If you do nothing else to grow your coaching business, do this

Hello and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarfe, 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 have done it all. I've grown coaching businesses solo and in partnership with teams of coaches working with me. I've been an in-house coach and 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 expertise 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. Keep listening in for lots of practical tips, inspiring stories, and prompts to help you grow your business your way. Okay, so I've led with a pretty big title this week, haven't I? If you do nothing else to grow your business, do this one thing. And Those of you who've been following along probably know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? And I just couldn't help talking about it again because you're right, I'm talking about warm outreach. And by warm outreach, I mean specifically and intentionally sending tailored messages to people who you know from your past professional or personal life. They might be lukewarm, like people in your LinkedIn connections who've liked a post, or they might be hot, like people who told you when you started your business to call them when you were ready for clients. Or mostly they are warm people you've worked with over the years, but you might not have spoken to in quite some time. Our warm outreach is how we reconnect with those folks and how we create real business opportunities. But I don't want to talk today about how you do outreach. I want to talk about why we don't do it and why it's important that we do, because I see this all the time. We know we need to do outreach. Even if, you know, you haven't been to any of my masterclasses or you're not in my Corporate to Coach Accelerator, you know that you need to tap into your network somehow. But so often there are things that get in the way. And so here are the common things that I hear that get in the way of an outreach strategy. The first one is people tell me, I can't do outreach until my website or my LinkedIn profile, anything like that is perfect. What if these people look me up and it doesn't reflect my messaging perfectly, or it's talking to a slightly different ideal client, or what if it doesn't exist exist at all, right? So that often gets in the way. Another thing that gets in the way is that many coaches are paralyzed by the fear of being salesy, right? The fear of being perceived to be selling. So that one gets in the way. Another thing that gets in the way is a fear of visibility. And that is, what does it mean for me to show up and to own this role, to have an opinion, to be putting myself out there, and to be doing that consistently, right? That's a really consistent one. You might notice that in yourself. There are also some very clever avoidance or very clever procrastination strategies. And I've heard the wonderful Tash Corbin on her podcast, Heart-Centered Business. She calls them advanced procrastination strategies. And I also see these getting in the way of doing outreach. And they include strategies that seem— they're advanced procrastination, mind you, not just, oh my God, I want to read my book or watch Bridgerton. And those strategies include things like really focusing primarily on what is the new training I need to do? What books should I be reading for my professional development? Right? And that is so important, but it really can be something that people use as an excuse to say, I'm not going to do this outreach because it's more important that I build my professional, professional skills. And that is also important, by the way. Or another advanced strategy might be that you follow 100 different business coaches online. You're always getting all these inputs, all these different complicated ideas. But you never apply any of them. So you might recognize yourself in some of those things that get in the way, some of those avoidance strategies. But my take is that if we let these strategies, let these fears get in the way, what we are doing is we are delaying the inevitable growth of your business. And it's only inevitable if we do the things that actually work. So instead of doing things like more and more training and development or waiting until the website is perfect, what if we got you paid while you got your website sorted out? What if we got you paid even when you felt scared? What if we got you paid so that you can afford to do all the professional development your heart desires? And by the way, I'm one of those coaches who wants to do every training course and get certified in every assessment. So I really hear you on that one. Let's do the things that get you clients so that you have the flexibility, you have the freedom to do those things, and that you can do alongside all this perfectionism, all these other strategies that pop up. We don't need to see it as sequential, and we don't need to see it as one or the other. We're going for a both and strategy. And so when I talk about outreach and I talk about getting you to get started with your outreach, I I want you to do it alongside, and I want you to do it even though you have all of these things that you would like to have in place, because the chances are those things like wanting your website to be perfect, wanting to do another training course, feeling afraid of being perceived as salesy, those are strategies that help you to avoid doing the things that matter. And so I'm not going to beat around the bush, and my clients will attest to this. I want you to put those things aside and I want you to do what matters. And there are very few things that truly matter, and one of those things is your outreach. So in my coaching program for coaches who want to grow their executive and leadership coaching businesses with more corporate clients, and it's called the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, this month we had a masterclass and the masterclass was on outreach strategies. And as part of that, we embarked on a group challenge. And in this group challenge, everyone made a commitment to their version of what they wanted to embrace. And so some chose to do a sprint, something like sending 100 outreach messages in a week. Others were doing baby steps, right? They wanted to do one each day. Most had something in the middle, so something like 20 to 30 per week or a version thereof. The main priorities were getting into action and then layering on volume. And volume is really important in outreach because we want to see your funnel developing and we want to be able to see the numbers as you go from outreach to back and forth messaging to booking sales calls to proposals to clients. So we wanted to be able to see that funnel start to develop. And let me just tell you, the results from the people who really leaned into it are extraordinary. And it's not just me telling you that this works, but remember, I have built coaching businesses into the 7 figures. So I think that is also important, but it's not just me. So let me tell you some of the results that my clients are seeing and where We're only about 2 or 3 weeks into this monthly challenge, right? So at the 2-week point, one client said that what she learned was to listen to Ellie. I had to share that one. And that she was seeing significant upticks in her website traffic as well as responses. One client said that he sent 100 outreach messages, got a bunch of replies, has 15 people interested in having a call, and now he is building his strategy for those conversations. Another client has organized 8 sales calls already as a result of her outreach sprint, and she is having to pull back because she's getting overwhelmed with her client work and the sales calls and just doesn't have time to do them all. So we're talking about how does she keep that momentum without feeling overwhelmed. Another client said that they've sent 20 targeted messages to CEOs in their specific industry in their network and has one sales call booked and many more conversations progressing to that point. Another sent 10 messages, has 2 lunches booked and a potential client already out of that group. And all of them are learning what works, what doesn't, and how it works best for them because one size really doesn't fit all. But this one habit really does predictably build businesses. So we need to figure out how you make that habit work for you and for your business and how you avoid any of those procrastination strategies that come up. And it's easy for me to say this, whether or not this helps get you over that hurdle. I don't know, but I constantly hear my clients say, I really wish I had done this the first time you told me, because now that I'm doing it— and sometimes it's a little bit later— now that I'm doing it, I'm getting results, and I wish I hadn't spent all of that time coming up with creative ways to avoid doing the one thing that was going to make a difference in my business. So if there is one thing you do make it your warm outreach. If you would like to learn more about how to grow your business with more corporate clients and specifically how to use your outreach strategy to do that, I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you about what we do inside the accelerator. I want to talk to you about whether it's a good fit, and you can book a call with me right now over at elliescarfe.com/bookacall. I really hope you do. And if you have been listening in, if you've attended my masterclasses in the past, if you have been considering whether this is the right time, I would encourage you to get in touch. Let's book a call and let's get you unstuck, right? Let's get you unstuck. Let's get you doing the things that are going to really make a difference and grow your business. Not just the busy work, right? The busy work that feels like we're in business, but isn't what brings revenue in the door. So let's have a chat, elliescarfe.com/bookacall. I look forward to speaking to you and I'll be back with more next week.