Hey, while this article is written mainly for coaches, consultants, and service providers, there are some great ideas that all business owners can use!

Like many of us who began our careers at an agency or in the corporate world, there is a moment when the idea of being self employed pushes itself to the forefront of our awareness.  The Entrepreneurial Bug has hit!  Visions of more freedom, more fun, and more “flow” are the catalyst for us to make the leap from the world of being an employee, to the new venture known as self employed business owner.

But where do you begin?  And how can you grow your income?  Having helped many coaches over the years accelerate their success, I have found the following three things to be critical when you are thinking of going it on your own.

Marketing -

Who is your target market?  Eager coaches fresh out of school or new to the business often think they can help anyone.  There’s a joke in the coaching field that says, “My clients are anyone who can fog a mirror.”  OK, hopefully you aren’t that vague, but the trick to marketing is to get as specific as you possibly can about who you serve.  The reasons are that, a) you will be more easily able to identify and market to the this group, and b) people can clearly understand what you do and whom you serve, so they can refer business to you, and c) it will position you as an expert.  This is the key.  Being a specialist rather than a generalist is where you want to end up.  Think about physicians.  You’ll go to your family doc if you need antibiotics, but if you need brain surgery, who are you going to call?  That’s right….the well paid specialist!

Usually when people hear that they have to narrow their target, there is a negative, knee-jerk reaction.  It seems counter-intuitive that in order to grow my business, I have to limit what clients I see!  NO!  You can coach or serve different kinds of people, but if you try to water down your marketing message to appeal to three diverse groups, the marketing materials will not be very effective.  The secret is to pick one group and market to that population.

Here’s an example of how to walk through the narrowing process.  If I ask you what your target market is, you may say…..

“I work with people who are in transition.”

Better would be:  “I work with women who are in transition”

 Now you’ve cut your market in half, so it’s more identifiable but still too vague.

 ”I work with women executives who are looking to re-career.”

 Now we can identify what kind of women, and what their goal or problem is.  Let’s see if we can refine it even further.

 ”I work with frustrated female executives in the IT field who want to have the freedom to create their own businesses, and they need some help starting them.”

 Now we have even a better description of the target client, what they want, and what their problem is.

 An effective marketing message will have someone thinking to themselves, “I know someone I can refer,” or “Hey, she’s talking about me…..I need to call her.”

 Money -

How can you charge a reasonably high fee when you are just starting out?  So many coaches struggle with this emotionally charged issue.  Here is what I suggest as a way to ‘grow’ into your fee structure.

Get as much experience as you can.  I know I said in the above section that you should specialize, and getting more experience is the most important thing you can to towards having a good sense of who you are as a coach.  Specialization comes usually from starting out as a generalist.

Thomas Leonard, who many consider the father of coaching, used to say, “Just get out and coach 100 people.  It will all start to make sense then.” After this much experience,  you’ll begin to see the natural gifts you have, discern who you are most comfortable working with, and by then end, you will have concrete results you can speak about.  That’s the key!  People don’t buy coaching because it “takes them from where they are to where they want to be” or for any of the other cliché ways we speak about it.  People will hire you to help them solve their problems.

The question is how much is that worth to your clients?  Currently coaching fees range from $150/month to the coaches who are charging $24,000/year and even higher.  The market has a huge spread, so you get to decide what you want to earn.  You will need to look at 3 factors to determine this.

Who is your target market and what can they pay?

Again, I can’t stress enough the importance of defining clearly your target market, but beyond that, you have to ask yourself if your market can pay you the fees you will need which will allow you to earn the income you have envisioned for yourself.  Maybe you love to work with college students.  You might love their ‘out of the box’ way of thinking and be quite drawn to their youthful nature.  But…can some of these folks pay $400/mo for your coaching?  Maybe not?  I’m not saying that you have to work with people you aren’t comfortable with just for the income, but you have to factor in generally how much the market can afford.

How many clients will you need to generate your income?

Let’s say it’s your goal to earn $60,000 this year.  In order to do this, you will need to bring in $5,000/month.  If you have a $500/month coaching program, you can get that with only 10 clients.  But if your fee is $250/month, the number doubles, and you will be looking at 20 clients a month to reach your goals.

Another important way to market and create income is by having a ‘funnel’ approach to your services/prices.  The theory is that coaching and consulting is a relationship where people need a high degree of trust to enter into.  For example, if I am picking up a book at the bookstore for $19, I don’t need the same level of trust or connection with you as if I am going to spend $5,000 on your services!

The funnel allows people to enter and sample your services at a much lower price point.

The way to structure it would be to create multiple offerings like this:

• Newsletter – free
• Special report – $9
• E-book – $39
• 6 week teleclass – $99
• 3 month group coaching – $249
• Monthly private coaching – $500
• Two day live event – $997

This allows people to get a sense of you and your ideas, products, and work style before they plop down huge money to do so. In the case of your struggling college students, maybe the monthly coaching would be out of their reach, but the teleclass series could be perfect for them!

      Mindset -

Do I even deserve to earn (DRAW IN) this much money?  This is the biggest factor I see in breaking through financial barriers and hitting new levels of success for  yourself.   How is it that “The Donald” loses all of his money, and then comes back earning more than before?  Have you noticed that there seems to be an internal set point which determines how much income people will allow themselves to earn?  Mostly, people will bump into their ‘stuff.”  I’ll speak more about that in the next section, as it has everything to do with mindset.  But for now, think about this story:

“A woman was walking the streets of Paris when she spied the great artist Picasso sitting in a corner café.  Mustering up all her courage, the woman approached the master, saying, “Pardon me sir, but could you be so kind as to do a sketch of me?”   Feeling in a good mood, Picasso took his pencil out, and in two strokes created a ‘portrait’ of the woman and handed it to her.  Delighted, she asked, “Sir, what would this cost me to buy from you?”  To which he replied, “That will be Fifty Thousand Francs.”  Aghast, the woman stopped, stepped back and said, “But that only took you a minute!”  Picasso looked at her and slowly said, “No, Madam….that took me my whole life.”

Truthfully, hearing that story allowed me to begin to charge more what I am worth.  The point is that all your life experiences, all your wisdom, education, and innate gifts are a commodity!  When you get how much you have to offer, you can easily begin to see the value of the services you provide.  And, when you can state clearly in results oriented language how a client will be benefited from working with you, the money will flow.

But where most people get stuck is in moving beyond their comfort zone about money and their own issues with desirability.  Years ago I worked for a coaching company where we charged $525 a month for coaching.  Being a relatively new coach, it was really a stretch for me to be able to justify my ‘worth’ to a prospective client.  I had been quite successful in my previous career, and didn’t feel as masterful in the field of coaching yet, so I never sold many coaching packages, because there was a part of me that didn’t believe in my value and could not stand behind the price point.  About a year into working with this company, the CEO began talking about the idea of devising a $1,000 month coaching package.  Whew!  If I couldn’t resonate with the $500 plan, can you imagine the fear I experienced at having to justify the $1,000 price to prospective clients?  I knew there was no way I could sell that because even though everyone around me was telling me I was worth that rate, I didn’t believe it.

My solution?  I hired a coach who charged $1,000 a month and worked with him until I ‘got it’ related to my degree of competence. That was being in integrity for me.  I figured if I was willing to spend that much money on my professional development and growing my business, that there were other people out there willing to do the same.  While it was a costly lesson, it did the trick.

I also had to answer for myself when I would be worth charging and earning more income.  So many people have an undefined sense of “I’m not enough” that there’s always more to learn, more to get, and more to figure out.  Instead of looking at all we have, we focus on what we aren’t.  For me it entailed asking myself the question, “How will I know when I’m successful and can charge what I’m worth?”  After getting the answer to that, I could take action and have been now able to set my rates at a fair market value.

 So if you were to answer the question, “What will it take for you to deserve to earn ___ income a year,” what would the answer be?  Maybe you need to hear from clients how you have made a difference in their lives.  What’s it worth when you save a person six months of job hunting?  How can you quantify assisting someone in helping them grow a business with much more money than they had anticipated?  When you begin to factor in these tangibles and some intangibles, you can see what a powerful asset you have been in your client’s lives.

This is where polling your clients comes in.  You may have a sense of what they have gotten from you services, but really dig deep.  Ask how their lives have changed, what they were able to do differently, and if possible, monetize the answers.  When you get this information, you can move through any critical voices or ‘old tapes’ in your head about what you are worth.  I knew I was on the right track when a client of mine who we took from not even having a business idea, to two years later creating a business that brought in $200,000 said to me, “By working with you, I am five years ahead of any other business that started at the same time.” I now can boldly tell people that working with me will help accelerate their success!  But I never would have known that fact had I not taken the time to ask!

And finally…play up!  Meaning, surround yourself with people whose income is where you want to be. Do you desire to earn six figures?  Then begin to find those people in your network and learn from them.  You have probably heard the expression that your income will be the average of the five people you hang around with most often.  You don’t have to ‘fire’ friends and colleagues if they aren’t where you want to be financially, but begin to add some new success models for you to follow.  You and your clients will be richly rewarded by it.

Here’s to your success!