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© Coach & Grow R.I.C.H.™ and Michelle Schubnel 2002 - 2015 Page 2
THE COACHING BUSINESS BLUEPRINT Complete Transcript
Michelle: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome, everyone. This is Michelle Schubnel, president and head coach at Coach & Grow R.I.C.H., and creator of the Group Coaching Success System. I am so excited to welcome you to today’s virtual workshop, the Coaching Business Blueprint.
You made a really great decision in being here today, and I want to start off by acknowledging you for not only showing up but making the decision and taking the time and energy to focus on what you most want for yourself and your business in the New Year.
Today, I’m going to walking you through the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Coaching Business Blueprint. If you haven’t already, I definitely would love for you to go ahead and download the blueprint now. You can get the blueprint at www.coachandgrowrich.com/bizblueprint. That is a password-‐protected page, so the password is MegaSuccess.
What are going to be doing together today? We’re going to focus on clarifying your income impact goals, identify which revenue streams, products, and programs make the most sense for you to offer in the New Year, have you discover how you want to structure your business, so that you have the time, energy, and resources to pursue the things that are most important to you outside of your business, and really outline your sales and marketing plan. Does that sound good?
This training is designed as a hands-‐on virtual workshop. I’ve set it up as 90 minutes of training to create your customized coaching business blueprint, and then I reserved an additional 30 minutes for question and answer.
With that said, you’re totally welcome and encouraged to type any questions that you have into the Q&A box during the call, and I’ll look in there periodically and make sure that anything that needs clarification gets answered in real time. If there are questions that aren’t particularly applicable to exactly what we’re talking about, we’ll take those at the end.
Like I said, this is a hands-‐on virtual workshop, so for those of you who are here live, hopefully you’re sitting at a desk, you have that blueprint printed out in front of you or it’s on your computer as the Word document so that you can go in and put your answers into the sections while we’re on the training together today.
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You’re not going to be able to complete every section of the blueprint during today’s session. My intention for you, if you’re here live, is you get started and then after the training, to go back and finish any sections you haven’t completed.
If you’re listening to the recording, you can always pause. As we’re doing the exercises, I’ll be silent and give you 30 to 60 seconds to work on whichever section we’re doing. If you’re listening to the recording, you can always pause it and take longer to go through the exercises that way. Sound good?
I’m curious to know who’s here and if doing regular annual planning and goal setting is a regular part of your annual routine. If you could just type into the Q&A box your name, where you’re calling in from, and whether or not you regularly do annual planning and goal setting.
It’s funny; I’ve had my own coaching business for 15 years – quit my full-‐time job Memorial Day 2000 – and over those years, I had some years where I was totally serious about goal setting and annual planning, and I had other years where I was not as focused on that. When I look back and I think about the years where I’ve had the most success, those were the years where I got really clear about what I wanted to achieve in my business that year.
I’m thinking about one year in particular. It started off in a January, I was at a mastermind event with one of my coaches, and one of the first things we did was this type of an activity, get clear about the goals and intentions for the year.
One of my goals was to double my revenue, and I did that. One of my goals was to double my e-‐mail list. I didn’t hit that one, but I sure added a lot of new people to my community. I also wanted to take a one-‐month trip to India with my husband, and I did that. I have no doubt that my setting those goals – double my revenue, double my list, take a month to go to India; I was saying that all the time – there’s no way I would have achieved what I did in my business that year if I had not set those intentions.
Let’s take a look and see who’s here. We have Miriam from New York; she says sometimes. Kate in Colorado hasn’t done it before, so that’s perfect you’re here. Kristen wrote, “I do set goals and plan but rarely follow through or look at them throughout the year. I’m very lazy about it and it shows.” Great self-‐awareness, Kristen. I’m curious, what do you want to do differently this year?
Georgiana said yes, she does annual planning and goal setting. Kimberly, great. A couple more comments. Carthage from Ireland, yes, does regular planning. Roger says he hasn’t done it in years. Mike says yes, it does help. Awesome. Great to hear from you.
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It sounds like we have a mix of people who have done some goal setting and annual planning, others who haven’t. For me, hands down, when I do it, I have a much better year in my business. I’m excited that you’re here with me so that we can do this for you. This is one of the things I do with my private clients, and it’s great to be able to do that with you here today.
As I mentioned, I’ve been coaching for a long time. I first got into the coaching profession back in 1998. That’s when I started my training with Coach U. I left my full-‐time software sales job in 2000. I thought it would be easy for me to fill my practice because I used to sell multimillion-‐dollar software systems, logistic management software to container terminals at Port Authority. Let me tell you, that was not easy.
For two years, while I still had that job, I took my classes from Coach U in the evenings and I would coach my clients on Sundays. Can any of you relate to that? Are you maybe in that place? Were you there before where you’re making that leap to becoming a full-‐time coach? I did that for two years and wow, that was quite a period. My goals back then were to quit the job and go full-‐time coaching.
When I did make that leap, I was shocked at how challenged I was to attract and enroll new coaching clients. I thought it would be so easy because I had a sales and marketing background, and I quickly learned that it’s very different selling a multimillion-‐dollar software system than it is selling myself, basically, and my own services.
Fortunately, I enrolled in a business-‐building program specifically for coaches called Coach & Grow R.I.C.H.. I took the program from the creator, filled my practice in about six months, met him in person at an ICF conference, and long story short, we ended up working together and becoming business partners. Since about 2002 – that was the year we did our first Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. live event – I’ve been solely focused on helping coaches attract clients and build thriving, rewarding, and profitable coaching businesses.
I share that with you because I’ve really seen what works and what doesn’t work. I’m excited to be able to share with you what I’m seeing as working and let you tap into my expertise so that you can really map out a great game plan for your business in the New Year.
The Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Coaching Business Blueprint has two parts. The first part is about creating your coaching business annual success plan, which involves more than just the business part of things, as you’ll see, and the second part is about creating your sales and marketing plan to achieve your annual success plan.
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The great thing about you signing up for this class is that you get to keep all of these materials for your own personal use so you can download the recording when it’s done. We’re going to get it transcribed for you. You get to download the blueprint. I’ll even put up my slides for you.
I encourage you to do this activity every year and we’re doing it together today for this upcoming year, but save this, and every November/December, if you’re running late, you can even do it in January, but it’s such a great thing to do this annual planning.
If you’re looking at the blueprint, go ahead and turn to page two. There’s a quote on the top of that page that I just love. Design your ideal life first, then back your business into it. What do you think of that quote? Would you like to have your life and business work that way.
My friend, colleague, and mentor, Patrick Summer [? 12:43] – he’s been coaching forever, he’s very successful – he’s the one who taught me that. It’s something that he really stands for, and it’s true for me, as well.
I know that I personally loved my full-‐time software sales job. Even though it was pretty glamorous, I was traveling all around the world, I had more frequent flyer miles than I knew what to do with, I was making really good money, but the fact was I didn’t feel like I was really in control of my life, so I wanted to do something different where I could be more in control. I wanted to create the freedom and the income where I would really be in charge of it instead of someone else determining my schedule and how much money I earned.
For me in my life, living my life according to my priorities is a huge reason why I became a coach. I’m wondering if that’s true for you, too. That’s why when I do my annual business planning for myself and with my clients, we start off by looking at what you most want to achieve in your life in your New Year because it’s this idea of design your ideal life first and then figure out back your business into it, see how your business can support in living your ideal life.
These life categories are not in any specific order, and there might be a life category that’s missing for you. You might discover that after we go through it. You can certainly add it once we go through these different life categories.
The first life category that we’re going to look at is health, wellness, and fitness. What would you love to achieve regarding your health, wellness, and fitness in the New Year? I want you to take a minute right now and just write down your intentions in these areas.
Like I said, I’ll be giving you about 30 seconds to a minute to actually start outlining your intentions and thoughts for your success plan during today’s call, and then you’ll go back and finish the sections that you don’t have time to complete during the training. So go ahead and
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write down what you would love to achieve regarding your health wellness and fitness in the New Year.
I know for me, I have gone and off the health and fitness wagon so many times, and I’m feeling much more connected to it these days. I’m actually working on working out every day if I can do it. I’ve set some pretty big health and wellness and fitness goals up for myself for the New Year, and it feels good.
Next, we have vacations. I don’t know about you, but one of the things that I love about having my own business is being able to take vacations. I’m married. My husband and I just celebrated our eight-‐year wedding anniversary, and we didn’t end up having kids; we thought maybe we would, but it didn’t happen for us. One of the things that allows is more time and money for travel. We love to take big trips.
We took a month-‐long trip, as I mentioned, to India in 2010. This past summer, we spent a month in Europe and went to Greece, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. We’re trying to figure out our next international trip.
Are there any big vacations that you would like to make happen for yourself or your family in the New Year? Go ahead and write those down. It’s fun to think about vacations, isn’t it?
After big vacations, I like to think about what I call weekend getaways. When I think of weekend getaways, it reminds me of making sure you have a getaway once a quarter, which was something I learned when I was in Brendon Burchard’s mastermind group.
He’s just an amazing marketing guru and personal development guru, and he was one of my mentors who really focused on the importance of living a great life and lifestyle and making sure you have time to connect with your partner and your family – it’s easy to get really caught up in business stuff – and just making your priorities a priority.
I think for us as business owners, it’s really up to us to decide to create our business and life the way that we want it, because if we don’t set the intentions to do something like quarterly long-‐weekend getaways and if you don’t put them on the calendar, it’s easy to not do that. Do you have any weekend getaways? Do you like the idea of making sure you get away at least once a quarter, visit friends, go away with your family, your partner?
Now, we have weekly fun, and I like having weekly fun as part of the annual success plan because it’s important to make sure that you have that ongoing thing that nourishes you on a regular basis in your life.
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I know for me, I would say one of the downsides of having my own business is I feel like it never goes away. When I had that software sales job, even though it was intense and it was hard work, when I was off for the weekend, I didn’t really think about it. When I got home at night, I didn’t think about it. There was more to do but I knew I would do it when I got to the office, where having my own business, it’s easy to have it be consuming.
Putting something in your schedule to make sure you’re getting what I like to call weekly fun is a great way to keep your energy up and make sure that you’re designing your life and living it and doing the things that bring you joy and happiness on a regular basis. What might that look like for you? What might your weekly fun look like?
Last in the fun recreation category, we have daily fun. Is there something daily that brings you joy that you want to be intentional about in the New Year? Oftentimes, my health and wellness is my daily fun. I go to a boot camp class down by Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, and that’s my favorite way to start my day. It’s fun for me, I like seeing the women at boot camp and the instructors, it’s social, and I get the exercise in there, too, so that’s a big part of my daily fun.
Let’s go on to the next category, which is relationships. When you think about your relationships, your romantic relationship, your friends, your family, and when you think about the New Year, how do you want to make your relationships a priority? What does that look like for you?
It might be having dinner with the family every night. It might be making sure you have enough time for your partner or your spouse? I know for me, with my relationships, it’s making sure I have time to travel to go back east to see our family. I live out in California with my husband. We’re both actually from the East Coast, so we have to across the country to visit our families, so that’s something I put into my annual plan around relationships, which is making sure I have time and scheduling in trips to visit my family.
Let’s keep moving on. Spiritual and contribution. What’s important to you regarding your spirituality? Do you attend church on a regular basis? Do you meditate? What helps you connect with your greater power both inside and outside of you? How do you want that to show up in the New Year?
I also put contribution into this category because I’m such a big believer in giving back. When I very first started my business, my coach encouraged me to set aside 5% to tithe, to give back, and I’ve now upped it to 10%, and I think that just makes a huge difference in our business. Even if it’s starting with 1%.
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Of course, money isn’t the only thing you can give. This isn’t a class about money, but I really do believe in the energetics of money. It’s like the money flow. When you’re in that place of flow and you know that you can give some away to somebody else because there’s more coming in, that’s what enables the flow to keep going. I truly believe that contribution piece is a key factor that has that money flow work well. What are your intentions around your spirituality and your contribution goals for the New Year?
Kim wrote, “Can you give some examples of weekly fun?” Yes, it might be date night with your partner. It might even just be one night a week for yourself. Maybe one week in a month it’s a book club, the second week of the month, it might be meeting a friend for coffee, the third week of the month, it might be going on a date night with your husband. It could be something like a dance class, a pottery class. Weekly fun might be movie night with your kids one night a week.
Whatever is going to nourish you, and especially if you have workaholic tendencies, I think making sure you schedule… That’s why I love having my clients schedule weekly fun, and we talk about what is that going to look like to make sure that they keep their life in balance and really this whole idea of why do we work so hard? Why do we have our business? I believe it’s so that we can live our best lives and make a difference and contribute. We might as well design our businesses to support us and creating what we most want. Good question.
Let’s move on to shift our thinking and talk about your ideal work schedule. I like to look at the ideal work schedule in three different categories. I like to start off by looking at what’s your ideal monthly work schedule?
For example, I know a number of coaches who like to work the first three weeks of the month and then they take the last week off. If there happens to be five weeks in a month, then they might end up having two weeks off that month. That structure just works really well for those coaches, so that might be what your monthly work schedule looks like. That doesn’t work for me. I do a lot of travel and I don’t follow that kind of a rigid schedule, so my monthly work schedule is more around balancing time off – work and play.
When you think about your monthly work schedule, is there a monthly work schedule that you want to put in place in the New Year that would really support you in both taking your business to where you want it to go and living the life that you want to have?
Eileen, one of my senior associate coaches, has been part of the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. team forever. You coach your clients the first three weeks of the month, right, Eileen, and then you have that fourth week off for vacation or admin or things like that?
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Eileen: Right, and it works out really well for me and for the clients, too. I do a lot of individual coaching, and they have to take their vacations and they have to schedule things. I find it works out really well. I also try to do any administrative things, any personal things, haircuts, dental appointments, vet appointments, all of those things happen, marketing things that I’m writing. I try also to schedule the marketing activities, then, because then I don’t have to worry about running out of the house after the last client during the first three weeks.
Michelle: I almost wish my business and life was a little more structured because when I talk to you, Eileen, or I think of Eva Gregory – she’s been around forever – she follows that model so religiously.
I think the point that you made, Eileen, that’s really key, is especially if you’re coaching a lot of clients – some coaches like a fuller roster than other coaches, so if you’re coaching a fuller roster of clients – I think that’s when it really makes sense because, otherwise, it’s like you’re all over the map. Thanks for sharing that, Eileen.
Eileen: You’re welcome.
Michelle: What’s your monthly schedule? Take a second and identify if you would like to adopt something like that – the first three weeks of the month – or if there’s a different way you’d like to structure your month.
The weekly work schedule is one that I really encourage you to take on and get clear about the days that you want to coach and also the times that you want to coach. I get this question a lot. “I have people who want to be coached on Saturdays. What do you think?” or “I have clients who want to be coached in the evening. What do you think?”
What I think is it’s up to you. What do you want for your business? What are the business hours that you want to be available? It might make sense and you might be totally fine with coaching in the evening one or two nights a week for a couple of weeks a month. You might be happy to coach on a Saturday, or you might say, “You know what? Weekends and evenings are off limits. I coach my clients between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. when my kids are in school and if we can’t meet then, I can’t coach you.”
What does your weekly work schedule look like? What would that ideal weekly work schedule be? I know for me, I like to schedule all of my calls, my clients, and my groups on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I do my best not to schedule things on Mondays and Fridays. This way if I’m traveling, it’s not a problem, and I just really like that work schedule. It’s not that I
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don’t work on Mondays and Fridays, but I don’t try to schedule any calls or anything for those days.
Now let’s look at the daily work schedule. There are a few things I want to address around the daily work schedule, and one of the most important priorities is creating, I believe, a morning routine that works for you and really starts your day off strong. Again, I recommend you determine what are your work hours, when do you want to work?
Some people, as I said, are very structured in this way, especially the moms I know because they drop their kids off at school, they have a certain amount of time to work, and they have to pick their kid up from school, and then maybe they have another hour or two in the afternoon after that when the nanny is there.
Some people have very structured work schedules and other people have looser work schedules. Regardless of whether you have more structure or more flexibility, one of the things that I think makes a huge difference as a business owner is a powerful morning routine.
Your morning routine can be whatever you want it to be, but the key part is that it really supports you in both achieving your personal goals as well as your business goals. For me, my morning routine is daily exercise – I just know that if I’m going to get it in, I do it in the morning – healthy meeting, and then a key thing is getting really clear about my priorities for the day before I jump into e-‐mail or start working on a task.
I think the best scenario is the day before as you’re wrapping up that day, you identify your priorities for the next day, but if that hasn’t gotten done, I really recommend that when you’re starting your work day, take a couple of minutes and identify what are your top priorities that day? What are the most important things for you to get done that particular day? Because it’s easy to get sucked into checking e-‐mail first thing, and when you’re on e-‐mail, for the most part, we’re just responding. It’s somebody else’s agenda; it’s not our agenda.
Take a second right now and identify what type of daily work schedule would you like to create for yourself, and are there any parts of a morning routine that you’d like to put into place?
Let’s go on to your ideal work environment. When it comes to your ideal work environment, are you happy with where you do you work? This is something like your office. What does your coaching office currently look like? Are you happy with it? Are you working from home and you’re excited about it? Or maybe you work from home and you’re feeling lonely and uninspired. Maybe you want to investigate an office share space.
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I remember one of my clients last year. That was a huge thing for him. As we were doing this annual planning, he realized he liked the flexibility of working from home, he didn’t want to get a full-‐time office outside of his home office, but he was isolated, he was lonely, he wasn’t being as creative as he knew he could be, and so he found a shared office space. He was local, actually, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’d go in there one or two days a week, and it just made such a huge difference in his business. That might be something to think about if you’re running into the loneliness or the isolation factor.
Maybe your office isn’t supporting you in the way you like. Maybe you need new technology or your office is actually the dining room table and this New Year is the year you turn part of the garage into your office space or clean out the guest bedroom and make that your office.
The other things I put in this category around your ideal work environment are support and assistance. When you think about your ideal work environment and the things that need to be done in your business, what would you love to delegate? What would you love to get support on?
I think a great place to start when it comes to delegation and support is around bookkeeping and accounting. I know that was the first ongoing support that I hired in my business because I realized there’s so many things to do and there’s someone who understands QuickBooks and can do it for me. In general, for most coaches, being an accountant is not their natural trait, so that’s a great first place to start.
Then as your business grows, your team can grow. The more you bring on people to do the things that you don’t love or that other people are better at, it frees you up to do the things that only you can do, like coach clients or deliver speaking engagements or develop relationships with strategic alliance partners. The more support you get, the more that enables you to focus on what you’re best at and then be able to take that time off to have those vacations and know that your business is still running.
In this upcoming New Year, what’s your vision or intention around your work environment, your office, your support? When I think of support, I also think of coaching and mentoring. I believe that, obviously, as coaches, we should be working with coaches.
I don’t mean that you have to have a coach 365 days a year, every year that you’re in business, but if you’re not investing in coaching, I believe as coaches, if we’re not walking our talk and also working with a coach, it’s hard to attract and enroll new coaching clients, and we’re making things a lot harder on ourselves.
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If I think back, I probably had seven or eight different coaches and mentors, everything from working privately with coaches one-‐on-‐one to joining year-‐long masterminds like the one I was in with Brendon Burchard. Right now, I’m in one with Justin Livingston. If you think about the upcoming year, is there coaching or mentoring that you’d like to put into your ideal work environment?
Let’s go on to page number four. At the top of page number four is another quote I like, which is “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” We’re going to set some goals and then we’re going to plan out how you can achieve them.
When I think about revenue planning, I like to start with a monthly net revenue number. Your net revenue number is the amount of money you get to put in your bank account at the end of the month. This would be after you pay your expenses, after you set aside money for taxes.
Depending on how you’re business is structured, you might be writing yourself a check every month, but your net revenue is the amount of money each month that you’re able to bring home from your coaching business.
I recommend having three net revenue goals, and this is not on your sheets, so you might want to write this down. I recommend having a bottom line goal – this is your “got to hit this number” goal – your target goal, and then you mind-‐blowing goal.
Your bottom line is “I need to bring in this amount of money every month in order to pay my expenses. This is the bottom line amount of revenue I got to have in my bank account every month from my business to not go into debt” – bottom line minimum.
Your target is more than that, so it’s like above the bottom line, and it’s your target. I’m going to make up some numbers. Maybe your bottom line goal is $5000 and your target might be $8000. Your mind-‐blowing goal – that’s the third goal – might be $20,000. Do you see how those numbers are really different?
Write down those three categories, your bottom line, target, and mind-‐blowing, and identify what those monthly net revenue goals are for those three categories.
Underneath your monthly net revenue goal, we have the monthly gross revenue goal. Your gross revenue is all of the revenue that comes into your business. This is before you pay expenses. This is before you set aside money for taxes. It’s the total revenue that comes in.
I don’t know what your expenses are, so when it comes to determining a gross revenue goal, I think a very easy, conservative way to come up with this number is to take your net number
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times two. If your bottom line net revenue goal is $5000 per month, you want to be bringing in $5000 into your checking account every month from your business, then a good gross number would be two times that.
That’s a generic formula, you might have higher expenses, you might have lower expenses, but for the sake of coming up with some planning until you have your numbers and start tracking, that’s a good formula to use.
Take whatever your bottom line, target, and mind-‐blowing net revenue goals were and determine what the gross revenue would be for those two categories.
Now we’re going to look at the annual net revenue and the annual gross revenue. For your annual net revenue, you’re going to take those monthly net revenue goals and multiply it times 12. If the bottom line goal was $5000 a month, times 12, it would be $60,000. If the target was $8000, times 12, it’s $96,000. It’s almost $100,000. And then mind-‐blowing, $20,000 a month times 12 is $240,000, almost a quarter million.
Determine your annual net revenue goals and then those gross revenue goals.
Why do you think this is important? Why is it worthwhile coming up with these numbers? Does anyone have an idea of why I start with a net and then have you identify the gross? If you have any thoughts, you can type them into the Q&A box, or if you have any questions about what we’ve covered so far.
The reason why I find it so valuable and important is sometimes people say, “I want a six-‐figure business,” just because it sounds like a good number. Certainly earning $100,000 a year in your business is a good thing, but it’s very important to really be clear about the difference between that net number and the gross number.
Also, I see that coaches sometimes keep themselves playing small. They don’t even set that mind-‐blowing goal. They might have their bottom line goal of $5000 a month, and then the target goal of $8000. That mind-‐blowing goal doesn’t even get into the equation, so they’re not even starting to think in that bigger way. That’s what I love about the mind-‐blowing goal.
Let’s go on to the revenue stream planning. We’ve gone through and identified what are the number goals that you would like to hit in your business. Now let’s talk about how you might do that in your business.
Let’s start off by looking at one-‐on-‐one coaching. We’re on page four of the Coaching Business Blueprint and where it says, “Revenue stream planning.” In that first line, let’s put one-‐on-‐one
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coaching. I’m assuming most of you here are doing one-‐on-‐one coaching, so in that first line on where it says “Service/program/products,” write “One-‐on-‐one coaching.” Where it says price, write down the investment for your coaching package, your main one-‐on-‐one coaching package. We’re going to talk about packaging and pricing a little bit later on in today’s training, as well. But for now, just write down whatever you charge for your main coaching package.
What would be your goal number of sales? With this revenue stream planning, there are a couple of ways that you can go about it. One, you can identify what’s your total revenue goals, and that will help you determine the number of sales and maybe the price, as well, or you can look at it from what would fit for you and your business?
For example, when it comes to one-‐on-‐one coaching – let’s think of a good example – I’ll use a client I worked with last week. She has a six-‐month coaching package that she sells for $3900. It’s $650 a month – most people do the monthly plan. That’s what she sells. She knows that when she signs up a new client, she’s not just earning $650 for one month, and they might leave after that; she signs her clients up for a six-‐month coaching package, so she knows it’s $3900 per client.
What would be her goal number of sales? I know that she likes working with between about 10 or 12 clients at once. That’s a sweet spot for her. More than that feels overwhelming, less than that, she’s not earning enough revenue.
For her, she’s got her price of $3,900. We’ll go with that higher number. If she’s coaching 12 clients at a time, she has a six-‐month coaching package, let’s call that 24 clients. Let me do some math, 24 times $3900. She would bring in $93,600 gross if she had 12 clients throughout the year at her six-‐month package of $3900. Go ahead and write down what might be your one-‐on-‐one revenue stream planning.
Let’s look at some of the other potential services, products, or programs that you could be offering. Are there things that you thought about that you know you would like to add to your service offering in the New Year? Perhaps you’re thinking about running group programs. If so, why don’t you write “Group coaching” down there? For fun, give it a price.
I know, you may not have an idea, if you haven’t run a group before, but if you just had to put something out there, if you’re going to do a group coaching program, how much might you charge per person for the group? Then, what might be a target number of sales?
In this example, I’m going to put down that the price of the group is $2000, and I’m going to say the number of sales that this coach is going to run this group twice a year. If it’s $2000 for the
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group program and it’s run twice a year, ideally, the coach would have between 12 and 15 people in the group, so I’m going to use the number 15. That makes the math easy. That would be $30,000 from those two coaching groups.
What might your number be if you did some group coaching in the New Year?
Another great service you might consider offering are VIP days or some other type of premium offering. Like I said, I’m going to talk about packaging and pricing when we get to the sales and marketing plan, but I like to bring it up now so that you can think about these different revenue streams that you can have in your business.
A VIP day or a premium offering is your higher level way of working with people. It is a way that you can support ideal clients in achieving the transformation and the results that they want as quickly and easily as possible. People will pay a premium for results that are fast and easy.
We’ve been teaching packaging and pricing for 12 years since we’ve been teaching the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system, and we’ve always found that between about 15% and 20% of people are premium buyers.
If you have a premium offering, between 15% and 20% of people will be interested in your premium offering and, in fact, if you don’t have a premium offering, those people may not even hire you. I’m a big fan of coaches having multiple ways of working with clients at different price levels, different price points.
Your VIP day can be a great premium offering. I love doing VIP days personally. I find them very strategic, they’re very fun, they give a ton of value to the client, and it’s a wonderful way to bring a nice chunk of revenue into your business.
If you’ve never done a VIP day before, let me give you a formula you can use to come up with a price for now, knowing you might alter it when you really map out what your VIP day looks like. But a good formula I like to use is that a VIP day would be about three months of coaching.
With this example, the coach who charges $650 per month for her six-‐month package, her VIP day would be $1950. We’ll call it $2000. Let’s say one a month. That’s a nice way of looking at it. I’m just going to round her VIP day up to $2000 because that will make the math easier. She can bring another $24,000 in from doing one VIP day per month.
Is that something that you might be interested in, offering VIP days? If so, what might you charge for it? How many VIP day clients would you like to have in the New Year?
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Let’s think about what are some of the other products or programs that you might want to offer? Are there any other things you thought about adding to your business? We’ve really now only been focusing on coaching – individual coaching, group coaching, VIP days – but I’m a big proponent of coaches who want to, that they have multiple revenue streams in their business. Maybe you’ll want to do speaking. That could look like a paid speaking engagement. It could be hosting your own workshops. It could look like going in and doing training within a company or organization. It can be a great revenue stream. Maybe you want to create information products – either an online course, an e-‐book, a manual.
Are there any other revenue streams that excite you that you’d like to add in your business? Maybe you’re going to provide some done-‐for-‐you services. I went to Coach U and one of the things they taught us was “The client does the work, the client does the work, the client does the work.” I believe that’s totally true when we talk about pure coaching, the pure skill of coaching.
As a business owner and as someone who helps clients get results as fast and easy as possible, and achieve the transformation they’re looking for, sometimes we can make it easier for our clients and offer them something done-‐for-‐you. That could look like consulting. If you’re a career coach, you might do done-‐for-‐you resumes. If you’re a health and wellness coach, you could do customized done-‐for-‐you meal plans.
Take a minute and identify if there are any other revenue streams that you can think of right now that you would like to incorporate into your business in the New Year.
As we wrap up this section of the training, one of the things that I really encourage you to do when it comes to this revenue planning is to identify where is the bulk of your revenue going to come from?
In this example of this coach working with 24 private clients that would bring in $93,000, two groups bring in $30,000, and her VIP days would bring in $24,000. Now, let’s say she also wanted to do an online course that she was selling for $97. She’d have to sell a lot of those $97 online courses to have it be a significant chunk of revenue in her business. It probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense to focus on the online course where instead she could focus on getting one premium client per month when it comes from a revenue standpoint.
Let me take a sip of my water here and see if there are any questions or comments. Type into the Q&A box if anything’s unclear or if you have any questions about what we we’ve covered so far, because now we’re going to shift gears and do a little bit more on planning, and then we’re going to get into the sales and marketing plan.
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Ariel wrote, “Are VIP days like mastermind retreats where a certain number of people meet in a location?” You could do it that way. I would think of that more as a mastermind retreat or a group VIP day. When I do my VIP days, it’s private one-‐on-‐one coaching but instead of working with a client for three months or six months or a year, you work with them on a VIP day. I’ll talk a little bit more about VIP days a little bit further on in the training. I’ll actually hold that thought. I think it’ll be easier to take it in then.
Let’s go on to the next page of the Coaching Business Blueprint, which is your calendar planning. I’m a fan of the laminated wall calendar. I have a home office, I love my office space, I love where it is in my house, and every year, I get a laminated wall calendar and I block out the important things in my business.
It’s up to you if you like the laminated wall calendar. Maybe you like a more tangible month-‐at-‐a-‐glance type of calendar. Maybe you’re just all virtual and everything’s on your computer. Whatever method you choose, it’s important to block out the different areas that you want to focus on.
I like to start off by identifying what would make my year great and blocking those out. Those could be things like vacations, quarterly getaways, doing continuing education, going to business events. I like to block all those travel, vacations, events on my calendar.
Next, I like to put into my calendar any promotions that I know that I’m going to be doing in my business. For example, I did a launch with my Group Coaching Success Program in September of this year. If you know you’re going to be doing any promotions, if you’re going to do a workshop, and event, if you’re going to launch a product or program, you, of course, want to put that into your calendar.
Then, also, I really like using the calendar for scheduling out your e-‐mail promotions. Another way that I find calendaring so valuable and important is using your calendar to map out your promotional plans for the year – the e-‐mails that you want to send, maybe you’re thinking about doing a webinar a month, something like that. The more that you can plan it out in advance, it really is helpful.
As you’re doing your annual calendar planning, don’t worry if you don’t have the entire year figured out. If you get that big laminated wall calendar, you might only have things for the first half of the year right now. That’s okay. I definitely recommend getting clear about what your calendaring system is, and then using that on a consistent basis.
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All right. Let’s all stand up and now that we’ve kind of mapped out some personal goals, some financial goals, what we want our days and week and month to look like, how to organize that on the calendar, let’s do a stretch, another breath, and stretch.
Now we’re going to switch gears and focus on part two of the Coaching Business Blueprint, which is your sales and marketing plan. These are the areas that we teach in the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system. These are the core areas that a coach needs to have in place or know in order to build a successful and thriving coaching business.
As we’re going through this part two of the Coaching Business Blueprint, depending on where you are in your business, it might be super easy for you – you’re like, “I totally know this” – and for other people, depending on if you’re more experienced or less experienced, you might think, “I have no idea.” If that’s the case, if you don’t have an answer, the good news is that just becomes a project.
If there’s something you don’t know, if it’s something you don’t have, if it’s something you need to figure out, don’t let it overwhelm you or confuse you or scare you; just know that that’s something that you can take on as a project.
Let’s go to page number six, and start off with the sales and marketing plan. The first part is getting clear about who you coach. This is your target market. Who are your ideal clients you would love to work with in the New Year?
I mentioned earlier that I recommend doing this process in December every year or the beginning of January every New Year. This is an area where you can do some nice refinement. I know that getting clear about who you coach and what you coach on can be challenging for some people.
For example, you might be a career coach and know that you work with people in career transition, but maybe you haven’t fine-‐tuned your ideal target market yet; you’re just working with anyone who wants to change careers. This might be a great time to identify who would you love to work with? Who are your most favorite ideal clients?
For example, I was working with a coach a while back. She was in the UK, and at the time, she was just coaching small service-‐based business owners, so she didn’t have a specific niche industry that she was focusing on. She’d been in business for about three years, her business was growing, but she knew that if she was clearer about who she coached, not only would she enjoy it more but her marketing would be even more effective and strategic.
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Her passion is architecture. She loves buildings, she thought about being an architect, but didn’t go down that route. So she decided in the beginning of the year, “I’m going to still keep doing what I’m doing to market to the existing small business owners that I’m currently working with, but in this New Year, I’m going to really take on the project of breaking into the architect market.”
She signed up for an architecture conference, she subscribed to Architectural Digest, she set up an informational interview with someone she knew who was an architect, and within six months, she had three architecture clients. They were also premium, so she created a premium coaching package for those architecture clients.
Is there a new market that you might want to focus in on in the New Year?
The other piece of the equation, in addition to knowing who you coach, the other half is what do you coach on? What you coach on are the big problems that you help your clients solve or the important urgent results and outcomes that you help them achieve. These could be things like growing their business, finding their soulmate, being successful as a new manager, finding a career they love, helping your college student learn great study habits.
What’s the area or the focus of your business?
For some people, their who is a big part. I was working with a coach – it was actually in the previous group coaching success program – who that specialized in working with new parents. Her who was super clear – first-‐time parents within the first year of the birth of their child.
The who is very specific – new parents, first year of being a new parent. The what was broad, because she addressed so many issues of raising a newborn when you were a brand new parent. But the who was so clear and specific that new parents who were struggling with being new parents were immediately attracted to her.
For other people, their what is the thing that they’re more known for. With this example of the coach in the UK, she helps small business owners grow their business. It was that area she had multiple target markets, and then she narrowed it down further to architects.
What is it that’s the focus of your business? If this is something you’re not yet clear on, make this a project. Know that if you haven’t figured out yet who you coach and what you coach on, and you understand the importance of clarifying that, set the intention that by the end of the first quarter of the New Year, you’re going to take action and move forward so that you can gain clarity around this area.
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Next are three burning questions that keep your ideal clients awake at night. The reason why this is part of your sales and marketing plan is because these three questions become the foundation for your articles, your marketing, webinar topics. This is the urgent top-‐of-‐mind problem that you ideal clients have.
These three burning, urgent questions are typically keyword-‐rich. These are the types of things that your ideal clients are typing into Google in the middle of the night. You need to know those because when you are addressing those three burning, urgent top-‐of-‐mind questions, your ideal clients will be attracted to you.
Just give you some examples, these might be things like “How do I find my ideal clients?” “How do I leverage social media to attract more of my ideal clients?” “Where could I find my soulmate?” “How do I identify what career would really be perfect for me?”
What are three burning questions that keep your ideal clients awake at night? What their urgent top-‐of-‐mind problems? I’ll give you a minute to do that because this is really important.
Let’s keep moving on. Now we’re on to page number seven on the Coaching Business Blueprint. Once you’re clear about who you coach and what you coach on, the next thing you need to know is your how, or your signature system.
There are really two parts of the how. When we teach this particular class in the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system, I teach it as two levels. The base level is I want for you to be able to answer the question “Oh, how does your coaching work?” in a way that’s clear, concise, linear, and it makes sense to the listener so that you sound like a professional and you know what you’re doing.
The second level is taking that how and creating your own signature system, your own intellectual property, your own process or methodology. This is something that I recommend coaches do. It’s awesome to have your own way of working with clients because it becomes the foundation for your group programs, products, books, it’s what you get known for, and I believe it helps you to be a better coach.
I think of a wonderful lady in Chicago. Her name is Victoria Cook, and when she went through the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. program, she created her RESULTS system, and RESULTS is an acronym. I don’t remember what all of those letters stand for. She works with busy women to help them achieve their goals guilt-‐free. She created that signature system, and that became the foundation of a group coaching program, of an e-‐book, of an information product.
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Do you have your signature coaching system in place? If not, is that a project for the New Year? Is that something that you want to take on?
The next part of your sales and marketing plan is having your compelling message. Your compelling message is the answer to “What do you do?” When you know who you coach and what you coach on, your compelling message is pretty easy because you can follow the formula that’s in the blueprint.
I’ll give you an example here. I’ll use the example of the coach who works with the architects. “I work with architects who want to attract their ideal clients, and I help them create marketing strategies to achieve them.”
You can use this formula. There are many ways that you can answer that question, “What do you do?” This is one of the formulas that we teach. You can plug in who you coach, what you coach on, and what’s the result or outcome that you help them achieve.
Why don’t you fill that out right now? What’s your compelling message?
The next part is “My specialty is…” This is what makes your phone ring. This is what you’re known for. I think about your specialty. Oftentimes, your specialty might be the combination of your target market and niche.
“My specialty is helping coaches build thriving, rewarding, and profitable coaching businesses. The way that I do that is I teach newer coaches the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system and then I help them leverage their time by running successful group programs.”
I’m known as helping coaches make money, that’s my specialty. What are you known for? What will make your phone ring? You want your specialty to be something that people want, need, and are willing to pay for, because when you’re known for something that addresses an urgent problem, has a compelling need, that’s the real key thing for making your phone ring off the hook.
Let’s take a quick check in here before we get into the packaging and the pricing and the offering. We’ve just gone through page six and seven, which is really the sales and marketing plan, and these are the marketing fundamentals.
When you are clear about who you coach, what you coach on, those three burning questions that keep your ideal clients awake at night when you can answer that question “How does your coaching work?” and potentially take it to the next level and create your own signature coaching system, when you can confidently answer that question “What do you do?” in a clear,
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concise way so people get it, and you have a specialty, so you’re known for something, those are the marketing foundational pieces that need to be in place for you to build that long-‐term thriving and sustainable coaching business.
If any of those places aren’t in place yet, make this a project for the beginning of the New Year. These are things that you can learn and figure out.
Now let’s go into the offering, and there were a couple of questions about the packaging and pricing and VIP days, so let’s go through that. On the top of page eight, it says “My one-‐on-‐one coaching package.” First of all, I 100% recommend that you package up your coaching into coaching that extends over a certain period of time.
The minimum coaching package I would recommend is a three-‐month coaching package. It could be six months, and it could be as long as a year. Those are the three main timeframes that I see for coaching packages.
For your one-‐on-‐one coaching package, how long is it, and then what do they get? Maybe it’s two sessions per month, maybe it’s three sessions per month, and then what else are you including in your primary one-‐on-‐one coaching package?
A great example might be a six-‐month coaching package, meet with the coach twice per month, two scheduled 60-‐minute sessions per month, and between the coaching calls, the client can have e-‐mail access and quick check-‐in calls as needed.
Then you price your coaching package as the investment for the total package. Right? That could be a $5000 package – six months of coaching, two calls per month, e-‐mail access, quick check-‐in calls.
I was totally just focusing on features there to help you see what a one-‐on-‐one coaching package could look like, to give you an example. But the key thing is that’s not why people buy coaching. They buy coaching because of the what – the result that you can help them achieve. You definitely want to keep that in mind when you’re creating a compelling name for your package and when you’re positioning your package.
For now, just identify what are you going to be including in your one-‐on-‐one coaching package, and what is the price? Are you happy with that? Is that something that needs to change in the New Year? Is it time for your raise your fees?
Let’s go on to the VIP day coaching package. There are many ways that a VIP day can look, and a VIP day is, I would say, one type of a premium offering. You could have a yearlong premium
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offering. I offer VIP premium coaching as a yearlong package, and I do VIP days, as well, so I have two different types of premium offerings.
What I love about the VIP day is it is an easy way to provide a premium offering that’s still relatively affordable because it’s just a day. You’re not selling three months of premium coaching or a year’s worth of premium coaching, and it’s a great way to have an offering for those premium buyers, the 15% to 20% of people who always go premium and are willing to pay top dollar to get the results they want as quickly and easily as possible, exactly what a VIP day is made for.
I’m trying to think of what else I can say about VIP days, knowing that we only have a certain amount of time today and we could talk for 20 minutes, half an hour, or longer about what makes a good VIP day. I hope that gives you a sense of what the VIP day is like and I would encourage you to offer these in your business. I told you that I love doing them, they’re super fun and it’s something that you can totally learn to do.
A good question from Roger: “Do you put your coaching package prices on your website?” I don’t recommend doing that. In the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system, we teach you to share your pricing with your clients during the complimentary consultation. With that said, there’s always an exception to every rule.
The reason for typically not putting the prices on your website is oftentimes, they might scare people away because they don’t have context and they really don’t necessarily see the value in the coaching without having that consultation with you.
The one time I do recommend it is if you really want to prequalify people, and this is typically if you’re charging higher fees and you want to make sure that people know up front that it’s a big investment, so you want to let them know that. In general, no, I don’t recommend putting your pricing on your website.
The third way that we have on here working with clients is a lower price or an entry-‐level way of working with clients. This might be something like a group coaching offering, it might be doing e-‐mail coaching, or maybe you have a small starter package.
I do not recommend selling coaching by the session. I recommend you package it up, and that’s how our clients can get the best results and the best transformation. Right? We know there’s no such thing as a quick-‐and-‐easy fix, and depending on what you coach on and who your ideal clients are, the benefits of coaching, as you know, build over time. We’re really doing our clients a disservice if we’re only offering them a session here and a session there.
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With that said, sometimes it’s nice to give people a way to dip their toe in the water and try you out without having to sign up for a full VIP day or your six-‐month coaching package. Another entry-‐level way that you can work with clients is create a coaching package, like a one-‐ or maybe two-‐session coaching package to address something very specific.
As an example, if you’re a career coach, you might do a resume review. It might be a two-‐session package to really work on making sure that have a rock star resume. It addresses an urgent problem for that client and then they get to experience you, know, like, and trust you, see what your coaching is like, and then you can invite them to move forward with you.
Not all coaches have an entry-‐level way of working with clients. I like this, especially for newer coaches, and we teach in the client enrollment part of the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system how to share your packaging and pricing, and if they say no to your main one-‐on-‐one package and no to VIP day, you can always offer them your two-‐session package; you wouldn’t start with that.
Think about if having an entry-‐level package makes sense for you, and if so, what might that look like?
Roger wrote, “Can you give an example of what you would include in a premium package?” The most important thing about a premium package is how it’s positioned regarding the outcome or result.
A big mistake that coaches make when they are packaging and pricing their services is they’re thinking about trading time for dollars, and they’re thinking, “Oh, I’m getting paid this amount per hour for coaching.” When we do that, it’s hard.
Also, we don’t want our clients to be thinking, “Oh, my gosh. I’m paying $1000 per month and I get two one-‐hour coaching sessions. What? She’s getting $500 an hour? I don’t even pay my attorney that much.” We don’t want our clients thinking that.
Premium packages, and the same thing is true with VIP days, they need to be focused on achieving a specific result or outcome. One of the things with premium packages is actually having something like a signature system because your clients will then feel confident that they’re going to get the outcome and the results that they desire. Hopefully, that’s helpful.
Let’s move on to your full practice goal. Earlier on, we talked about the different revenue streams that you can have in your coaching business, and I encourage you to figure out what’s your ideal full practice number. Mine right now is seven. I was going to say six, I’m going to say it’s seven. I can work with up to seven clients. The most I ever had at any one time was 24, and that was way too many for me. I did not enjoy coaching that many people one-‐on-‐one.
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What’s your ideal full practice? What would a full roster of clients look like for you?
Once you know your number, the second part is really important. How many complimentary coaching consultations should you be doing per week to achieve your full practice goal? This is something we teach in the client enrollment course within the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system.
Sales is really just a numbers game. It’s something (a) you can totally learn, and (b) if you ask anyone who’s a sales manager, it’s about “Okay, how many calls do I have to make per week? How many people do I have to talk to?” You need to know your numbers.
If you know what your conversion rate is, if you know that out of every two or three consultations, one person becomes a client, you can do that math. If you’re not sure, a number that I recommend to get started is times four. Let’s say your full practice goal was 12 clients. Using that calculation, 12 times 4, it would be 48 consultations to get the 12 new clients. One out of four people would become a coaching client.
That’s just a number that we’re using. I don’t know what your conversion ratio would be or will be or is. It could be much higher. You might be converting one out of every two people might say yes. It might be a lot lower.
If it’s a lot lower, that’s something that we can help you address because when you follow a client enrollment process that works and you’re not just doing a free coaching session and coaching the person on whatever they bring to the call, and hope that you do such a great job and they fall in love with you and they see the value of your coaching that they want to hire you, because that’s what I did when I was a new coach. I did not know that. I knew how to sell software; I did not know how to sell coaching.
When you follow a client enrollment process and you’re working with people who are somewhat prequalified, one out of four people is a good realistic number that you can work with.
What would be your number and how many consultations per week do you need to focus on to achieve your full practice goal?
I just realized here in this example the total would be 48. Maybe this coach is like, “All right, if I want 12 clients, I’m going to do four a week. So I should get four new clients a month if I do four consultations a week.” If you set that goal, you might not hit it every week, but you have to at least have that goal to begin with.
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Let’s move on to page number nine within the Blueprint. We started off with some of the marketing foundational elements, we just talked a little bit about that sales piece – how many clients do you want, how many consultations do you need to do? Well, how do you get those consultations? That’s what marketing is.
As long as you’re in business, you’ll always need to do marketing, and in the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system, we teach this concept called the Marketing Train, which is your marketing system. If you have a system in place for your marketing, it makes your marketing a lot easier, and since you always need to be doing marketing… You don’t have to market every single day of the year, but you do need a system in place to do marketing. If you’re going to be attracting clients, some type of marketing needs to be happening.
This analogy of the marketing train identifies the three key areas to focus on when it comes to being successful with marketing. The first part of the marketing train is your engine. Your engine is your active marketing strategy. These are the things that drive your business forward. They’re the things that you actually do to connect with potential clients.
It’s things like grassroots marketing, leveraging your existing network to get referrals, speaking, doing networking, forming strategic alliances, joint-‐venture partners, doing online marketing, maybe you’re offering free teleseminars or webinars.
When you think about marketing your coaching business, you need to have at least one engine activity and it needs to be something you enjoy. So identify what would be one or two main active marketing strategies, these engine marketing strategies that you’re going to focus on in the New Year?
For me, mine are strategic alliances, also known as joint ventures, and doing webinars. The third one would be videos. Webinars are part of a whole downloadable free gift and a video that goes with it, kind of a product-‐launch-‐formula-‐style launch sequence. That’s it. I used to do a ton of speaking, I’m not doing a lot of in-‐person speaking any more. I used to go to a bunch of networking events. Now my networking, I network not to meet my ideal clients, I network with my joint venture partners.
What are the one or two main marketing strategies that you know you want to focus on in the New Year? Of course, it doesn’t mean that you’re only going to do these two active marketing strategies, but a mistake I see coaches make is that they’re distracted, they have too many things going on. They’re focusing on doing in-‐person speaking, and teleseminars, and webinars, and networking, and online marketing, and they never get really good at any one of them.
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I would rather you pick one or two main marketing strategies, get really good at it, get it really dialed in, and that will be the thing that can pull your business forward.
All right. Let’s go on to the cars of your marketing train. The cars of your marketing train are your passive marketing strategies. These are the things that don’t get business in and of themselves but they’re important parts of your marketing system.
The main car of your marketing train is typically a website. Having a website in and of itself doesn’t get you clients; it’s what you to do drive people to that website that’s the active marketing strategy, but you need to have a place to send people to.
Typically, when I think about the cars of your marketing train, these are passive marketing strategies, one of the most important ones is your website. For the purpose of today’s training in particular, how is your website marketing strategy, the car of your marketing train? Is your website in good shape? Is that a project for the New Year?
I know I need to do a new website in the New Year. My current Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. website is not mobile-‐compatible, and that makes me so sad. It’s not even that old, but yes, I need to do an upgrading of my website, so that’s part of my annual plan for the New Year.
Another important car of your marketing train is what I call the free gift. Your free gift is what you offer people in exchange for their name and e-‐mail address to provide them with value, to enable them to get to know you, and for you to start to build a relationship with them via e-‐mail.
This could be something like a downloadable report, a template, a checklist, a video series, although that’s typically not the world’s greatest free gift. But I definitely recommend that you have something free of value that addresses one of those three urgent problems, those three “keep people awake at night” questions, those burning questions that we went through earlier in the training, and your free gift would address one of those three burning questions.
Do you currently have a free gift? Yes or no? Is it working? If not, how about making that a project or a priority for the New Year?
The last part of the marketing train is your “keep in touch” strategy. There are two main “keep in touch” strategies, e-‐mail and online social media. I recommend doing both. I know some people like to say e-‐mail is dead, but I disagree, especially if you’re working with people 30 and over. Maybe if your market is 20-‐somethings, that might be a place where you may not want to focus as much on e-‐mail. But if 25 and over is your main ideal client, e-‐mail is still an incredibly
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effective marketing strategy. It’s so important to create your “keep in touch” strategy and e-‐mail is the cheapest and easiest way to do it.
What are you currently doing via e-‐mail to keep in touch with the people on your e-‐mail list in your community? Are you connecting with them on a regular basis? Are you sending out valuable information and resources? Is this an area you need to address in the New Year? What might that look like?
The other “keep in touch” strategy is I call it your social media strategy. I do recommend that everyone have at least one social networking platform or community that you’re involved in. You definitely don’t want to do all of these. Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and Google+ would probably be way too much. But I recommend you have at least one of the online networking social platforms that you focus on and get involved in.
It could be Facebook, it could be LinkedIn, it could be Pinterest, it could be a YouTube channel and doing YouTube. It could be Google+. It’s a balance of what’s a fit for you, where are you already? Are you already on Facebook all the time anyway? Do you use LinkedIn a lot? Are you on LinkedIn a lot? You’ll want to identify what feels good to you, what do you like, and then where are your ideal clients? If your ideal clients are on LinkedIn, that might be a place where you focus your energies. If they’re on Facebook, you can focus there.
When it comes to developing a following via social media, are you doing anything right now and is it working? If not, what change would you like to make in the New Year?
We’re going to keep cranking through this. I know that we’re almost at the 90-‐minute mark. I want to acknowledge you for sticking with it. Hopefully, your brains isn’t exploding too much at this point. We’re on the last page now of the handout, page 12.
This last piece is your marketing budget. When you think about the investments that you want to make in your business, it’s important to identify your marketing budget. That’s why we started off and we were looking at those growth and net revenue numbers, because I’m sure there are some people who haven’t sat down and outlined what are your expenses that are going on and what are the investments that you want to make in your business?
When you create your marketing budget, it will help you get clearer on those numbers, the ongoing expenses that you’ll have from a marketing standpoint. As an example, I use Infusionsoft in my business, and that’s a marketing/operational ongoing monthly expense slash I think of it as an investment. Every month, it’s $300 at least to Infusionsoft, sometimes more if I go over my limit of e-‐mails.
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You have things like that that will be ongoing infrastructure expenses or investments that you’re making, and then there might be specific investments that you might want to make – like developing a website, hiring a copywriter, going to training, getting business development training.
Obviously, we’re not going to do your whole marketing budget right now, but it’s important to lay this out and really get clear about the ongoing expenses and then the investments that you want to make. I really encourage you to identify what are the investments you want to make and prioritize them so that you can get the best return on the investments that you’re making.
How are you feeling? We just went through a lot. I believe that the New Year is a great time to set the intention to make this an amazing year. I totally believe that the upcoming year can be the best year in your business and your life, and it all starts with that intention. What is the intention that you want to set for yourself for the New Year?
Why don’t you type that into the Q&A box? What is your New Year’s intention? What intention would you like to set for the New Year? I know for me, that when I get really clear about my intentions and goals for the New Year, it’s something that just drives me forward, it’s like rocket fuel.
I saw a couple of questions on the Q&A box like “Do you teach this stuff?” There are a couple of ways that we can support you if it’s a good fit. I’d like to just share what those are.
If you are a newer coach and as we went through the sales and marketing part of the plan, part two, and if you found yourself thinking, “I’m not clear about who I coach and what I coach on, I don’t know how to describe how my coaching works, I don’t have a client enrollment process, I need help really figuring out my coaching packages, I need to learn how to do all these different types of marketing strategies,” it’s exactly what we teach in Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy.
The Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system has been around since the year 2000, so it has evolved, but we have literally taught thousands and thousands of coaches worldwide the step-‐by-‐step Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system to attract great clients and build a thriving, rewarding, and profitable coaching business.
One of the best ways to learn this system is through Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy, and we are going to be opening up enrollment for Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy late December, early January.
I’m actually super excited about this. The Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system has lived on a variety of different content delivery platforms and I’ve invested in a really wonderful online learning
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environment that makes it so easy to go through the training at a pace that really works for you, be able to track your progress, and then within Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy, we have group coaching calls.
Enrollment is not open right now. Like I said, we’re going to be opening it up in a couple of weeks, depending on when you’re listening to this recording, but what I’d like to offer you, as someone who’s invested in this training, is a Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. strategy session.
This is an ideal consultation for you to take advantage of if you are interested in learning more about learning the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system – whether it’s through Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy or perhaps getting private one-‐on-‐one coaching – can support you in growing your business. The consultations are done by my associate coaches, and I have one of them here today, Eileen.
Eileen, do you want to say anything about the strategy session besides for the fact that the people who are interested should send their requests to [email protected]?
Eileen: The strategy sessions are really going to be beneficial for people because we’ll talk about your business, we’ll look at where you are in your business, and then we’ll talk about the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. offerings and what each of them can help you accomplish and whether or not that’s a good fit for you. I know definitely that you will emerge from a session with value. I’m really looking forward to doing those sessions, and I’ve opened up time for that.
Michelle: Send an e-‐mail to [email protected], and Eileen will get you hooked up.
One way that we can be of service to you is taking advantage of Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy, learning the Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. system, whether it’s through the online course, working with one of our associate coaches.
We also have our Group Coaching Success Program. I just actually wrapped up the boot camp that I run about once a year. We just finished up this past week. It was awesome. I love running the boot camp where I take the coaches week by week through the Group Coaching Success System.
I’m going to be making a self-‐study version of the program available. It’s not open for enrollment right now, but it will be very soon. I just wanted to give you the heads up on that, that if you are wanting to coach groups in the New Year, learning the Group Coaching Success System will walk you step by step exactly what you need to do, and that’s a great resource for you if you’re excited to do groups in the New Year.
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The last resource I want to share with you is getting private support from me. As I mentioned, I work with a handful of private clients and I also do VIP days. If you’re looking at working with a coach and a mentor for the year or if you’re wanting some more focused quick support through a VIP day, those are the two options that I have available right now.
You can go to coachandgrowrich.com and just click on the coaching tab on our website where you can fill out an application and then from there, we can review that and see if it will be a fit and I’ll follow up with you.
If you’re interested in getting some private support, VIP coaching, and mentoring, doing a VIP day, go to coachandgrowrich.com and click on the Coaching tab to complete an application. If for some reason you’re not finding that there, you can always just e-‐mail me directly, [email protected], and I will send you what you need.
Those will be some of the ways that we would love to support you in the New Year if you’re feeling like you’re looking for the kind of support that we offer. I just want to share that with you.
We went a little over the 90 minutes but we’re still under the two-‐hour mark, so that’s good, and I really acknowledge all of you who are still here on the phone and via webcast. I’d like to wrap up our call, this training, today with a closing activity.
First, I’d love for you to identify three specific next steps. We did a lot today, we covered a lot. I would recommend that one of the three specific next steps be to revisit the Coaching Business Blueprint, to block out some additional time and to either listen to the recording again or now that you’ve heard the recording, just to sit down and finish any of the areas that you didn’t complete as we went through our live virtual workshop today.
Then identify at least two other very next specific steps, action steps that you know you’re going to take. Then those who can keep for yourself.
The thing I’d love for you to share in the Q&A box with me is what’s been most valuable for you today. If you can type into the Q&A box what’s been most valuable for you, we’ll take a look at those.
As we start to wrap up, I want you to think if there are any other questions that you have. I’ll take a look and see what’s the most value for people and we’ll finish up our closing activity and then I’ll go into open question and answer. If there’s anything that you would like answered, get those ready to and we’ll take those in just a minute.
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Let me look on the Q&A box here. Roger wrote, “If we’ve been a lifetime member of Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Virtual University, will we still have access to this new learning platform?” No. It’s so funny. This is almost embarrassing that I’m going to tell you this, but I’ll tell you it anyway. When my old business partner and I first launched our online training center called Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Virtual University, that was the original name of it, and we launched it in September 2003, at that time, when we launched it, we sold it for $97 for lifetime membership.
Believe it or not, I still have some people who got in and got the training for $97. Yes, if you’re one of those people, you don’t have access to the new platform. I have to pay a per-‐student fee. It’ll probably cost more than $97 per person to have you in that program. We might do an alumni rate, so feel free to send me an e-‐mail about that.
Kim wrote, “2016 will be my best year yet. I’m going to be consistent with my marketing and make a big-‐picture plan for group coaching and one-‐on-‐one clients. I’m ready.” Woohoo, love that, Kim. Thank you.
Darren wrote, “The game plan is to become profitable.” Yes, that’s a good goal. I love that intention.
Roger wrote, “The goal is to create a powerful teaching platform.
“Is Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy the same as the University?” It is the same basic content. Some of the content has been upgraded and updated, and the delivery mechanism has changed.
Right now, we are still enrolling people and giving people access to Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. University Online, which is 100% self-‐study, no group coaching. That is still available, but we’re going to be taking that offline when we open up enrollment for Coach & Grow R.I.C.H. Academy.
Carthage wrote, “The most valuable thing for me is having the process broken down into such small steps. Really worthwhile.” Thank you. I’m glad that was valuable for you.
Any other questions or comments? We’ll start moving to those.
A question here is “I don’t know how to determine the number of clients I’d like to have. Is there a generic formula to figure it out?” I would say yes, the generic formula is probably between 10 and 20, and that formula is just based on the number that I see. That’s just a number that I see a lot of coaches liking, between 10 and maybe up to 20 clients. It’s really
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going to be based on you, how much you want to work, how much you want to make, how much coaching you want to do.
Eileen, I know you’ve been working with so many coaches over the years, do you have a formula, or do you think that there’s a sweet-‐spot number for someone who’s trying to figure that out?
Eileen: I don’t go by sweet spot or formula, but what I try to do is look at the schedule, and block out what looks doable for you in terms of when you’re going to be working with those clients, what that’s going to do to each of your days, and that will really show you the number that you really can handle. I block it out in hour time blocks, and I think that that’s a really good thing.
I did want to offer a tip, too. When you’re working with your daily schedule or your weekly schedule, just keep in mind one thing. If you coach on Mondays, you will probably get a lot of field work coming into you on the weekend. This has been something I found, which is why I do not coach on Mondays. It’s just a good thing to keep in mind because people get busy and they’re sending it in late.
I think that it’s looking at how that week is going to work for you. That will tell you. Then, of course, your experience will let you know because I’ve been in Michelle’s boat, too, with having 22 clients one time and not really liking the load that that was. That’s my recommendation.
Michelle: Yes. I love that recommendation. Thanks, Eileen. Hopefully that was helpful for you.
Amy wrote, “The examples were really helpful in priming the pump for my thinking about the different offerings that I could have.” Yes, great, I’m happy to hear that that was valuable for you.
What other comments are in here? Debby wrote, “Thank you. I like the support and assistance. I used to think that doing my own bookkeeping was saving me money. Now I know that with the time I take to do my bookkeeping, I could be earning twice as much by coaching or delivering training. That was a real eye opener for me.”
Yes. That’s a very common mistake or misbelief that we’re saving money by doing everything ourselves, and when we can really identify the areas that we know we’re excellent at, our zone of genius, and the things that only we can do and the things that we’re not as good at and that we can easily delegate or outsource, it makes such a huge difference in the business. Glad to hear that was valuable.
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Kimberly wrote in, “I’ve been wanting to sit down and do this planning for months, again, to refocus. This has been so valuable sitting down today to actually start and get it done. My focus and motivation is much clearer. Thank you.”
You’re welcome. It’s really true, right? I think this stuff is great and it’s valuable, but this isn’t rocket science. It’s about sitting down and doing it and then now taking time to go back and revisit it, and then making sure that you’re getting the support, accountability, and guidance so that you’re implementing your plan in the New Year.
All right. Anthony wrote, “Very good stuff, but I have to leave. Thanks so much.” You’re welcome, Anthony. Everyone’s jumping off, we’re getting to the top of the hour. Carolyn’s like, “I got to go, too. See you later.”
All right. I’m just going to wrap up our call today with my last parting thoughts for you, which is I believe that being a coach is one of the most rewarding, fulfilling, fun, and potentially lucrative businesses out there, and the key is really getting clear and committed about what it is you want to create for yourself in your business and then, also, so that it supports you in your life.
I truly believe that you can create the coaching business that you desire, you can make a big impact, enjoy a lucrative life and lifestyle, and it’s about getting clearer about what you want to achieve and then focus on taking action and to making that happen. I totally am excited for you about what the New Year is going to bring. If I or my team or our trainings can be of service to you, it would be a pleasure and an honor to support you in any of the ways that we talked about.
I certainly wish you all the best for the New Year. I hope that our paths cross and I wish you all Happy Holidays and may the New Year bring you every that you desire. Thank you, again, for being here, and have fun implementing your Coaching Business Blueprint in the New Year.
All right. Take care, everybody. Bye-‐bye.