If you want a successful coaching practice, you can’t start with Step #1. You’ve got to start with Step #0. You have to start with “dedicating yourself, your time and your energy to mastering the art and science of coaching.” You will notice that I didn’t say “getting certified as a coach.” And I didn’t say “feeling the power of the universe move within you, then buying a few hundred cool business cards and having at it.” No! OK? Got it? Yes! Good then, now that we have clarified Step #0, we are ready for Step #1.

Identify the Specific Group of People that You Are Best Suited to Serve

A crass marketeer would call this your target market. But for us let’s just call it the convergence of your interest, your experience, your expertise, and their need. Don’t rush into it. Let it steep AND percolate. Take your time. And when the “power of the universe” actually does move within you, well then: that is the group. No. That is YOUR group!

One word of caution: if you want a truly successful coaching practice, the more specific your group, the better. It’s all about focus. If you want to have two groups, that’s OK. But keep them separate and keep the focus – anything else is just a blur.

Connect with Those People – NO! – connect with YOUR People

Open yourself up to the possibilities: speak publicly, create an internet site, write an article and/or write a book. This is a big subject, so get ready to read my next 25 blog posts. The point is GET OUT THERE AND GET CONNECTED!

For a Truly Successful Coaching Practice, Knock Their Socks Off, Ask for Referrals, and Watch the Magic Happen

Even in this cynical age, greater, freer, more open communications means that the better coaches with the more successful practices will rise to the top. So, first do a great job for your people. After that you can help it along by asking them to share their success with their friends and loved ones. Remind them of exactly the people you are looking to serve. And remind them to share their success. It is as simple as that. And before you know it, you will have a very successful coaching practice.

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!

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

Here are three secrets to building your coaching practice. Follow them and you will be running hard to keep up with the demand for your coaching services. Skip even one and you will be just another coach looking for part time jobs to pay the rent.

Make Yourself the Expert

There are two sides to making yourself the expert. First you have to be the expert. Second you have to demonstrate to lots of people that you are the expert.

Coaching is a very broad field. Obviously if you want to be a real expert, you have to pick a segment of coaching to specialize in. Pick an area that leverages your experience, whether that is about an event in your life – like being widowed or abused or overcoming a physical handicap – or some professional experience – like running businesses or being successful at sales. Then get training from a really solid school based on science not mumbo-jumbo.

Once you are on your way to being an expert, you need to show up as an expert. Experts do public speaking. Experts write articles. Experts appear on TV and radio. You get the idea.

Stand Out on the Internet

Experts also have content-rich internet sites. They have blogs that they update DAILY. They create video presentations that they load onto YouTube, and then link to their sites. They also get fans to link to their blog articles and friend them on Facebook. They use Adwords to bring prospects to “squeeze pages” to offer free high quality content in exchange for the prospects contact information. They build their contact databases, and stay in touch with email marketing. All that to not get lost on the internet and to build their coaching practice.

Make Every Client in Your Coaching Practice a Raving Fan

Perhaps the most important secret to building a successful coaching practice is to work to make every client into a raving fan. This is done with hard work and heart. But it is critical because each of these raving fans will tell their friends and everyone they know about what a positive difference you made in their lives. There is nothing more powerful than an enthusiastic recommendation from an actual client.

Follow these three secrets and you will be well on your way to building your successful coaching practice.

Special Bonus – Learn 3 simple ways to become a life coach with the “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit when you fill in the form at the top right and click the “Watch The Videos Now” button. You’ll learn how to change your client’s life in 45 minutes.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

When you started your coaching practice, I bet you wanted it to succeed big time, right? How’s it doing? Are you drawing the clients you anticipated? Are you bringing in enough income to leave your full time soul-sucking job? No? Well, check your vocabulary. See if you are using “killer” language, in the good sense of the word, or if you are killing your practice by using words that tell your mind you really don’t intend to succeed.

Trying Doesn’t Lead To Success In Your Coaching Practice

Listen to how you speak about your business. How often do you say you are ‘”trying” to build your practice? How many things on your to do list did you “try” to get to, but you just didn’t manage to do? Have you ever seen the a certain guru’s video where he asks someone he’s coaching to try to pick up a chair? She can’t do it. She can either pick up the chair or not pick up the chair. But there is no way to “try” to pick up the chair. When you tell yourself or others that you are trying to build your coaching practice, or trying to get x number of clients, what you are really saying is that those things won’t happen. Or more clearly, that you aren’t committed to making them happen. Trying means failing. Pretend that you are at the seminar I went to recently where saying the word “try” cost $10 and 10 push-ups. You’ll immediately raise your commitment to actually achieving what you need to achieve.

Can’t Is Another Weakling Word

Millionaire marketing coach Kelly O’Neil describes “can’t” as three year old language. Gurus and high achievers don’t allow themselves the luxury of can’t. They always find a way to do the things they want to do and need to do to further their business. You need to have that same commitment and express it in your language. In your coach practice, there will be times when you choose not to do some particular thing because it doesn’t serve you or because someone else can do it better. That puts you in a position of power. If you “can’t” do it, however, you are giving up your power and acknowledging your weakness.

You obviously want your coaching practice to succeed and become a successful, lucrative helping business. Make sure your language supports you in that goal.

To learn more about how to generate an endless wave of high paying coaching clients, get your FREE Instant Access to our “Life Coaching Business Blueprint” video toolkit when you go HERE.

Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

When you started your coaching practice, what were you expecting? Did you expect it to be easy? Did you expect to quickly have a great income from coaching? Did you think that clients would be falling all over themselves to beat a path to your door? So how’s it been going so far? If you are feeling frustrated, try adopting the playful attitude of a child approaching a new and exciting challenge. Try adopting the 3 keys to finding joy in your coaching practice.

Are Your Clients Friend Or Foe

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Children generally approach strangers with inquisitiveness and positive expectations—anyone could be a new best friend. As a coach, you deal with new people in your coaching practice and business all the time. How do you approach them? Do you feel intimidated or apprehensive? How do you react to a forceful voice on the other end of the line? Adopt the attitude of a child and approach your potential clients or partners with interest and enthusiasm. Potential clients come to you because they need your help and you can help them best and enjoy it most if you assume a positive attitude right from the start.

Stay Curious

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If you have ever been a child (!) you probably went through the “why” phase—you know, when you followed every answer to every question with another “why” until you drove your parents or teachers nuts. But it was fun, wasn’t it? And you learned a lot. Well, you don’t want to drive your clients nuts, but staying curious and asking open ended questions is definitely the way to keep you interested and to help your clients discover what they need to discover.

Don’t Be Afraid To Try Something New In Your Coaching Practice

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Children are always exploring and trying new things. That’s how they learn and it’s also how they keep from being bored. Guess what–it works the same way for you as a coach. Keep trying new techniques and technologies. Take courses. Learn NLP or hypnosis. Get trained on how to interpret assessments. Don’t be afraid to practice something you just learned. If it doesn’t work you can always retreat to what’s familiar. But keep expanding your expertise and you will never find your coaching practice boring!

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

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

How do you know if you are ready to start a coaching practice? It sounds like a great idea, but the average coach makes about 12K during the first year. Only the top 5% make more than 100K. How can you tell if you are ready to start your own practice? It takes more than great coaching skills. It takes determination at a level that will scare away all but a few.

How to Tell If Are Ready To Start a Coaching Practice

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1. Create a long term vision, and align yourself with it. Make decisions from the place you want to be. For example, if you are considering taking a course to get you to the next level or making some other type of investment in your business. Don’t determine your answer based on your current resources of time, money, energy. Take your current state out of the equation.

2. If you choose not to go forward, you don’t have to think about it. If you chose to move ahead, you must take action to make your decision work. The only mindset that works is when success is your only option. You need to create a plan and get coaching from people that have proven they can make it happen. Not from your buddies who are still hoping to make it happen.

Why This Doesn’t Work For Most People

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The reason this doesn’t work for most people is that they don’t commit. They rely on a plan B. You must be clear about what you want and why. Developing your coaching practice must be as important to you as the air you breathe. Don’t ask yourself how you will come up with the resources until you align yourself with your long term vision. Until then you will not get you the results you want.

To learn more about how to generate an endless wave of high paying coaching clients, get your FREE Instant Access to our “Life Coaching Business Blueprint” video toolkit when you go HERE.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

Your coaching practice can’t help but grow like Starbucks grew crazy out of control with the power of the free session. If you’re not practicing coaching through complementary sessions, you’re being stupid and it’s because you’re afraid you really don’t shake-up your clients’ lives in powerful ways that’ll free them from their 5 by 8 jail cell.

If you believed in your own ability to coach you wouldn’t allow your most precious source of new clients to rot right on the vine. Complementary sessions are hugely valuable for your coaching practice whether you sign-up a new client or not. Free sessions equals more testimonials and more testimonials means more life coaching business. The free session is the best way for new coaches to practice coaching and get better at it.

Growing your coaching practice through the power of the free session strategy

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I have two outcomes for complementary coaching sessions: 1. Get the client to sign-up for coaching and 2. ask them for a testimonial. You should always preframe this at the beginning of your coaching sessions and tell your prospect you’ll let them know at the end of your time today how they can get more coaching with you and if they choose to and what they can do to help you grow your life coaching business.

Once I’m done running a free session, I always ask my prospect to give me a testimonial whether they sign-up for coaching with me or not. My goal is to make my sessions the best coaching experience the new client has ever had because at the end I’m going to ask them to choose me as their coach and give me a testimonial. It’s my job to coach my client beyond their expectations so their testimonial will be powerful and a knock out for new free session prospects who’ll decide to coach with me based on prior customer testimonials.

Social Proof

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The best way to attract new customers to your coaching practice is to give them social proof. Many people make buying decisions based on other’s experiences. They want to know how you’ve helped other clients like them reach their goals and change their lives for the better. Prospects want proof that someone else like them got the result they want from you.

Coach your client how to give you a great customer testimonial for your coaching practice. Help them practice for a few minutes. Don’t put words into their mouth, but coaching them in doing it the right way can make a huge difference in what they’ll say.

Get them to state their experiences in measurable terms so others can quickly grasp what you did for them during your free coaching session which really got them breakthrough results.

Measurable terms means stating testimonials in ways that show the following results:
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1. How quickly they got the outcome they wanted
2. How your coaching improved their relationships by giving a before and after short story
3. How they got their project done on time and in less time with your coaching practices
4. Coaching helped them face their fears and now they take actions in areas of their life which they never did before

Now you can see the types of measurable ways your complementary sessions can create many new opportunities for growing your coaching practice. To grow a life coaching business like Starbucks grew out of control, the free coaching session can be the espresso for helping you get wired for more success.

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.

Don R. Hunter, MBA, Certified Financial Planner
JTS Certified Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

Would you be offended if I told you that your coaching practice is just a hobby?  Well, if you are reading this, that might be your situation.  Are you coaching part time without any concrete plan to leave your “real” job?   Undervaluing your services because you really want to help people but you aren’t sure your coaching is good enough to charge them?   Or maybe you’re coaching full time, but barely scraping by financially?   Not exactly what you had in mind when you decided to open a coaching practice, I’m guessing.  So how would you feel about turning that hobby practice into a business that will support you and give you the life you want?

Three Essential Roles Make Your Coaching Practice Into A Lucrative Business

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1)  Every business needs an entrepreneur.  To turn your coaching practice into a successful business, you need to have a vision.  What will the business look like?  What services will you offer?  Who will you serve?  These kinds of questions require a vision beyond the issue of how many clients you have time to coach in a day, or what niche you prefer.  They require an entrepreneurial mindset, an ability to see a bigger picture.  As with any new concept, if you can’t imagine it, you can’t make it happen.

2)  A business needs a technician.  The technician in a coaching business is you, the coach.  You have the skills to do what the business offers as its product and service–coaching, in whatever formats the entrepreneurial vision expects.  The technician is probably the role that sits most comfortably on you if you already have a coaching practice.

3) Your business needs a manager or administrator–someone to handle the day to day running of your business.  In a successful business, someone has to be designated to have the  responsibility for billing, paperwork, follow-up systems, bill-paying, etc.  This is a detail oriented job, and whoever fills it can’t let important details fall through the cracks.

What Do These Roles Mean For Your Coaching Business?

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All three roles are essential if you want your coaching practice to become a successful, satisfying and well-paid business.  So you either have to fill them all yourself or get someone to do the ones you can’t or don’t want to do.  To decide, ask yourself these questions:

1) Which role do you play most often?
2) Which one least often?
3) What are the costs and benefits of you filling or trying to fill each of these roles?

Be brutally honest, and when you have the answers, you will be well on your way to transforming your coaching practice hobby into a successful coaching business.

Special Bonus – Learn 32 ‘Guru’ Transformation Techniques when you fill in the form at the top right and click the “Watch The Videos Now” button. You’ll learn how to become a life coach in 30 days.

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

The most important single quality to succeed in building a life coaching business or coaching practice is self-discipline.  Self-discipline is having the ability within yourself based on your character, to do what you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.  This is essential to build a life coaching business or coaching practice.

Life Coaching Business:  You Can’t Build a Coaching Practice Without Character

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Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed.  It’s not what you learn but whether or not you can dedicate and discipline yourself to pay the price over and over again until you finally have the life coaching business or coaching practice you want.

You will need self-discipline to set your life coaching business or coaching practice goals in the first place.  You need self-discipline to continually revise and upgrade your plans with new information.  You need self-discipline to plan each day of your coaching practice and concentrate on the most important task that you could be doing to build your life coaching business.

Life Coaching Business:  Invest in Yourself and Your Coaching Practice Every Day

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You need to invest in yourself every day in order to develop personally and professionally.  You need to invest in yourself to learn what you need to learn to reach the goals that are possible for you in your life coaching business or coaching practice.  You will need self-discipline to delay gratification, to save and invest your money so that you can reach financial independence after you build your life coaching business or coaching practice.  You will need self-discipline to keep your thoughts on your goals and dreams and keep them off your doubts and fears.  You need self discipline to respond positively and constructively in the face of setbacks and problems rather than becoming angry and depressed.  This also sets a great example for your coaching clients.

Kris Thompson

JTS Advisors Strategy Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business

When you start a life coaching business or any coaching practice, you will have problems from the start. As soon as you commit and start taking action in your life coaching business, it may seem that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. You will learn more lessons in the first few weeks and months than you may have thought of in a year of planning a coaching practice from top to bottom.

Your Life Coaching Business Will Be A Series of Two Steps Forward And One Step Back

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When you start your life coaching business, you will make mistakes often. Probably all of these mistakes will cost you time, money and emotion. Don’t be discouraged by this. There is no other way to develop the skills, knowledge and character you need to have a successful life coaching business. Afer all, how can you teach someone about overcoming mistakes if you haven’t made any in your own coaching practice?

Your Coaching Practice Will Be Successful If You Take “Response-ability”

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Your journey toward a successful coaching practice will have regular problems, setbacks and temporary failures. These challenges are impossible to avoid. You cannot have a successful coaching practice without developing the skill of sticking to it. You will need to be able to overcome challenges and obstacles that will stand between you and the life coaching business you desire.

A successful coaching practice starts with expecting to experience problems. Coaches who fail in their life coaching business without expecting to have problems can become surprised and upset when things don’t go the way they expected. They can get angry and may even lash out at others and blame other people for their failure. They might get depressed and irrational. You can control only one aspect of a problem in your life coaching business: your response to the problem. It is sometimes called your “response-ability”. If you learn and do what other successful coaches have done to have a successful coaching practice, you will have one despite any problems that come up.

Kris Thompson
JTS Advisors Strategy Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Practice, Life Coaching Business