Running a coaching practice is like being on a seesaw, says Charlotte Housden, in this article on business development
I think of running a coaching practice as something similar to being on a seesaw. Just like the ones in the playground, our coaching businesses will be either up, down, or (less often), in perfect equilibrium.
Using this metaphor may feel unsettling, conjuring an unwelcome image of instability. I should add to this that in some parts of the US, a seesaw is called a teeter-totter. The thought of teetering and tottering between growth and contraction may worsen our sense of insecurity!
But while reduction might feel like a loss for some, for others it’s what they desire: doing less coaching means they can free up time for different work, or place a greater emphasis on relationships, or other parts of their life. It’s about finding the right fit for our context as this shifts back and forth, up and down, over time.
I should also mention that by using the word ‘growth’, I don’t just mean more coaching hours, more clients or more income. For many coaches, growth also shows up in other ways. I’ll share more about this later.
All of these reflections on seesaws and teeter-totters has come about because of one type of coaching/mentoring client that I support. I never expected to be collaborating with coaches as clients, helping them navigate their way through their businesses. However, it’s an area of work that I really enjoy and it’s a part of my practice that keeps growing.
If I reflect on the contexts of my coach-clients, they generally fit into three areas, the first of which is growth. Some coaches are earlier on in their career, wanting to develop their businesses, market themselves and stand out. For a few this means writing a book. Having read mine (Swim, Jump, Fly: A Guide to Changing Your Life, 2022), they want mentoring around the process of writing/publishing or coaching to address anxieties about starting or continuing their writing. Others are keen to produce podcasts or videos, both of which I’ve created.
The second group have been coaching for longer and don’t necessarily want to grow. It’s more of an extension sideways, exploring new avenues, sectors or types of work. Often, they have mature businesses and want to switch tack, to pivot elements of their portfolios to focus more on purpose and meaning, both of which may have shifted over time. They also want to continue balancing this with income and the predictability of their work.
The third group are those who have grown their practices for significant periods of time, often taking on associates and increasing the breadth of their products, services and sectors. These coaches are now in a place where they’re reflecting back, taking time to pause, considering whether the size of their practices is still a good fit for them. Sometimes this means contraction, for example, one person is looking towards retirement.
Growing your business
It was with this type of client work in mind that the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) asked me to run series of workshops called Growing your Business. I jumped at the chance to switch my approach so I could support more coaches. I also thought that by creating these workshops I’d have more time to reflect on my own practice. I found this process an invaluable opportunity to pause and consider my coaching and consulting business and where I might want to take it in the future.
I wondered whether Coaching at Work readers might also find it useful to reflect on the business side of their practice via the exercises I offered. So I’ve outlined a number of them below. These are in no particular order. Just pick any that resonate for you.
If you’d like to shift your practice, then having clarity on where those changes will come from is useful. The quadrant in Figure 1 can create choice points of where to amplify or reduce. You might like to use ticks and crosses in each quadrant – mine were red, amber and green to highlight where I am currently and which activities I might dial up or down in my own work. You could add percentages to highlight the amount of work you do or even change the extrinsic or intrinsic motivators to suit you better. The specifics are less important than the question: what’s the balance between the work you do vs. the work you want to do?
Another way to reflect on your practice is to think about the selection process you use to decide what to pursue (or not). I use this when I’m deciding what to pitch for, but also where I might want to amplify or reduce my current workload. For example, I applied it when deciding whether to take the EMCC workshops. Why not use the acronym RISE to ask yourself if the work will help you with:
- Raising your profile/growing your network?
- Income generation?
- Stretching (developing skills, or enabling you to create new content, services etc)?
- Enjoyable, engaging or fun?
One workshop participant said she liked the idea of RISE but that it didn’t quite fit all the principles she used herself. She asked if she could create her own. “By all means,” I said. So she’s crafting her own acronym to focus on what she’ll pursue, decrease or stop.
I mentioned earlier that I’d give some examples of different types of growth. In the workshops I asked participants to consider what this meant to them and where they wanted to place their focus:
- Increasing types of client
- More coaching hours
- Building your income
- Offering a wider range of services/products
- Going into more depth with current services/products
- Collaborating with others/outsourcing the work
- Raising your profile
- Or other ways?
It can be easy to be scattergun and try them all, hoping that some will stick. Being clear on which routes you’ll take is useful. Another exercise I offered was to ask participants to reflect on where they get their energy from, by using the axes in Figure 2.
To bring it alive, I shared where some of my products and services would sit in this diagram, along with the changes I saw over time. For example, when I ran the research for my book in 2019, I worked alone at depth – bottom left corner. However, when I started writing up the research for the book, I knew I’d need deadlines and accountability from others. I therefore invited my blog subscribers to join a book club to give me feedback on the initial ideas and structure for the book chapters. I wouldn’t have completed it without their help and the end product is higher quality because of their invaluable input. Collaborating on writing my book sits in the top left corner.
In the last few years I’ve been branching out, creating more products and services. This sits in the bottom right corner. In Spring this year I’ve joined forces with coaches on two separate endeavours. These collaborations are extending my skills, my reach to new clients and helping me to build new approaches. The coaches have skills and qualifications that overlap with mine and they also offer a wider range of interventions. This will provide clients with a more rounded approach. I’m enjoying working with others this year in a broader range of offerings, which sits in the top right corner.
During the EMCC workshops I included other ways for the coaches to reflect on their practice, such as the lifeline exercise. Many of you will have used this with your own clients. This exercise helped participants stand back, identify the highs and the lows, and figure out when they were most often in flow.
Coaching is such a popular career choice nowadays, so differentiating ourselves can feel like a challenge. I included this David Drake quote in the workshops, as I think it can reduce our discomfort: “The market is only really crowded if you want to stand in the same place as everybody else.”
Marketing professional Simon Batchelar makes the same point: “The key to standing out – to attracting attention – is having a new idea and starting something new. That’s where showing up as yourself, not copying others, and sharing your own ideas and concepts very simply sets you apart.”
During the workshops we spent time working on the ‘coaching essence’ for each of the participants – identifying the combination of their previous careers, skills, attributes, personalities and ways of working that make their coaching stance, products and services unique to them. Being distinctive can be “scary and exciting” says Simon and I’d add that being clear about your ‘coaching essence’ will help you
get there.
I’ll leave you with a final thought on seesaws. While instability might create sleepless nights, increasing our movement will help. We all know exercising our bodies is important but so is movement in our coaching practice. Spend too long in the place of perfect equilibrium and your coaching practice will become stale. Try growth or contraction, you never know what amazing shifts they could bring.
Figure 1: Quadrant
Figure 2: Axes
About the author
- Charlotte Housden is a chartered coaching psychologist and chartered occupational psychologist and runs an international coaching and consulting practice. Charlotte will be delivering more Grow Your Business sessions in the autumn.
ch@charlottehousden.com
References
Batchelar, S. Will AI break the internet? Retrieved June 2024 from
https://simonbatchelar.co.uk/will-ai-break-the-internet/
Drake, D. (2024). The Five Maturities: A new paradigm for coach development.
The Moment Institute. Retrieved June 2024 from
https://www.themomentinstitute.com/the-five-maturities
Sheridan, C. (2022). Swim, Jump, Fly: A guide to changing your life. Charlotte Housden Consulting Ltd.