A lot of coaches never get around to building a coaching practice because they don’t feel like they are ready. Others don’t know where to begin. Of course, you can begin by coaching your friends and family. But does it really count? Building a coaching practice is much more than coaching. It’s proactively meeting people, setting up free coaching sessions, and enrolling them into coaching.

The Distinction Between Building a Coaching Practice and Just Coaching

When you actively contact people and coach them, you take control over your coaching business. Waiting for friends and family to ask for advice is not a basis for a business. Taking a passive approach to your business has an extremely limited future. It’s at best a hobby and unless you take your own business seriously, no one else will.

If you are taking action, however, you are in control of your own destiny. As you start taking actions that build a coaching practice such as running free sessions, you begin to take ownership of your business. You become the authority. Eventually these coaching sessions will become the backbone of your practice. You will have control over the growth of your business instead of being a passive recipient waiting for crumbs of bread.

What Else Can You Do To Build Your Coaching Business?

Other ways of building your coaching practice include using Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networking sites, internet marketing, public speaking, joint venture partners, cold calls, networking events, referrals, and so on and so on.

Of course all these are great ways of building your coaching practice and some of these will bring so much business you’ll need to hire coaches to serve the clients that come to you if you are consistent over time. Until you master the skill of taking control of your coaching relationships and actively seek out clients rather than wait for people to seek out your advice, you have a hobby and not a business. Having a coaching hobby is fine, but you won’t make money and you won’t help your clients as much as you will when they know you make your living on your coaching skills.

It’s sad to say, but true. Until people somehow see your coaching practice as a business, they actually won’t see as much value in your time. It’s a bit of the old adage, you get what you pay for. Coaching family and friends for free cheapens the transaction. While I don’t charge my friends and family, they know that I have a business and that others pay me for the same advise they get for free. Somehow they

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach