The 4 Levers to Pull to Grow Your Coaching Business

What do you believe is your biggest obstacle to succeeding in your business?

Take a moment and think about it.

If there was one lever you could pull that would solve everything you’re struggling with – or at least make everything more manageable – what would it be?

In my 8+ years of coaching, I’ve experienced both struggle and abundance. And in that time, I’ve watched really brilliant people flounder in a sea of overcomplication. Without a framework to build your business on, it’s too easy to get lost in the shuffle.

I’ve identified 4 things that will make or break your coaching business. These aren’t “tips” or “tricks” or advice on which marketing platform to choose. These levers go much deeper, and get at the core of your business to help you discover the best and highest use of your time.

If you align these 4 levers, your business will grow without the hustle or brute force. Instead, it will feel almost effortless! You’ll be achieving your goals with ease.

1. Clarity on Your Results

You know those weight loss before-and-after pictures you see online? They’re a fantastic, visual tool for showing off a tangible transformation. 

But often, when people apply to work with my team, they can’t articulate the transformation their coaching services will deliver. Instead, they focus on the content of their program, their offerings, their coaching style, details of their coaching sessions, their marketing plan, etc., and they lose sight of the results. 

What is the transformation that your business will create? What is the before, the problem that your client comes to you with, and the after, the transformation that comes from working with you? 

In other words, what result will you help create for your client? If you can’t articulate this transformation, then your ideal client will be unable to find you. They won’t know if your program is right for them, or if it will help them achieve the transformation they desire.

So gaining clarity into your results and the transformation you promise, is critical.

2. Clarity on Your Ideal Client

How many client avatar and demographic exercises have you completed? This work is helpful and necessary, but in the end it only gives you an algorithm, not a person. In order to reach your ideal client – your target audience – you need to know who they are at their core, not just what they look like or their income level. 

You need to know what your ideal client feels like. What is their internal world? What messaging gives them goosebumps? What solutions are they desperate for? What are they scared to admit to their family… or even themselves?

If you don’t know these details regarding your ideal client, you’re building your entire program and marketing plan on a very shaky foundation. Too many people focus on the strategy or the platform before they have crystal clarity on who the client is. But how can you know where your people are if you don’t know who your people are?

What I find with the clients I work with is that lead generation isn’t their problem — oftentimes, it’s that they lack clarity on who their ideal client is. No one is picking up their information because they’re not sharing it with the right people. 

Once you find that ideal client, you’ll be able to understand their pain and position yourself as the solution to help them move through it.

3. A Clear Structure For Your Messaging

We love information, but there’s a big difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing how to use and apply it to your behaviors and actions. When structuring your message, you need to be able to set it within a powerful context and give your prospective clients enough information to nourish them, not just fill them up. 

This is my problem with the “tips and tricks” format. Some people have great success with this structure, but 90% get nothing out of it because they aren’t giving people enough relevant context. When you give people a list of tricks, they get seduced by the dopamine rush of learning new information. 

But if you don’t also give them enough context to understand how and where to apply those strategies, they won’t see any meaningful results. Now, the whole premise of your program hinges on something that didn’t work. So they’re gonna think – “Oh, I already know that info and I still have that problem so I must need something different.”

You have to really understand how to set the context and how to position your advice so that when you share information, it demonstrates your expertise and gives people the ability to apply it.

When your message is clearly grounded in reality, and your prospective clients are able to get tangible results, it will open their appetite for the real thing.

4. A Sales Process that Actually Converts

I’ve worked with clients that have all the other levers at play. They had clarity into their transformation, they understood their audience, and had a clear message, but they were unable to make the final sale. Starting a coaching business was no problem, but deep down, they were ashamed of asking for the sale. They had internalized fear of judgement, or rejection, or greed, or they didn’t want to come across as “salesy.” 

Many of these clients were really comfortable teaching, but when it came time to sell, they mumbled their way through it. They had the offer, they just weren’t making it, and their business results suffered.

Having a sales process that actually converts is crucial to making all the other three levers succeed. 

I tell my clients to think about the sales process as their first taste of coaching. Coaching is all about knowing how to move through a client’s fears and hesitations and ease them into a new way of thinking. 

Clinching the sale is the same process — you identify whatever might be holding the potential client back. Concerns about money, fear, anxiety, whatever it is, a good sales process, like a good coaching process, will move through those fears to a positive action (signing up for your course).  

In a successful sales process, you’re able to give a prospect a taste of your coaching style. You will get to know their fears and resistances early on, and have greater insight into how to work with them in the future.  

Want a deeper dive into these principles? Watch me talk through these steps in this video.

Need help building these 4 levers into your business or identifying where your actual bottleneck is? Use this link to speak to someone on my team about how we can help you.