Mattison Grey is professional business and leadership coach and the founder of Greystone Guides, a high performance coaching and consulting firm. Her clients and fans enjoy her contrarian views and her courage to be provocative in a way that challenges the status quo. Mattison is fascinated by the gap between high performers and low performers and what it takes to go from mediocre to masterful in a chosen endeavor.
Coaching is a popular choice of profession for people right now.
Seems like everyone is a coach or is becoming a coach, doesn’t it? That is no secret. The trouble is there are secrets about coaching and having a coaching business. Secrets no one is telling beginning or emerging coaches. The coaching schools won’t tell you – you might not sign up; coaching organizations won’t tell you – it’s not their role. So who has the guts to tell you? Julia Stewart, the gutsy-ist coach in America, has asked me to expose some of those secrets and share with you what I think are the biggest myths about coaching and starting a coaching practice. Here we go with the 8 biggest myths many emerging coaches believe.
MYTH #1, 2 and 3: Everyone needs a coach; coaching is for everyone; or everyone is a prospect. Sure everyone has room for improvement, but not everyone wants it. Learning to identify who is curious about coaching and who is not takes quite a bit of practice, and assuming everyone is a prospect can get in the way of accurate sorting.
MYTH #4: Coaching fixes problems. In fact, if you approach coaching with that mentality you will drive people away. Even though few people’s lives are perfect, they will resist coaching if you “come from” something’s wrong.
I often say, Amateur Coaching fixes problems. Masterful Coaching creates them.
What do I mean by that? If you take the client’s problem or challenge at face value, you will be missing a huge opportunity to really move them toward their greatness. Behind the presented challenge is always a bigger issue. Most of us know that. What masterful coaches know is that you don’t have to find that issue and solve it. You have to help the client find a project or game that is so interesting, fun and engaging that the previous issue magically disappears or is solved by the new game.
Here is a real life example: A few years ago, I was bored with my coaching business and not having much fun anymore. That was a pretty big problem. I asked Julia for a coaching session. Long story short, as a result of the coaching, I decided to DOUBLE my coaching fees. Never mind my fee was already pretty substantial. Doubling it would, with the exception of celebrity coaches, put it near the top tier of coaching fees in the world. WOW, now I had a HUGE “PROBLEM” but boy was I excited about it, and instantaneously my boredom went away and the fun returned.
MYTH # 5: You have been coaching your entire life. Even if you have been a great listener and confidant all your life, that doesn’t mean what you were doing is coaching or that you were meant to be a coach. When you get really good professional training it will become obvious that, while what you were doing may have been helpful for people, it wasn’t really professional coaching.
MYTH #6: You can make a great living in the beginning. You can’t charge high fees in the beginning. Beginner coaches get beginner clients, who pay beginner fees. That is true in most professions. The more experience you have under your belt, the higher fee you can charge.
MYTH #7: Internet marketing is coaching. This is a huge misconception and my biggest pet peeve. You can be a coach who uses internet marketing, or you can be an internet marketer who coaches. Trying to be both or not being clear about this distinction is a big mistake that beginners make. Either way is fine, but to really make it work you have to choose.
Finally the biggest myth in coaching today:
MYTH #8: You can have a successful coaching business without learning to sell. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but to fill your coaching practice you must learn to sell. This has never been more of a reality than in today’s extremely competitive market. With a coach on every corner, the only coaches that will make it will be the ones who can sell in a graceful authentic way.
Related posts:
There are so many great reasons to becom a coach and some that are not so great. One of the best reasons is you simply have the sense that there is so much more to life and you want to share that.
Watch 'More' by Nic Askew. If it resonates with you, you're on the right track.
'MORE' from Nic Askew on Vimeo.
I never thought I'd say this, but it's time: Time for coach training to be free.
Why? Because people need coaching. It changes lives and that's why it has become one of the most marketable and employable skills of the 21st Century.
But many of the people who want to coach are unemployed and broke, so a new cottage industry has emerged: selling fake coaching credentials for a few hundred dollars, instead of the few thousand that coach training usually costs. Sometimes a tiny amount of training goes with the diploma, certification, or degree, but mostly they're just rubber stamps.
Fake credentials hurt the clients who hire the coaches and they hurt coaches who are naive enough to buy them. They also hurt the reputation of coaching.
It's time for real coach training to be free. So coaching schools can go back to competing on merit, instead of price and the coaching world can get back to quality, evolution, growth and potential.
Today, School of Coaching Mastery starts offering our Free Coach Training Program. It's our answer to the epidemic of bogus training.
Over the coming weeks, we'll add more courses. We'll also give an exam for those who want to take it and the graduates will receive a free Coaching Certificate. Now anyone who is curious can have genuine coach training. There's no reason to buy bogus credentials.
If you want to know more, read our 'Free Coach Training Manifesto' here.
If you like this idea, please use the social sharing buttons above to help us spread the word.
What do you think? Do you like this idea? Are we crazy? Are you curious about the details? Comment below:
Can new college grads find work this year, or should they just go home and live with Mom & Dad?
With the unemployment rate still hovering near 10%, new college graduates are having an awful time finding jobs this year. Transitioning from college to adult life is tough enough even when the economy is good. There's getting the job, learning to budget, pay the school loans and still buy the stuff you need, all while navigating your social and love life. That's overwhelming, right there.
But this year? For millions it's easier to just delay the whole process and move back in with the parents. Or maybe apply for graduate school and hope things get better in two more years.
Things are so bad, one frustrated NYC mother started her own website called, Get My Kid Off My Couch, with links to resume, blog, social sites, etc., showing off her daughter's skills, because both of them are desperate to get on with their lives and all it will take is just one little job.
Well here's an alternative. If your son or daughter has good communication skills (Check their cell phone bill, if you're not sure), they may want to upgrade what they already have with coaching skills for a couple of reasons.
1. There are still jobs for people who can coach. I just did a search on Indeed.com for 'coach, coaching or coaches' (and I filtered OUT sports references like tennis, lacrosse, cheer, football, baseball, softball, basketball, etc., etc.). I got back nearly 75,000 available jobs that require coaching skills. Not bad.
2. Coaching can be a lucrative business. Some college grads are skipping the job treadmill all together and just starting their own businesses. Few businesses are as inexpensive to start up as coaching. There's no inventory, no store front, no staff needed, just a computer and a phone. And good coaching skills.
And by the way, that major transition that students go through from high school to college to first job and beyond? That's a huge coaching niche. Who better to coach young people through these major life stages a than those who have just navigated all that, themselves?
However, a very young coach needs coach training to be credible. Happily, new college grads are already good at being students and coach training costs a lot less than graduate school. And it trains them in something they can actually do, too.
You could say that all coaches are in the business of success.
Our clients hire us to help them succeed at big goals, life dreams and personal growth. Good coaches know they transform their client's lives, so it's only natural that every coach wants to feel successful with their own goals and dreams.
Just like our clients, we coaches have our own personal definitions of success.
My definition of success is that I get to be my best self, doing work that I love, that is changing the world for the better. Oh yeah, and I get paid for that! I know I'm succeeding when I'm lit up daily and having fun most of the time.
To reach this level of success, I had to learn and relearn my vision of myself and how the world works. I then had to practice thousands of hours to master this new way of seeing, being, and doing. Along the way, I had to craft a business that would support me while I spread this thing called 'coaching' that seems to change everything.
How do you define coaching success for yourself?
If you could use some help with your definition, I've put together our top 3 most popular ebooks into one free 'Coaching Success Kit':
- It starts with 'Become a Coach!', an ebook designed to help the new coach get started in this booming industry and it includes 8 hours of recorded coach training, plus a side-by-side comparison of some of the top coach training schools.
- Next, there's the Coach 100 Business Success ebook, with tools to get you started with one of the most effective processes for filling a coaching practice EVER (while becoming a masterful coach, at the same time).
- Finally, there's the Seven Secrets of Mastery Certification ebook, with tools and tips on how to inspire yourself and achieve an elite coach certification. It includes a quiz that will help you determine, once and for all, whether you even need to get certified.
If you know how to coach masterfully and you know how to fill your practice with clients, then you have what you need to achieve coaching success, however you define it.
Coach Michael Jay Sullivan left this unsolicited comment about the Coaching Success Kit on Facebook last week:
"It's amazing how transformative for me Julia's free Coaching Stuff in a box has been. Better than some of the paid training I've gotten."
I love unsolicited testimonials; they are usually the most honest!
By the way, please tell us how YOU define coaching success, in the 'comments' section, below.
If you're active on social media, then you can't have missed the hoopla over Google Buzz, Google's foray into social networking.
Google gets it right so much of the time, that most of us were surprised when they messed up with Buzz. First off, after testing Buzz internally, Google made some assumptions about how customers would interact with Buzz. Those assumptions led them to integrate Buzz automatically with every Gmail account, instantly giving millions of Gmail users Buzz followers gleaned from their Gmail address books and linking private emails and chats with public social conversations. Whoa Nelly!! That's a major invasion of privacy!
In addition, Buzz links up blogs and social networking profiles, which is kind of a nice touch, but suddenly, millions of people realized that Google knows more about us than we thought and it apparently can't be trusted to use keep all that info private (see above). This prompted Karen Rubin of Hubspot, to comment that Google knows enough about her to build an exact clone. Eew.
Result? A lot of negative buzz on Buzz. And a mild sense of paranoia about what Google was really up to. Google has enjoyed a fantastic reputation for years and the Buzz snafu will hardly bring them down, but even big companies can spoil their success with too many missteps. (Re: Microsoft, AOL)
So what are the take-aways for coaches?
- All the data in the world doesn't mean you really know what your clients want. Nothing's better than asking and listening, no matter how smart and informed you are or how good you are at what you do.
- Just because your customers already love what you do, doesn't mean they'll love everything you do. You can build an awesome empire with one fantastic offering (like Google Search).
- Guard your contacts' identity info even more than you guard your own. People hate having their data spilled out where they don't want it and as a business owner, you are liable if someone's identity is stolen, because of your mistakes.
- Do Google potential clients and even connect with their social profiles. That's normal and expected these days, but don't collect so much info about them that you creep them out. Stalking is still extremely unattractive.
Bottom line? Be a coach in everything you do. Make it all about others and be sure to ask and listen. That's the foundation of great coaching and great coach marketing. It's why coaching is such a successful business (and why even Google's CEO says everyone needs a coach)
For more ideas on how to do it right:
Download the free Become a Coach eBook.
If you're reading this article then, obviously, you spend time online reading about coaching.
And if that's the case, then you must have noticed all those ads that promise that you'll be a master certified coach in two days or 16 hours, or whatever. Sometimes, they also advertise their tuition, which is cheap, cheap, cheap.
You can imagine how those schools are regarded by real professional coaches. Mark Joyella (@CoachReporter), who writes for the Coaching Commons, tweeted about them (I'm paraphrasing), 'Sure and next weekend you can become a brain surgeon!'
I'm thinking those ads mainly appeal three types of people. Those who:
1. Think they already know how to coach (a.k.a. arrogant)
2. Are only interested in coaching for the money (a.k.a. greedy)
3. Are clueless (a.k.a. gullible)
Those who're attracted to us don't fit those descriptions, so I never considered weekend coach training schools our competition.
But I reconsidered that when I heard that one of my most respected competitors, Barbra Sundquist, is closing her 'Become a Certified Coach' school at the end of this year [12-11-09 Update: Barbra isn't going out of business, but simply closing the doors of this particular program. See Barbra's comments in the comments section, below.]. Barbra cited a number of reasons, including rising competition from cheap, highly advertised, schools. That got me thinking...
What if the proliferation of bogus coach training schools drives out most or all of the legitimate schools? Where does that leave the profession of coaching? Will the majority of coaches then be unskilled or disreputable? Will the reputation of coaching drop to the point that real professional coaches quit?
I'm not trying to be an alarmist here. You can't prevent a potential problem if you're not willing to look at it. Coaching has enjoyed incredible freedom in the past 20 years. But the success and freedom of coaching has sometimes attracted people with the wrong motivations.
I admit, 2009 has been a challenging year for School of Coaching Mastery, as well. Several of our students didn't pay their bills. But that forced me to consider just how committed I am to coach training and I realized that if it came down to choosing between my home or my school, I'd give up the house!
So I'm in it for the long haul. But what about you? If you're committed to coaching, then you're probably just as disturbed as I am about the proliferation of schools and coaches who don't cast a good light on this profession.
What do you think needs to be done about it? Do coaching organizations like the IAC and ICF have a responsibility to do anything? Do they even have the authority to do anything? Or do coaches themselves need to take more responsibility for the image of the profession?
There's lots of hang-wringing going on in private forums, but coaching is about action. Do you need to take action?
Please post your views on this in the area below and if coaching is a really important issue for you, please also share this article with the social sharing tools, above.
Free teleclasses (aka: teleseminars, teleconferences) are an incredible way to learn amazing new stuff from top-notch leaders.
Most new coaches and a lot of not-so-new coaches love to spend time on fantastic teleclasses. The reasons are 5-fold:
1. Teleclasses are a cheap, easy and convenient way to connect with like-minded people from around the world to talk about stuff your family and neighbors may not give a hoot about.
2. As a new coach, you have a lot to learn. What better way to learn it than to listen to the experts tell you how they did it and how you should do it.
3. Practically everyday, another not-to-be-missed teleconference series is launched that you simply must attend. Often, these conferences are free, so how can you say, 'No'?
4. You can sit in your bedroom, wear your underwear, pet the cat, drink coffee and answer email; all while you learn from the world's greatest thought leaders.
5. (Biggest reason) As long as you're taking teleclasses, you're moving forward on your path to becoming a successful coach, because you're learning and growing, right?
If you're like thousands of other coaches, probably not.
Free teleclasses are like the crack cocaine of coach training: Cheap, available everywhere, trendy (for a while), and incredibly easy to get addicted to. That last point explains why they are so available: Because people get addicted to them, they make perfect marketing vehicles.
The reason I say you are not moving forward with your business when you are on teleclasses, is for one simple reason: You can't build your business that way. You just can't.
And if you're like many of the newbie coaches that I know, the real reason you spend so much time hanging out on teleclasses is that taking steps to build your coaching business is scary, uncertain and you are soooo afraid of making mistakes.
Teleclasses are the coach's favorite excuse for procrastination.
Sorry. The truth isn't always pretty. What can you do about your teleclass addiction? Well, until they come with Surgeon General's Warnings or alarms, red flags and flashing lights, you need a plan. And you must stick to your plan. Here are a few points that might help:
- Figure out how many client hours you want to be coaching each week.
- Double that number and you have the number of hours each week you need to spend on building your coaching business.
- Mark those hours off on your calendar and use them to actively build your business. Daily.
- None of those business-building hours should be spent on teleclasses.
- Consider time spent on teleclasses as entertainment time.
- Limit your hours on teleclasses, just as you would limit a child's time watching television.
- Don't worry if you miss a teleclass program. If EnlightenNext is doing it this month, you can bet MaestroMonth will do it next month. You'll never miss a thing.
Some teleclasses will benefit you more than others. Prioritize those that are part a progressive (usually paid) program that actively teaches you how to do something you need to know, gets you into action, and gives you feedback on how you're progressing. Also prioritize those programs that you lead, yourself, those that you actively participate on and those that teach you something you need to know this week, because you are applying the lessons right away.
Have a big vision for your coaching business and actively create it in reality.
Unless your big coaching vision is of you sitting in your bedroom, wearing your underwear, while you pet the cat, drink coffee and answer email, step away from the teleclasses.
Photo by jerine at flickr creative commons.
'I don't want to market, I just want to coach.'
You too? I've heard this refrain from hundreds of coaches and I am soooo sympathetic. Building a coaching business from scratch can truly feel overwhelming. Of course, you don't know how to do it - yet.
But I'll let you in on a little secret.
THE best marketing strategy is to coach, coach and then go coach some more. Is there a problem here that I'm missing? I don't think so!
Here are 10 ways to fill your coaching business by coaching:
1. To reach the moon, shoot for the stars. What's a way bigger goal than filling your coaching businesess? Shoot for that and fill your business in the process. One fantastic way to do this is to coach many more people than you think you need to.
2. Get a system. All a business is, is a system for making money. Systemize your coaching and create a business out of it. Coach a lot of people in a systematic process that provides value to others and build your business abilities at the same time. Everything will get easier.
3. Experiment. Millions are made by 'gurus' who claim to have 'fool-proof' systems for making a killing. Usually it's only the gurus making the killing. To find your own best system, experiment and expect some failures. Every successful coach fails some of the time and then learns from each failure.
4. Track your progress. Set goals for yourself along the way (you can call them intentions, if you prefer). Watch how you're doing over time. You should be improving. If not, tweak your system. Make it fun by making a game out of it.
5. Remember it's not about you. Get your focus off yourself and your needs and focus on assisting your potential clents. If you need to get a side job, go for it! Most new coaches have a side income in the beginning.
6. Build relationships. You'd be surprised how many people will HELP you build your business if you give them a chance. Some of them may become your clients; some of them may just tell everyone they know about you. But remember to be assisting them, too.
7. Learn to cement relationships. Recognize when someone wants to work with you (they may be shy about showing it) and when they just need an invitation from you. In sales parlay this is known as 'closing the deal'. You do NOT need to be salesy to do it. In fact, salesy-ness can kill relationships.
8. Transform lives in minutes. Fantastic coaching practically sells itself. If you give a complimentary session to someone, solve their problem, and they don't buy your coaching package, you didn't give fantastic coaching. Get ongoing feedback on your coaching and you'll become a fantastic coach faster.
9. Collect outcomes, results, testimonials and referrals. The more great coaching you do, the more attractive your track record becomes. People need to see your track record, so don't be shy about sharing it.
10. Stop boo-hoo-ing. Crocky the Coach (above) gets to cry you-know-what-kind-of-tears, but you don't, because you're not a cartoon!
Isn't it marvelously perfect that the best way to build a successful coaching business is by doing a lot of coaching?
If you're not sure how to begin, the new free Coach 100 eBook will help you. We also have a system for filling your coaching business that makes it easy to shoot for the stars, experiment, track and tweak everything, so you can get your focus off you and onto building and cementing relationships, having transformative conversations and collecting great testimonials, referrals and clients. We even have a community of coaches who are going through the same process. They've become the experts on this and they're even sympathetic to the occasional crockodile tear. But start with the ebook.
Get the Coach 100 eBook here.
Watch the recorded version of our free 'Become a Coach' webinar and learn the keys to building a successful coaching business as quickly as possible.
Download the free 'Become a Coach!' eBook