10 Steps To Improve Your Coaching Business

When it comes to launching a coaching business, there are a few smart steps that can transform even the most ordinary business into something truly special and profitable. After working with thousands of Experts in our YourTango Experts service we have narrowed down all of the best business development and marketing advice into the following ten tips. They’re the same tips that we offer all of our business clients and they can certainly help you too.

As you settle in, ask yourself: Which ones are you doing well? What needs a little help? Which ones haven’t even made your radar yet? Then make a commitment to yourself to get started. If you want help, we’re here and info on how to connect with us is below.

1. Define your niche:
Every practice needs to have something that defines it, and usually that definition comes from our clients. For some the idea of niching brings up the concern that you’ll be limiting clients when, in fact, the opposite is true. By creating a well-defined niche you create a smart way to target your practice to others who are seeking your services. A general practice can work in small towns, but to improve your coaching business, you want to leverage your experience to draw in the right people.

To get started, ask yourself the following questions:

• What topics are you particularly good at talking about—be as specific as you can.
• What kind of clients do you enjoy—couples, singles, divorcees – who is your cup of tea?
• Who is your IDEAL client?
• What clients leave you energized when the session is over?

Try to work on defining your niche based on these parameters and this will help to drive the “best” clients to your door.

2. Get online:
Every coaching business needs to arm itself with a few smart tools that work for you when you’re sleeping. The most important of those include: your website, your blog & your store.

Your website serves as your online business card telling all who visit who you are, what you do and how to contact you.

Your blog serves as your online megaphone- it’s how you talk to the public and demonstrate your expertise. This allows clients to research and decide on you before meeting you.

Your store serves as the platform on your site to sell your wares to the public. It also creates a stream of income that increases your bottom line. Often the relevance of a store comes into play after you’ve started writing and transformed that writing into e-books and downloads.

3. Write:
Many coaches think that to start writing that you have to be a rock star, academic writer. Today that’s just not the case. Obviously you want the content you publish to be of high quality and offer your readers great information, but writing, like all things in life, is a process. If you let your desire for perfection stop you from putting your advice, thoughts and musings online, you’ll never get started.

Additionally, with the onset of “advertorial” content, you can share your services with readers in smart contextual ways in new publications. Readers are open to your wares/services because they’re shown to be relevant to the topic you’re writing about. Take a look here at one smart example.

4. Transform:
Once you’ve started writing, step away from your writing to see what can be built from those pieces. You can update something older and create a product to add to your store. For example, an article on becoming a financially savvy couple can transform into a 5 step system to becoming financially savvy that readers pay for.

By transforming your existing article into something that can be downloaded that expands on the education you already provide is taking this transformational idea and really making it work for you. This is one of the smartest skills you can apply to improve your coaching business because it takes less time to adapt an idea than it does to create something from scratch. And we can help if you need insight about where to start and what makes the most sense to convert.

5. Get social:
Join power sites like Twitter and Facebook to start conversations with fans and like-minded people about your area of expertise. Both sites are free and take minutes to set up. Facebook allows you to create a special business page so you can keep your personal and business life separate, just know that you must have a personal page first.

6. Make new friends:
Now that you’re on social sites, talk to people, and develop new relationships. On sites like Twitter, you can find countless people who share your main interests and can help show you the way to growing your following and engaging with other members. Don’t be afraid to reach out to strangers with your opinion, questions, or advice—it’s encouraged and part of everyday "social media" culture.

7. Sell:
Now that you’ve crafted a message and transformed it into a product you can be proud of, it’s time to sell it. Share links to your product page on Twitter and Facebook and include them in links on articles to help drive readers to learn more about what you do. Some coaches even include sessions in their store to help readers simplify their decisions to engage in coaching. However, you use your store (and you can change it as often as needed) it all starts by getting a page live. From there, the sky’s the limit!

8. Get help:
No one can do it all alone and there does come a time when a little help from a virtual assistant, cleaning lady, organizational coach, or intern can help. When all of the little duties are preventing you from growing your business, the smartest thing you can do to improve your practice is to get some help.

9. Manage your time:
One member told me that the breaking point for many coaching practices is when they hit the miracle 100K mark and that more businesses close whose revenue is between 100K and 2 million—the reason why? Poor time management and being overly focused on projects that don’t affect the bottom line. If you’re a solopreneur you need to have smart time management skills and feel comfortable asking for help or your coaching business could be in jeopardy.

10. Measure:
Finally, know what works. Don’t rely on opinions or comments from those who admire you. Seek out your competition, know how they make money and make it work, and when you receive negative feedback seek to understand it. If you want to improve your coaching business you have to know what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s neglected. Fix what can be fixed, get help for the rest and never be evaluate your business. By measuring your results you can tell quickly where your time, energy, and money should be spent.

When you really think about how to improve your coaching business, the answer isn’t magical, it’s practical. Just like every other great business, you have to take smart steps to grow or else your business will stagnate.

If you need help growing your business and want to learn how we can take this 10 step plan and help it to explode, we’d love to talk with you. You can learn more about our Expert platform and our online magazine here.