these that you'd like to share?

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