The following is taken from David’s interview with Bob Davies in 10 Super Coaches.
What top three methods, in order, did you use to get your clients in the first 2 years?
My belief is that it is vital that coaches become public speakers. Find your passion in the field and book yourself to speak as the “expert” in the field. Coaching clients will seek you out.
You could also align yourself with other speakers, like myself, who are not looking for more coaching clients, but want the speaking engagement. Leverage your client relationships to bring in “speakers” who will create “buy-in” for coaching and position you as the ongoing follow up live coach.
Did you coach your friends and colleagues?
My fees are too high to coach my friends, plus my friends would not listen to me as their coach. Many clients have become friends as well although I do maintain the professional relationship first. I won’t sacrifice my impact with the client in the name of friendship.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Ernest F. Oriente in 10 Super Coaches.
Roughly how much capital/money did you spend in the first 6-12 months, and on what?
It was about $40,000. We had to buy a computer desk, a computer, phone, fax, cost for insurance, cost for telephone calls – we call all of our clients. We have a phone bill that’s quite sizeable. And so those were the costs.
Here’s the interesting part though, when we were billing about $100,000 – $200,000, our expenses were about $40-50,000. Then we grew it from $200,000 to $400,000.
In most businesses your expenses grow proportionately, but our expenses today are almost parallel to our expenses six and seven years ago. It still runs us about $40-55,000 a year to operate our business. A coaching business has fixed expenses so as you add more revenue all of that just flows straight to the bottom line.
1) Narrow your key words
Say you live in Maryland; instead of “financial planner,” which has SO MUCH competition, focus on “financial planner Maryland”, “financial goals Maryland”, or “pension plan specialist”. You’ll have better luck.
2) File names
Have key words in your web page file names: e.g. call your page financialplanning.htm
3) Key word frequency
Have your key words make up about 5% of words on the page.
4) Hyperlinks
Have your key words in the hyperlinks (the text that’s clickable) on your page
5) Alt Tags
These are in your html code and provide a description on your pictures for browsers that don’t show pictures. Yep – you guessed it – keywords in here too.
6) Reciprocal Links
Have DOZENS of web sites linking to your site. (I’ve only got about 100 linking to one of my main sites, and it’s currently #3 on Google for my major key word). Even better, when they link to you, have them put your keywords,e.g., “financial planner” IN the text of the link!
7) Focus mainly on Google and Yahoo
Get listed there, and the rest of the engines will eventually follow.
The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
1. Tidy your room (and for a bonus – the apartment/house! Consider getting help doing it.)
2. Get/understand that anything you do above securing food, shelter and clothing, is all entertainment. (You’ve made it dramatic!)
3. Arrive 15 minutes early to all appointments (including those with yourself).
4. Stick to the speed limit (drive with peace…let others overtake you)
5. Schedule BLANK TIME in the day – 1-2 hours where nothing can be scheduled. When it comes, you can use it to walk on the beach, work, make love……. It doesn’t matter.
6. Lower the Bar – Examine what you THINK you need to do this week, and then think again.
7. Drop something. There are 1-3 things you’re about to do this week, which do not support you having peace in your life (or maybe anything good!). TV? Obligation? Draining person? (Oops – can I say that?)
8. Identify what your needs really are, and get them met. (This is easiest using a coach with experience in this area)
9. Handle a drain i.e. something you’re putting up with.
10. Schedule at least two hours per week for YOU. Time where you get to reflect, think, walk, paint, write, and quieten the mind.
The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
David: Okay. So, I know a really nice model of coaching – I heard this from Laura Berman Fortgang at the ICF conference, and I really like it. Her model that she is using is very simple, and that is to begin each question with the word ‘what’.
So don’t ask them ‘why’. Never ask clients, ‘Why do you want to do that?’ or ‘Why do you feel like that?’ Just ask them ‘what’. You can ask them ‘how’, but again, try to start with what. It was really funny when we did the exercise, we had someone tell us about a problem, and we had to say ‘what’. Like, ‘Okay, what’s the solution?’ and they’d say, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I probably need to lose some weight.’ Then I’d say something like, ‘What’s the first step?’ and they’d say, ‘Oh, I probably should go to go to the gym.’ and I’d say, ‘What are you going to do at the gym?’ It was really amazing how it just focused them in, even if they didn’t know the answer. In five ‘what’ questions, they had it.
The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
- Learn to trust your intuition
- If someone is stuck figuring out what they love, ask them “what do you hate?”
- Remember your mission as a coach: to discover or create who your clients really are.
- Make a list of 10 to 15 powerful fallback questions to help if you ever get stuck in a session. Here’s a couple to get you started:
- How could I best help you with that?
- If you were the coach right now, what coaching would you give yourself on this?
- What’s something that you could do to move forward on this goal?
- Convert more prospects by helping them to clearly see the gap between where they are and what they want. Then get them excited about achieving what they want.
- Exceed the expectations of your clients. Give them more value than they pay you in money.
- Stay educated. Never stop learning about your specialized field. Become an expert.
- To help draw out a client ask them about different areas of their life. Go through the standard areas (relationships, finances, health, and career) and ask them to score each one out of ten. This will help you find out where to start with the client.
- Dealing with resistance: Start with building awareness of the resistance. Set targets you can actually achieve. Try double padding. You set the target for each day; estimate how long each will take and double the time. Another thing is to set spaces in your day, like an hour space in the afternoon.
