Barriers to Coaching Business Success

This is an extract from an excellent article by Steve Mitten an ICF Master Certified Coach in this months ICF Victoria Newsletter Coach Connection.

When you read through replace the word "coach" with "natural therapist" or your modalitiy. Steve does a great job of highlighting how important growing your business needs to be in your consiousness and that business building is a science in itself and needs the proper resources and time.

Barriers to Coaching Business Success

Maybe I have seen a few too many clips of Dr. Phil, berating his guests but I agree with one of his mantras, you really can't change things that you don't acknowledge. So, in service of raising awareness, and in hopes of minimising the suffering of those who are called to coach, here is my list of the actions that have the most negative impact your ability to make a decent living as a coach:

• Get no training, or sign up with the cheapest, unaccredited school that will train you in a matter of weeks, via DVD, and promise you a quick path to success.

• Fall in love with the coaching skills, spend all your time and money learning them, and never think about, or budget anything, to learn the basic business and entrepreneurial skills.

• Jump into coaching with an all or nothing approach, without researching, or budgeting for, how long it will take and how much it will cost you. (Longer than you expect and far more than the cost of tuition).

• Wait until you have finished all your training, all everyone else's training, and gone on to get two or three PhDs before you believe you are finally competent enough to begin to coach.

• Never attempt to find an ideal client group (niche) and thus waste a lot of time and effort on ineffective, unrelated, marketing initiatives directed at people who cannot afford you or are too stubborn to get any help with their problems.

• Attempt to sell this new generic service called "coaching" - that very few people really understand or want - as opposed to finding an existing need, which can be better solved through coaching.

• Never do anything to proactively manage your stress, so you will always be at level 1, reacting to the circumstances in your life instead of creating from them.

• Never grow as a human being, or develop a daily reflective practice, so you remain stuck in your habitual reactions, wresting with your shadow or pain body, and never grow in self-awareness.

• Never aspire to master the coaching skills or seek a reputable independent credential that establishes your competence in the marketplace.

• Try to do it all by yourself, instead of connecting to colleagues (free coaching circles, ICF chapters, using this network, hiring your own coach, etc.) for the support, information and shortcuts you will need.

• Try to reinvent the wheel as relates to finding out what works for marketing coaching services so you can fall into the very same potholes that all the coaches ahead of you have, and quit when you get discouraged. (And you will get discouraged dozens of times along the way).

• Price your services on your fears and insecurities, as opposed to actually doing the marketing work to see what other professionals charge, or what your clients actually use the service for and can afford.

• Believe you need to be some kind of business whiz with a Harvard MBA to coach anyone in organisations or small businesses.
• Offer only one solution, 1 to 1 coaching at one price level, so you only have one offering on the shelves of your virtual store.

• Don't keep track of how you spend your time and money each week, and have no idea how long you have to launch your practice before you run out of money.

• Don't have goals for your practice and have no idea how much time you must market each week to achieve the number of new clients you want.

• If you are not getting any clients from your current marketing efforts, keep doing what you have been doing until you run out of money.

• If you are not getting the results you want, believe it is because of your inherent incompetence, or unworthiness, and shrink away from the world as opposed to trusting we have all gone through the same thing, (and we all have our fair serving of incompetence and insecurities), and ask for help.

• Coach just for the money, never treat your clients - your brothers and sisters - as the great gifts and teachers they are, and never be grateful that coaching is giving you an opportunity to be of service to the world, every day.

About the Author:
Steve Mitten, B.ApSc, CPCC, MCC, is a highly experienced Master Certified Life and Business Coach and former president of the International Coach Federation. He frequently volunteers his time, ideas, and support to encourage coaches to excel in their work with clients. To learn more about Steve and his work, visit his website and blog at www.acoach4u.com or steve@acoach4u.com