How to build business momentum before you leave your full time job

Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf, a senior executive coach with over 17 years experience coaching, which I now bring to my role as a mentor and business coach to other executive coaches. When it comes to coaching business, I've done it all. I have grown coaching businesses solo and in partnership and with teams of coaches working with me. I've been an in-house coach. I've been an associate coach. So when I talk about selling coaching to corporate clients, you know that I'm sharing from a place of experience and empathy. I work with coaches now through my group coaching program, the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, where executive and leadership coaches grow their businesses with more corporate clients. So today I want to talk about— this one is really for those of you who have not started your business yet, and it is all about starting before you officially quit, right? The case for building your business while you still have your job, whether that is full or part-time employment. And So in my experience, when coaches start, hit the ground running, when they start their business before they actually quit their jobs, they do very well, right? And I think that those are the folks who are able to ramp up the quickest when they do start their businesses officially, like, you know, when they've left the job And day one, shingles hung out. The ones who ramp up the quickest are, and it makes sense, are the ones who have done a lot of the work before they got to that point. And so I like to think of it as your Corporate to Coach runway being the time from, you know, when you say, I want to start my business, to when you have a, a business that is, if not replacing your corporate income, like well on the way to doing so. And so I think of that as your runway. Runway, and the first part of the runway is really the, the hardest part. That is the bit where we are taxiing along, we're trying to build up enough momentum, we're trying to build up enough energy to take off, right? So that part is, we can start that either when we officially have our first day when we are not employed, or we can start that before that point, and we can do that in a number of different ways. But when people do start the runway, right, they start the taxiing before they officially start their business. They do put themselves in a better position to move faster into takeoff when they do officially, you know, hang out their shingle, quit their job, be, you know, out there on their own. So those folks do move quicker, take off faster. And there are a number of reasons for that. And I want to sort of talk through why I think this is so. And the first one is, is that when you start this process, like there's a big mindset piece of this, right? The big, a big mindset piece, which is saying, I am, I am going into business. This is what I'm going to do. I have this intention. I'm going to start a business as part of starting a business. There are certain things that need to be true. There are practical things that need to be in place. There are. Tasks that I need to complete. And there are also mindsets that I need to embrace, things like, you know, understanding that you are a business owner and a coach, that you are a salesperson, for example, that you need to put yourself out. There's visibility required. And so I think the idea of starting some of this process, whether it's the asset building or whether it's the network building, whether it's the the mindset work, starting that while you still have the security of employment is kind of luxurious in that it gives you this freedom to experiment without the pressure that you'll have once you officially go live in your business of needing to generate revenue in an immediate, visceral, tangible way, right? So you have this sense that actually I can try a few things. I can play around with my offer. I can talk to people about what they're doing, what their organizations, you know, do, what they need, without the pressure of feeling like every interaction, every decision you make is, you know, really, really deeply important. Now, my take when I'm working with my clients anyway is that I really want everyone to hold those things lightly and to embrace this spirit of experimentation, not because we don't care about revenue, but because I think it is the most effective way to build revenue quicker. But I think that there is a freedom when we still have a paycheck, right? And I mean, I think that the most luxurious one is when we're working part-time. So you have the luxury of time and you have the, the security of some pay coming in the door. I think that freedom is extraordinary. You can try things, you can, you know, get clear on— you can experiment with who you want to work with. As I said, you can get out there, you can start to talk, you can do some research, and you can build your confidence, right? You can build your confidence by by posting on LinkedIn, by having these conversations with people, by doing more training. So there are so many— I think there is that freedom, that luxury of experimentation that comes when you do this work when you still have employment. The other thing I think you can do while you are still employed is that you can tap into your network without the baggage of feeling like you are only reaching out with a sales agenda. Now, we work a lot of, a lot of the time in Accelerator, my group coaching program, on how to do outreach without feeling like, you know, you are, you are some sort of predatory salesperson. How to get good with this idea of sales being service. How to remember that, that, you know, we have to really, really be deeply convicted that the work that we do is actually making a difference. And so sales has a different tone when we have this mindset. But the luxury when you are still employed is that you get to connect with people in your network, right, without feeling like you are only reaching out for sales because you genuinely aren't, right? You are reconnecting. You can reconnect with people from your past, people you'd like to build deeper connections with in your current employer, you know, even if you believe that they will be helpful, or especially if you believe they will be helpful for when you do start your business. But you can do it really with, you know, like, I guess, a clean, a clean ability to really just connect. And I'm always encouraging for people to focus on connection first in our outreach. And we can do that with our networks even easier when we still have that employment status associated with us. And particularly when we still have that connection, right? We're still in the same organization. It is much easier to connect with people. You can even have conversations saying, you know, I'm, hey, I'm thinking about this as a, you know, a future career path, right? Not necessarily now. Have you, you know, have you heard of people doing that? Now I would say very much a red flag. Don't be very careful. With who you share with. It is not something that I would recommend if you don't have an extremely safe culture in your organization. So in fact, as I say this, I'm like, oh no, maybe don't. But you know, some people will have told you that's what they want to do. So, you know, you can, you can just build connections based on, on what they say. Maybe hold back on that sharing. As I was talking, I was like, I should really edit this out, but I'm going to, going to let you see my thought process as I go through it. So the next thing is that there is so much that we can do before we're officially in business, right? There is a lot we can do around developing our asset base before we start. Now, in, uh, you know, I like to put some timeframe boundaries around that when people start their business because these things can kind of become bigger than Ben-Hur, right? Things like developing our website, developing our coach bio. But a lot of this infrastructure, a lot of the thinking The things like, you know, defining your ideal client, building out your first draft of an offer suite, your coach bio, your LinkedIn profile, although I'll talk about LinkedIn profiles in a moment, your website, even thinking through, you know, your revenue targets, your pipeline. All of that can be built before you officially are in business or exclusively in business. You do not need to be full-time in your business to do any of that groundwork. And if you think of the The time benefits of starting before you're officially in business, like it literally is anything you can do before you start will save you time. And so it is a true acceleration strategy to start before you're officially in business because the hardest version of starting a coaching business is starting from zero with no clients, no momentum, and a shrinking, you know, financial runway. And a lot of that difficulty is avoidable with some strategic preparation. Now, look, honestly, not everyone has the luxury, right, of that. It may be that your role does not allow, either literally doesn't allow or does not have the time or energy or bandwidth, you know, with it that would allow you to do that. But if it does, you know, any work you can do will see you accelerate faster once you're out there. So, you know, I think that starting a lot of these tasks, these mindset shifts, this learning while you still have, you know, a paycheck is a great strategy, but I don't want to paint it purely with rose-colored glasses because there are challenges as well with this strategy. And honestly, the benefit of this strategy, it's not magic. It's not that you, you know, magic, there's something magic about the timeframe. It just comes from doing the work and taking the time to do the work before you've started your business, right? So that you don't have to use the time once you start your business to do those tasks. And, you know, I think there is some magic to the timing around your network and around this experimentation mindset, but a lot of it is just that you have the time. And so I think the biggest challenge I see for folks who are, you know, who want to use this strategy is splitting your time and energy across two big pursuits is not easy, right? So having a job, particularly if it's full-time, less so if it's part-time, and putting in place infrastructure to grow your business that is hard, right? It is hard to do both. And if you don't manage it carefully and you're not strategic about, you know, the tasks— and, you know, for example, one of our pieces of curriculum inside the Accelerator is literally called Your 90-Day Quick Start, and those are all the tasks that you can do before you start a business. If you don't manage those things carefully and strategically, I think it can be burnout fuel, to be honest. And particularly, a lot of people who want to start their coaching business are already on this precipice of burnout, and that might be what's driving them anyway. So you would need to be very careful about that. Now, what I've heard is that this generally doesn't tip people into burnout because they feel fun, they feel exciting. And I really, you know, when I'm working with people to go through that, I want them to tap into this, you know, this passion, this purpose, this bigger picture about why we want to start a business. And that makes doing these tasks a lot easier. Another challenge that is often raised is, how do I start to talk about coaching or start to put it out there, particularly on LinkedIn, when my day job you know, may expect me to show up on LinkedIn, or, you know, would not, we wouldn't want to give them an indication that, you know, a business is, is in the offing. Um, so we generally need to craft a specific plan for this. And, you know, I, I do, I answer this question quite a lot, but usually where we start, if our organization either doesn't know or would not be open to us talking about, hey, you know, I, I do coaching and I take clients. I always start with saying, okay, well, just talk about, you know, your interest in coaching, right? Talk about your interest in people and culture and development and the nexus between that and the work that you do so that we sort of create a, a narrative that can flow really beautifully when you do start your business. And, you know, also means that you are building this, I guess, reputation, or people start to associate you with coaching. Long before you actually put yourself out there as a coach. So you've started to, to build that brand, if you like, of yourself. But even with all these challenges, I have seen this work and I've seen it work a number of times. You know, I've had clients join in sort of 3 to 12 months before they start their business. And what works well is being very intentional about goals and plans for what you want to do before you officially start your business. So, for example, a client who had a planned resignation date that was based around a bonus payment. We just worked backwards from where he wanted to be at that date, and we staggered the key tasks out before then. So we spent one quarter working purely on asset development, things like defining ideal clients, office suite, coach bio, website, LinkedIn. The next quarter we spent developing more around the funnel strategy, starting network growth, getting some momentum around that, starting to think about a content strategy for LinkedIn. In the third quarter, we started outreach and then we worked, you know, quite closely on what that would look like. And then in Q4, we hit go time. And it was incredible to see the speed at which that Q4 switch-on turned into real client opportunities because we had started ahead of time. And, you know, like a lot of that work was done in limited amounts of time. So You need to be very clear what time boundaries you have, and you know, you need to be very consistent. So you don't necessarily need to be doing a huge volume of work every week, but you need to be doing it every week, right? A small amount every week so that when you are ready to go, there are potential clients in the wings waiting. Now, your version of it will work back from your timeline. So your timeline might be 3 months, your timeline might be 2 weeks, Most people come to me when they're already in business, but if you have this opportunity, I think it makes sense to invest a bit of time, a bit of energy in this growth opportunity that exists for you before you start your business. So I think it's a great strategy. And I always see clients, they say, oh yeah, maybe 6 to 12 months, 3 months in, say, I'm ready to go. I really want to, I want to do this immediately. Um, and it's very exciting. So look, if this is you, if you're considering the move to start a business and you might want some help, please do head on over, book a call with me at www.elliescarf.com/bookacall. I'll put that in the show notes as well. And I'd be really happy to help you talk through your timeline, your runway timeline, and also where I see your lowest hanging from a business development perspective. So I would love to chat. We can consider whether the accelerator might be a good fit for you. Have a wonderful week, and I'll be back with another interview next week.