Dear Fellow Coach

Don’t you just love being a coach?  Nothing beats the exhilaration of coming off a coaching call knowing you’ve helped a client make a real difference to their life.  And nothing’s more disappointing and frustrating than trying to find enough of them.

Where are they all hiding?  It’s tempting to go round peering under cabbage leaves in the hope of locating the rare lesser spotted coachee because helping the people you were meant to serve feels so damn good you can’t get enough of it!

If you’ve experienced the frustration, scarcity or anxiety around filling your coaching business, you are far from alone.  Many wonderful coaches have given up the work they love because they learnt how to coach – and loved it – but never learnt how to attract their ideal clients to them.

People talk about the secret of a profitable coaching business or the key to your coaching prosperity but this is baloney. 

Honest, there’s no secret.  There’s only stuff you don’t know yet and – more infuriating – stuff you know but don’t do yet.

So read on and let me tell you how you can grow your business…

As well as being a successful coach for many years I now run The Abundant Coach which is a group coaching programme for new or somewhat experienced coaches who are always in a state of struggle about how to find more clients.

Find more clients?  We make it sound like they’re stuck in a dark cupboard or at the back of the garage under a pile of old newspapers.  The truth is we need to know how to attract clients and because so many coaches struggle with this, they don’t get enough experience and that in turn affects their confidence.

I used to have a particular client with a huge hairy business goal.  She was amazing.  She swung into action between coaching sessions and came back each week with a list of accomplishments as long as your arm.  When she wasn’t building that successful business she was a trainee coach struggling to keep up her skills and she often said to me – I wish you’d create some sort of programme for people like me.  I need to learn how to get some clients but my confidence is so wobbly now I’m getting in my own way.

In the end up the only way to keep her quiet was to create the programme.  Yes, persistance was one of her great strengths.  And though I felt sure she was echoing what many other newer coaches were feeling, I decided to survey a group of them anyway.

I guess that’s my first tip.  You have to find out what your potential clients are struggling with and give them what they want, rather than what you want.

How you survey them is up to you.  Sit down with a little focus group and let them talk.  Get on the phone to a handful.  Set up a simple online survey using SurveyMonkey.  You can do this for absolutely free as long as you keep your survey to fewer than 10 questions and no more than 100 people answering.

In my experience you start seeing patterns and similarities very quickly.

A note of caution though.  Just because you can identify a problem they have isn’t enough.  You have to be sure of two things:

• That they want to solve their problem
• That they are prepared to pay to have that problem solved

I’ll be sharing my second tip with you in a couple of days.  Remember, there are no secrets.  Just stuff you don’t know yet and stuff you know but don’t do yet.  While you’re waiting for my next tip feel free to visit TheAbundantCoach.com and see what my programme is all about.  In fact, you might also spot some other essential elements in the matter of attracting more clients to your coaching business.  See if you can see what I’m talking about!

Join us today, Tuesday 9th October at 6.45pm BST for this fab FREE teleclass!

• Are you ready to create coaching products to supplement your work with clients?
• Are you ready to build your income streams?
• Do you want to make money while you are away from the telephone and your computer?
• Do you know that you want to package your expertise into products but you don’t know how?

Join us Tuesday October 9th at 6.45pm BST when Sandra De Freitas, The Coach’s Tech Coach and the creator of The Coach’s Start-up Program will spill the beans about:

• The easy ways to take your knowledge, skills and expertise and turn them into passive revenue products
• How to satisfy your target market with the products they want in the format they want (so that they buy what you create!)
• How to fill your products with valuable content even when you think you have nothing to offer
• How to promote and sell your product before it is complete!

Sandra is the techie expert who speaks ‘coach’ so this is one call you can’t afford to miss.  There’s NO CHARGE for joining the call but you must register in order to receive the call-in details.  The call will be recorded and the recording made available to everyone who pre-registers.  Simply drop a blank email now to marion@marionryan.com with SANDRA in the subject line to receive the phone number.

Looking forward to a great turn-out from everyone who wants to start working smarter!

And don’t forget to check out more of Sandra’s offerings here.

Due to the high interest in The Abundant Coach programme, the first intake is now full and I have twelve great coaches to work and have fun with over the coming weeks to help build their coaching businesses and practise their coaching skills. 

I will be posting details of the next programme dates soon.  If however you would like to pre-register your interest, without any obligation, drop me an email to abundant @ marionryan.com and you will be among the first to get the low-down on the next course.

Remember, The Abundant Coach is a group teleclass programme so you can participate wherever you are in the world.

On 17th July at 12.45pm GMT, we will be joined by Chantal Cornelius for her presentation entitled:

"How Not to Do a Newsletter"!

She says:

Did you know it costs far more to sell to a new client than it does to sell to an existing one?  This means that you need to build strong relationships with your clients, which keep them coming back for more, buying from you again and again.

But how do you do this when you’re busy running your business?  How do you find the time to keep in touch with dozens, if not hundreds of contacts every month?

An email newsletter is a very cost effective way of doing this.  You don’t need to be a graphic designer or a world class copywriter to produce something that keeps your company name in front of the people who matter.

Chantal Cornelius has been building businesses through newsletters for
a number of years.  She runs Just Add Content, an email newsletter
system that has been described as a “highly praised UK service”.  In
this session she will share with you some ideas on how to get started:

• Planning what to send and how to send it

• Deciding what to write and how to make writing easier

• Who to send your newsletter to

Chantal is a regular speaker at business events and network meetings and helps her clients produce newsletters that create a professional and authentic image of their business.  See a selection of those newsletters by going to the JAC Client page here

To register for this call, you must be a member of New Coach Business Network.  Join now by submitting your email address below:

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• Are you a new or nearly-new coach feeling daunted at the prospect of finding
  her first paying clients?

• Or a coach with some experience but no clear plan for attracting new business
  to you?  Especially not if it means any of that dirty M word,
  marketing!

• Are you concerned you will start losing your coaching skills if you don’t
  get some practice fast?

Now discover a way to become more confident, professional and attractive to the people you are meant to serve.  Choose to be an Abundant Coach!

Wouldn’t
it be wonderful if you could fast-track your coaching success, stop CHASING it,
start CHOOSING it!

Well
Now You Can.  Visit The Abundant Coach for details.

If you’re comfortable about your writing skills and have a particular expertise or passion that you know others would benefit from, then you must consider creating an online course that could one day make you money while you sleep (or while you get your nails done or do the gardening…) – and how cool would that be?

I created my first e-course in 2003 while working with my then coach, Nicola Cairncross, who incidentally will be our expert speaker next Wednesday 20th June.  For details click here.

Even back then, Nicola was an afficionado of passive income and once she had coached me to start writing a newsletter, I didn’t take much convincing to create an e-course that I could sell to people who were  potential ideal clients but who perhaps weren’t ready to buy 1-1 coaching.

So what tips can I give you to create and promote your own online course?  Read on and I’ll share some of the key points you will need to bear in mind…

1. First you need a subject!  Fortunately for us we’re living in the information age and people around the world might well be looking to learn more about an area you’re passionate about or an expertise you’ve acquired whether this is a hobby like making rag dolls or a business skill like confident public speaking or a life experience like caring for a child with a disability.  To get an idea of the incredible range of information products already out there take a look at Clickbank.  You’ll be amazed at what people will buy!

2. When you know what subject you want to write about, what then?  How do you structure your course?  Remembering this is something you’re going to be delivering by email, bear in mind that people generally don’t find it easy to read very long emails.  Far better that your course should come in bite-sized chunks they can digest easily.
3. Here’s an easy tip.  Divide your subject into 8 or 10 key areas.  Do this via a simple mind map – the subject area in the middle of the page then key areas branching out around the page.  At this point you just want titles; content will come later.
4. If you’re intending to use your e-course as a promotional tool, ie giving it to people for free, then it might be enough to write 5 – 10 succinct emails.  If however you have lots to say and intend to sell your course, you can sub-divide each module into three sub-topics or more.  This then creates a 30 part e-course like the first one I wrote, Flying Without Wings.  Or a 101 part course (10 modules, each with ten sub-topics) like Nicola’s Wealth Tips.   

   Click on that link and you’ll find the sign-up box in the left hand column.  It’ll cost you precisely zilch, nothing, not a cent – do you think that’s a powerful marketing tool she has there?

5. How will you decide on content?  In my experience we are far more likely to over-deliver material than under-deliver so don’t think in terms of having to share every last snippet of your expertise with your audience.  Focus on 1 – 3 key points in each email.  No more.  Your readers will stop opening your lessons if they feel they have to set aside too much time to properly digest them. 
6. Unless you really need to deliver a lot of theory, use stories or allegories to make your points easier to understand.  If it’s an e-course about making rag dolls include pictures or video links.  If it’s a personal or professional development course, add a relevant quotation or include a useful link.  And suggest an action or two for your participants to complete so they are not just learning something new but developing their skill in practical ways that will delight them and increase the value of the programme for them.
7. Remember whether your course is free or paid-for, it’s a promotional tool.  The fact that you are, with their permission, landing in their in-box every few days, gives you a great opportunity to include a promotional paragraph, reminding them exactly who you are, who you work with and where they can find more information.  It’s much easier to sell to an existing satisfied customer than go out and find a new one so don’t assume they know you are Scarborough’s leading life coach!  Tell ‘em then tell ‘em again.
8. When your course is written, how are you going to deliver it easily and automatically to your clients’ inboxes?  You will need an autoresponder which is just an internet word that means that you can set up a group of emails (yes, that means modules for your e-course) that once triggered, will go out to a particular person at set intervals.  So they sign up for your course and you have set this up so they get a welcome email on Day 0 (ie straightaway).  You’ve then set up that they get Email 2 on Day x, Email 3 on Day y and so on.  Make sense? 

   The best, in my opinion, for deliverability, is AWeber which gives you a free 30 day trial then costs a measly $20 per month (ten quid!) or even less if you want to pay for a year’s subscription up front.

   I’ve also recently come across what I think is a new kid on the block, FullyBiz, which costs $10 per month (again with free trial period) and $85 for a whole year (prices correct at today’s date).  No idea how they perform though I’d certainly be prepared to give them a go.  Please send a comment if you have used them and can endorse the service.

9. How will your clients pay you?  Make this as easy as possible, not just for you but for them.  The easier it is, the easier they will buy.  I use Paypal which is easy and free to set up and allows anyone with an email account anywhere in the world to pay you securely.  There is an admin fee (around 3%) so factor that in when you are setting the price of your course.
10. And then to market?  How will you promote your course?  You’ll need to set up some sort of  web page to direct people to.  If you’ve never done this before but don’t want to outsource this, open a Typepad account and do it yourself using this intuitive blogging platform (the same one I’m using on this site).  With the Paypal account you’ve set up, you’ll be able to pick up a small piece of code from that site and create a Paypal button easily.  You can see some examples on my own coaching payments page here

And a bonus tip for you…

You’ve read all the above and it’s all very well but you can’t write for toffee!  What then?  Well, you can outsource the whole project starting with someone to write the course for you.  This can be done for a very affordable amount by putting it out to tender at Elance.  You can see what experience the writers have and choose one who looks like a good fit for you.  Do make sure you are crystal clear in your instructions or you’ll waste money on re-writes.  And you must make sure you are agreed on who owns the copyright and whether you are prepared to credit their input.  Please make sure you have this in writing up-front or ask me to recommend a good intellectual property lawyer.

You are very welcome to add your own comments if you think I’ve forgotten something or have a great tip of your own.