e147 Coaching vs Running a Coaching Business, Are You Stuck in Hobby Mode (1)
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Gill Moakes: [00:00:00] Welcome, welcome to the Heads Together podcast. Welcome back. My name's Gill Moakes. Thank you for joining me again this week. If you're new around here, welcome to our little corner of Tinternet where I come into your ears every Monday with a new. I was about to say hot take, I feel like I've been listening to too many American podcasts, but I love them so much.
I'm pretty bilingual. You know, those of you who have listened for a long time know that a lot of my clients are in the States. Yeah, I'm pretty much multi or bilingual now, which is good. It's good. I think I can almost get away with saying I bring a few hot takes to the table. Sometimes I do say some really American things within my very British accent and it, I make myself cringe.
Honestly, I really make myself cringe. Anyway, today's hot take. I want to know, are you fixated on coaching? But not running a [00:01:00] coaching business. In other words, are you stuck in hobby mode? Now, don't get me wrong. If that is what you want, if you don't want coaching to be your business, to be your main source of revenue, to be a fulfilling career for yourself, and you just want it as a part time hobby, yeah, fair play, you know.
Each to their own, but I know that a lot of you listening really want coaching to be the thing that is your main source of revenue that actually brings in an abundant amount of money for you and your family and is absolutely far from a hobby business. You want coaching to be your business. So if you are treating your business as if it's some kind of side project, side hustling type thing, instead of a real company, then I don't think you're ever going to get the results that you really want.
As usual, I'm probably going to [00:02:00] give you the brutally honest truth about what it actually takes to really step into being a business owner and not. A coach who's out there coaching, but not growing a business. All right, let's dive in.
Welcome, welcome to the Heads Together podcast. I'm Gill Moakes, and I am obsessed with cutting through the noise when it comes to growing your business. Each week, via intimate coaching conversations and inspirational stories, I share what it really takes to get the results you want. In a way that feels right to you.
I am all about attracting higher ticket opportunities, building authentic relationships, and creating the abundant, full fat version of your dream business. I mean, how many of us have beavered away creating a light version of what we really want? [00:03:00] The thing is, I honestly believe, when you're outstanding at what you do, there is no limit to what you can achieve.
So, are you ready to put our heads together and make it happen? Let's go.
Like I say, loving coaching does not mean that you have a coaching business. And I think a lot of coaches get stuck because they think that being a great coach should be enough. You love helping people, you love coaching, you're passionate about the transformation, you've got your certifications, you know about the impact you can have, right?
Amazing. But the problem is if all you're doing is coaching, waiting for clients to magically appear, you know, so you're kind of tweaking your website for the 20, 000th time or posting your kind of random inspirational quotes [00:04:00] online, that's not running a business. That's playing business. Because a real business has a really bloody solid foundation.
It's built on a foundation of having like a clear signature offer that actually solves a problem that people are willing to pay for. Remember what I say in practically every episode. I know, I know that your ideal clients are the people that you love to work with, that you get the best results with, and who are in a position to pay you.
A business is. Has clients who are willing to pay. To get the problem they have solved or to get the desire that they have met, right? And a real business has a system in place to consistently and continuously generate leads. Every business has to be generating leads and then every business has to have a [00:05:00] structured way to turn those leads into paying clients.
And every business needs a longer term strategy where you're looking ahead and putting in place the things that need to be there for you to grow and eventually if you want to scale that business. So I want you to be really honest now and ask yourself, you know, is your eye on those things or are you just kind of sitting back feeling I'm a great coach.
Surely that's enough. Surely the right people are going to find me. There's a few things that I think rear their ugly head very often with coaches who are stuck in this hobby mode. One of them is that there's a massive discomfort around enrolling clients or what some people would call selling. You know that I don't like using the word selling when it comes to coaching because I don't think as coaches we sell.
We do enroll clients and [00:06:00] enrolling clients absolutely involves talking about money, talking about how much you charge for the coaching that you offer. An enrollment call talks about money and people who are stuck in hobby mode really resist it. They hate it, but the truth is every business has to sell what it does.
To sustain itself. That's the truth. Otherwise it is a hobby. These are the differences between business and hobby. Another thing that I see an awful lot, that's a massive red flag for me. It's a big sign that this coach is playing here is when you are just relying on social media alone to get clients. So in other words, you're posting on Instagram or LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever, and then just hoping for the best.
That's not a marketing strategy. A marketing [00:07:00] strategy has three phases to it. It has visibility. Yes, absolutely. Post away. But then it has a system to generate leads and a system to convert those leads into sales. That is what a business has. So what are your systems? Another sign, third sign is I see a lot of kind of hobbyist coaches are still working too much for free or they're really charging a low amount for their coaching.
And that doesn't equal a sustainable business, right? It really doesn't. If you're constantly doing coaching swaps or you're undercharging because you're so desperate to sign up that client and you think that's the way to do it, then you've got a problem. You've got a problem in terms of building a sustainable business.
And this isn't to say that there is never a situation where you want to [00:08:00] coach for free. I coach for free on occasion, but I have built a business that is sustainable and has a revenue that sustains me being able to offer that when I feel called to do so. Right. It's not what I do most of the time.
Another sign of coaching being really more of a hobby than a business is when you have no. Predictable revenue. Like I say, I have a revenue in my business that enables me to plan. It enables me to offer scholarships or free coaching, or however you like to call it from time to time. If you can't even hazard a guess as to how much money you're going to make in the next month, and if you have no idea where your next client is coming from, then you're in hobby mode.
Because businesses track their revenue and they plan for their cashflow. Hobbyists don't. [00:09:00] And a huge sign, actually, this has just come to be the massive, massive sign. You're really busy, but you're not making money. That's a massive sign. So in other words, you're spending hours on your branding, on redoing your website, on really kind of agonizing over your offer and designing beautiful workbooks and doing all the things that keep you super busy, but you're not actually marketing or selling your coaching.
That's a really sneaky form of procrastination actually, isn't it? If you're listening to this and you're kind of like nodding away and, and like hanging your head and thinking, Oh, God damn it. How have I ended up with this hobby business instead of the actual business? That full fat business I really want.
How has that happened? I don't want you to panic. Okay. I really don't want you to panic because I've got you. You need to shift your focus. You've got to [00:10:00] shift your focus. Stop treating your coaching business like it's a hobby and start running it like an actual business. And the first step towards doing that.
Step one. You've got to shift the way you think about yourself. You've got to shift your own identity. You can't think of yourself as I'm just a coach, right? You are a business owner. You need to own that and you need to make decisions from that place. You are no one's employee. You are a business owner and no one's coming along to make decisions for your business, for you.
So it's not gonna happen by accident. You need to absolutely own your identity as that business owner. Okay? So that's the first step. Shift your own identity. Really commit to seeing [00:11:00] yourself as a business owner and acting accordingly. The second step, step two, is you've also got to commit to marketing and sales.
Don't have to call them sales if you don't want to. If you're like me and a little bit allergic to the S word, that's okay. We call it client enrollment, but you know, it's the same thing, same thing. Block time out. Every week in your calendar for business growth activities. This is a decision I made really early on in my business was that I am only going to coach clients Tuesdays to Thursdays because Mondays and Fridays are my days to work.
On my business, they're the days that I record this podcast. They're the days that I create content for LinkedIn. Perhaps they're the days that I, uh, write the fit. The day is when I am actually doing the activity that is going to bring in leads and convert those leads into clients, [00:12:00] right? It's the time you spend on building relationships, having conversations, making offers, right?
That is the stuff that you've got to block time out for. It's no point in saying I'm actually going to work three days a week, but all of that time I'm coaching. No, you've got to have some time set aside for growing the business. All right. The third step, I want you to set revenue goals and then track metrics so that you know your numbers.
If you've ever watched Dragon's Den, or what do you call it in the States? Oh, what's the equivalent of Dragon's Den in the Dates, uh, Shark Tank, Shark Tank. That's it. If you've ever watched one of those shows, okay. The first thing they'll say is you don't know your numbers and that will turn them off straight away.
As a business owner, you've got to know your numbers. How many clients do you need? At what price point? How many [00:13:00] conversations do you need to have to enroll those clients so that you are getting the amount of revenue? That you want for your business. Those are some very basic numbers that you should absolutely know.
You should know how many conversations you need to have, and you should know how many leads you need to generate to convert into conversations to enroll clients. So you might track this for a few months and you might say, I now know that I need a hundred leads. For every one conversation that I'm getting onto.
So if that's your metric, then you need to think, okay, well, I have a high ticket coaching program. Okay. That's great. I have a revenue goal, which is X. That means I need to sell this number of this high ticket coaching program, which means I need to be making four sales a month. But if I need to be making four [00:14:00] sales per month, then I need 400 leads.
Coming in, right? How am I going to do that? How am I going to get to that point? And these are numbers I've plucked out of the air. They may be completely meaningless to you. It doesn't matter, but you just need to start really thinking about. Leads. And of course, when we talk about those conversion numbers and how many leads do you need to have so many conversations to then have so many sales, that I'm really talking about the metrics involved in content marketing, where you are putting out content to get people to subscribe to your email list, you're nurturing them, and then you're making an offer to get on a call with them at some point.
Don't forget, you can shorten that cycle and reduce the number of leads potentially that you need by upping your game in terms of the much more relationship driven side of things. So if you were to say, actually, you know what, to hit the numbers that I have, I need to be attending X number of [00:15:00] events because I know that's where I get really good leads and I actually convert a much bigger percentage of those leads.
But you can't make any of those decisions about what you should be doing until you understand where are the leads coming from, where are the clients coming from, how many do you need? Okay. The fourth step, the fourth kind of shift in the business ownership is. Building a signature offer and pricing strategy.
I am really passionate about this. It's what I teach inside the coaching business Academy. I really want you to have one clear, compelling offer that speaks directly to your ideal client's needs and is priced to be profitable. Okay. That is what a business does. The fifth step, super important. Get help, get help if you need it.
Right. And whether that's like a mentor, a mastermind coach like me, [00:16:00] or probably. The most obvious, according to me, the coaching business academy, because everything I'm talking about in this episode is the stuff that we teach inside the academy. We teach you how to get really clear on who you are. As a coach, as a business owner, we teach you how to market your coaching business.
We teach you how to set those revenue goals and track your metrics. We teach you how to build a signature offer and price it for profitability. So I'll pop the link in the show notes, but absolutely, if you're listening to this and thinking, yeah, I really need help to make this shift because I'm stuck in hobby mode and I actually want to be growing my coaching business, then check out the coaching business academy because it could be exactly what you're looking for and really good news now.
If you want a taste of what we teach inside the academy, then the very [00:17:00] first module of the academy, I've taken that and created a free masterclass, which is coming up from the 11th to the 13th of March. So for three days, you're going to join me live. If you register now, you can join me live for an hour each of those days where I'm going to teach you how to really uncover your unique edge as a coach, first of all, I'm going to teach you how to refine your niche.
And I'm going to teach you how to really nail the kind of messaging you need to use to attract your ideal clients. So this is the real kind of beginning part of the coaching business academy before we get onto marketing strategy and building your signature offer, et cetera. So if you want a little taste of what the academy has to offer.
Do join me live for those three days for this live masterclass. It's going to be quite fun actually, because we've got a pop up community as well. So as soon as you register, you actually join the community straight away. So if you register now, you can already start getting to know people. [00:18:00] You can message me inside there.
You can actually direct message me inside of the community if you want to, with any questions you've got about anything. I actually am one of the rare people who quite likes having their brain picked. Quite enjoy it. So that's coming up in March. Definitely register. Like I say, I'll pop the link to the masterclass as well.
It's GillMoakes.com/unearth . The masterclass is called Unearth Your Edge. And it's really for coaches like you. It's for coaches who want a thriving coaching business. You're not going to be satisfied with a hobby business. I guarantee that. And it's absolutely doable for you to grow a thriving, profitable coaching practice.
Okay. Like I say, I'll pop all the links in the show notes. Do join. Even if you can't make those dates or the times, then register anyway, because I will be making the replays available. So you'll still be able to get all the gems [00:19:00] of wisdom from the replays. All right. Well, listen, have a fantastic week and I will be back here again.
Same time, same place next week. If you did enjoy this episode, I would love it. If you'd leave me a review, a five star review on Apple podcasts is just podcast as gold. So if you can be bothered to head over there and leave me a five star review, I'd be so grateful. All right. Have a fab week and see you next time.
Bye for now.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that getting our heads together this week has filled your mind with what's possible. If you love the show, would you do me a massive favor, please? Would you leave a five star rating on Apple Podcasts? It would really help you put more heads together. Reach more ears and expand more minds.
Until next week, bye for [00:20:00] now.
