Are You A Life Coach? - How Busy Are You?

I can remember when I was training to become a life coach being shocked at how little thought most trainee coaches had put into the sales and marketing side of their business. Most of the people I talked to seemed to think that being a great coach was enough to guarantee them a steady stream of grateful clients beating a path to their door ready to hand over large sacks of cash and undying gratitude. Well of course it may happen like that just like it may snow in Florida, but I wouldn’t want to bet my retirement on it.

According to industry stats (I’m going from memory now so forgive me if I am slightly out with these figures but they are there or thereabouts) 90% of coaches earn less than $30k per annum! That is an amazing figure because that is significantly less than $20 per hour! I am pretty sure that no coach charges less than $20 per hour and I am guessing most are around the $100+ mark so that means either that a large percentage are part-time, are taking extended vacation time (on 20 bucks an hour it must be camping in the Wall Mart parking lot) or are sat around with no clients to fill their time. I am guessing that it’s the latter.

Generating client enquiries takes up about 30/40% of my time and that is down from about 60% of my time about a year ago when I had no referral network! Having said that, simply working on getting new clients is not enough you need to know, who your ideal client is, where they hang out and how to sell to them to avoid wasting a lot of time.

I spent some time working in advertising and let me tell you, it can be the biggest waste of money under the sun if you do not know what you are doing and it is getting increasingly more difficult to succeed at. Yes of course it can be hugely successful but I have seen more companies stretch their budget with ludicrous advertising campaigns that were no more likely to attract business than erecting a 40-foot advertising hording at the top of Mt McKinley. Actually the latter may just work because of the (bad) publicity it would generate, but you get my point.

If you are a life coach or a therapist of some description with no knowledge of sales and/or marketing get help! Don’t try and battle through with off the wall ideas and marketing campaigns that you think are terribly clever and witty because it’s unlikely anybody else will.

Of course I know a guy that can help with this sort of thing but you knew that already, right?

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