You can Build Something Beyond What You Believe is Possible

It's interesting because I think you identified a gap in our industry of  not “being done for your services.” And I don't know how that would look. And I think people, some people would argue you can't really do done for you services in coaching because it's gotta be about you.

I don't know. I think there's a middle ground. But what I mean by that is in my real estate business, my husband and I do a lot of off-market investing and we pay a company thousands of dollars a month to market to property owners, and then we get the leads that way. So how do you know?

I just think there's a gap in the coaching world on ways of being able to send the flyers out with the cars on them. There are services like that except you have to go out there and seek them. They're not as common as it is in brick-and-mortar businesses. Like you can work with a marketing consultant or a copywriter, and you can build these things and they can help you set up the whole thing and you can send it out. But it takes a level of investment there.

What is Your Business Reay For

Now, is it necessary to do that in the initial stages? It's just probably not, because you can do that. But then it probably becomes necessary. So for example, for me, I'm finding it becoming more and more necessary because I wanna scale it. So I want to go towards stuff like that. And we're doing it in our community as well that we're going towards ads, we're getting them to set up and, and it's not like a brick and mortar type of thing, but it's on the social media end.

It's the same thing. We're hiring an organization, they're setting up our ad process, and at some point, it's gonna become a recurring thing that we run in the background. A lot of companies do it now. Do you need that in the beginning? Not necessarily, but you need a structure like that. Whether that is every business has its upturn and downturn – whether you talk about the market being at a peak and then the market goes down. You need to be able to do business at every stage of the market. 

So there are times when I don't have a lot of clients coming in. That's the time that my marketing efforts and sales efforts increase. Because I don't have a lot of clients coming in and I'm not spending a lot of bandwidth with clients.

I have some empty spots. Now I'm going into prospecting and sales mode and marketing mode. But then there are times like right now I'm overbooked. Like I have too many clients. So that's an opportunity for me to reinvest part of that. So I've gotten two certifications, and gone towards getting coaching on the sales and business end.

So this is a time for me to build skill sets. This is a time for me to get better at so many other things because once the market goes in this area, then I can start to build systems and other things. And I feel like it's very common in the business world, but then we are not aware of it because we don't look at it like a business.

It’s a Real Business, Treat it Like One

Right. When I launched my business 12 years ago, a brick-and-mortar business before I ever launched, I spent a good amount of time on it. I got coaching from the small business development centers at S.B.D.C. which I believe is the acronym for Small Business Administration in the U.S., they have these centers specifically devoted to that.

They've got people that work there that will give you free coaching on how to build out your business plan, and how to think about all the different things. I spent months going over that and I built out a written business plan and did all that stuff. And I will be the first to admit, I did not do that detailed of an analysis of the coaching business before I launched it.

But that might be a missing link for a lot of people because I think it's easy. And I certainly have found myself doing this –  I start the coaching business and then all of a sudden I feel like, “Oh my gosh, Joe Schmo over here is doing X, Y, Z, and A, B, C in his coaching business. I am behind the game, I'm only trying to do A.”

So we feel like we're already failing from the beginning, but if we had a written plan, We would probably have already recognized that we can't do 17 things out of the gate. You just focus on one, and then when one hits a certain metric, then you add another.

And that there's this progression that you have already mapped out that makes sense logically based on finances and income and all that sort of stuff. And so I think continuing to go along the lines, and honestly, that's accountability too. And the small business administration in the U.S. here, all of the services here are free.

There are coaches that will help you for free. And so these are resources and additional ways of being accountable, to other people who know what they're doing and who can coach you, and to yourself because now you've gotten a written plan that you can go back to and be accountable to that.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And actually, even in my local region, our city Kitchener, it's about 200, and 300,000 people. But then, the government has a plan where you pay like $50 a month, they help you with your marketing stuff and all sorts of stuff. 

But right before that, I got another opportunity. But when I looked at their system, had I known about it six months ago I would've probably joined. And no, they didn't just have marketing for “normal” brick-and-mortar. They had it for social media and other things, and they had business mentors that would help you think through your business.

I just had to submit a bunch of documents about my business. It's legitimate, I'm trying this kind of thing. That's all. But it was like literally $50. That's nothing for a process like that. 

We don't look for this stuff. But see, I didn't have that mindset around this stuff. I developed it about three years ago when I started meeting other business owners. I'm like, “Oh shit! This is a business.” I dunno, and there's a key problem in there.

The Downside of Freedom

I wanna share one last thing before we end this episode. So the idea of freedom is very very attractive to human beings. Yeah. But with freedom comes problems. We don't have structure, and this is a cliche example of somebody who doesn't feel aligned with a religion that has rigid structures.

But as soon as, let's say they leave, that's a disaster way to happen. And when you go out there, there are too many choices. There are too many ways of looking at things, and one of the reasons human beings have religion is it helps them make sense of the world in an easier way. And now think of it from a business standpoint.

A brick-and-mortar business has a structure around it. You know exactly what needs to happen for you to build it. Now you go towards a business like coaching that doesn't have defined boundaries, and we don't know what works, or what doesn't work. There are so many choices, and so many development paths. Now you watch the next person trying this thing, “Oh, let me try that.”

Then you watch another person trying another like, “Ah, I'm falling behind. What am I gonna do?” Freedom creates problems if you don't have a structure built into it. So like you said, Dr. Sherry, if you don't have a written out plan, if you don't have a strategy, we're gonna keep jumping from one thing to another thing, and one of the reasons why that has helped me is that I'm focused on my community.

I need to grow it at a certain level before I do anything else. So all my efforts in collaboration, with sales, everything comes back to funneling people into my community which gives me the cash flow that I need to do other things. 

Create Your Plan

That's great. This whole conversation has made me realize I need to redo my written plan and everything I'm doing, I'm just, my wheels are spinning and I'm thinking about things –  real estate investing with my husband and his team, and I'm thinking about my coach, our coaching and all. So I'm gonna be accountable to you, Faisal. I'm gonna get a written plan out.

Woohoo! Yay! And hopefully, you guys who are watching it, your wheels are turning too. And my wheels are turning to it. The more I talk about this, the more I realize how passionate I am about this; because that's actually one of the reasons why I signed up for coaching certification –  It's actually coaching slash consultant.

It's a very different mix that you can actually bring consulting into coaching but for businesses. But how do you do that? And then it's through mind value. Like so far I've gone through a few of the things. I'm so glad I signed up. But I never thought, like a few years ago I'd be passionate about business.

But I am because I realize that it can create possibilities that I didn't know that was possible. And I can do it by keeping my values. That was a huge thing for me. I can create a business model that aligns with who I am. I don't have to create a cliche story of a business that doesn't feel aligned with me, and that's a big objection that coaches might have.

But the more I've gone into this, the more I've realized that this is a medium for possibilities, not only for you, for your community, and for the people you're gonna serve. The more we get better at this, the more we help people understand. You can build something that's beyond what you think is possible, especially in this day and age where we find teenagers making six-figure-a-month income.

Get Around Like-Minds 

That's possible in this day and age, and if you're struggling, there's something off on the business end likely. All right, well, we'll end there. 

If you're struggling, there's likely something off with your business. And what better opportunity to have accountability, to have community, to get your own coach than to become part of the Coaching Mastery community because all of that is present in the community and in the membership.

It's really quite a robust solution for coaches. Yes. And we'd be excited for you to join us because that's what we're trying to figure out. Well, what would it take for us to move coaches forward? And it doesn't exist anywhere as far as I've seen. We have coaches from different modalities.

Every high-performance coach, conscious parenting coach, relationship coach, and transformational coach, they have the same problem. They struggle with getting feedback. They struggle with getting feedback on their coaching skillset, but also in terms of how they're moving their business forward.

There is no structure. We help them build a structure within a safe encouraging and supportive community. Yes, and we have just added it to our repertoire! We have just added a success coach whose sole job is going to be touching base with the folks in our challenge, touching base with all of the members.

Another way of thinking about accountability is somebody holding up a mirror to you. They're just reflecting back to you who you are. So you can see that. And then you can choose to make those adjustments and changes. And that's how I envision the success coach is going to be. They're gonna be like, “Okay, Sherry, what are you wanting out of this? What do you know, what are your goals? What are you shooting for?”

 I'm the one generating all that information. So then when I meet with him next, he just holds up the mirror of what I said, and then I get to be like, “Yep, I did not follow through on the things that I was going to follow through on in these areas.”

And so how can I problem solve that? How can I make sure the things that I value, I'm actually valued with my time? And, you know, it's just a continual process of getting better and refining our activities. And then it goes back to that accountability piece.

That, and one of the reasons why we're adding this and added this is he realized how important that was to be accountable to somebody who can actually help you problem solve. The challenge is not just to tell you, “Well, you should have done it, but you didn't,” but actually help you problem solve some of the problems and help you track your KPIs and look at it like a business.

Yeah. So I'm excited about that too. All right, guys. I know that you found this hugely valuable, whether it was the things that we talked about, that got you to think about your own business in a different way. Maybe there's a new thing or Structure that you need to put into your business; a new accountability partner or person that you can bring into your sphere to help you stay on course, whatever it was.

We would love to hear how you were impacted by this episode. You can send us messages on our website, The Coach’s Journey Podcast. Send messages on Facebook, wherever you wanna get ahold of us. We would love to hear from you.

Yes. And make sure you share this video with any coach that you think will benefit from this. A colleague that you know, somebody that you've come across who's struggling with these things. And if we know coaches who are starting out, they will be struggling in this area. So definitely like and share this message and reach out to us.

Let us know your thoughts, the areas you're struggling with, and if you have anything you wanted to share from your journey. And also we'd love to have you on our podcast. So you will also see the link for thecoachsjourney.com.

You can actually submit an application to be a podcast guest with us. Please do that as well if you're interested to join us here. 

Providing real-time insights, value, and support from real-world coaches. 

 For more information on how you can transform your coaching business, head to  http://www.thecoachesjourney.com/ Or http://www.coachingmasterycommunity.com/ to see what the CMC community is up to. 

Visit our community page where we support coaches with their craft and business skillsets: www.coachingmasterycommunity.com 

Join our newly opened private community group where you will get access to training to get better in your skillsets as a coach and in your skillsets as an entrepreneur for free! https://www.facebook.com/groups/coachmasterycommunity