Hello, and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm Ellie Scarf, your host, and I'm an executive coach who has been a coach for many years now. But today I don't wanna do a formal intro. I wanna dive right in. So today I wanna talk about things that I would do this year, so what is left of this year, we've got a few months left.
What I would do if I was starting my executive coaching business in 2027. And so this episode is for you if you're dreaming or planning to start your business in 2027 in the executive or leadership coaching and consulting space. It is also for you if you have already started your business, but perhaps you have been on a bit of a go-slow because you've come out of a corporate role, or you've come out of the back of a redundancy, and it just hasn't...
You haven't had the energy to really, really go full throttle, and that may be that you're recovering a bit from burnout. And look, to be honest, it might be for you if you're feeling a sense of needing to restart, right? The sense that things haven't been going well, and you would like to not quite, you know, call ground zero, but start from, start from scratch with some of the foundations again.
So these are the things in this episode that I would do if that was me. So this episode is not about all of the things you need to do to maintain, to sustain, and not necessarily even the things that are about driving your marketing system. But these are the things that you can do to ensure that when 2027 starts, you can be off and running, and so that 2027 starts with an absolute bang.
So when I was thinking about what I would recommend, what I would do if I was restarting my business in 2027, they kind of naturally fell into, I guess, three categories. And those categories were some mindset pieces. The second category was like foundation or asset [00:02:00] building. And the third category was marketing momentum building.
So all of them really are foundations, I think. But some of them are, you know, asset development, and some are less tangible, but will be things that mean that when you really wanna turn on your marketing engine, you can do it with, I guess, less mental load, less obstacles in the way from a practical perspective, and so that you are ready to fly.
So what are the 10 things that I would do this year if I were starting or restarting my business in 2027? Firstly, the mindset, mindset one. So the first one is I would encourage you to remember and do some work on remembering that your role now is not just as a coach or facilitator or consultant; your job is also CEO and business owner.
And you really need to think of them as being roughly equal, and that equality is in weight and identity, and also potentially in time. So often people are like, "Yes, yes, I can... You know, I know I'm a business owner, I know I'm a CEO," but when I look at their calendar, I don't see that, right? I don't see evidence of that.
I don't see the sales calls. I don't see the time set aside for marketing. I don't see the time where you are working on your business, not in your business. So, so that is, you know, you really need to focus on embodying this identity. And so, you know, if you want to know whether you do embody it, I would encourage you to look at a few things.
Look at what is in your diary. Are you doing those things that business owners need to do? I would get you to look at how you are thinking about yourself as a salesperson. Do you have a marketing plan? What does that look like? And, and how do you feel? Like, do you feel good about that side of your business?
Is that something that you avoid, or is it something that feels like a natural part of who you are? The second thing that I would do this year if I was gonna be restarting my business in 2027 is I would really map out my funnel. And, you know, I wish I'd known about doing this back when I started my business, and this is a tool that I certainly have masterclasses and teach it inside my program, the Corporate to Coach Accelerator.
But I also teach it in my free masterclass that is all about business growth. So if you wanna have a look at that, I'm actually running some sessions of that. It's a free masterclass. It's called The Business Growth Workshop for Executive Coaches, where I introduce your executive coach pipeline and the model that is like the foundation of a coaching business that I think you need to have.
So I do go through a funnel plan in that session. So if you wanna check it out, it's at www.elliescarf.com/pipeline. So you can go and sign up for those, and I run those live, uh, I think every couple of weeks. So what is entailed, and, you know, if you are going... The point of building this funnel plan is that I want you to feel like you're going into '27, 2027, not just having a goal, right?
Having a revenue target. But being able to see in a number of ways how you can make that revenue target, right? So that means I want you to set your revenue goal. I want you to then break it down into a number of offers, into how your offers can make up that revenue target with a number of different scenarios, right?
So let's say it's more coaching. Let's say it's coaching at a different price point. Let's say there's a combination of coaching and facilitation. Let's say there's team coaching in there. What about a retainer? So lots of different ways of looking at it. So the first thing I want you to do is be able to see it and be able to see lots of different pathways that you can hit your [00:06:00] goal.
Then I want you to break it down all the way from here is my revenue target, here's how many thing engagements I need to sell to get there. What does that mean, then in terms of how many proposals do I need to have out there? How many sales calls do I need to have? How many conversations and leads do I need to nurture?
And how much outreach do I need to be doing? Now, I'm not gonna go into that here. I've got a podcast episode all about that, so you can look up the funnel mapping in the podcast. But also come along to my masterclass, elliescarf.com/pipeline. And I'll show you in that session, or I'll take you through what that is, and you'll get that, the slides for that so that you can do it yourself.
So the third thing I would do this year, and this is starting to move into the foundation and asset building category, is I want you to get really clear on who you want to work with. Now, if you've been in my world for a while, you'll know that because we are selling into corporate clients, when I say [00:07:00] identify who you wanna work with and your ideal clients, I don't mean identifying a very narrow niche.
I hate the word niche actually in this space 'cause I don't think it lands in the same way. So if you are marketing to individuals, then yes, absolutely, you need to have a very specific client avatar. You need to be really, really narrow in who you are marketing to. When we're working with organisational clients, it's a little different because we will be talking to different, uh, different individuals within different organisations.
What I want you to have is a set of sectors or industries, maybe two or three of those, where you have an unfair advantage. And the work I want you to do is thinking about what unfair advantages you have, and how that translates into a set of ideal client sectors. So for example, my background, I was a lawyer, and one of the, one of the industries that I ended up [00:08:00] doing so much of my coaching and facilitation team, teamwork was in the legal sector, and that being law firms, in-house legal teams, judiciary bodies, law societies, all of the above.
And I had a number of both- I had a couple of other c- core sectors as well. But we want to figure out... Like, the reason I ended up with so many clients in that space was that I had an unfair advantage, and that unfair advantage was that when I went in and I had a sales conversation, I didn't need to build my credibility in the same way that I would've had to if I didn't have that legal background, because they knew I understood the context.
Now, I also will... You'll often hear me say, yes, coaching is context-agnostic, arguably.in, what I mean is that you don't need to be a lawyer to coach a lawyer, right? I really don't think you need to. However, selling is not context-agnostic. Selling [00:09:00] is highly context-dependent because of the role that trust is playing in the conversation.
And your exposure to context, your experience, gives you that credibility and that trust earlier because of that. And so you will have access to opportunities that maybe your sheer hours of coaching experience, post, you know, since you started your business, would not necessarily get you entry into those doors on its own, but your professional background will, right?
So that's what I call an unfair advantage that gets you in the door So the next thing, number four, once you've figured out who you wanna work with, and part of that is figuring out, okay, well, what are their pain points? What are their problems? What are their issues? Not just what are their goals, what are their hopes, but really the pain side of it.
And ideally, what are their urgent and expensive pain points? We wanna do that as part of this, you know, reflection on our ideal clients. Because the next thing is, well, then I wanna think you to think about, well, what is the work you want to do? Getting really clear on what you wanna be doing in your delivery.
And so it may be that it is coaching or it may be facilitation. Ideally, it is a combination, but a combination with boundaries. So not every single, every single thing under the sun, but, you know, maybe two or three really core assets that really reinforce each other. Sorry, assets- I mean offers, that really reinforce each other.
So it may be coaching, it may be team development, and it may be a strategy facilitation. Because we know that if we get you in there with one of those pieces of work, it may well lead to the others because of just the nature of the relationships and the exposure that you'll get in any one of those pieces of work.
Now, I do recommend, uh, you know, I think it is most of-- the most successful businesses that I see in this space will have a breadth of offering, so they will be doing [00:11:00] coaching plus facilitation, plus team potentially, plus, you know... Or substitute any of those for, you know, consulting or speaking or training, leadership development, co- leader as coach training, whatever it is.
But you just need to know. And the-- what I often find is that people come to me and like, "Yeah, I can do all of that." And it's like, yeah, you can, but should you? And I want you to put some boundaries around it. And the filter that I like to use is kind of an adapted Ikigai, which is thinking about: what do you want to do?
What do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? Like, what is it that is, you know, really using your strengths? What is going to have the impact that you wanna have on the world or organisations or individuals? And then finally, but absolutely not least, last but not least, is what are organisations willing to invest in because it is solving an urgent and expensive pain?
So really making sure that we're being [00:12:00] practical and commercial as well as, you know, honouring those strengths and preferences that you have. So thinking about that, I think if you can get really clear on, you know, maybe three things inside your offer suite, that will allow you to go out there and promote yourself in a much more, I think, clear way than if you sort of just have in the back of your head, "I could do this and this and this and this and this."
What do you want? And you could basically say, "Yes, I can do that." The other thing I would say is that even though I'm asking you to, in some ways, narrow, right? So having a few sectors, having a few offers, that is for our outward-facing marketing. It doesn't mean that if someone was to ask us to do something, or if in a sales conversation it were to turn out that there was something else that made more sense in this scenario, you-- it doesn't mean you wouldn't do it.
You absolutely still would. So keep those things in your toolkit, but we're not marketing them in the same way. So once you've done that, those, I guess, the thought foundations, right? Those definition pieces, then I guess the next three things I would get you to do before you, you know, relaunch or start your business are assets that I want you to develop as a result of that work you've done around identifying your ideal clients, understanding them, and figuring out what is the work you wanna do.
And that is, you know, building a really professional coach bio or updating the one you've got. Uh, doing the same for LinkedIn, so making sure that your LinkedIn profile is speaking to your buyers, looks great, and is optimised based on what we know works on LinkedIn. And then also making sure that you have a good enough website.
Now, if you are starting your business or if you, um, you know, have been in business for a little while but haven't really fully taken off, I don't want investing in your website to be your biggest priority. I really want you to think about what a good enough website looks like for me right now.
And that might mean using a template, getting someone on Upwork to help you put it up, and making sure that it is good enough that when someone in your ideal client sectors cross-references what you're saying in your outreach with your website, that it all makes sense, right? That it is clear, and it says what you do, and people can look at it and say, "Oh, yeah.
Okay. That makes sense." Those... I guess that is five, six, and seven: your coach bio, your LinkedIn profile, and your website. Then number eight and the final foundation or, or foundation that I would want you to have in place as part of a build-up to a launch or a relaunch is doing your network analysis. And that means, you know, going into LinkedIn, going into the back end, downloading your list of contacts into a spreadsheet, and going through a segmentation process where you go through and you figure out who is in your network, who are the warmest people, [00:15:00] and what...
And really identifying what are the... I guess, who are you gonna go after first from an outreach perspective once you're alive, right? Once you are in this, "Yes, I'm ready to go." And so I've got lots of resources in previous episodes and also in my free masterclasses to help you with that piece, but it is a really important thing because the depth of your pipeline, meaning who are the people that I'm gonna reach out to, the depth of that are is the biggest predictor of client out- client flow, I guess, off the back of your funnel.
So a really important piece of it. And then the final two things I would do if I was starting or restarting my business in 2027 are all about building momentum for your marketing. The first one, so point nine, is growing your audience consistently on LinkedIn. Now, this is important because what happens, and I get this question a lot, is people go, "Okay, Ellie, I hear what you're saying.
Only do warm outreach. But my warm audience is g- or my warm network," usually people I know from my past career, "That is going to run out." And you're right, it is. You do not have infinite numbers inside that warm network. Now, what I will say is it's gonna last a lot longer than you think it will, but you absolutely need to be generating the next phase of your warm network.
And the way we do that is by adding people consistently to our network on LinkedIn, engaging in strategic networking activities, and then making sure that our content is talking to those people to warm them up. So the thing I would do is I would start building your rhythm every day, adding between 10 and 20 new connections to your LinkedIn network.
Now, you don't need to send a personal message for all of those. We have advice from, you know, our LinkedIn expert that your response rate, with or without a personal note, is going to be about the same. And some people say, "I always wanna send a personal note," and if that's you, great. However, these... We- we're not selling off the back of the connection.
We're selling off the back of these people being in our network for a period of time so that they get to know us, right? They know us so that when we reach out to them, they're more likely to respond. So I would just say, just do it. The best place to go is to find one of your ideal clients and look down the side.
LinkedIn's gonna suggest a whole bunch of people exactly like that person, and just hit connect, connect, connect, connect. Sooner or later, if you do that enough, it's gonna start recommending it on your connections page, and you can just work through those people. You can also obviously use the search feature to help you find those people.
And then finally, number 10, the last thing I would do this year if I was, I w- I was planning to start or restart my business in 2027, is that I would build a really good rhythm around posting content on LinkedIn. And I do like to point out, to my mind, the point of our content on LinkedIn is not content for content's sake.
It is not to be a thought leader in isolation. It is not to be LinkedIn famous. It is because if we post relevant content and connection content and whatever your pillars are, we obviously, inside the accelerator, have a lot of support around that. But if you, if you do that well, and you are talking to your ideal clients, you are more likely to get positive responses to your outreach messages, and to me, that is the point of your content.
So what I want you to do is build up your rhythm, go through your learning curve before that point, like in the lead-up. And that means experimenting with different types of posts, getting into a rhythm of at least three posts a week. I know, controversial, but we are seeing a real, a real contraction of impressions on LinkedIn.
People are not seeing your content. The only thing I've seen is that when you post more frequently, you seem to get more impressions on each post. So, you know, I think at least three is probably the minimum if you want the algorithm to learn that you are showing up consistently. So I would do that.
And, you know, as part of that experimenting with posting on a frequent basis, talking to your ideal clients, that might include drafting and getting prepared for a launch or a relaunch post, because those posts do really well, and I want you to have that as part of your launch week once you do get into, you know, the part of 2027 when you wanna go live.
And I've got an episode that is all about that official launch, uh, period. Okay. So those are the 10 things I'd do if I were starting or restarting my business in 2027. What would I not do? So the things that I would not do, that I would hold off until you go live are turning on your outreach muscle. Now, what I would
What you could do... Actually, I should have included this. I'm ... That ... Let's make this one number 11, as I would prepare your outreach templates. You could even potentially prepare real outreach messages. But I wouldn't actually be pressing send until you are ready to have a certain volume and start having sales conversations.
So as soon as you're ready for that, then yes, going up, that's, I think the thing that will make all the difference. But until you're ready, that is not the thing. So if you're gonna start your business in 2027, you don't want clients before that; hold off until that point. Where your outreach can probably start is, you know, maybe, maybe two to three weeks before you would be available to take sales calls.
You can start generating a bit of momentum so those calls and those reconnection calls start to fill up your diary for when you are ready. Another thing I would hold off on until you go live is investing a lot of money in fancy branding, right? So it is okay to save that investment in the shiny website, in the professional logos, in the design stuff.
It's okay to hold that for phase two. It's okay for now to build good enough and then let that be phase two when you have some money coming in the door. That is what I would recommend. So those are the things I would hold onto. Now, another one that I would recommend doing, but I'm not gonna count this as one of the numbers because I have a vested interest in this, is that I think if you are getting ready to go and you want to be most efficient, you want support, you want accountability, I think you need a coach yourself.
Now, do I provide this service? Yes, I do, right? So I am absolutely, you know, I have, I have an agenda in saying that. However, I will say for the last [00:22:00] five, five or six years I have had my own business coach, and it has completely transformed my business. I have one now. I'm part of a mastermind group. I'm a member.
I have, I have always got coaching, and I am always getting more advice than, than I need because I want to do things as quickly as possible. I want the resources. I want the templates. I want the tools. I want the shortcuts. I wanna learn from someone who's already done it. I don't wanna have to have every learning curve the hard way.
And so that is what I want for you as well if you are starting or restarting your business in 2027. Now, what that looks like is, from my perspective, obviously I run the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, which is aimed at exactly this, which is giving you all the tools around building your funnel, doing the thinking work around your ideal clients and your offers, and giving you personalised feedback on that.
Helping you build your assets like your bio, your LinkedIn profile, and your website with templates and expert advice, and profile audits, website reviews, copy guides, and all of the above. And, you know, giving you step by step on how to, you know, s- build a content plan, all of the above, and doing that with people who are also doing that with you, incredible coaches around the world, and with coaching support so that you are never stuck and you never have a question that doesn't...
that goes unanswered. So if you would like to have a look at it, check it out at elliescarf.com/cca. I'm open to having a chat at elliescarf.com/bookacall, if you would like to explore whether that is for you. What I would recommend is to come along to my masterclass because I will tell you all about the executive coach pipeline model, which covers all of these things and so much more and what you need to do when you do go live, and I'll tell you all about the accelerator, and I'll show you what is included, what's inside.
So don't forget to sign up at elliescarf.com/pipeline. If you are interested. And I would say if you choose to join us in the accelerator, now is a really good time if you want your business to be live in 2027 or if you want a bit of a restart, and that is because we are about... In November, we start our planning cycles.
And that includes resetting your vision. That includes resetting your strategy, ready to go. So I am, I'm, I'm very excited. This is a very exciting time of year, uh, for those of us in business. And so now is the time to start thinking about what your 2027 strategy will look like. And so yeah, do come along.
I'll see hopefully I'll see some of you at my masterclass. But if this is you and you are starting or restarting your business in 2027, I'm so excited for you. This is, like, the most exciting part to me: helping people to really, you know, start with a bang. So I love it, and I'll be back here [00:25:00] next week with more.
See you later
