If you are a life coach, marketing is what will determine whether or not you are a financial success. You may be the most effective coach, the most skilled coach, the most compassionate coach, the most any adjective you like coach. But without effective life coach marketing, you may very well struggle to make a decent living, let alone a great living, by coaching. So what’s the key to marketing effectively?

What is marketing about?

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Marketing is about conveying information. Life coach marketing is about conveying the benefits of your coaching to your potential clients. What will they get as a result of your coaching? The profitability of your coaching is directly related to your ability to translate what you do and present it as concrete, external outcomes that your potential clients want.

Who are you when you design your life coach marketing?

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You have a choice when you develop your marketing materials. You can keep your “coach hat” on and be the expert. Or you can put your “marketer hat” on and draw clients to you so that you have the opportunity to change their lives. Let’s look at some of the differences in mindset about life coach marketing under the two hats.

1) The expert’s internal dialogue is all about himself. He feels he’s invested his time and money and energy learning his craft. He’s highly skilled. Now he just has to let people know that he’s an expert, and they will come flocking to hear his words of wisdom. He thinks marketing is immoral, unethical, or at the very least, beneath his pay grade.

2) The marketer’s internal dialogue says that marketing has to be the highest priority and that the most successful coaches are marketers first and experts second. She knows that people have to be educated about the value of coaching, and that they are only interested in knowing WIIFM, also known as what’s in it for me. She knows that potential clients won’t buy your services unless you are offering what they want.

Which hat are you wearing? Is it time for a change?

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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If you’re like most coaches, the reason you started your life coaching business was to help people. Most of us coaches are selfless when working with our clients; and selfish when we stop. Specific to marketing, we have our own perception of a marketer. We think we are different from those people. Our business is helping people. When our clients are in front of us, of course and we get into that coaching state. It doesn’t matter how good of a coach you are, however, until you get in front of them. How do you get to talk to all the people you want to help so badly?

What Your Life Coaching Business Clients Really Want

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What your potential life coaching business clients really want is to be understood. If you understand the greatest fears, hopes and desires of your target client and you can communicate that with them in a clearer, more concise manner; they will automatically see you as the solution. The will want you to be their life coach.

The Secret To Successful Marketing

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It’s not how you write your marketing material that matters most. It’s what you say and the point you are trying to make. Marketing material written at the 4th grade level can be more effective at getting clients than a work created by a professional copywriter. The ideal sales letter is almost like a love letter to your mom or a best friend. You want to give them what they are looking for in terms of greatest fears, frustrations and desires. When you market in this manner, it is more of an attraction method to getting life coaching business rather than a push. And if you’re like most coaches who don’t identify themselves as sales superstars, this can be a much more appealing way to grow your business.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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The first thing many coaches want to do when they start their life coaching business is to choose a name.  The process can take months, and it costs time that would be better spent on getting coaching clients.  Unfortunately most life coaches don’t have the information they need to choose a great name when they are just starting their business.

The Formula For Success In Choosing a Life Coaching Business Name

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Before you can choose a life coaching business name, you need information.  You must clearly understand your ideal client, so you can choose a name that calls out to that person in a way they know you have what they want.  How do you do that?  The best way is to ask your potential clients.  I know that sounds like suicide, but there is a way to find out in a way that conveys that you truly care.  The best way is by surveying your list in order to find out what their greatest fears, frustrations and desires are regarding the problem you are planning to help them solve.  If you are a business coach for example, you want to find out what their greatest fears, frustrations and desires are in their business.

The next step is to use their fears, frustrations and desires in a way to show that you are the resource for getting them what they want.  Try to make it catchy, memorable, and in a brief form.

The New School Of Business

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Gone are the old days where businesses flourished without really being about the client.  If you want your life coaching business to be successful in the new economy, you’re going to need to take a stand for being about your clients.  When your company name conveys their greatest fears, frustrations, and desires; they will automatically assume that you have the power to help them.

Would you like an endless stream of new coaching clients? Simply fill out the form to the right with your first name and email and I’ll send you free videos with step-by-step blueprints for generating a massive income from high paying coaching clients.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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If you’re going to have a successful life coaching business, you’re going to have to walk through some type of fire.Most likely on more than one occasion.  This fire is of course a metaphor, although you could join 3 or 4,000 others at a Tony Robbins’ UPW seminar and walk through actual fire.  The fear alone would stop most people from moving forward, but as a life coach it won’t stop you from achieving what you want to do in your business.  Here are some coaching reminders to make sure nothing stops you from achieving your life’s dreams.

Life Coaching Business Cures As You Step Out Into Your Own Fire

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.1.  The most important life coaching business cure is to know what you want and surround yourself with others who are committed to going with you.  The power of a peer group can keep you moving forward even when you think you can’t, don’t want to or any other reason that comes up as you are about to step up.

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2.   Build up a relationship of integrity.  When you commit to doing something, follow through.  Even with the small things that don’t seem to matter.  This will make it easier to follow through as you come up to the more challenging commitments.  When you are about to step up to your own “fire walk” you will come up with any one of a number of common excuses not to move forward.  These excuses will seem reasonable, but BEWARE!  These excuses are the voice of your sub-conscious mind trying to keep you from moving too far out of your comfort zone.  The sub-conscious is trying to keep you from “certain death” that will result from moving forward.  It will use any trick possible to protect you.

Get Some Coaching When You Start To Doubt

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3.   You can’t see your own blind spots, so you need perspective at these times.  And someone who is willing to hold you accountable to your goals.  Friends and family will most likely not be able to do this for you, when faced with your sub-conscious mind backed into a corner.  Beware that at these times the sub-conscious mind is running off the fight or flight mechanism.  This means you will either fight the person who is trying to hold you accountable or avoid them.  Another way of avoidance is by tears, which may be very effective with friends and family in getting them to back off.  There is no substitute to for a good life coaching business coach to help you navigate through your own challenges, and help you step into the person you want to become.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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If you want to learn how to speak with confidence in any situation, you may be thinking it’s either a nearly impossible or that it will take a lot of time to achieve. But that’s not true. I have a friend who had an opportunity to be showcased during a 30-minute local news program. Unfortunately she is very introverted. In her mind it was a huge shift from where she was to the confidence she wanted to speak with. It was only required a 2mm shift, and here’s how she did it.

How To Speak With Confidence Even When You’re Terrified

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Tip #1: Realize that you know how to speak with confidence, and that you do so every day. Notice how you stand when you’re confident, the look you have on your face, and how you breathe. Step into that posture and really feel how you feel when you are speaking with confidence. Compare this state with how you feel when you are nervous. Which one will be more effective?

Tip #2: Speak from the heart. That is, the giving side of your heart. Isn’t it much easier to give a gift than to ask for something? Don’t ask people to listen to what you want to tell them. Find out what they want, ask questions, and give them what they want. If you’re nervous you are making it about you, your message, and how you look instead of making it about serving others.

The Key To Speaking With Confidence

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Tip #3: If you really want to know how to speak with confidence, you’re going to have to practice. Practice is of course most effective when it is specific to the environment you want to have mastery over. If you practice in front of the mirror, you’ll get better at speaking in front of a mirror. Find areas where you can get in front of people and practice. After awhile, you will step into the confidence that you are seeking.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Your life coaching fees are not dependent on your experience, your past outcomes or your market. What really determines your coaching fees is the extent to which your clients see you as the only way to get what they want. If their life is on the line, and you have the answer, they will do whatever it takes to get it. That’s one of the reasons creating a niche is so important when setting up your life coach business. But choosing a niche is not enough.

The 3 Niche Myths That Harm Your Life Coaching Fees

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Myth #1: Targeting your market is a one-time event. In reality a niche is more like a baby. The needs of a newborn change over time, and you teach them to express their needs as they grow. You also discover the needs of your niche more deeply over time while in a dialogue with your prospects and clients. It can happen live or via internet.

Myth #2: You should try to find the biggest niche possible. In reality you want to find the biggest need that you can meet, not the biggest market. If your mega niche is health & wellness coaching, you could never meet the needs of that entire group. You’ll need to narrow it down even more, to something such as weight loss coaching for women over 50 so you can develop the skills to become an expert.

Myth #3: Do what you love and the money will follow. In reality you need to look to meet the needs of your clients, and give it to them in a format that they are willing to pay your life coaching fees. Then you need to learn about marketing and sales so you can deliver those solutions to them.

The Ultimate Niche Myth

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The ultimate niche myth is that you want to find a niche; similar to choosing a dress off a rack of clothes. Actually, you want to develop a niche if you want to optimize your life coaching fees. Create something that has never been done or make improvements on someone else’s services. Just like FedEx created an overnight delivery service in a well established package delivery environment. They broke into that market because they found a need that wasn’t being met. You can do the same, and enjoy the same success if you dare.

SPECIAL BONUS — If you would like step-by-step blueprints for generating a massive income from high paying coaching clients, I invite you to claim your FREE ACCESS to the “Life Coach Salary Secrets” video toolkit. Go HERE to get it FREE.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Marketing for life coaches is a challenge. Think about it. How do you feel about sales and marketing? Do you want to be writing sales copy or coaching clients? Probably you want to be coaching clients—enough clients to make a good income. The problem is you have to find them before you can coach them. How are you going about it right now?

This week I’m in a JTS Advisors training on internet marketing for life coaches, and it’s a real eye opener. Marketing may not be what you want to do, but since you want to have enough clients to fill your practice and have a great income, here are two ideas to help you be successful.

Marketing for life coaches takes an unexpected mind set

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Marketing is all about your prospect, in this case your client. If you look at coaching websites and blog pages on line, most often what you see is words and pictures that are all about the coach. What the coach wants to do for the client. What the coach thinks the client needs. Guess what? What you want to do for the client is probably not what he or she is looking for. Your potential clients will only begin to like and trust you if your words make them feel you understand them. What you say has to address the deepest fears, frustrations and desires of your potential clients. Then they will know that you”get” them—that you understand what it is they want or need, and they may be willing to go to the next stop with you.

What else is absolutely critical for successful marketing?

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What is the most critical phase of marketing for life coaches? It should be obvious, but it’s easy to miss. It’s GET STARTED! The toughest thing about marketing is often getting started. You want it to be perfect, right? That seems like a good reason to not do it yet. But it’s not. Push past your reservations and get something out to begin to market to your potential clients. It doesn’t have to be perfect—once you have something, you can test and tweak and revise until you get the results you want. But if you don’t start and push through all the yammering in your head that’s getting in your way, you won’t get any results at all.

Give this strategy a try and see for yourself that it works. If you liked this coaching tip, leave a comment or use the handy bookmark buttons below to share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. Thanks!

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Unfortunately for most life coaches, building a coaching practice requires more than coaching skills. For most of us, our coaching “hat” fits well and easily. But it is very different from our business “hat” which may not fit so well. While the helping and giving side of being a coach is what makes us who we are, it also makes turning our coaching into a successful business something of a challenge. Networking helps coaches to bridge the gap when building a coaching practice.

Networking uses attributes that coaches already have

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There are many approaches to building a coaching practice. Networking, however, is a particularly congruent skill for coaches who want to build their businesses. Why? Because networking is about relationships and so is coaching. Dr. Ivan Misner, the father of modern networking, says that networking is “more about farming than hunting.” Translation: networking isn’t just about going in for a quick exchange of business cards. His networking model involves building relationships. Sure, you might go to a networking meeting and find someone who is interested in a free session with you. But if you take the time to get to know people in the group and let them get to know you, you might end up with several clients or even better, an affiliate partner–someone far more helpful than a single client in terms of building a coaching practice.

Three key networking techniques for building a coaching practice

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1) If you’ve studied marketing at all you probably know that you need a 30 second “elevator pitch” for your networking. What you might not know is that you really only have about 7 seconds to catch someone’s attention–by then you’ve either caught their interest or not. So when you’re building a coaching practice it’s critical that you script an elevator pitch that makes people want to know more about you and what you do.

2) Remember that networking is about relationships and relationships are critical to building a coaching practice. When you meet someone, ask questions about them. Find out who they are and what they need. Build the conversation about them first, and see if what you are offering is a good fit for them before you offer it.

3) Focus on getting other people’s information rather than giving away your own. Most business cards go straight into the circular file after a meeting, but if someone gives you their card, they are giving you permission to contact them. Contact them by phone no more than 48 hours after you meet them if building a coaching practice includes giving complimentary sessions. And add them to your mailing list.

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Coaching success stories are what keep us going as coaches. Whether it’s my story or yours, it’s inspiring to all of us. We use coaching success stories to motivate ourselves, to motivate our clients and to help convert potential clients into paying ones. But for some coaches, and in fact many clients, it can be challenging to acknowledge the successes we’ve had and take credit for transforming ourselves into the people who could make those successes happen. When we don’t acknowledge success and transformation, we limit our ability to use those experiences to spur us on to further action. So how do we cement it all in? What can we do, and have our clients do, to keep our successes real and significant so they can move us forward? We can celebrate!

Why celebrate our coaching success stories?

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The simple answer to why we need to celebrate our coaching success stories is that when we do, the successes become real to us. The celebration anchors the story and the success to a positive, powerful physical and mental state so we can call on that state when we need it. Everyone has doubts and fears, and it’s easy for the doubts and fears to cloud the story and take away our power. We get into our heads, start analyzing what happened, and minimize or even negate out accomplishments. We find explanations for what happened other than “I did that, I made that happen!”

One of my personal coaching success stories is about me being coached into a state where I was so unstoppable that I could (and did) safely walk barefoot across a bed of 2000 degree coals! I celebrated like crazy afterwards, and now I have only to put myself back in that celebratory state to know that if I could do that, I can do anything. Celebrating helps us to own what we have done so it can kick-start us to further action.

Meaningful celebrations

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Coaching success stories are always cause for celebration, and celebration is first and foremost a physical activity. Pat yourself on the back. Jump and down and shout “yes”. Do whatever works for you. Reward yourself in some way and when you are feeling your absolute best, ask yourself some questions to really help you own what you caused or accomplished and who you had to be to make it happen. What are you celebrating? Why is that worth celebrating? Why was it an important goal? What did you do to achieve that goal? Who have you become in the process? Who will you become in the future because of what you did?

As children, we all knew how to celebrate. Something as small as seeing a caterpillar on the ground or a rainbow in the sky made us burst with joy and excitement. Coaching success stories are our caterpillars and rainbows. So celebrate your successes and your client’s successes with abandon, and use the momentum to make both of you unstoppable.

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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If you haven’t reached your life coaching business goals yet, there is a reason. And it’s not really your fault. Someone has kidnapped your brain and fed it lies. The good news is once you know the lies that are keeping your from living your dreams, you can then take action that will turn your life and your business around.

3 Lies That Will Kill Your Life Coaching Business

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1. “I Don’t Have Time”. We all have the same amount of time in our lives, and being the mom of 2 small children I have wondered what I could have created if I began before they arrived. But that is not the hand I was dealt. You have your own hand, too. But think about areas that you could put up a claim and call it your own. For example, did you know that if you slept one hour less per night for a year you would have an entire extra month to work on your life coaching business?

2. “I Don’t Have Money.” Money is never really the issue. The same people who say they don’t have money to invest in their life coaching business are the same ones who find that money a week later to bail out a family or friend in need. Other people can find money when they need it because of their sheer audacity and determination.

It All Comes Down To A Single Question

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3. The biggest lie of all is that you are doing all you can. It all comes down to one question. Are you committed or not? At one point in his life my dad was struggling financially. Making some money was a must for his survival. One day someone asked if he could lay tile. He told the guy he could and committed to be there the next day. He had never done it before, so he went the library immediately to check out some books to learn how. He committed, and then took action. He didn’t leave a way out.

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Most people “try”. But as Yoda said in Star Wars, “There is no try, only do.” Are you committed enough to your life coaching business to taking action, assessing the results of your action, modifying your approach, and persevering until you achieve the results you want? If not, you are better off finding a nice steady job with good benefits because coaching is not for you.

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Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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