Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to PRIME SPACE, a PRIME Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Scultori. Hello, coaches, I usually talk a lot about in these episodes of Prime Space, they talk about coaching mindset, coaching skills, the philosophy of coaching, coaching in the world, and all of these philosophical aspects of coaching and skills aspect of coaching. But I don't think I have done any episode about practice building. I thought it would be important for us to talk about this, and here is a point I'm not just going to address poky or for the new coaches who are building their practice for the first time. The concept I'm going to share with you here today are for every coach, even for the seasoned coach who has a solid practice, I believe that what I am going to address here today is for you as well. It seems that every single coach is looking for clients, and there is much to talk about this because I am a firm believer that we don't chase after clients.
(01:24):
We establish ourselves in the market, we establish ourselves solidly establish ourselves in the market, and then clients come after us. But this is another story. We are going to talk about this another time, and I believe that some of you already understand this concept here. Maybe another episode. We are going to address that today. I want to talk about the M word marketing and what comes before marketing, marketing this bad word in coaching because coaches come to coaching because we want to coach and then we realize, oh boy, I have to build a practice and then I have to do this marketing, and we go to marketing like grudgingly and I have to do this.
(02:18):
And true, there is that. And if you go, every time I go to LinkedIn, there is always someone promising me that they're going to give me this amazing practice in 30 days and they're offer the world. And all of these steps are important. At some point, it's important for us to have marketing strategies, developing a brand, building a pipeline, making connections, setting up systems, creating a communication model, having an online presence. All of this is around marketing, but what I see oftentimes is that coaches miss what needs to happen. Before marketing. Before Amy and I created PRIME Coaching Academy, we worked for several other coach training programs, and I remember very clearly working with one of these coach training schools and we were revising the course that supported coaches to establish themselves as coaches in the marketplace. And they had lots of documents, oh my gosh, a book full of documents with templates and letters and assessments and all of this stuff. And they were interesting, but I remember that in the group that we were revising the curriculum, I said, Hey, before we go to all of these marketing gimmicks, we need to talk about other stuff because if we don't have a solid foundation, all of these marketing tools will fall flat for sure. And these are the two points that I firmly believe coaches need to pay attention to, and oftentimes coaches don't take enough time to think about these two points. Ready. Number one, what is your case for coaching?
(04:51):
Number two, why should clients hire you instead of another coach? These are foundational points for the success of any practice at PRIME Coaching Academy in our level one program, we have a module that Amy and I go substantially about these points here, but today I'm going to give you a little preview, so let's address the first one. Oftentimes, coaches don't know how to verbalize the value of coaching, and I'm not talking about ROI. ROI is great. It's important for every dollar that you invest. The statistics say that you're going to get $7 back, whatever it is, this is good. It's good to have the statistics and information because clients like this, but what I'm talking about here is what is the impact that individual, that employee, that manager in that organization, yes, they may be concerned about ROI because someone is talking about budget with them.
(06:14):
Someone is talking about the bottom line. The most important, that manager is thinking about the impact. How is this going to benefit me? How is this going to benefit my team? Why coaching is so valuable? What is coaching? What is the difference between coaching and another modality? Why should I hire you instead of this other guy that says that he's going to give me the answer to my problem and come and fix everything? Why should I hire you? That is saying that I need to have discovery conversations and think about deeper aspects of exploration. How do you explain and verbalize this concept? It's stuff that coaches oftentimes don't take the time to think about them. Right now, the coaching industry is estimated to be a $15 billion industry, so think about this coaching. The ICF is celebrating 30 years this year, so what happened that an industry started from nothing and 30 years later we are a $15 billion industry. There must be something valuable there. How do you verbalize that? How do you verbalize your case for coaching? How valuable do you think coaching truly is?
(07:45):
And I'm not telling you my point of view. What is important is that you have your point of view because at the moment, when you get in front of that prospective client, you are the one sharing your idea. What is your proposition for coaching? And make sure that this is an authentic and compelling message so that people can truly get what you're saying. Let's go to point number two. Why should clients hire you? Why? What is unique about yourself? What about your background will make clients want to build this partnership with you? What about you as a person will entice people to spend time with you? Right now, the ICF has 60,000 members, and then I think that is estimated to have the world who have like a hundred thousand, 1200 thousand. I don't know the estimate of coaches around the world.
(09:04):
What makes people want to hire you and not the 59,999 other coaches? And this is not about resume and qualifications. This is about you. What is the energy that you bring to the room, your interests, your presence? What is about your character, your values? Coaching is not about sales. Coaching is about attraction. It is important for you to have a sense of a niche and what your best client is, but most important it is about knowing who you are, what you have to offer so that clients will come to you when you are in front of your prospect clients, you want to exude this so that of course they want to spend time with you and no other person.
(10:20):
I am a firm believer that these are the two foundational points of a successful practice. Again, I say this again, you can have all of the strategies, all of the gimmicks, you can have a very clear brand pipeline strategies, but if you don't know these two points, all of that is going to fall flat. And if you take the time to think about these two points, the brand, the pipeline, the strategy will come a lot easier because they are coming out of an authentic process and an authentic message that you have within yourself. So you have some work to do there. Take the time to mature, to ripen these messages within you because all of your practice, everything that comes out of your practice, all of your marketing strategy is going to come naturally out of these points. Make sure that you share this episode with others. Make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel and we have registrations open for our Level one program so we can talk about this. Amy and I can talk about this with you, and we can have a directly with you on these points, and it would be wonderful to work with you either on level one or a level two program. Anyways, everyone, every coach, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next time. Take care.
