What You Really Need to Do to Grow Your Coaching Business | by Ruby McGuire

Originally Posted on The Coaching Tools Company as What You Really Need to Do to Grow Your Coaching Business | by Ruby McGuire

When you run your own business, you obviously want it to grow. You also probably want it to grow quickly. Unfortunately, business doesn’t work that way: overnight success is rare.

I recently listened to Mel Robbins talk about our desire for instant business success. She says the harsh reality is that you have to put in years of hard work. You’ll face many rejections, and it’s your job to bounce back and keep going. Tough but true.

In fact, if your business did grow super fast overnight, you might not have the capacity to keep up. You might not have the systems in place to take on all of those fabulous new clients or contracts (or even the energy to serve them).

So instead, I’m sharing three reliable ways to grow your business. They don’t fit into the “overnight success” category. However, they will help you make strides towards having a business you love that pays you well.

Here are 3 Reliable Ways to Grow Your Business

1. Get back to basics

Many business owners fall into a trap by chasing the next idea or “secret ingredient” to business growth.

But if there was a secret, it’s to go back to basics: put the essential business things into place.

I use a five-step business model for helping clients get clarity around their:

1. Passion. Allow your passion to shine in what you do, and more importantly, ensure you have the skills to back it up.
2. ‘Dreamies’. Get clarity on who your ‘dreamie’ clients are, the clients who excite you.
3. Packages and pricing. This needs to be clearly defined and you need to know how you help your clients and the benefits of the package you’re offering.
4. Message. Once you’ve got 1–3 nailed, then you can clarify your message to attract the right clients.
5. Marketing and visibility. Write a simple marketing plan, and then stick to it. Keep showing up, over and over again. Your efforts will pay off if you’re consistent over time.

If you’re not good at sales, focus on learning that for a month or two. If it’s list building you struggle with, join a challenge. If you want to learn how to share stories through your marketing, read some books. Make that your focus.

Top Tip: Stop trying new things before giving yourself time to see the results. Instead of thinking something isn’t working, ask yourself why it isn’t working. Then, go back to basics, and keep improving on them. You don’t need more “secrets to success”.

Actions:

1. Think about your business.
2. Get the basics nailed down.
3. Go through the five steps above and choose an area to focus on.

2. Step up and Be Consistent

Building a business takes persistence and consistency. Doing one newsletter might feel monumental. It’s great that you’ve done something, but it’s not enough to keep a steady stream of clients.

If you want your business to grow, you must keep being brave. Dipping your toe in and out isn’t an option! You must keep at it!

Make it playful

If you feel that being consistent sounds like hard work, make a game of it. Set yourself some mini targets. For example:

• Reach out to _____ people a week to offer your services.
• Write two newsletters a month.
• Do a video once a week.
• Ask three clients for testimonials.

Take the right action

You get the gist. Faffing around getting every word perfect on your website and creating pretty graphics doesn’t bring in the business. Specific client-attraction tasks do. Taking action on something now might not have a knock-on effect for a few months or even longer. But consistently taking action will give you results.

Focus on one thing

The best way to grow your business is to focus on one key thing at a time. When you promote one program or event, you may often find other business areas drop off slightly. Get absolutely clear on the areas you need to focus on. Then go all out to build that one area of business. Review your progress, ask for feedback and adapt accordingly.

By focusing on just one area, you will start to figure out much more quickly where any problems might be. It is much better than doing 10 things and not doing any of them very well.

Actions:

• Decide to step up and be the leader of your business.
• Create a plan of action, and then stick to it. Simple.

3. Be more visible

I’m an introvert, so despite teaching visibility for years, I’d still prefer to hide behind my laptop.

However, my Double-F, Double-D Four-Step Plan (no, we aren’t talking bra sizes!) helped me get more visible:

1. Fear – Figure out what fear is holding you back. Know that fear is normal and that you’ll experience lots of it as a business owner. Get support to clear your fear if you need to.
2. Find your thing – Start with a platform where you’re comfortable, maybe networking, newsletters, Facebook, LinkedIn, one of your groups, etc. Share your tips and tricks with your favourite audience.
3. Declare – Tell people you’re going to be more visible. Get them to help you stay accountable.
4. Do – Do it! The more you do things to raise your visibility, the easier it is to speak up or push that post/publish button!

I no longer market with social media, but I’ve been in business for nearly a decade, so I have now built a following.

But I still need to be visible, though, whether I choose to use social media or not. My visibility is just in a different format like:

• Writing (books, articles, newsletters)
• Podcasting (being a guest or host)
• Referrals and relationship building (networking, creating referral systems)

Staying visible (getting out there with your message) gets your business noticed.

Action:

• Choose an area of visibility to focus on and consistently show up.

Wrap-up

You have to get out of your own way if you want to grow your business. So get someone to support you in taking action—a coach, mentor or friend, mastermind group or accountability partner.

To recap, I’ve shared three ways you can grow your business:

1. Get back to basics.
2. Step up and be consistent.
3. Get more visible!

Now, remember to take action!

Share in the comments below the action you’ll take after reading this post. Then make it happen!

If you liked this article, you may also like:

• 3 Ideas to Supercharge the Success of Your Business also by Ruby McGuire
• The Secret to Developing a Consistent Flow of Coaching Client Leads by Stephan Wiedner
• Two Key Types of Coaching Clients & What You Need To Know To Easily Market To Them by Stephan Wiedner

Also WATCH this 10 Lessons Webinar with Emma-Louise (What does it REALLY take to Grow a Coaching Business?)