8 Things You Don’t Need to Be Ready to Start Your Coaching Business

Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. I'm Ellie Scarfe, coach consultant, mentor to coaches, and, you know, pretty new podcaster really. So I'm really excited to be here today. I want to talk about the things that get in the way of people starting their coaching businesses. And a story that I hear all the time is people putting off making the decision to start their coaching business. And you know, whether it is full time or starting it as something they do part time alongside a corporate role, there are things that get in the way. And of course, some of these make a lot of sense. Things like, well, I really need a consistent income, I can't afford to step away from that consistency. Or I need to have a buffer of a certain number of months of income before I can make that decision. You know, I, I think that's really smart. And I love talking to coaches about ways to stagger your Runway, what you need to prepare before you can make the leap, how much you can before you make the leap, how you can do try different types of part time. I think that is really smart. So that's not what I'm talking about today. And of course I also love some real cold turkey, all in energy and I love supporting those people just the same. But there are also some barriers to starting a coaching business that are often either unhelpful stories that we tell ourselves, or they might be myths that have been perpetuated by business coaches or advisors or people on LinkedIn experts, or they could be assumptions or expectations that we have that are not true in reality. So today I want to share eight things that you don't need in order to be ready to start your coaching business. So the first one is that to start your coaching business, you do not need 10 years of coaching experience. You don't need a thousand hours of coaching, you don't need. You know, there is no magic number of years of experience or hours of coaching that you need in order to start your coaching business because your professional background counts. And often what you have been doing, formally or informally, is work that is going to make you an even better coach. Now one thing I think is required in order to start your coaching business is high quality coach training. And look, I could have a whole episode on what counts as high quality coach training, but coach specific training that is based on evidence based coaching, ideally in a corporate context, that is what you need. But there is no magic number of how much experience you should have before you start your business. And in fact, what can happen is we can get into One of those cycles where it's like, well, I need experience to start my business, but I can't get the experience till I start my business. And so it becomes a vicious cycle that stops us starting. And honestly, the only way you're going to get that experience is to dive in, to sell it and to do it. And so, absolutely, when you're in the Runway, I think getting as much coaching experience as you can, either on the side in your existing role through peer coaching, pro bono coaching, like, do as much of that as humanly possible, but do recognize that it is unrealistic to expect that you are going to have this pool of existing clients before you put yourself, yourself into a position, I. E. A business where you can acquire those experiences. So you can start with a combination of your great training, the coaching you've done in your role and on the side, and your deep professional background as a leader, as a coach and through, you know, doing those things in a different context. So often people discount a lot of their experience. They think, well, actually, only the hours that I have spent specifically coaching count when it comes to what is relevant to me as a coaching, coaching business. And I want to say that is absolutely not true. All of the work you've done before, your professional background, your experience, it all counts in terms of building the breadth of perspective that you bring to coaching. Now, I don't mean that you come and you coach from your experience, your expertise or your knowledge. Absolutely not. But your experience does mean that as a coach, you have greater insights, you have more perspective, and you have a greater ability to be present with your coaches and to ask them questions that are going to be enlightening because you come from this background and you have this past experience. The second thing that you don't need in order to start your coaching business is a perfectly curated LinkedIn profile or a professional website, or a beautifully designed business card. All of these things are really important and really lovely. But what I see happening is I see people putting off starting their business because they have this unrealistic expectation that they need to have things perfect. And the truth is, it will never be perfect. Right? You're never going to have the perfect LinkedIn profile because just when you think it is spot on, you'll change something in your business or the LinkedIn algorithm will change, or, you know, the way you think about something will change. So it is better not to think of these things as tasks that can, can ever be completed or standards that can ever be perfect, but as assets you have in your business. That you continually improve, that you experiment, you iterate. And what I often say inside the accelerator to my clients is I want you to do, and I heard this from my coach, Claire Pelletro, is to start scrappy and do B minus work, Right? What does that mean? That means if you were aiming for 100%, like the most beautiful professional website you could possibly imagine, have a crack at doing 75%, right, a website that you might have designed or you might have drafted and is pretty good. It's not as good as you would hope and dream in your, you know, your absolute best case scenario, but it's pretty good. I would much rather you have these things out there at 75 or 80% than not have them out there at all and never be putting yourself out there. So if you're working, worried about not having these things in place, don't let that stop you. You can build these things, you can build them quickly. Inside the corporate to coach accelerator we have one of our pieces of curriculum is the 90 day Quick Start program. And in that I give you a time limited opportunity to build all these assets. So define your ideal clients, define your offers, build your coach Bio, build your LinkedIn profile, write your website, all of those. And we do it with a limitation on time and we do it with so much support to help you just get it out there and then you can continue to iterate and of course I give you feedback on all of that, but you don't need it in order to, it doesn't need to be perfect. And I just can't hammer that home enough, really. Don't wait for perfection in anything really. Like if you're holding off for something to be perfect before you start your business, you're going to be holding off forever. So it's time to get scrappy and iterate. The third thing you don't need in order to start your coaching business is to know exactly where your clients are going to come from. And this is true on a couple of levels. So firstly, you don't need to know yet because what your client base is going to evolve over time, it is going to unfold. And so where you think you will go in terms of your ideal clients and the work that is likely to come your way, your network, your referral sources, where you end up is highly likely to be somewhere different to where you thought it would be. So if you don't feel 100% clear, that's okay. And if you don't know precisely where your clients are going to come from, that's okay. Because it is absolutely something that will unfold and it unfolds through taking action, doing, reaching out, all of those things. Now, of course, I say that on the basis that you're going to get support and learn how to acquire clients. So inside the accelerator, the support you get is that we build a system or we implement a system that is intended to remove that. You know, that, that six month learning curve where you have to figure out, oh, hang on, how do I get clients? 6 to 12 month learning curve and we get you into implementation quicker. So you don't need to know where they're going to come from because we're going to give you a process that you can go through that will make it become very clear where they're going to come from. And like, it doesn't have to be that you do this within the accelerator, but you don't need to know where clients are going to come from to start your business. You just have to commit to learning, right? You have to commit to finding a good system and a good structure and learning from experts to help you do that. The fourth thing you don't need in order to start your coaching business is a corporate brand. And when I say a corporate brand, what I mean is that people think that when you become a coach, you have to say, okay, well I'm going to, this is a business, so I need to have a business name, I need to have a business entity that is not me. And in fact that can, that can shoot you in the foot when it comes to building your coaching business. Because coaching is very much a relational service, I guess. Right. So who you are as a coach is very much associated with you, your personal brand, your professional background, which makes sense. Right? So when people are looking for you or are looking for a coach, they're not necessarily looking for, oh, there's a business, that business looks like it'd be a great person to help me get a transformation. But what they will do is they'll say, oh, you know Jenny, I connect with what she's posted, or I think that she would help the people in my team. I'd be interested to talk to her. So I always recommend start out with a personal brand and when you get to a certain size, if you want to bring in other team members, if you want to grow, then you might choose to convert to a corporate brand. But you don't need that to start. You get to be you. And that is hugely liberating. Now I will say, I know some people don't really want to Be visible as them. They want to have a corporate brand so that they are not putting themselves out there in the same way. This is, of course your choice. But what I will say is it is going to be much harder to build a client base of coaches and corporate clients if your brand is purely corporate. And what you might find is that the people that are coming to you, they're going to be coming to you because they know you, they've heard of you. And a corporate brand can sometimes get in the way of that search process. Of course, it does mean then that you need to get comfortable with visibility. And so that is a learning curve. It's not something that should stop you pursuing your coaching business, but it is a learning curve and potentially some discomfort that you need to get to grips with. So that's my take. You don't need to have a corporate brand to start your coaching business. You also don't need permission from anyone in order to start your coaching business. And that's number five, you do not need permission. This is a tricky one because often this permission seeking that I see getting in the way of people starting their coaching business, often it is not consciously known, right? So we don't know that that's what we're doing. We don't know that we're waiting for someone to give us permission to start our business, to quit our job, to step away from a professional, you potentially a fabulous professional journey. And the reason we're not aware of it is because often it's coming from, you know, quite deep past experiences, right? So we might be subconsciously looking for permission or approval from our parents, right? We might be looking for approval or permission from our boss. And that is highly unlikely to come, right? We might be looking for permission or approval from our spouse or, or our peer group. If we're, you know, or our, you know, other community organization or if we're in a professional group that has very strong norms, we might be looking for, you know, permission to, to step away from that. And, you know, the truth is that anyone, if you said to them, you know, may I have permission to start my coaching business, like your parents, your spouse, they would say, of course, like, you know, no problem. But the problem is we don't have. We're really working from a basis of some assumptions, right? And assumptions which is, oh, people aren't going to like us if we upset the apple cart or people won't spend time with me if I'm no longer in the same, you know, role as them, or, you know, I no one in my family has ever been an entrepreneur. So they're going to, they're going to think it's weird, they're going to think it's, it's insecure. They're going to be concerned if I do that. So it's interesting. You don't need permission in order to start your coaching business, but what you probably do need to do is have some conversations and do some deep internal work. Because if there, if you are for some reason holding off when you're not sure why, and you, you know that this is something that you want to do, it's possible that you're waiting for perm permission to come. And that permission is, is not going to come, of course, because it's not outwardly stated or asked. And so I would start just inquiring about that in yourself and doing a little bit of self coaching around that. The sixth thing you do not need in order to start your coaching business is to look a certain way. And I say that because I was completely surprised when I started the corporate chick coach accelerator. How many people were having an experience of feeling blocked in terms of visibility and outreach because they felt like they didn't look the way they should. And that might mean that you didn't, you don't feel like you look like a coach. And you'll probably have an image in your mind of what a coach should look like, right? And whether it's an older person or a, you know, person of a certain gender or a person of a certain race, in your mind you probably have an assumption of what a coach looks like. And if you don't match that, then you may have a blocker, right? And it may again, not be conscious, but it may be a blocker anyway. And so I, I had this conversation with the members of my accelerator and I was surprised by how many people associated with that. So they, they might have felt like they didn't. They needed to lose weight or they needed to have a different haircut, or they couldn't let certain natural aspects like their hair or other parts of them, they couldn't let that show because they had been trained to believe that was less professional or it was less acceptable for them to show up in that way. And I want to be really clear that who you are and how you look exactly as you are is exactly how you need to be as a coach. And I really, really want to stress that. And I want to stress that, like, I know that that can be hard. And I think one of the hardest things for me in starting My, well, this business in particular, where I've been showing up so much more on social media, on website, all of that is, is the, the physical visibility, right? So there's visibility in terms of putting your opinions out there. I feel okay with that. But it was a big leap for me to embrace this physical visibility that my photo plastered in everywhere on the Internet. And so I have had to embrace the fact that it just feels a little bit uncomfortable. And I want to just reinforce that you do not need to look in any way other than exactly how you do in order to be a successful coach and to start your coaching business. The seventh thing you don't need in order to start your coaching business is any particular accreditations. Now I say that there are obviously many well known accreditation certifications, accreditations out there. For example, the ICF being an acc, pcc, MCC or EMCC or the association for Coaching, all of those have, you know, accreditations. I do think it is good to work towards an accreditation, but it is not a condition of entry to starting your coaching business. What I think should be a condition of entry is that you have a continuing focus on, on professional development, that you have committed to an ethical practice and a set of ethical guidelines and that you are always, you know, improving your skills and you are always aiming to, you know, be a better coach and you serve your people in a way that is honest and ethical and values led. So I do think you need all of those things and I do recommend getting accredited. And you know, the icf, the emcc, the academy, all have different ways you can go about it. And I think that there is value in going down that path for sure. But it is not required to start your business and there is no one particular accreditation that you must have. So I wanted to just be clear about that. And then the final thing of the eighth thing that you don't need in order to start your coaching business is to feel ready, right? So in order to be ready to start your business, you don't need to feel ready. And I talk about this quite a lot because often we assume that there is this magical point in time where you are going to feel like, yeah, okay, this is it. But the truth is we might never feel ready because that's a feeling, not a fact, right? And we may never feel ready because there are so many other things going on and this is always taking the leap, is always going to put us outside of our comfort zone. So what I would encourage you to do instead of waiting to feel ready is to embrace courage, right so rather than needing to feel ready or needing to feel confident, embrace the courage that you have and the certainty that you have done difficult things before where you have not felt ready in order to make that leap, right? So you may not ever feel confident, you may not ever feel ready, but you sure can do difficult things and you sure have been brave in the past and done things you weren't ready for. And so that is what you need rather than a feeling of readiness. So thank you for listening. If you want to start your coaching business, whether or not you feel ready to do so, this June is your chance to get support from me to go from corporate to coach through the Corporate to Coach accelerator as your support program. You can check it out@elliscarf.com cca and if you'd like to talk about your business, whether it's existing or you are incubating it with lots of ideas. If you want to talk about that and how the accelerator might be a good fit for you to support your Runway or you going to the next stage within your business and getting your next corporate client, head over to elliscarf.com bookacall and I would love to talk so as I mentioned, doors are opening next week to the accelerator and this is your last opportunity to get in at current prices before we make some very exciting additions to what is included in the accelerator. And that includes things like expert LinkedIn coaching and coaching supervision and outreach templates and LinkedIn prompt databases. All of those things right? So before though, this is the last chance to get in at the existing prices and from July prices will be going up to reflect those changes. So I do recommend booking a call with me asap. And if you are keen to get a taste of what it's like inside the accelerator, I'm running a free masterclass on the 12th of June at two different time zones and this masterclass is on three LinkedIn strategies to get your next three corporate clients. So if you are interested in some advanced strategies, things that I teach inside the accelerator, you can sign up for that@elliscarf.com class LinkedIn. All of those links I will of course put in the show notes. So thanks for listening and I will be back again next week.