3 Skills You Need to Master to Build a Successful Coaching Business

Any professional coach who has started a coaching business will tell you that it’s not an easy road to take. This is also the same case for trainers, speakers and mentors.

While these specialists (or transformational entrepreneurs) play an important role in helping their clients live better lives, most don’t make a good income out of their work.

This does seem like a contradiction given that they are good at helping others achieve their goals, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, being great at what you do does not automatically translate into success in business. In fact, it’s possible to find people who are not as skilled as you are having greater success in the same business.

This article is the first in a series on how to build a successful coaching business. The series combines my learning and experience in my own business plus strategies I’ve used to coach new and established coaches.

You can use the tips and resources in this series if even if you’re a trainer, speaker or mentor. Simply interchange coaching with your specific profession.

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In today’s article, I share 3 skills that lead to success in a coaching business. There are more skills, but these 3 are the most important for coaches.

Before we get into the skills, let’s take a look at…

The state of the coaching industry

Coaching is a multi-billion dollar industry that is growing steadily. A study conducted in 2015 by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on behalf of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) revealed the following:

1. The age of practising coaches is evenly split between below and above 50 years old.
2. A large number of managers and leaders aged under 40 are using coaching skills.
3. Over two-thirds of coaches and managers or leaders who use coaching skills are women.
4. There was a modest growth of 6% in coaching-related income from 2011 to 2015.
5. Global revenue from coaching averaged $2.356 billion in 2015. This was a 19% increase from that reported in 2011.
6. Coaches earn an average income of $51,000 (over Kshs. 5.1 million) per annum.
7. On average, more coaches expected an increase in their number of clients, number of coaching sessions and annual revenues over the next 12 months.
8. Only 45% of the coaches surveyed expect an increase in their fees over the next 12 months, while 2% expected fees to decline.
9. In both the 2012 and 2016 reports, the biggest future concern expressed by coaches is “…the number of untrained individuals who call themselves coaches.”

(Source: 2016 ICF Global Coaching Study by PwC).

What does this mean for coaches and the coaching industry?

First, coaching is a growing industry that’s set to grow even further. Africa is one of the most lucrative places for coaches because there is less competition compared to the West.

Second, I expect that as more organizations start taking coaching seriously, many will train or hire internal coaches. This will automatically reduce business for external executive and business coaching.

Third, while coaching fees may not increase drastically, the potential for having more clients is growing. This is partly due to the fact that coaching is getting increased and more positive attention across all media.

Fourth, it’s very easy to get started as a coach and maybe this is what’s giving the industry a bad name. Also, being a certified or credentialed coach doesn’t necessarily translate into being an outstanding and ethical coach.

Nevertheless, I believe that unethical and untrained coaches will be weeded out. As the industry grows, we can expect stricter and better enforced regulations. Hopefully, this will lead to an increase in the number of trained ethical coaches who provide excellent services.

Finally, it’s important to address the NLP-professional coaching argument, which is not addressed in the ICF report. At present, ICF does not offer accreditation to NLP (Neuro-Linguistics Programming) trained coaches.

This creates a challenge for NLP coaches who want to work with organizations because HR departments are increasingly preferring to work with ICF-accredited coaches.

Luckily, some ICF accredited coach training schools have bridged this gap by combining NLP and coach training in a way that meets ICF standards.

This is a big milestone in my opinion as I’ve trained in NLP and professional coaching. Inasmuch as each of these is powerful on its own, I’ve found that the combination brings quicker and more sustainable results for clients.

3 skills to master when building a coaching business

While the 2016 ICF study revealed that on average coaches earn $51,000 per year, there are great disparities in earning among coaches.

A similar study conducted by the ICF and PwC in 2012 discovered that over half of the respondents earned less than $25,000 per year from coaching. There were further differences with some coaches earning less than $10,000 per year.

This doesn’t mean that these coaches are not great at what they do. Many of them are amazing. But, they haven’t mastered what it takes to succeed as business owners.

In order to have a successful coaching business, you will need to master and balance 3 sets of skills:

1. Professional skills.
2. Business management skills.
3. Marketing skills.

Below are tips on how you can improve these skills. I’ve also included resources that I normally recommend for my coaching clients.

Skill #3: Professional skills

It goes without saying that you cannot be a great coach if you don’t have specific skills that are marketable.

You can start a coaching business without formal training. But you won’t last long in the business if you don’t invest in your professional development.

Luckily, there are many credible organizations that offer coach training. Some offer general life coach training. Others have specialized into specific niches including:

• Business coaching.
• Executive coaching.
• Career coaching.
• Leadership coaching.
• Parenting coaching.
• Relationship coaching.
• …and many more.

There are also new fields that are emerging such as: inter-generational coaching and coaching millenials.

While it’s still possible to succeed as a coach without formal training, the industry is fast getting formalized and such loopholes will be closed.

Also, if you’re working in niches like leadership, executive or career coaching, many organizations will request for your certificates and/or credentials.

Finally, your professional skills are not limited to coaching alone. Your chances of success increase when you include other skills like speaking and training in your business.

For example, while I’m primarily a coach, I train and speak as part of my work. I also mentor trained and untrained coaches who are starting their businesses.

Skill #2: Business management skills

These skills include business startup, management, and growth. It’s important to get clear about how you will manage and grow your business and not just about getting clients.

Setting up a coaching practice is not hard and you can do it with very little financial investment. Given that many coaches work from home, it’s also easy not to treat your work like a business.

From the moment you set up your business, it’s advisable that you separate yourself from your business and keep it that way.

This means that you:

• Register your business formally.
• Open a separate bank account for the business.
• Don’t use all the money that comes in. Pay yourself a monthly salary or part of the monthly income.
• Compile your monthly accounts or hire a part-time accountant to do this for you. This includes calculating and remitting taxes.
• Have formalized and well-documented business management processes. These include systems for marketing, client care, financial management, and overall administration.

As your business grows, consider hiring staff to take on the jobs that you don’t like. Alternatively, you can outsource these jobs to virtual assistants.

Hiring or outsourcing may seem like a big expense in the beginning. Conversely, it will save you money in the long-term as you concentrate on what you do best.

Having the best systems or employees will not create a successful business. You need to use these systems and manage your employees.

This calls for your growth as an entrepreneur, which a totally different mindset from simply being a coach!

Skill #1: Marketing skills

Poor marketing skills often lead to lack of success in many a coaching business. Many coaches also fear marketing because they equate it to being like insurance salesmen. That’s not how you market coaching.

Marketing is the lifeline of a business and you cannot escape it. If you don’t market, you cut off the lifeline of your business. It’s as simple as that.

It’s also possible to find yourself operating in feast and famine cycles. These cycles are common in service businesses, and coaching is no exception.

Here’s what happens:

• You work hard to get new clients.
• Once you get clients, you stop marketing and networking to concentrate on client work.
• When you’re about to complete working with these clients, you realize that your income will take a dip soon.
• So you scramble to start looking for new clients.
• And the cycle becomes your way of life!

When you get caught up in these cycles, you’ll not have time to rest. You’ll also not focus on business development. So your business will not grow and it will turn into a job that only pays you when you work.

Here are some things you can do immediately to improve your marketing skills.

1. Find your niche

For established coaches, the first thing you need to do is identify your niche. This is a specific area of the market or a group of people who you coach.

Coaching is not going to be easy to sell if you don’t have a specific niche. And all unsuccessful coaches have no niche; they are generalists.

The most lucrative coaching niches are in executive, leadership, business, and coaching coaches. These coaches coach people who already value coaching and are willing and able to pay premium prices for it.

The least lucrative niches are general life coaching, spiritual coaching, and working with low-income individuals or groups.

It’s also not easy to make good money as a coach when focusing on stay-at-home mums and startups. There are also some professionals who are not easy to get as clients.

• Stay-at-home mums are used to giving their children the best. Many are not willing to spend money on their own personal growth.
• Startups are hard to work with because most of them are focused on getting started, marketing, and making money. Spending money on coaching is not a priority in the minds of startup entrepreneurs.
• Some professionals like lawyers and doctors are trained to be highly independent. It’s not easy to market coaching to them if you’re not already one of them or a highly respected member of their circle or society.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed when coaching stay-at-home mums, startups, doctors and lawyers. It means that you may have to invest more marketing and networking in these circles first.

Once you’ve identified your niche, it pays to work only with your ideal clients. Check out my article on 5 Steps to Working With Your Ideal Customers Only where I’ve summarized the system I teach my clients.

For example, I used to be a general life coach. Then my mentor coach pointed out that most of the people seeking my services were professional and business women.

As we explored this, it emerged that the professional women were either seeking help to grow as leaders or start businesses.

So it made sense to grow my skills as a business coach for women entrepreneurs. With time, I’ve narrowed down further to being a business coach for women entrepreneurs in Kenya.

This is a very specific niche because now people either self-identify with what I do, or they don’t. It’s also a location-specific niche because I want to address specific challenges faced by business women in Kenya.

Having a specific niche has also helped me:

• Create programs that are specific for women entrepreneurs and professional women who want to get into business.
• Focus my marketing in specific places where my ideal clients are (online and offline).
• Get to know my market well because I’m already a part of it.

Marketing is a breeze when you have a specific niche that’s made up of people who need you and they’re willing and able to pay your fees.

Marketing becomes a nightmare when you’re selling to everyone or you’re selling to people who may need you, but they’re not willing and/or able to pay your fees.

2. Create and use a marketing plan

Lack of a strategic and effective marketing plan creates another challenge for your business.

This plan is not a 20 page document that’s created by a marketing expert! It can be as simple as a 1-page document that clearly documents the 3 main marketing strategies you’ll use to get clients.

I use C.J. Hayden’s Get Clients Now! (TM): A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches to create and manage my marketing.

Get Clients Now! will help you identify your ideal marketing strategies. You then narrow these strategies down to a few things that you do daily or weekly. 

The best thing about the Get Clients Now! system is the fact that it’s simple enough to learn on your own. On top of that, you can use each 28-day cycle to work on 3 aspects of your marketing plan at a time.

3. Use your natural marketing style

I used to hate marketing. That was until I learnt how to harness my natural marketing style. What does this mean?

Everyone has a way they naturally network and connect with people. Marketing is “…telling people what you do over and over again” (C.J. Hayden in Get Clients Now!).

Combine these two and marketing becomes telling people in specific networks (places) about what you do. This becomes easier once you identify and master your natural marketing style.

For example, I’m an introvert. So it’s rare to find me hanging out in crowds. When I got into business, I was told that I have to attend numerous networking events each week.

I tried it. It didn’t work. I’d go to the events and then go back home with headaches that took hours to heal. The more I forced networking, the harder it got.

Marketing became fun when I realized that I can network online and then meet a few people offline. This was a huge relief!

I no longer have a problem attending networking events because I know my limits. I also carefully select the events I attend in order to maximize marketing in places where my ideal clients hang out.

As you work on your marketing style, also get comfortable talking about your coaching fees. Pricing your services and talking about your fees are obstacles you have to overcome sooner rather than later.

Pricing is a topic on it’s own so I’ll write a comprehensive article about it in this series. Also, make a note to read next week’s article which features an interview with Shilpa Shah.

Shilpa is an NLP Life Coach and Trainer based in Nairobi. In the interview, she talks about overcoming her pricing challenges and gives tips on how you can ask for higher prices.

3. Go beyond marketing

Does using your natural marketing style mean that you’ll never try out new things?

No it doesn’t. Challenge yourself to try out 1-2 different marketing strategies each year. You’ll be surprised at how much fun this is once you get the hang of it.

Left to my own devices, I’d never have tried out (and loved) online marketing. What started out as a challenge from my mentor coach has now become something I enjoy very much.

Everything you have done in your life up till now will be an asset in your coaching business. Your create your story around these experiences so that you identify with your ideal clients.

Whatever challenges you’ve overcome in your life, or new areas you’ve ventured into, that is what your ideal clients are looking for. The good thing is that you only need to be a step or two ahead of them, even if you’re a new coach.

Let’s take this discussion further

It’s important to understand that it can take 3-5 years to finally earn a 7-figure income from coaching. If you’re not willing to work hard in this business for the next 5 years, then don’t get into this business in the first place.

If you’re currently employed, I recommend that you don’t quit your job to start a coaching business. Start the business in your free time and transition into it full-time when it can pay you at least 75% of what you’re earning when employed.

If you don’t have a job and need an income, then get a job and build your coaching business in your free time and on weekends.

You are the client that you’re looking for

For coaching to work as a full-time business you’ll need to bring your past knowledge, education, experiences and skills into the business. You also need to add your personality and personal strengths to your coaching.

You’re not too far ahead of your clients. You share what you already know with people who are ready and willing to be guided by you. In essence, you shine the light for them and encourage them to follow the lit path.

A successful coach utilizes their experiences, training, and life skills to guide others. They also take care of the management and marketing ends of their business so that they’re free to do what they love.

Are you that kind of coach?

Your way forward

Creating a successful coaching business takes time and commitment. The information in this article is enough to push your business to the next level.

However, if you’re like and love having a strategy to follow, then I welcome you to my teleclass on 3 Steps to Success as a Coach, Trainer, Speaker or Mentor.

In this 90-minute teleclass, I share the key mindset, skills, and tools you need to succeed in a transformation business.

(Image credit: Unsplash)

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Disclaimer: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links and I get a small commission when you purchase from the vendors. Even so, I only recommend books, programs and resources that have been beneficial to myself or my clients.