How To Be a Working Coach #39: Making Your Vision Work...and then Working on Your Vision

Hi Reader!!

Welcome to How To Be A Working Coach, issue number 39.

Last week, at the end of Issue #38, I asked for questions. I got several, but one question came up multiple times: How do I set myself up to make a full-time living from coaching?

When I started my coaching career, I worked inside of several large organizations, and all of my coaching hours were tied to my job. I remember when I went out on my own, being completely unprepared for how long it would take to build a practice that would sustain me. I didn't have a safety net. I needed to make it work, and I needed to make it work quickly.

Please go to school on my example. Don't do this.

In last week's edition, I mentioned Cal Newport. He is a math professor at Georgetown University but writes on topics of deep work and productivity. He even touches on career planning and wrote a book called "So Good They Can't Ignore You."

The big idea of this book is that if you go out on your own, you need to have a meaningful skill set that will allow you to build a lifestyle that you are interested in and do work that matters to you. The key theme is that your skill set has to be absolutely sharp because that's when it becomes valuable to potential clients.

In my day job at FLUXIFY, I see lots of potential coaches who want to lay the groundwork for a career after they leave the corporate world. Maybe this is a career transition, or perhaps they're viewing coaching as a retirement job.

Either way, sharpening your skill set takes more time than just the training process. And a business development mindset is definitely necessary. So, how can you work as a coach for purposes of sharpening your skill set so that when you go out on your own, you have a product that people are willing to pay you for?

Time Matters...but So Do Repetitions

Here's the bad news: It's going to take you longer than you think. In fact, the majority of working coaches need five to seven years to build a skill set and a client base that will support a full-time income. And most working coaches have more than one revenue stream that adds up to their full-time income. That's why you see a lot of coaches supporting assessments or doing speaking or facilitation as a second revenue stream for their coaching practice.

Ok, real talk for a second: I know thousands of coaches, but only one who's full time income comes exclusively from coaching. That's right, out of thousands, I only know one who has one revenue stream, and that revenue stream is coaching. Every other coach I know has multiple revenue streams that they use to provide their full-time income.

Now, this is less of an issue if you're using coaching as a side hustle or a secondary income, or you have a spouse that provides the majority of your support. But if you want to be a full-time working coach, two critical lessons have to be front and center:

1. You'll need more than one revenue stream. We've talked about that in previous editions.

2. An apprenticeship where you sharpen your skills so that you are so good you can't be ignored will set you up for success.

It's the second scenario I want to talk about in this week's edition.

Building Your Vision...Working Coach Style

Newport advocates building a vision in two stages:

• One for 5 years from now
• One for 10 years from now

Because of the nature of coaching education and how long it takes to earn a credential, which is a part of the full-time coaching journey, I'm going to go even a little further and say you need three versions of your vision:

• One for a year from now
• One for five years from now
• One for ten years down the road

The 1-Year Vision.

This version of your vision picks up at the end of your training. Include all the things that you're after. What do you want your lifestyle to look like? How many hours per week can you devote to coaching? What kind of revenue goal do you have in mind? How will you manage your interpersonal energy? And maybe most importantly, how will you improve your coaching so that your clients get great results every single engagement?

In my case, if I had built a 1-year vision at the end of my training, it would have included a side hustle where I started to fine-tune my coaching skills with a variety of clients. I didn't do this because I didn't think I needed to. I know now that that would have made my full-time transition much smoother. My skill set would have been much stronger earlier in my career.

Take some time to think about this vision once you're a year out of coach training, and your client roster has had some time to fill. What do you want your life to look like? That's really the critical question. A vision is a future point different from your current state, so a helpful strategy can be comparing and contrasting where you are now and where you want to be when your business has picked up a little bit of momentum.

The most important question for the one-year vision is, "What do you want your coaching skill set to look like after you've gotten some real-world experience working with clients and honing in on your niche?"

The 5-Year Vision

The most significant difference between the one-year and five-year visions is that by the five-year mark, you should be ready to move to full-time coaching.

• Your coaching practice will have an hourly rate that contributes to the lifestyle you're after.
• You'll be clear on the amount of clients you want to work with at any given time.
• You'll have a marketing and business development strategy that will unearth new leads, warm them up, and put you in a position to close the deal.

Most of all, you'll be living the lifestyle that you're after, that coaching can provide you, and that works for you and your family.

As I reflect back on my story, it wouldn't have been hard to build a small part-time roster of coaching clients while I still worked full-time. I could have done that in the evenings or on weekends. The experimentation it would have allowed would have shown me some areas where I was uniquely suited to coach and would have eliminated some others. That would have made my transition much smoother.

Many coaches who read this find themselves saying, "Wait, it's going to take five years," and the real response is likely, "Yes, it will." Training is a great proving ground. The year after training is where you really sharpen and get clear on what you want from coaching. Years 2-5 is when that vision begins to take on a life of its own, and you set into motion the pieces you'll need to have a full-time income from coaching.

The 10-Year Vision

The third version of your vision is when your business is clicking on all cylinders. You might have a waiting list for potential clients. Your niche is crystal clear, and your ideal client is identified. Plus, you know where to find them and how to get in touch with them. Your marketing machine works with only a moderate amount of effort from you regularly to keep it thriving.

Not only is your revenue goal increasing year over year, but you have a track record of hitting that number year in and year out.

By year 10, you'll likely have earned an advanced credential, PCC or MCC. Those credentials really help with raising your hourly rate to the point that it builds a sustainable income on a consistent and reliable basis.

Your coaching roster is filled with your ideal client, and you have a stable of candidates to take any open slots that you might see in front of you. Being systematic in the identification of this ideal client, the acquisition of potential candidates, and the closing process means that your income stays relatively consistent each month.

Comparing all three visions side-by-side should give you a picture of what needs your attention in each year of your 10-year plan. In the year one vision, you're focusing on building skills and developing processes that keep your coaching roster populated. As you move to the 5-year vision, you're honing in even more tightly on your ideal client vision and building sustainable revenue streams. The difference between the 5-year and the 10-year vision is your lifestyle takes full front and center focus. You're working the hours you want to work, living in the place where you want to live, and you have enough free time to pursue the other parts of your life.

Put in the Reps

This is a hard lesson for a lot of coaches. As the timetable involved in building a brand, a track record, and accumulating success stories just takes time. With systematic and intentional effort, you can get there.

As I think about my own business development journey, the 10-year version of my vision actually took me about 16 years. It's only in the last 5 years that I found myself in a scenario like what the 10-year vision describes. If I had sat down and developed three versions of this vision and then reviewed them regularly, I think I could have cut that time in half. You can too with intentional thought and a little bit of planning.

Take Action: Write Your Vision(s)

Here's the challenge for this week's newsletter:

Sit down and develop the specific versions of your 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year visions.

Consider what role you want AI tools to play in your business processes and marketing strategy.

• Who is your ideal client?
• How will you discover who you work best with and who gives you energy?
• What do you want your workday and workweek to look like? Where do you want to live?
• What other sources of income or revenue streams might you consider
• And how will you evaluate whether or not you're living into each version of your vision?

Being a working coach is a tremendously rewarding life, but it takes intentional effort and focused strategy to get there.

What topics would be most helpful for you to dive into? Let us know.

Cheers,

Jonathan Reitz & the Working Coach Labs Team

Brought to You By FLUXIFY If you're thinking about adding an ICF credential or upgrading your credential, or you need a strategy for your renewal, FLUXIFY has you covered. Check out what FLUXIFY Does