Most Coaches Don't Realize This About Their Finances

So let me guess, you're a super smart individual. You absolutely love the work which you do for your clients. You get incredible results for the clients which you work with. Yet each and every month you get to the end of the month scratching your head going, well, where's all the money? Where's the reward for all of the effort which I've put in this month? And one of the things which I've noticed that most coaches seem to get wrong in this day and age is that they're all about hustle and grind and working harder. And in one of my previous videos, I was talking about the fact that like 2x doesn't work as a framework. What do I mean by 2x? I mean that like if you had to do more sales calls, more marketing, more client fulfillment, that that is the only way that you can grow your income. And that's just not true because the likelihood is if you could do any more, you would already be doing more. So I've got some really basic things that most small business owners are not doing and they're effectively leaving money on the table to the tune of potentially thousands of dollars each and every month. And the 6 things I'm going to share in this video, you don't have to do all of them, but even if you can just knuckle down and do some of them, they're super easy, they're quick things and inexpensive things that you can fix and add into your business. And I can guarantee that if you just do these things, you will start to get more traction with people who potentially want to work with you and become clients. So the first thing which I've got for you, the first mistake which I see business owners making all the time, I look at lots of people's social medias and it's very clear that the people who are successful at using social media have worked really hard on their personal brand. Now I'm not gonna go into a long diatribe about what personal branding and personal brand is. However, just some really basic things that you can do with your social media presence like having some professional headshots taken and then using the same image consistently across all of the social media channels that you've set up in the avatar, as well as also making sure that the color schemes match, that you've used the same logo on each of those social media platforms, that you have the same biography on each of those social media platforms, and that you have the same call to action on each of those social media platforms. The amount of small business owners that I see where it might as well be that every single one of their social media platforms are for a completely different business or person because they all look completely different. What you want to see is when somebody comes in and sort of travels across all— through all of your different social media accounts, that they look really consistent. They look like the same person because that's just going to build trust. You erode trust if everything looks confusing and in a bit of a muddle. So just go through all of your social media channels today. Make sure you've got the same headshot. Make sure you've got the same bio. Make sure you've got the same call to action and any graphics in there so that they at least look consistent. Because that will make a massive difference in terms of building trust with your prospects. The second mistake which I see small business owners making is not having even just a rudimentary website up. Quite often somebody will have gone to the extent of buying a domain and getting a personalised email account set up like robin@robinwaite.com. And then you— quite often one of the things which I do is I look at their personalised domain and I'll put that into Chrome and then lo and behold, there's no website there. And there is nothing more frustrating than when you see somebody who does a piece of outreach and email or a podcast interview or something like that and you want to track them down and you can't find a bloody website. Now a website doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. There are plenty of great free website building tools out there that you might have to spend a small amount of money on hosting once the website is set up. But even if you wanted completely free, you could go to a website which I've used in the past called about.me and just set up a simple one-page website which links off to your social media channels so people contact you. It just shows, like, demonstrates professionalism if you've got at least some kind of online credibility, you know, out there. Just a very simple one-page website is enough these days just to show people that you're a real person and you've taken an extra bit of care over your business and your brand to make sure that you have that online presence set up. Just as a side note, and without going too technical, if you have that website set up and Google finds it, it becomes like Like, Google essentially is a trust engine, the same as all of the AI search tools which are out there now, including ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and Perplexity. If you don't have a web presence, if you don't have a social media presence and it's not consistent, none of these tools are going to know who you are. They're going to serve people who have a much better, more congruent online presence together. So what you want to do, at least if you just have a website and just have your social media set up, you don't have to be posting on those daily. Don't have to have an extensive blog, but if you've just got a presence, that starts that trust-building process with those various different search tools. So it's really important you get something set up, even if it's not perfect in the first instance. The 3rd mistake that I see people using is that they do their outreach, you know, via email or social media or whatever it is, or go and do some networking, and next thing you know they say, oh, I'll drop you an email, and the email comes back from a Gmail account. To me, that just looks totally unprofessional. And look, I get it, it's, it's cheap or free to set up and at least get you online so you can communicate with people. But for me, it loses immediate credibility. I don't take business owners seriously if they don't have their own personalized domain and if they don't have their own personal email address set up like robin@robinwaite.com. So one of the first things you should definitely do when you set up a business is register a domain, Set up a personalized email address and then set up a one-page website because those things you can actually do in as little as a day, like a single day, and then you've got an online presence, you look professional, and when you email people, it just says that you've gone that extra mile to make sure that your brand is well, well reflected and it looks professional, it looks credible. I literally these days will not reply to somebody if they have a Gmail account, especially if they're trying to sell me something. I get a lot of people who do reach out to me who want my services. That's slightly different. But one of the first things I say to them is that go and register a domain, set a website up, set your socials up, link to your website. It's really just basic stuff that you can do very, very quickly, even to the point that I've actually registered domains for both of my daughters. They're only 11 and 9. On the off chance that if in the future they run a business or want to set up a blog or do something for themselves, we've already got personal domain set up for them. The 4th thing which you should do when you're first starting up a business is get out there and get some social proof. The amount of people I see when I put their name into Google that, one, they just don't appear simply, not even their social medias or website. But thirdly, you don't see anything about their interactions with clients. And it's really quite straightforward to get, you know, case studies, reviews, testimonials. You can set up a Google My Business account or Trustpilot. They don't even have to be customers customers, but you can invite colleagues and associates that you've worked with in the past just to put something up there to say that you're a trustworthy person to work with. The other thing which I encourage people to do is actually to upload photos alongside their reviews where they can, especially where it's things like books or if you sell physical products. You want to have people like interacting and engaging with your products so that again it just adds to that credibility. Believe it or not, you can actually go on to Fiverr and buy reviews, and I not recommend that you do that because you will immediately get blacklisted by Google if, if they catch you doing that. However, what it does tell me is that there are brands out there that potentially have gamified their review process and maybe purchased some of those reviews. So you actually want a broad spectrum of social proof, not just reviews, but you also want fully professionally written case studies or even snapshot case studies talking about the, the journey from when a customer started working with you to the end result which they got from through working with you. And I think the pièce de résistance when it comes to social proof is video testimonials from clients, especially if they're professionally shot. But again, there's nothing better than using one of these these days too, because the cameras are so good on them. But send your client 4 or 5 pointy questions and then get, get them to answer those questions on a video, ideally landscape, so that it can go on to a multitude of different medias, and then upload those onto your basic website. And I always say to people, people look. If you can get half a dozen professionally written case studies, if you can get 20 to 30 5-star reviews on whatever platform you choose, if you can get 4 or 5 video testimonials onto your website, you're light years ahead of many of your competition. Because one, many of your competitors won't know to do this. 2, they'll be too lazy. 3, they probably don't have the throughput of clients in order to get that volume of social proof under their belt as well. The 5th mistake which I see a lot of small business owners making especially when they start up, is that they can set their business up online, hide behind their computer screen, and never speak to a soul in person. And then again, they scratch their heads wondering why they're not able to build relationships with potential clients and then attract and enroll them into whatever products or services it is that they're selling. So you have to get out. You have to meet people in person. Go to conferences, go to networking events, go to business exhibitions, exhibitions, get out and have coffee in person with people, especially when you're starting up. You know, in your local town or city, there's probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, potential customers that you can be networking in. Yet you still initially turn to your computer, your laptop, go online, set up your social medias. I know I said you should do that anyway. And then lo and behold, you wonder why you can't attract clients in. Business is based on building personal relationships. So, and I can guarantee when you're first starting out, there are enough customers in your local geographical area, so get out there and meet some of them. Even if it's just to start building up some of the social proof I talked about in the previous tip, around getting those case studies, reviews, and testimonials under your belt. You may even choose to offer clients a slightly discounted deal, an unrefusable offer, in exchange for leaving that review or testimonial for you. So that's something to consider. But please, please, please, I know the dream is to make a passive business and run it online, but frankly, I think that's just lazy. You need to get out of your house or flat or your studio, away from your laptop, and go meet people in person. The final tip I've got for you is that people just don't do enough activity and then wonder why things aren't working out. And the amount of times I speak to people and look at, you know, and part of it is more of like a psychological thing where for some reason in business there is this unwritten rule that success is defined by the amount of sales which you make and the amount of pounds you've got in your bank. But actually, when I take a step back from that and start to speak to clients about the number of consultations which they've delivered that month, or the number of warm conversations, leads, which basically they've been able to produce that month, quite often that volume of activity is low. So think about it this way. Sales is what we call a lag indicator. All of the activity that has happened before that client says yes has lagged before it, and there is nothing once you get a yes or a no that you can do to kind of influence that sale or not. So let me give you an example. If your goal was to make 2 sales a month for your coaching practice at $5,000, and you only— you get to the end of the month and you've only achieved 1 sale, that activity's lagged. There's nothing now that you can't get another sale because It's the end of the month. You can't lose that sale. It's the end of the month. You're stuck with that one sale. So I actually encourage people to look at their lead indicators, leads and consultations. We measure those, we track those in a very simple Google Sheet. How many warm conversations or warm leads have we got this month? We write a list of those down. How many of those converted then into consultations? And what happens then is if we know that we need 70 warm leads and 10 consultations to get those 2 sales and we're measuring those lead indicators, If midway through the month you've got to a point whereby, I don't know, maybe you've only generated 21 warm leads and 3 consultations, you've basically got 2 options at that point. You can either basically give in and go, oh well, I'm away on holiday next week, therefore I can't influence, you know, I can't do any more work and I might fall short of my goal. Or you can go, well, fuck this, I'm gonna knuckle down and actually do the work now. Um, and what do I need to do in order to get 50 more warm leads in, what do I need to do in order to get those 7 consultation slots filled? So those lead indicators are a good way of seeing whether the volume of activity that we're actually putting in is working or not. And the great thing about measuring leads and consultations means that if you do 70 warm leads and 10 consultations but you only make 1 sale at the end of the month, you can still pat yourself on the back and go, well, actually I did the work, it just didn't convert into what those warm clients And I'll share— I don't mind sharing a statistic with you. In 2023, the first 6 months of 2023, I enrolled the grand sum of 3 clients. Now, I'd actually sat 29 consultations that month, and some of them, yes, it wasn't best fit and they decided it wasn't best fit for them. But the vast majority of those prospective clients I actually turned away because I didn't feel they were a good fit for my community, that potentially they could have been disruptive in there. Even several of them actually had the money ready to spend on a business coach. And I was like, actually, I don't think this is a good fit. So you can look at that and go, well, as a business coach, as a, as, as an influential business coach, 3 sales in 6 months is a bit rubbish. But actually, the way I look at it is like, well, I booked the consultations, I qualified those clients, and actually a majority of them weren't a good fit. And it means I focused on quality over quantity in terms of enrollments, and I was happy with the volume of activity that I put in. Now, I can rest on my laurels a little bit because I've spent several years building up a rainy day fund so that I don't have to sweat over enrolling every single client. For me, it's about enrolling the right clients. However, for many business owners where you're in a position where you haven't built up that rainy day fund, I get it, it's a little bit harder. But that shouldn't stop you putting out the right volume of activity in order to get those sales in. But also, if you're doing that volume of activity already and you're not getting the results, it could be that there's a couple of levers in there that you've got to, to, to change. Maybe it's something up with your offer or your product. Maybe it's something up with your marketing strategy or your target audience, or maybe your approach to sales that needs optimizing. That lead capture data around leads and consultations actually gives you a lot of very useful information as well in terms of whether you're doing enough activity and in the right place or not. If you have enjoyed this video, please do give it a like and a subscribe. And also, I've got some signed copies of my book, The Fearless Business Blueprint, which you'll see a link to in the description below. Pop your details into there and I'll get a copy of that out in the post to you.