How to Build a Coaching Business When No One Taught You How
Being good at coaching and knowing how to run a coaching business are two completely different skills.
You might have spent years helping people. You know how to listen, ask good questions, use your tools, and create change. Then you decide to become a self-employed coach and suddenly you're supposed to understand marketing, sales, networking, offers, funnels, visibility, pricing, and everything else that comes with running a business.
Nobody necessarily taught you how to do any of that.
In this episode of Getting Coaches Paid, Laura Hulleman talks about why building a successful coaching business requires learning a new skill set—without turning yourself into a miniature corporation or abandoning the way you naturally work.
What We Talk About in This Episode
Why being an experienced coach doesn't automatically make you an experienced business owner.
The difference between running a coaching business and following business advice designed for corporations.
Why more visibility won't necessarily solve a messaging or sales problem.
How talking about your coaching tools can confuse potential clients instead of helping them understand why they need you.
Why coaches need to find the right rooms—and why the “right room” will not look the same for every coach.
How outside perspective can reveal things about your business that you simply can't see yourself.
Why your business can be simple, profitable, and still feel like yours.
What Coaches Will Learn
One of the biggest lessons in this episode comes from Laura's first fitness business.
A business coach walked into Laura's personal training studio and asked her a brutally simple question: “Why is your gym weird?”
Laura had designed the space around what made practical sense to her and her clients. There was a place for their kids. There wasn't a traditional reception area. Cleaning supplies weren't displayed because the equipment was cleaned regularly.
But someone walking through the door didn't necessarily understand any of that.
The lesson wasn't that Laura needed to turn her studio into somebody else's gym. She kept the parts that reflected who she was and how she wanted to serve her clients. But she also learned that there were things she couldn't see because she didn't know what she didn't know.
The same thing can happen in a coaching business.
You may be great at coaching while still being brand-new at explaining what you do, finding clients, having sales conversations, or knowing where to market yourself.
And sometimes your coaching business might be a little “weird.”
Potential clients might not understand your language. You might be talking about modalities, tools, transformation, manifestation, tapping, IFS, or other concepts that make perfect sense inside the coaching world but mean very little to the person you're trying to help.
Your job isn't simply to become more visible. It's to learn how to explain your coaching in a way the right person understands.
That also means questioning business advice that wasn't created for a self-employed coach.
You don't necessarily need 99 people to tell you no so you can get one yes. You don't automatically need a low-ticket course because you sell higher-ticket coaching. And getting in front of a larger audience isn't particularly useful if you haven't figured out the message and sales conversation that turns the right people into clients.
The goal is to learn how to run your coaching business.
The Endotype Connection
This is where Endotype Formula™ comes into the conversation.
Laura's approach isn't about finding one marketing strategy and telling every coach to follow it. Endotype helps identify how you naturally operate and where your strengths lie so you can make better decisions about how you market, sell, network, and build your business.
For example, advice to “get in the right rooms” might work beautifully for one coach. For another coach, constantly putting themselves into networking rooms could leave them shut down and exhausted.
The strategy needs to work for the person executing it.
Laura recommends starting with the Endotype Quiz to better understand your coaching and business superpowers and begin thinking about how those strengths can show up in the way you explain what you do.
Resources Mentioned
Endotype Quiz — Laura recommends taking the four-question Endotype Quiz as a first step toward understanding your coaching and business strengths.
Personalized coaching business masterclass / small-group program — The episode mentions a six-person pilot program beginning July 15. Because this episode page is being prepared after that date, the original offer should not be presented as currently available unless its availability has been confirmed.
RavingCoaches.com — Mentioned in the episode as the place to schedule a conversation with Laura.
Listen / Watch
Apple Podcasts:
Listen to How to Build a Coaching Business When Nobody Taught You How on Apple Podcasts
YouTube:
Watch How to Build a Coaching Business When Nobody Taught You How on YouTube
Ready to Build Your Coaching Business Your Way?
Take the Endotype Quiz to start identifying the strengths you naturally bring to coaching and business.
Knowing how to coach doesn't mean you were automatically supposed to know how to market, sell, network, and run a profitable business. Those are skills you can learn.
You don't have to build somebody else's version of a successful coaching business. You can learn what you don't know, fix the parts that aren't working, and keep the parts that make the business unmistakably yours.
Q&A
How do I build a coaching business if I'm already good at coaching but bad at business?
Treat running the business as a new skill rather than assuming coaching experience should automatically translate into business experience. Learn how to communicate your value, find the right potential clients, have effective sales conversations, and evaluate business advice based on whether it actually fits a self-employed coaching practice.
Why isn't my coaching business getting clients even though I'm marketing consistently?
More activity doesn't automatically solve the underlying problem. If potential clients don't understand what you do, why it matters to them, or how your coaching solves their problem, increasing visibility may simply expose an unclear message to more people. Start by improving the message and sales conversation.
Should coaches follow traditional business and marketing advice?
Not automatically. Much traditional marketing advice was developed for larger companies, product businesses, or organizations with teams and resources. A self-employed coach has different constraints and advantages, so the strategy needs to make sense for that kind of business.
How do I explain coaching to someone who doesn't understand coaching terminology?
Focus less on the tools and terminology you use and more on the person you're helping and what your coaching helps them accomplish. Your prospective client shouldn't need to understand coaching jargon before they can understand why working with you could help.
Do coaches need to network to get clients?
Networking can work, but the strategy needs to fit the coach. Laura's point is not that every coach must constantly attend networking events. The goal is to find ways of connecting with the right potential clients that work with how you naturally operate.
