Hello, and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf, and today is a very special extra episode. So this week, I ran a special one-off workshop called The Business Growth Workshop for Executive Coaches: Your Pipeline to Consistent Clients. Now, we had over 800 coaches sign up with a number of those who are planning to join us inside the Corporate to Coach Accelerator.
Now, this masterclass is part of opening doors to the Accelerator for the last time at current pricing, and in fact, you will hear a special discount on top of that that I share in the masterclass. But this is the last time it'll be available at this price before prices are officially going up on the 21st of August.
So if you are an executive or leadership coach, and you want more corporate clients on a consistent basis, whatever stage you're at in business, this is for you. So we cover exactly what is in my executive coach pipeline model. I take you through your own funnel calculations. I talk about the three biggest ways I see coaches get in their own way.
So please listen in, and if you want to lean into addressing your challenges with business growth, book a call with me as soon as you can, uh, so that you can get a time locked in because they are going fast. You can do that at www.elliescarf.com/bookacall. Now, this episode is only going to stay up until the 20th of August.
So do listen in ASAP, and please share it with anyone else that you think it could be helpful for. I hope you enjoy.
Beautiful. Oh, Tracy, beautiful in Seattle now that the smoke is moving away. Excellent. And Christine in Austin. Welcome, welcome everybody. I am so pleased, so excited to be here. We have an amazing group of coaches. , As people sign up, I like to come and see what you do. Obviously not everyone, but as, as many as I can. We've got 100 in here this morning which is great, and we've got another session this afternoon.
So I'm very excited by coaches leaning in to business, which I'm sure is why you are here. So I'm definitely going to introduce myself now, but if you have been to one of my masterclasses before or you listen to the podcast or we're connected in LinkedIn, you will already know me.
Let me know in the chat where we came across each other. So I'm an executive coach, coaching business owner. I've been coaching for over 20 years now, selling coaching services to big brands, to big tech, to financial services, big four accounting, as well as boutique companies, a lot of not-for-profit organizations, government organizations.
I've also been an associate coach, I've coached in-house, I've managed sales training and strategy for a billion-dollar sales org. I've done a lot in the coaching space. So my passion and my business now is coaching and mentoring executive and leadership coaches about the business foundations that underpin profitable coaching businesses in this space.
I also host the Business of Executive Coaching podcast which may be how you know about me. And that's where I share very practical business advice tailored for executive coaches. So if you haven't, check it out. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, please do. I love to fill my feed with coaches.
And across my coaching programs and the workshops I've run, I've worked with over 2,000 executive and leadership coaches now, which I am so deeply proud of, and I really just am very passionate about the impact that we are going to have on the world through this work. So we have 60 minutes here today, and I've allowed an extra 15 for questions.
But I'm gonna stay here for as long as there are questions to be answered. So if you have a question, don't worry, we're not gonna shut this session off. Please put your questions into the Q&A box. I'm gonna try and answer some as we go but we do have time set aside at the end, so we'll definitely make sure that we cover it off, and that way I won't get derailed with side quest conversations and we'll finish in time.
As a bonus for coming along today, we will absolutely be sending you the slides from today, including the pipeline model, which I'm gonna work through. And I'm also very excited, at the end of this session, I'm gonna share details about the Corporate to Coach Accelerator. For those of you who want to go deeper on business growth, and specifically, I've got a few bonuses if you would like to consider that some of them quite substantial.
So most people who are interested will book a call with me. I'm just gonna put that link in the chat now because these calls do book up fast, especially the best times for your time zone. I'll share that later again, but if you think you'd like to chat do just follow that link and book in now.
Now, as a very special bonus also for attending live today just by, coming along, you are also eligible to win a 90-minute strategy session with me. And I'll draw that right after the second session today, and I'll email you all tomorrow morning or later tonight with the lucky winner, and all those slides, and the pipeline map that I share with you today.
Okay, so just to give me a sense... Hang on, I'm gonna stop sharing. To give me a sense of where you are at in your business let me know in the chat how long have you been in business, or are you still thinking about starting your business? Do you have a plan? How long have you been doing it? Where are you at with that?
Okay, so we've got a few years in. Oh, 10 years a coach, 30 years in business, five years. All right, well, this is actually quite hard to keep up. One month in, first year a couple of months, few years in,still thinking and planning, brilliant. Consulting and coaching for 10 year- nine years. Thanks, Becca. Some lovely familiar names.
Hello, everyone, if we've met before, I'm so delighted to have you here. Two years in business. Okay, so we've got people at a range of stages. And so what I'm gonna do is I just wanna share a few signs that you are in the right place. So what I'd love you to do is just keep a little tally in your mind.
I'm gonna read through a list of reasons that you are in the right place, and I just want you to go through a tally and think about how many of , these relate to you, and feel free to share it in the chat if you have a number. So this is a bit of a checklist. So you're in the right place if you really want to be a coach, but you are not sold on wanting to be a salesperson.
Definitely in the right place if you thought that because people were so excited when you told them about your business, you thought it would be easy to get clients, and that has not been the case If you had early wins via referrals, but you can see that won't be sustainable over the long term.
You're in the place, right place if you're about to start your business and you want to get up to speed as quickly as possible, and you want to do things right from the start. You are definitely in the right place if you have been laid off or made redundant, and this is the opportunity that you wanna use to start your business or get into it really quickly.
You're in the right place if you find selling sales and belief in yourself to do this work, that trust that you can do it, harder than you thought. Even as coaches, I know we've done all the mindset work. If you found it harder than you thought. You're in the right place if you find the lack of structure and support that you had in your role to be one of the most difficult pieces of this.
You're in the right place if it feels a bit lonely. You're in the right place if you may even have had a lot of success with ex- associate work or with one client, but you're seeing it dry up. You're seeing the revenue, the pricing go down and you know you need to build your own pipeline, sorry.
You're also in the right place if you feel like your marketing is chaotic rather than structured and ordered. And you are in the right place if you feel like everyone else got the memo about what a coaching business has to involve, but you didn't. Like, there's some sort of secret code you didn't get.
And if you are feeling stuck about where to next or worried that you might put all this effort in and it still might not work. Yeah, honestly many of these. I'm curious if you went, if you counted, how many of those rang true for you? Or if you didn't count, which ones are ringing most true for you?
Blair had nine. Very... I feel like we should give some, let's give some awards. Yeah. Almost all of them. Yeah. Most of them, 610, most if not all. Yeah. Amazing. So that just makes me know that you are in the right place, and you are in the right place because of what we're gonna cover today, and you're in the right place because that is the work that I'm passionate about doing.
I wanna hold you through that tension and help to build the, you know, the other side of that. And so let me share slides again because I do... We don't wanna leave you hanging on the challenges. I wanna move into what is the upside here? And so what I hear from coaches...
So I've shared the challenges, but here are the goals that coaches have shared with me are most important to them, and that have informed the system that I have built and that I'm going to be sharing today. So drop me a yes in the comments if some of these are goals that resonate with you. So firstly, you want more clients than you currently have, right?
Most people do. Yeah. Not many people who don't. But specifically you want them to come more consistently, right? You want a sense of predictability and a pipeline where you can see where your clients are coming from. You want to also potentially replace your corporate salary or exceed it, but not at the cost of working more.
You want to feel inspired and excited by the work you get to do every day. You want flexibility in your days and weeks that your corporate job probably couldn't or didn't provide and very importantly, you wanna be out there making a difference and doing work that matters, right? Every day or at least every day that you decide is a work day, because we get to make that decision.
So I'm hearing - is one of them more important for you, or is it a sense of I want all of it? So let me know. Yes to all of them. And I am very much in this category of I don't want my cake if I can't eat it too, right? So I want us to have this blend of profitability, purpose, and this life first orientation.
Truthfully though, most of those are met if we have more clients coming in the door more consistently, and that underpins a lot of the work that I do and what we're going to talk about today So today is going to be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pack it in. I'm gonna be sharing three keys that I think are most important for building a consistent pipeline of corporate clients.
So first and foremost, I'm very excited to share with you my entire executive coach pipeline model, which is my system that defines the processes and assets that coaches must put in place in order to build a sustainable pipeline of corporate or organizational, right? Could be government, could be not-for-profit, clients without requiring you to be constantly marketing and selling.
As we go through, I'm going to break up those 10 elements. I'm gonna break it up by doing a deeper exploration of the second key, which is unlocking greater results with funnel thinking, and this is all about how we bridge the gap between your network and the results you want and using funnel thinking.
So that's pretty exciting. I'm gonna... and I hear all the time that this is the missing piece that coaches wish they'd known on day one of their business. And then the third thing that I'm gonna do as we go through this system is I'm gonna share some of the most common mindset hurdles we have, and specifically how we get in our own way as coaches, how we self-sabotage when it comes to realizing the results of the work that we do in growing our business.
So let's dive in. So firstly, I want to start by sharing the model as a whole, and this is the model is the executive coach pipeline. You're going to see that it is a fairly in-depth model, and I'm gonna tell you about each component. Obviously we only have a certain amount of time, so I can't go into too much depth, but it will be very helpful for you to see the whole picture.
Now, I want to be really clear about this. It is not a simple three-step model, right? There are 10 parts to this model, and that is because I believe that any model or any system for this type of business needs to be sufficiently detailed that it can meet the complexity of what you're trying to build, which is a thriving executive coaching business, selling a range of services and offers to high-paying corporate or organizational clients.
A simple three-step, one-size-fits-all process will not cut it, right? And I'm sure many of you have gone down the path of people who've told you that there is a simple three-step process that can do this, and you may have discovered that it's not true. So what I prefer to do is think of this as a roadmap for growing your coaching business that adapts to you, right?
So each one would be adapted to you. So here's the model. Here's the overall map. I'm gonna explain it in more detail, but the components are identity and intention, clarity and positioning, authority assets, defining your funnel, warm outreach, visibility and marketing, conversion and sales, sustainable rhythms, community and accountability, and systems and operations.
So firstly, identity and intention. This is all about stepping into your dual role as a coach and a CEO. What you're gonna do at this stage is embrace your dual identity, create clarity on what success means to you from a profit impact and flexibility perspective, and define the boundaries and routines that you need in order to support and embed those intentions.
Now, this one is very foundational, and I find it to be a process that people really enjoy. It's creative. It's a chance to figure out what we want. Part of it, of course, is mindset and identity work, and that's a lot of the work that we do as coaches, right? But it is an opportunity to remind ourselves of our strengths, our values, and what brings us meaning.
And it is really important also, if you want your business to meet your life goals, it's really important to get explicit about how you want your business to integrate with and support your life. So we do things like defining what an ideal life works out, looks like blocking out priorities in your calendar.
So we get really granular and specific here, as well as doing that, big picture work Clarity and positioning is knowing exactly who you serve, what you offer, and how you stand out. So some really big tasks for you to check off here in this stage. And by the way, these are not necessarily sequential, but the early ones tend to have a foundational framing role for the rest of it.
So tasks you're gonna check off here, identifying your ideal client. Now, this is not the same as niching. Niching works for individual clients. Doesn't work in the same way for corporate clients. But we talk about ideal clients where we are able to use our unfair advantages. Identify that ideal client, figuring out what exactly is going to be in your suite of offers, right?
And that should be a combination of what you want to do, what your clients are willing to pay for, what you're good at, and what is gonna have the impact that you wanna have. You need to figure out your pricing strategy, right? Your pricing brackets. And as I mentioned, high level, you need to leverage your unfair advantages, and that means figuring out what it is about your background, your experience, your network that means you are perceived to be extra credible with the clients that you are pursuing.
As an example of this last one, I have one client an extraordinary coach, who came out of 30 years within the NHS as a nurse, as a researcher, as a senior leader. And the NHS obviously is the UK public health system.
She did the work on defining her unfair advantages and at first she wasn't really clear of it, but once we realized that her hands-on experience in the NHS was context and credibility that set her apart from other coaches in this space, she was able to confidently lean into her outreach to her ideal clients, which were sub-sectors within the NHS.
And in her first month, right, her first month after she turned on her outreach machine, she landed 15 new coachees, right? 15. And so that is the power of connecting to your ideal clients with your offers and unfair advantages in mind. Anyway, I just love, I love that story. And you wouldn't meet anyone who is more humble and less likely to promote herself, so I'm delighted to do that for her.
You also need authority assets, and that means creating the tangible building blocks of acredible and client-ready business. Now, that includes things like your coach bio, your LinkedIn profile, your website, proposal templates, and systems to capture testimonials, feedback, and case studies. So you need to have this set of assets.
It's a bit like a checklist but there's a bit more to it, which is that these assets need to really speak to your ideal client. And a common mistake my clients make, coaches I come across make, in their assets is that they are talking to the coachee, not to the buyer of their services. So that is a bit of a beware for you to think about.
So make sure that your documents are targeting the right people. Now, for a corporate buyer, for example, that could be HR, could be L&D, could be OD, or it could be a CEO, it could be a leader of a business department. But often it's not the person you will be coaching themselves, and this is very relevant in how we create these core assets.
Now, inside, inside my group coaching program, the Accelerator, we have experts who help us. Specifically, we've got a LinkedIn expert on staff and we've got templates and curriculum for all of these. But regardless, you can use this as a checklist of those foundational assets that you must have in place in order to, get out there and feel confident promoting yourself okay.
So the next stage is to define your funnel. Now, I'm going to take you through this process now at a high level. What this is about, though is mapping the path from outreach to revenue into so much detail that we start to see the specifics of all of the inputs that are going to get you to your target, right?
So that includes things like we're gonna break down your revenue target into multiple scenarios. We're gonna work backwards from goal to outreach, applying benchmarks. And sorry if you can hear my dog. I'm hoping that Zoom is doing its magic and filtering out his barking. You also need to capture metrics in this.
But because it's such a pivotal activity, I don't wanna focus on this. I wanna actually walk you through it for what that would look like and how you can do that for yourself. And remember, you're gonna get these slides, so you'll be able to take yourself through this activity. So think of this as a side quest.
And we're gonna side quest and define your funnel based on this idea of funnel thinking. So this is based on a provocation I like to share, which is what if we stop acting like we didn't know if this business was gonna work, and instead we started planning for how we are going to make it work?
So just think about whether that's something you might have as a bit of subtext if we're acting like we don't know if this business is gonna work, but the alternative is planning more specifically for how we are going to make it work. Now, you might not be in that case, but I know a lot of coaches are.
Ultimately, this process is all about the how. It is creating a map that works backwards from a revenue goal [00:18:00] and reverse engineers it into a very tangible set of activities that will lead you to the outcome. And it's all about getting to a point where we can make achieving your goal a numbers game with solid data that we can then track and leverage to know where we need to improve So the first numbers that you need to think about are your revenue targets.
So often I hear from coaches that they are hesitant to set revenue targets because they are afraid that they might not meet them, right? Anyone... Does anyone else get that? I've been there. Sometimes it's scary to set a revenue goal because we're putting it out there, right? We're saying, "This is what I wanna do.
I don't know if it's possible." But the truth is, if we don't put a revenue target out there, we definitely won't achieve it. If we do define one, then we have a chance of building a plan to achieve it, right? So once we set that revenue target, we need to then break that revenue target down into different projections for how your offers can add up to your revenue target.
So how that looks for, a successful coaching business owner might be like this. Now, I'm choosing illustrative numbers, not actual numbers, but let's say a coaching business owner has a target of $120,000 as an annual revenue. Now, purely illustrative, 10,000 a month, help me do mental maths on the fly.
This target can be achieved through several different strategies, right? So if you're a coach and facilitator, team coach, you might make up that target by selling 12 $10,000 coaching engagements. You might sell two $60,000 retainers covering coaching and consulting. You might sell twelve $5,000 coaching engagements and ten $6,000 training sessions.
You might sell twelve $3,000 training sessions, five $6,000 facilitated strategy days, and nine $6,000 coaching engagements. Or you might sell six $20,000 team coaching packages so the process of doing this is valuable, and it's not just because we can visualize it, right? It also makes it clear where we might have some issues, right?
So it might make it clear that you are underpricing an offer. So for example, if you go, "Ooh," if I pick that second last option, for example, I would have to sell 12 $3,000 training workshops, five strategy days, and nine coaching engagements to hit my target. That feels a lot harder than some of the other options.
And I might say, "Oh I just won't do that." But what I could say instead is actually, maybe I'm underpricing my training sessions, or maybe I'm underpricing my coaching engagement." Because if we look about ... look at it, 12 $10,000 coaching engagements looks a little easier than 24 $5,000 coaching engagements, for example.
You might also find when you look at this list that some offers feel harder or easier to sell relative to their price point. You might look at some of these and go, "Oh God, if I had to deliver, you know, [00:21:00] 10 training days, I'd hate that." So this is gonna give you a lot of insight, and from there comes the magic, right?
So now you can see a number of ways that you can achieve your goal. And, like, if I put on my positive psychology nerd hat on, which comes out periodically, hope theory tells us that when we have multiple pathways that we can see to pursue a goal, we are more likely to achieve that goal, right?
So there's a lot of magic to this process and, really going from thinking we could achieve a goal to seeing exactly how that goal could be achieved is a very significant step, and one that I really encourage everyone to do.
Once you have some clarity of the different ways that you might make up that revenue target, then we can reverse engineer our activities from the goal all the way to the inputs that are required to get there. So we could call this your sales funnel really. I always do this when I talk about funnels. I always have to
I don't know why but here you go. Here's the funnel. So these numbers, of course, change as you get more clarity and certainty on your own numbers and percentages, but the process of viewing it as a numbers game takes it from a discussion about whether or not you can do it, right, whether you might achieve it, into that how you can do it place that we really wanna be in.
So it is a different way to look at things instead of hoping, and it does create a bit of a reality check about what is truly involved in business development in a growth business. So let's look at these numbers that I've put up there. So let's say we are aiming for 12 new coaching engagements or training engagements with an average of a $10,000 value to make our $120,000 target.
I might assume that in order to hit, get 12 new engagements, I need to send 24 proposals if I assume that about 50% of them will be accepted. Now, remember, your numbers will be different. These are numbers that I see as a rough benchmark among my clients. But, you will find that you have better and worse numbers for some pieces of these, the some stages in this funnel.
If you need to have 24 proposals out there you might need to have 96 sales meetings if we assume that 25% of sales meetings progress to have a real opportunity for which you would submit a proposal. Usually people at this point go, "Ooh, this is starting to look a little bit scary." Trust me, it comes good in the end.
So if I think I need to have 96 sales meetings, then I might say, okay, well, I need to be in conversation nurturing warm leads for about 288 people or opportunities, right? If I assume that, a third of those people will go on to have a meeting with me. And if I wanna have 288 meetings, or sorry, conversations back and forth, leads that I'm nurturing then I probably need [00:24:00] to send about 860 outreach messages if I want 33...
if I assume 33% of them will reply. And so you might be going, "Oh, that's a lot of warm outreach. I don't really wanna do that." Let's break that down further. So I'm assuming that most coaches do this because we wanna have a really lovely life and take lots of holidays. So I'm assuming that you wanna work 44 weeks of the year.
Yours, your mileage will vary. If you wanna work 44 weeks of the year, 864 messages, that's 20 warm outreach messages per week.
Totally doable, right? Eight- 20 messages a week feels pretty, pretty doable relative to those overall numbers, don't you think? So if we say, okay, 864 warm outreach messages, that just means 20 a week. I need to have one to two sales calls a week. I need to get one to two proposals out per fortnight.
Seems actually quite doable when we break it down. But if we stopped at I just need to have 24 proposals out there, it's like, all right how do I do that? If I stopped at, I need to have 96 sales meetings, that feels deeply overwhelming. So does the warm lead nurturer. So does the warm outreach message.
But when I say, actually, I need to send 20 outreach messages a week, actually that makes it feel a little more doable. And so you can see how looking at this suddenly shines light on some very important things. Acquiring 12 new clients might seem overwhelming. Sending 20 outreach messages a week is a lot, but totally doable.
And you can start to see, once you get into the funnel, where your numbers actually sit. So inside the accelerator, we've got dashboards and spreadsheets that we use to track this data because what we wanna know is what are the levers that we can pull? So if we discover that you actually have a 75% acceptance rate for your proposals, then the numbers shift.
If we discover, though, that your outreach messages are only getting a 10% response rate, then we have another lever that we can pull, right? So if you've got issues at the sales meeting stage, we work on that. If you have trouble converting conversations into meetings, we work on that.
This, this funnel combined with the data gives us so much direction, and again, something working really well, do more of that.
So I wanna know, I'm just throwing that at you. Does looking at this make you feel more hopeful, more overwhelmed, like it's more tangible? Like, how does that land for you? Just let me know in the chat how that feels.
So someone has posted in the Q&A are these messages to cold contacts or to organizations? So this is warm outreach. So this is reaching out to people in your network or people that you have added to your network and warmed up with content, for example, on LinkedIn.
So I don't teach a cold outreach strategy, but sometimes, you know, particularly once we work through the warmest people in our network we are doing more lukewarm outreach in some cases.
But that, that's a whole nother process of how do we bring people in, the right people in, and how do we warm them up. So I hope that answers that question. Okay, so I'm seeing, yeah, lots of hopeful, feels okay, little bit over- a little bit overwhelming. Feels like a lot. It's a lot, but it's doable.
Makes you realize you haven't been doing enough. Good to see it broken down. Yeah, absolutely. Blaire says, "How do you define warm?" So warm it's probably easier to define cold. Cold is someone who you have not got any connection with and who has not really agreed for you to communicate with them, right?
So, someone who you've added as a connection on LinkedIn, right, for example, and has accepted that connection, I call them just warm, right? They're just warm. So we don't they're cold to warm. So we don't want them to, we don't necessarily wanna prioritize them. We wanna give people time in our network so that they can see our content and have the opportunity to put their hand up through liking and engaging, for example.
They become our next generation of warm leads. The real warm leads are the people, who we've worked with, people who've been our colleagues over, you know, 20, 30 years. And weirdly, those are the people who I see consistently come through, people who've gone, "Oh my God, this is so old."
It works. So yeah. Yeah. Can feel, yes. Not sure how to convert to a warm outreach in the first place. Yes, absolutely. So there is definitely each of these stages has got a whole bunch of, a bunch of tools that you need to develop in order to do that. Nadine says, "What if your network does not typically buy coaching?"
So your network don't need to be the people who buy the coaching, but they need to be the people who can get you in the door, right? So they may, if they exist in a corporate environment, the outreach strategy will depend on who they are and their role. So for example, they might not be the people who are going to buy coaching, but they might be the people who can tell you about the challenges in the organization and the sort of the sort of needs of what the organization is experiencing or how the organization is buying coaching, for example.
And Nova says, "Ex-colleagues don't view you as a coach versus your previous profession." Yeah, exactly. And in some ways what we're doing is we're leveraging that professional credibility and rebranding as a coach. So when we sell our services as a coach, we kind of have to sell credibility, and it's that professional credibility is often the very thing that will get you in the door.
And I do think sometimes that's why older colleagues are more likely to turn into opportunities than more recent ones because, you know, they have also changed and evolved in their career, and so they're more open to you having this new professional hat. Okay, thank you. Great questions.
I know I said I wasn't gonna answer questions along the way but I can't help myself. So the next component is warm outreach, and I know that many of you will have heard me talk in detail about warm outreach, and the truth is, warm outreach will transform your business.
So I can't count the number of coaches who've joined my various programs and who have implemented a warm outreach strategy, and it has been the one activity that has unlocked all of the other effort that they've put into their marketing and their content, and actually created real opportunities and real conversations.
So I've got this idea of this golden triad, right? Which is that you have your network, you have your posting and your content, and you have outreach. Any two of those is insufficient, but the three together is magic, and it unlocks the power in that professional network, and it stops you feeling like you are just posting into the void.
And also remember, the goal of our outreach is not to sell. I know that sounds weird. The goal of our outreach is to generate conversations where we can sell or move on to more selling conversations. So there is so much in warm outreach. I can't go into it today. In the accelerator, we have outreach templates, masterclasses, we do outreach sprints, we include it in our weekly accountability commitments.
We do a lot of work in our coaching calls on outreach strategy. It is important to know that it is a vital part of your business growth, and so it is definitely something that you should lean into. You know, whether or not you are interested in joining me, it's something that you need to master So visibility and marketing is all about the next step after that, right?
Which is sort of what was touched on about warmth, which is that if I need warm leads to be reaching out to on a consistent basis, at some point I'm going to run out of my warmest network, so I need to be creating new warm leads. And for some of us, that will be sooner than others. Some of us will have, thousands of warm leads, some of us will have very few.
And so this process involves visibility content, and networking. So firstly, to talk about content. So the content I'm talking about is really posting on LinkedIn. The purpose... but it could be other things. The purpose of this to me is less about drawing in random people off the streets of LinkedIn who see your post and go, "Oh, wow, I must buy from you."
Although this happens, the more consistent you are, the more you're talking to your ideal client, the more inbound you will receive. But that's not the point. It's actually more about saying who-- what do I need to say to the people that I am bringing into my network that resonates with their big challenges, right?
Their strategic challenges, their tactical challenges, their political challenges, their personal challenges, so that they can s- continue to see and engage with my posts and so when I reach out to them, they already have this belief in my credibility and a degree of trust built over time, right?
So they are warm. We need to have a content strategy you know, which is what we're going to say, the pillars we're gonna talk about every week, and we need a great system to make this manageable within the limited time that we have.
And I encourage you, to have some boundaries around what you do so that you don't feel like you're writing content all day, every day. This could be-- there's all sorts of strategies for content creation. Could be creating one meatier piece of content. I call that hero content, and then repurposing it across different platforms and breaking it down into smaller pieces of content for LinkedIn.
But that's just one, one way you can do it. And to make the flow work, we have to be consistently adding new ideal clients to our audience. And for those of you who are preparing to make the leap into business, or if you just want to ramp up your client acquisition, this is a step that you can take immediately, which is adding 15 to 20 new connections each day on LinkedIn in that, in those ideal client categories, and these are the pool of connections that we warm up with our content.
And you also need to think about your other preferred strategies. So LinkedIn ultimately is just one of the tools you have available. Your other strategies for bringing potential clients into your world might include things like [00:34:00] networking, speaking, conferences, panels, podcast guesting, collaborating with other businesses who are not competitors but who have had the same clients all of those sorts of things.
Now, a quick self-sabotage note here and I know I said I'd talk about mindset, and one of the, the tips is that when you are putting out content and showing up on social, like LinkedIn, when you are writing messages in outreach, when you are posting photos, the thing that is the biggest risk to you to you not achieving your potential and growing your business is not what you write, right?
No matter how low the quality or controversial the opinion, or maybe not, no matter how. But in the scheme of what you're doing, the much bigger risk is that the perfectionism and overthinking that you are doing means you don't get it out there at all. And so you've probably heard, "Don't let perfect get in the way of great," but I would take it another step and say that if you are not getting your voice out there, you are facing a greater risk, which is not being seen or known, and that is compulsory in order to grow a business.
So my tips for this, which we bake into the foundations and the curriculum of my Corporate to Coach Accelerator are, firstly, just aim for B+ work. Don't set your sights on an A because you will start overthinking it. This is very hard because most coaches I meet are overachievers and people pleasers, so expect that aiming for B+ work will feel awkward, but it will pay off.
The other tip I have is give yourself time constraints, right? Whether they are self-imposed or imposed by others. I love imposing a restraint for my clients. And require yourself to, to press send at the end of the time you've given yourself, no matter what. Send, post, whatever it is. More time does not equal better.
And then finally, think of the posts and the visibility and the things you're getting out there as a vital part of your learning curve, not as, the ultimate product. You need to put a certain number of posts out there just to see what works, to build traction, and to improve your style, right?
Your hooks, your stories, your connection. This takes time and practice, and if you wait until you feel like something, a, a post or a message is perfect, firstly, it will probably be only marginally better, to be honest. It will probably get the same outcome. It'll probably be seen by the same amount of people, and you will have just delayed your learning curve.
So I've seen coaches join me and say, "I could have been doing this imperfectly for six months and been so far ahead of where I am now after all of the overthinking and perfectionism." So the sooner you can move into B+ work, getting it done, getting it out there the better Okay, so excuse me. So of course, I can't leave out conversion and sales.
It's my favorite. So this is where the rubber hits the road, which is that you also need to have skills, systems, and mindsets to help you have real conversations that you have generated through your outreach and create real paying [00:37:00] clients. This is sales, right? And I want you to feel great about doing it.
So what do you need to get there? You need to be the master of consultative sales conversations. This means relying on something more than just good relationship building. That means, what value are you bringing? What insights are you offering during the sales process? We want you positioned as a thought partner during your sales conversations, and honestly, as a coach, I'm willing to bet that is a strength that you already have if you allow yourself to show it.
You also need to understand corporate buying cycles and decision processes. You need to be able to design proposals and pricing on an opportunity basis that is compelling to the buyer. You also need to be able to navigate the specifics of selling coaching and facilitation workshops consulting into organizations, including navigating procurement, contracting, coaching panels, supplier setups all of the above.
So one of my clients, Tim,posted in our Slack group recently that he did one of the, our internal master classes on B2B sales conversations that we have in our curriculum, and he used it to prepare for a call, a sales call, and he said it completely changed the way he navigated that conversation and that it shifted, that he felt so much more confident that he was able to create a much expanded opportunity.
And yes, he landed that piece of work more quickly than he would have in the past. But the thing that spoke to me was that the preparation allowed him to go in there with a entirely different mindset, right? That confidence, and that is what allowed him to do all the work he needed to make that a bigger opportunity and convert that deal.
So a bit of a watch-out, another mindset that I wanted to put in here, which is that far and away the biggest derailer I see when it comes to coaches growing businesses that they want is their mindset around sales.
Now, these mindsets can be quite deep-seated. Often it goes back to childhood, and we might have grown up with, the used car salesman stereotype being the automatic thing that comes to mind when you think sales and salespeople or something sleazy and exploitative, and certainly not something you would ever have aspired to, and in fact something that you might have been ashamed to be associated with.
Now, this comes out in a few ways. One is the fear of being seen as salesy. Just give me a yes if you've ever thought, "Oh God, I don't want to be salesy. I don't wanna be thought of as salesy. I don't wanna come across that way." Yeah. Yes. Yes.
I love that. Hard yes. Exactly. So this is, yeah, this is the, this is a big one and so the fear of sale- being salesy can translate to being paralyzed when it comes to outreach and hampered when it comes to conversations in sales conversations.
It can stop you from doing what you know you need to do. It [00:40:00] can translate to overthinking your posts. So yeah, sounds like a number of you in this bucket. And a way I see this come out and, this is a bit of an indication to think about, is in the language some coaches use about being sold to.
So if someone sends you a DM on LinkedIn, for example, and it's one of those, sales messages that pop in as soon as you're connected, some coaches get really upset about it, right? So it could be that irritation through to be really pissed off about it and sending shirty replies. What it means is that this is triggering something in you, right?
And I know this type of sales is the worst, but it's a really good canary in the mine shaft to see how you feel about being sold to, because how you feel about being sold to can give you some very interesting data about what is going on subconsciously when you sell. Because if your brain is telling you selling's the worst, then for sure when it comes to writing your outreach messages, having a sales call, that is going to be very difficult because there is going to feel like a contradiction in values, right?
An incongruence, and you are going to block yourself. Now, what we want to aim for is not, I want to love selling and being sold to. You might get there eventually. I feel like I love selling. I don't mind being sold to. But doing the work on your mindset and beliefs, just self-coaching, so the goal is that we can sit in this neutral place of curiosity, right?
I wonder what it would be like to explore different types of outreach, to see how it feels after I do it once versus doing it 10 times. I wonder what thoughts will help me show up my best in this sales conversation, right? If this is you, I really encourage you to do that work because if you don't, it will block your progress potentially subconsciously, no matter what else you do.
And yeah, does, it does give coaching a bit of a bad rap, for sure. And yeah, I do, yeah, I agree with some of those comments about salesy. Yeah. And belief, yeah. True, Todd. And Todd says, "It's only salesy if you don't believe in what you're selling." I've [00:42:00] heard a really great analogy for that, which is that we want to focus on conviction rather than convincing when we're selling.
Because the convincing energy, if we feel like selling is having to convince people to do something, that is gonna feel hard. But if we sit in that space of being very deeply convicted and really believing in the value of what we do, and the importance of that for the people we're speaking to that is really powerful.
And yeah, Gillian says, "People love to buy, they don't love being sold to." So yeah, we need to help them with that. Okay, so a lot of the elements we've covered are really about the skills, the processes, and the things that we must do. But actually, we also have to place a very high value on building sustainable rhythms, and specifically the rituals, the systems to sustain long-term progress towards your goals, and to ensure that your wellbeing is front and center.
So most of my clients have reasons that they wanna be in business, and we need to [00:43:00] make sure that is translated into practical habits, right? Typically, coaches love people, right? So there is a real paradox when we suddenly find ourself working at home alone with very little support. So you will need to proactively surround yourself with a network or a community that helps you to stay motivated, in motion, and committed to your goals and to learning.
This includes making sure you have external sources of accountability, if you're someone who thrives on that. It includes having a place and a community of people to celebrate your successes and be inspired by others in the same path. It means having people that you can also say, "Actually, this is really hard right now," and know that the commiseration, empathy, and suggestions come from people in the same boat.
So I sent an email a couple of months ago with 10 things that I've learnt about coaching business, and the one that I got a number of replies back was this statement. I said, "Most coaches will [00:44:00] believe that they need to shut down their business and think that their business is the best thing that they've ever done all in the same week."
And this, that, that experience, So let me know if you've ever felt that. It's every week sometimes we think, "Yeah, this is the best thing I've ever done. This is the worst thing I've ever done." It can be hard to share that with people who aren't in that same boat. So yeah.
Yeah. I feel it. I still feel it and I think that's the reality of being in business in some ways. Right. So I've listed accountability as a big part of this whole system because one of the biggest hurdles that I see to business growth for coaches is that sometimes the problem isn't that you don't know what you need to do, the problem is that moving into action is really hard, right?
For various reasons. Could be overwhelm, almost certainly fear, right? Self-sabotage. But it is also often that many of us thrive with external sources of accountability and usually in our corporate roles we had so many of those, right? We had KPIs, we had bosses, we had [00:45:00] teams relying on us, we had deadlines, we had colleagues to cheer us on, you name it.
But when we're in business, we lose so much of this accountability infrastructure. So what you personally might need is not a new strategy, but just some external accountability to do what you know you need to do. Inside the accelerator we have a channel in our community that is all about accountability.
Did I say yeah, a channel in our community that is all about accountability. So people post their commitments and priorities at the start of the week on Monday, and on Friday we check in with them to see how it went. This is not important for everyone, and it might seem small, but if you struggle to get movement on things that you know will make a difference, you know you wanna do, you know you need to do, then you might be one of the people for whom external accountability is completely transformational.
Of course, this is something you can build for yourself. We do it inside the, the accelerator, but, is something you can definitely put in place. The final component is [00:46:00] systems and operations. Now, if you are like me, systems and operation and admin is the bit that makes you bury your head in the sand.
But the truth is, spending time setting up the backend of your business systems will save you time and make your life easier, and of course, that includes AI. That's where I see AI playing a role. I've listed out some things here that you need to work on. Justin says, "Nerds love a system." I love a system, I'm just not very good at it.
I think naturally it doesn't come to me, so I've had to really lean into this. So, you know, that's things like you need operational processes, invoicing, contracting, financial and compliance systems, things like tax, insurance, privacy. And then I really recommend having a dashboard and AI.
Claude can help you build the most beautiful dashboards to track your cash flows and metrics and of course, looking at how you are using automations and AI to save time is also a big piece of it. So- Let's quickly summarize what we've talked about. We've gone through all of the 10 components of the executive coach pipeline which is [00:47:00] exactly what you need to have in place in order to build a business that has a consistent flow of corporate clients coming in, and a sustainable business that fits in that bigger picture of what you want from your work as a coach and from your life.
We spoke in more depth about how to reverse engineer your revenue goal, build the components of your funnel, and I've shared a few of the biggest ways that I see coaches self-sabotage in growing their businesses, including perfectionism, overthinking, and mindsets towards sales and lack of accountability.
So if you're happy, before I dive into telling you about the accelerator would you share in the chat, based on what we've covered, what would you say to someone who is thinking about signing up for this session? Which I think I'm running one more of these. And what has resonated with you most deeply?
What are you going to do differently? Clarity on structure. Yeah, Tim. Todd's going to teach a class. Excellent. Systematic approach, funnel thinking, very helpful. Structure and accountability. [00:48:00] Yeah, need structure. Leveraging credibility. Yeah, absolutely love that. Funnel thinking, working backwards. Not being alone, I love that.
I love that Okay, perfect. Thank you everyone for those. So, at this point, you know exactly what is required to grow a thriving coaching business with a pipeline of corporate clients, and I want to invite you to consider two options. The first is that you may feel very clear on taking this information, implementing it, and growing a thriving coaching business.
The other option is that you might at this point be thinking, okay but what's next? How do I go deeper to bring this to life in my business? How do I bring more of my ideal clients into my business? And so for example, some of the questions that you might have now are, okay, well, I know I need to do outreach, but how do I build my outreach strategy for my network?
How do I build my content plan? [00:49:00] How on earth do I know if my assets are suitable for my target clients? You might need someone to help you figure out exactly who those ideal clients are or what pricing is appropriate or how your specific background is an unfair advantage I'm in business for the singular purpose of supporting executive and leadership coaches to grow businesses and have a positive ripple effect on the communities that they serve.
I do that through my program, the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, which I'm gonna tell you a little bit about. So if you want to start or grow your executive or leadership coaching business, very specifically with more corporate or organizational clients, I'm very pleased to share that the doors to this program, the Accelerator, are currently open and on a specific basis.
So this program is the work that I'm meant to do in the world, bringing all of my experience together with my favorite people in the world, who are coaches, such as yourselves. So the Accelerator truly is the only program that you need to build your coaching business or to grow it further, [00:50:00] and to create a consistent pipeline of corporate clients without feeling like you are constantly selling.
So, this is for you. I think I've shared a little bit about who this is for, but if you are either considering starting or in the process of starting coaching because you know it is for you, or you are already in those, those early years or a little bit further into your coaching business, but you want better results, right?
Whether that is more clients, higher margins through less associate work, more direct clients, more satisfaction, more time back if that is you, this, this program is also for you. So let me tell you very clearly what you get inside the Accelerator. So our goal in the Accelerator is to get your next corporate clients, and specifically we're going to pursue your next 10 high-paying corporate clients so that you feel confident that this business can support you financially now and into the future.
You will leverage your professional experience and your professional network to build your sales pipeline with over [00:51:00] 100 ideal prospects, because we know that the depth of your pipeline is the biggest predictor of new client flow. So you're going to learn how to build your pipeline and continue to grow it, and we know that the more you focus on your pipeline, the healthier it and your business will grow.
We're going to take the stress out of marketing by implementing a marketing and business development system that you can implement in five hours a week, right? Content outreach, network growth. In those five hours- And we are going to build your key assets, right? Your website, your LinkedIn profile, your coach bio together during your first days in the program.
With our guidance, accountability, and our very specific feedback, you will avoid those procrastination and perfectionism traps that may be coming up for you. You'll also build a flexible schedule that suits your business and that allows you to show up for all of the priorities in your life that are why you started this business and that may have been [00:52:00] pushed to the side in your corporate role.
And we do those things through our PRISM framework. So we do all of it while leveraging, not ignoring, your professional background and credibility. We focus on efficiency and doing this as quickly as possible with tools that mean you're not starting anything from scratch. Everything is adapted to your business and your personal goals, so very individualized.
We wanna take the emotional labor out of this work by building systems, and we want to embed this identity of you as an industry-leading coach So, very hands-on program, huge amount of resources, and they come in three categories of what you get inside the program. There is curriculum, there is coaching, and there is community.
What that looks like is, and I've got a I've got quite a few things here so stay with me. We always start with a kickoff call, a group kickoff call, where you will identify your goals for the program, audit where you're at, and we will build your very specific [00:53:00] pathway through the program because, as I said, it's not one size fits all.
Your pathway will be unique to you. We then have a range of coaching opportunities over the course of the month. There is something that you can attend every week if you want to. You don't have to, depends on your pathway. But for many coaches, that rhythm of connection and feeding into yourself on a weekly basis is important.
What it is every week is different, though. So once a week we have general group coaching that is anything from advice on you building your assets to deal strategy, to pricing, to proposal management, to follow-up strategy, you name it, anything goes. That's me, that's my eyes on your business. And I should say, all coaching sessions happen between two and three times each week, so there are always time zones that will work for you.
Each month we also have a master class in the third week of the month is a master class or a guest expert or a strategic planning quarterly strategy session. That [00:54:00] is on all sorts of things. So next week, in fact, we are running a 90-day content sprint in our master class time slot, which will be very exciting.
We have once a month, in the second week of the month, we have our LinkedIn expert runs a LinkedIn workroom where she helps talk through any questions you have about LinkedIn, the algorithm, content strategy, profile strategy. And we also include coaching supervision, and this is ... People think, okay, that's about coaching practice.
We understand coaching supervision. It is also incredibly powerful for your business growth. So really, something that is valued by all of the participants, and that is in small groups. It also, curriculum-wise, we have three core pieces of curriculum. So we have the 90-day quick start, which is some people do it in seven days, some people do it in six months, so I really need to change the title.
But this is really about how do we build those foundations in a time-capped way, and that includes definition of your ideal client, building out your office suite, building your coach bio, your LinkedIn profile, your website, all of the above. And so we do that in that piece of curriculum. We also have the business development accelerator framework, which is all about analyzing your network, building your content strategy, and building out that five-hour-a-week mechanism for doing BD and marketing on a consistent basis.
And then if you are new to business and new to coaching business, the corporate to coach blueprint is the A to Z of the foundations of coaching business. So everything from compliance to how organizations buy coaching, to how to invest your professional development dollars, what assessments should you be certified in, you name it.
We've included it in that piece of curriculum. We also offer personalized reviews and feedback for all those foundational assets, and that is my eyes on your work and your business. Or for LinkedIn, our LinkedIn specialist does full profile audits on your LinkedIn profiles.
We've got a, an incredible network of coaches in the program. We are all executive and leadership coaches, global, very diverse. Everyone comes from a significant professional background. It is an incredible community of coaches. And beyond just, being great people, there is so much sharing and generosity and, lots of people asking questions and giving ideas and feedback.
We even have a whole range of community-led sessions on things that someone might be a specialist in. So those happen on an ad hoc basis, a lot of body doubling, co-working and even in-person, in-person networks, which is really fabulous. We host the community on Slack. In Slack, we do accountability processes.
That happens on a weekly basis. You can always get coached on Slack as well. So if you have a question and there is no coaching call coming up doing that in Slack, you'll get a response within a day or two. It is definitely-- My, one of my goals is I never want you to stay stuck, and so I've built in multiple layers of how we get you unstuck and keep you in motion.
We also have an on-demand [00:57:00] portal, which has all manner of master classes recordings, everything guest experts, workshop series one-offs, so much resource. So I'll often refer people to those depending on the specific challenges that they are experiencing. We also have a private podcast.
I know that a lot of people don't want to sit and watch videos of call recordings, so all of our coaching calls are released on a private podcast, which people love. And we also have a collection of templates aimed at saving you time. So Though that includes, your coach bio, your proposal, your template, your outreach, outreach templates all of that.
LinkedIn, we've got a year of LinkedIn prompts, so you never stay stuck. So as you can see there's so much in there. And the question is, well, okay tell me a little bit about the investment, Ellie. And so that is what I want to do. So doors are open, as I've mentioned. In fact, you can always join, but the doors are open currently for our last intake before we have a price rise.
And prices will be going up significantly from the 21st of August. So there are some amazing bonuses as well. So the investment is, if you join by the time doors close on the 20th of August, you will receive a $1,000 discount, and that takes your 12 monthly payments down to 700 US dollars per month.
If you choose to pay on a 12-month payment plan, that would be 6,999 US dollars. So Yeah, that's the pricing strategy. Most people join on the monthly basis, but you are also welcome to pay upfront if you prefer. The bonus, the second bonus is that, yeah Simon says Canadian or US.
That's all US dollars, Simon, because we have people around the world. Had to pick a currency. The second bonus is that there is a fast action bonus. So after we have a conversation, or if you join within the next 72 hours you'll be eligible for this bonus, which is that you will receive a free month on the program, which would take your membership all the way until September of [00:59:00] 2027.
I'm also open to, if the timing is just slightly off, I'm open to delaying start up to two months if you want to lock in the pricing and the bonus month. Now Gillian says, "How big are the cohorts?" This is a great question. So because we don't run in cohorts, people join at any point into one group.
The group is currently about 50, 50 coaches. We expect to grow some, but what I find is that what people are really asking is how big are the calls, like how many people are on each coaching call. Because we run each call at two or three time zones, we generally have somewhere between 5 and 15 people on a call.
My intention is that if I notice any calls getting up to that point, I will add another call. So there is no world in which there's 100 people on a coaching call cause that is a reasonable concern, and I've been in programs like that, and that's not what this is. So this is not for everyone.
This is very much, a fairly select group if you are interested, I have now... Oh, hang on. Let me go back. I've officially opened up my calendar, including today and over the next week. If you are wondering if this is the right investment in yourself and your business for the next 12 or 13 months, I would love to chat with you.
There is, I hope, you've taken from this, no pressure or obligation. We will discuss your business, your challenges, and the best pathway for you to hit your goals, and I'm also really open to answering those specific questions about the accelerator and fit for your business. So, I put that link to book a call in.
Please book ASAP. If you have any issues finding a time, just send us an email and we'll make sure we can make that work. Now, if you would rather go back and forth by message, you can do that on LinkedIn or email, and for a limited time you will be able to join directly on the accelerator page.
You do, of course, in order to join, need to be an executive leadership coach wanting to create a practice primarily working with organizational clients. Keep an eye on your inbox also for the winner of that 90-minute strategy call with me. Okay. So, let me answer these questions. So, Revital says, "Given it's not a cohort, how do you start?
How much is live content, or do you need to catch up on content recorded?" Great questions. So, what happens is every month we run , a group onboarding session, and so in that session is where we will go through just making sure that you have access to all of the tech and setting your goals and building out your specific pathway.
Now, if that is a week or two away, what people usually do is they start, they dive in, and you can, you know, send me messages. I'll help you figure out where to start. And come to coaching calls, come and, jump into the community, see what's happening and really start to dive in.
The curriculum is all self-paced, so those, those big chunky pieces of curriculum are self-paced, so you can start any time. You don't need to catch up. You really just start from where you are. What is live is the weekly coaching calls and those are the opportunity for you to bring in whatever it is that you're working on.
. So, it's a combination of self-paced and a weekly live call as, I mentioned. I hope that answers that question. So on that note, Okay, questions. Let me turn off slides and answer questions. So Andrew says, "Is the program ICF accredited?" No, it is not, Andrew. Because it's very much more business than practice focused.
It's not. So we don't have that. But I do believe some people use parts of it for... That you can claim it yourself if you're using the portfolio process, I think, and if you are... I'm not an ICF expert by any stretch. So yeah, I can't say yes to that Okay, so let me just quickly, now I am open to as many questions as we've got.
Let me go over into the Q&A box. But feel free to post in chat or in Q&A. Okay, so Blair says, "Your thoughts on ads, Google/Meta?" I don't think ads are the right way to go if you are looking for organizational clients. I think if you wanna work with individual clients, yes, you should lean in. An interesting area of experimentation for me at the moment is LinkedIn ads.
My experience with them has not been great. It seems like they work for a little bit, and then they sort of peter out. They're also very expensive. So, my take is that it's not super super important. . Yeah I think the interesting area, Blair, in terms of promoting digitally is probably not SEO, but AI optimization, so that any queries into AI are recommending you, and that is an interesting area.
I am absolutely not an expert on that. Feel free to explore that. I think that's going to be interesting. So EL says, "Many people on LinkedIn are lurkers, and I've learned that this is particularly true for HR people. How do we engage them effectively?" This is such a great question, and this is why outreach is important, because I would say with corporate buyers, the vast majority of the people in your network are going to be lurkers, right?
So most of them are not going to comment and say, "Oh, I'm very interested," or, So some of them are going to right? Some of them are going to like, and that's maybe all the indication you, that you'll have. The way you need to engage with them is through outreach, through Messenger, because that's where the conversations happens.
Now, what I also like as a little bit of a LinkedIn strategy is if you know that you've got a group of people who are lurking, post, make your posts talk to them very specifically with the aim of drawing them out of the woodwork, right? So it could be that you post for a while, and then you send them a very specific outreach message.
There's like a one-two, a one-two punch that they're getting that and your outreach message. But truly, yeah, outreach is the way that these things work. It doesn't happen out loud on [01:05:00] LinkedIn. So you've tapped into a really big challenge. Alice says, "This might be a question that's unique to me, but do you have an opinion on whether it's viable to run a B2C funnel for coaching rather than through coachees being the, through the company?"
Look, Alice, there are definitely people who successfully coach individuals. You have to be much more niched and you have to do advertising. I don't think you can do it otherwise. I think that's the pathway. What I say is that think about the budget for what you do. If we think about the budget for executive and leadership coaching in the world, 95% of it sits with organizations.
So that is the market that we should be trying to crack. Yes, there is 5% that sit, that is self-funded individuals. Maybe it's even 10%. But there are so many people fishing in that pond and usually I see coaches deciding to fish in that pond because this is scary to them, right? Marketing to corporate feels scary.
It feels like this, working with individuals is easier, that it'll be easier to get clients. In fact, I don't see that as the case. In my experience with all of my clients and my own work, it is just as easy to get a corporate client as it is an individual client. Maybe their buying cycles are a little bit longer.
So I want to say yes, it is viable, but it looks different. The marketing strategies are different and remember that you're possibly pitching to a smaller pool of money. Okay. So Lisa says, "How much time is spent with you in the accelerator versus your team?" Great question. So Lisa, my team is me.
It is Kate, who is our LinkedIn specialist, so she runs our monthly LinkedIn calls, and she does the LinkedIn audits. She also audits websites because she is a copywriter by trade, which I'm not. We have Louise Kovacs, she is our coach supervisor. She runs our supervision sessions. And then the only other person in the team is the incredible Zoe McAlpine and she helps in Slack, which is our online community with some of the coaching questions [01:07:00] there.
So she has been through the accelerator, and over the last three years has built a multi six-figure coaching business, and so she brings her insights from that perspective. Everything outside of that is me. So I am running the coaching calls. I am running the masterclasses, except when we bring in an expert and sometimes Zoe might run the quarterly planning strategy sessions.
But you are going to see plenty of me. I am in the Slack feed every day. And so there is plenty with me if that makes sense. Caroline says, "Should I only be targeting corporate clients or can I offer to both B2C and B2B?" You can do both and honestly, most coaches will have both.
What I recommend though is being very clear that it is B2B first, because if you try and do both and you try and speak to both in your marketing, it's very difficult messaging. So talking to the organizational buyer is what I recommend, because if you try and talk to the buyer and the individual, it gets murky.
It's doable and most of my clients, we have to talk about how do I, remain relevant to both on my website and my content? What is more likely, I think, is that it's better to talk to the organization but allow for the individual through referrals, connections, inbound thing, things like that.
And be open to it, but don't pursue it as your first pathway. But yes you can do both, but don't follow it. EL says, "How do you land cl- land-" Found clients when you're starting. Foundational, I think. First clients. So how, the first clients are gonna come from the same process, right?
Which is going to be having your assets ready making sure that you've got a good content strategy, analyzing your network, and reaching out to the warmest people in your network first. Because your first clients are gonna come from the warmest leads in your network. So that is the way to do it.
Then of course we need to be open to, the, having the conversations, being able to have sales conversations that allow for different opportunities to emerge. So I think that is a big piece of it as well. Okay. So anonymous says, "What are your thoughts on competing with coaching companies like BetterUp in corporate space?
These types of comp- companies have more resources and can offer better pricing, which it seems to attract corporate buyers." Great question. This is fantastic question. Okay. Companies like BetterUp, the platforms I call those they have very much got a place in some of the bigger corporates, and typically when they're brought in is to be able to offer coaching at scale, right?
So it can be offered to people who are maybe individual contributors or more joint junior leaders, like when there's generally hundreds of thousands of people who are in scope for coaching. Now, this is often not where you want to compete anyway, and organizations that have BetterUp or CoachHub or Ezra, they are often still bringing in executive coaches at different levels or for different pieces of work where it's more important.
And so I think it's important that you are targeting sort of premium work. You may have a premium price point, so you're not competing in that race for the bottom, which is what the BetterUps of the world can be doing. So I don't think of it as competing. I think there is space for everyone in this space.
And also, I do see, BetterUp doesn't tend to penetrate smaller organizations, mid-size or smaller organizations, for example. And I do see organizations who may have worked with the coaching platforms move away from that, either to building an internal coaching team or to working with more of a panel of coaches because there's levers.
The, the models of the platform tend to be Less pure coaching and more taking people through a coaching journey where there is a predicted pathway. But look it's fantastic for many organizations to be able to offer coaching more broadly, but don't think , it's not a competitor of you unless you want to build a similar coaching platform.
In which case, that's a little out. Like I've built a boutique coaching company. I've had about 25 coaches working for me but I would always, I was always positioned at that premium level, not as a competitor to the low-cost coaching providers. I don't know if that's answered your question.
Hopefully. Dalia says, "What if we have 50% of this already tackled but only need the other 50% of the hard stuff?" Yeah, Dalia, that's so common. Many people who come into the accelerator have already got, they've got the foundations, although often they'll go through a review process and we'll look at is there something missing?
But what they really want is to lean into the business development stuff and that's what they do, and that's the intention of this. Not, there's no one-size-fits-all. We'll get you right into business development work.
So, there's no, you don't have to work through any of the basics. You can jump in exactly where you are.
Now, we have a lot of coaches in the accelerator who have, 10, 20, 30 years of coaching experience who may have been an associate coach for a long time or and something has changed. Either they're not finding that it's paying them what they want or the, the work is drying up.
And they have got so much already in place but they need to work on the sales piece. So it's very common. We work on what you're, what you need to work on. Annaba says, "I'm building a coach platform. Is this applicable to bringing that to corporate as well?" Yes and no.
I would say in terms of, selling coaching, yes. What I don't teach is sort of, volume advertising plays that might be more relevant if you want to build, the next CoachHub, for example, Annaba. So that may not be relevant. Annaba says, "How long do you see it takes to get first client in your experience?
$600 feels like a reasonable amount for me to get a paying client and pay the rest from the profits." I'm not sure what you mean it feels like a reasonable amount to get a paying client. So I'm not sure. You might have to explain that a little bit. But how long does it take to get your first client?
It's really variable. It depends on your network and it depends on the type of work and the type of client you want to work with. Anonymous says, "How do I find out information on, about the opportunities on panels?" A different it depends. Panels, I'm not sure if you mean on a coaching panel in an organization, how do you find out whether organizations have coaching panels, how they buy coaching, and how to get on the panels?
So inside the Accelerate I've got a module on how panels generally work. But what I recommend doing is connecting with those people who are warm in your network and actually asking them, "Does your organization have a panel?" Not organizations do. How do you bring coaches in? How is the panel, how is the panel populated?
So actually asking people about that, because panels can look different. Panels can be where someone in learning and development puts together a preferred list of coaches, and so if someone asks them, "I need a coach," they just share the list.
Or it can be, for example, one of the panels I've been on is for a major Australian telco Telstra, for those of you here, and that was very regimented.
So there was a very strong process of, exactly what that involved, what the pay rates were, what the work you could do, what the levels, who was in scope. So that, and, they would have, quarterly briefings. It was very specific. Not all panels are created equal. There is, you're gonna have to find out on an organization-by-organization basis. And remember that being on a panel is not an automatic guarantee of work.
I think of panels as it's a license to hunt, right? Yes, if someone has coaching, and a coaching need, you are someone who may deliver that. And in many organizations, you still need to go out and develop the business.
Some organizations will not let you do that so it really depends on the organization. So Anubhav says, "To start the firth, first month, 600 feels like a realistic amount to start." I'm actually not [01:15:00] sure. Are you saying that 600, the first month payment would be the investment in client acquisition through advertising or something?
I'm not sure about that. Okay, Nadine says, "I have a professional services sales background," excellent, "and have completed ICF level one coach training. Uncertain if I really wanna be an executive coach. Any sage advice for clarity on it?" Yeah, Nadine, I would say talk to a coach about what the day-to-day looks like of that work.
And find out what they enjoy and what they don't. Certainly remembering that so much of what we do is the business aspect, so the sales, the marketing, the promotion all of the above. That is what I would recommend. Talk to someone. Now, what I would also say is that as a coach, very few coaches just do coaching.
I know this might sound weird, but most coaches that I work with have a, a broader portfolio than that. So they will also have maybe team coaching, or team development, or workshop facilitation, or strategy facilitation, or consulting, or speaking. That is, generally you will have a suite of offers beyond coaching.
That can sometimes help you to say, "Ooh, actually actually I want to, I feel more positive about it if there is this opportunity to do other things." And if you have, you might say, "I actually also wanna run a program teaching professional services folks how to sell." I've always thought that would be a really good avenue, by the way.
So you know, that might be something that you wanna do. But I just think remembering that- Yeah, you have to wanna do the day-to-day of the work, the coaching, the being in, in coaching. You have to wanna do the business growth and that side of it. And honestly, I think there is nothing more rewarding than this work.
I think it's amazing if you are pretty, pretty passionate about it. Oh and above said, "Okay, your program is $600 per month. I could commit for the first month." Okay. Yeah, that does. Thank you so much. Sorry, I was a bit dense about that.
It does. The challenge is I, and this probably does me a disservice as a salesperson but I never can make a guarantee about that because it is completely dependent on your skills, your network, and your willingness to do, the work of outreach and building of those foundations.
I would say that it usually takes a, few months to build momentum to get to a place where you can consistently start getting conversations, right? What we want is we wanna get as many conversations on the basis that those conversations are then going to feed into real opportunities.
So I can't make any promises. What I see consistently is that three to six months, people are consistently having sales conversations. Six to 12 months, people are bringing clients in the door. But again, it depends on the organization. It depends on your network. So really wanna not make promises, but while also, feeling optimistic.
I also think a lot about that, it's good to think about the payback of the investment. And the payback of the investment, where I see it coming from, is people increasing their rates, right? That often pays it off. Even one engagement over the course of the year should cover that investment, right?
If you bring in one more client at that rate that should hopefully hopefully pay it off. And I also sometimes think about what is the opportunity cost, right? If you don't do this what are you missing out on? So- I hope that helps. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Anubhav. And do, I'm very happy to have a conversation.
Yes, great. I can see we've got a whole bunch of calls booked. I've just put that link in there one more time. I would love to have a chat to you if you think this is for you. I know it's not for everyone. If it is, let's have a chat. Let me just scroll back, see if I've missed any questions. Mana says, "Will there be a replay?"
Mana, send me a, an email. I did say upfront, I don't I'm not officially releasing a fully edited replay but I can definitely figure out a way to send you the recording. Thea Foundation oh, no, thought it was a, 10:00 AM. No, it was a 9:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. Yes, I think you have, but we are running it again later today Thea which will be I think it's 5:00 PM AWST, which would be 7:00 PM your time.
So feel free to come along. Okay, I think... Yeah, I think I have answered a lot of those questions. Please do... Yeah it's great to see some, some fantastic familiar faces. Wonderful to be here, looking forward to those, conversations.
Thanks everyone, and yeah, look forward to seeing you all soon.
Okay, bye everyone.
