Are you qualified as a coach but struggling to generate clients? Thomas Chalmers and Russell Borland remember how that used to feel
We’ve been following Ginny Baillie’s column, The Real Business of Coaching, with great interest and are honoured to grasp the baton from Ginny.
We’re of a similar view that it’s often difficult to find best practice advice on business development in the coaching world. Many coach training programmes give very little or no guidance on what it takes to grow a financially viable coaching practice.
As many of us will know, stepping out into the self-employed arena is quite different from holding down a corporate role. Even those who’ve built successful internal coaching frameworks and cultures in well-known organisations can sometimes struggle to make a living when they become self-employed. Everyone wants to know you when you’re on the inside, but it can be a different story on the outside.
When I decided to pursue a career in coaching in around 2002, the mentor-coach that I (Thomas Chalmers) hired pointed me in the direction of the US-based virtual training provider, Coach U.
Married with three young sons, I’d naively decided to become a coach and sell the business that had been in our family for more than three generations.
Running our family business by day and studying at night I started to worry about what would happen when I’d completed my Coach U qualification, actively marketed my website and started handing out business cards.
How was I going to cope with the queue of clients at my door? I concluded that I’d have to place many disappointed prospects on my burgeoning waiting list.
But of course, the reality was completely contrary to my fertile imagination. No sooner had I sold the family business and proudly placed my framed Coach U graduate certificate on the mantelpiece than reality hit home.
It began to dawn on me that I’d been worrying unnecessarily – what I should have been more concerned about was generating clients – not fending them off.
Fast forward to 2019 and I’m now in partnership with Russell Borland who left a senior corporate role eight years ago to pursue his second career in coaching.
Before we met, Russell had qualified with the Institute of Leadership and Management’s Level 7 Executive Coaching certificate as well as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
We were introduced to one another around six years ago and formed Leading Figures, a UK-wide coaching consulting firm, specialising in the finance and professional services sectors.
Our partnership currently generates a six-figure turnover, but it’s taken consistent effort, considerable resilience and a few layers of shoe leather (as well as blisters) to get here. It’s now easier because we’ve built deep relationships with key people over time and neither of us is complacent. No matter how busy we are though, we always have one eye on business development.
We’d like to share our approach to the real business of coaching, including the trials and tribulations along the way; what worked and still works, along with what didn’t work, as well as other ideas that we’re either currently trying or still developing.
One plan is to host a Business Development Forum where coaches (including ourselves) can share best practice and learn from one another.
We’ll keep you posted!
- Thomas Chalmers is a co-founder with Russell Borland of Leading Figures. Thomas is a chartered banker whose previous careers span 10 years in commercial banking followed by 14 years as owner/partner of a seafood business. Russell was previously at Hymans Robertson where he held a number of senior leadership positions including firm-wide managing partner.
- www.leadingfigures.com