Inner Firewalking

Selecting Target Organizations

Posted by David Wood

The following is an excerpt from the CoachStart Manual.

Who would benefit from your talk and ideally would pay for it (associations, clubs, charities, corporations)? Some will pay; some are just a training ground, testimonial builder, and a place to get individual clients! Source them from friends, yellow pages, people in the speaking industry, Chambers of Commerce, Libraries, a local chapter of The National Speaker’s Association (NSA). All will have a list of service groups, associations, etc… that want and need speakers. Joining a Toastmaster group is also a great idea, and they have a speaker’s bureau which supports their members in getting speaking engagements.

Call or email your friends and colleagues and ask them which clubs they belong to which might need a speaker.

You might provide ‘lunch and learns’ at companies and organizations. These are for free or fee, and are provided during the employees’ lunch hour. It is a way for the company to provide self-development/educational programs and for you to get in front of decision-makers and show them what you can do. Your friends within corporations might be able to put you in touch with the right person who organises or approves these within the company.

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How To Craft a Sizzling Elevator Pitch

Posted by David Wood

The following is an excerpt from the book Get Paid For Who You Are.

Now it’s time to refine your offer and target market into an “elevator pitch”. an elevator pitch is you telling someone what you do in the time it takes to ride an elevator. Sometimes 10- 30 seconds is all you’ll have to state who you are and what you can do.

The beauty of an elevator pitch is that, in addition to helping you say with ease and confidence what you do and for whom, it also allows others to spread the word about you. So, the next time someone asks your friend, “What does Mollie do?” Your friend replies, “She helps small business owners get free publicity” or, “She teaches families of cancer patients how to support their loved one and cope”.

Here are more samples of “sizzling” elevator pitches:

I help start-up biotech companies bring life-saving drugs to market faster.
I show you how to make pottery at home in 5 easy steps.
I help women 45 and older recover from divorce.
I help people who need to buy or sell used heavy machinery.
I show people how to save thousands of dollars on their plumbing expenses, by doing it themselves.
I connect hikers with the trails just made for them.

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Leza Danly on Getting Initial Clients

Posted by David Wood

The following is taken from David’s interview with Leza Danly in 10 Super Coaches.

What method did you find most effective in getting your initial clients?

First, do your personal inner work. Know what you want to create (the kind of coaching practice, the size, etc.) and more importantly WHY you want to create it. Invest the time to explore your motivation deeply. Because if your motivation is to prove you are good enough, or to run away from failure, or to get people to love and approve of you, or to exploit people, or any of many negative motivations, it won’t work. Often these motivations are deeply buried and we don’t realize they are at play. When you find the joy of service and align yourself with a motivation to contribute, things will turn around.

Once you feel confident that your motivation is clean, you need to confront your willingness to give yourself this dream career. This may sound like a no-brainer, but for most people it’s the biggest challenge. They limp along at a handful of clients, because they honestly feel deep down that to be paid really well for inspiring conversations and having lots of free time is too good to be true. They aren’t willing to receive it.

Second, once you’ve done the introspection, give lots and lots of sample sessions. You never enroll clients from talking about coaching, only from boldly giving yourself to the client in a sample session. Let yourself love. Let yourself care. They will either want it or they won’t. Don’t obsess on the ones who don’t. Just keep giving.

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Michael O. Cooper on Training and Experience

Posted by David Wood

The following is taken from David’s interview with Michael O. Cooper in 10 Super Coaches.

What training, experience and qualifications did you have when you started coaching?

None! My first client told me they wanted to hire me before I even knew what coaching was. She gave me an article about coaching, told me I would be perfect for it, and wanted to hire me on the spot. I spent about four weeks reading all I could, enrolling in Coach U and hiring my own coach before our first session.

I subsequently discovered that I had been using a coach approach in managing teams, working with clients and developing strategy in my role as a management consultant.

What were the biggest doubts you had in your early months?

The need to be an expert! My own coach helped me see that I was rarely an expert in my role as a management consultant, but that I had a methodology, framework and best practices to help clients improve their businesses and systems – it was an easy shift to apply this same approach to my coaching business.

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Bob Davies On Finding New Clients

Posted by David Wood

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.

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Ernest F. Oriente on Start Up Costs

Posted by David Wood

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.

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Home

Selecting Target Organizations

How To Craft a Sizzling Elevator Pitch

Leza Danly on Getting Initial Clients

Michael O. Cooper on Training and Experience

Bob Davies On Finding New Clients

Ernest F. Oriente on Start Up Costs