A guitarist and lesson-studio owner spent 25 years on his own business, then five years coaching at Akimbo Workshops before launching a $100-per-hour coaching offer using a Google Doc and PayPal. He sold 11 packages to his network, but then screwed up the business model. Most coaches and small business owners spend 80% of their time on marketing, sales, and admin instead of the work they actually wanted to do.
Chapters
Before we can find, fix, or fine-tune what's missing, broken, or needs work with your business, let's define the main problem and how it happened. In working with hundreds of coaches and other business owners, a pattern emerged regarding how they came to spend 80% or more of their time in their business, leaving only 20% of their time or less for doing the work they started their business for in the first place. By in their business, I mean all the activities associated with marketing their service instead of fulfilling it. To illustrate this, I'll share an example of how to screw up a coaching business that I am very familiar with—my own. Here's the origin story of my coaching business and how I came to craft the principles and practices shared in the rest of this workshop. First of all, I entered coaching very reluctantly. After graduating from Seth Godin's Alt MBA program in August of 2016, I began to hear and heed a new calling. I was 25 years into a self-employed career as a professional guitarist and lesson studio owner. Although I found that work fulfilling financially and otherwise, I was ready for a change. I just wasn't clear on what that change was. My Alta MBA pals encouraged me to go into coaching, but I resisted. I resisted even though I was tapped to be an Alta MBA coach, which led to a 5-year tenure as a head coach at Akimbo Workshops. Even my wife told me coaching was a clear path to cash and calling for me. I refused to heed the call to coach for almost 2 years, trying my hand unsuccessfully as a course creator and a speaker. Desperate to at least cover my current expenses, which included hiring a coach who told me I'd be a great coach, I finally decided to give it a try. Here's what I did. I took the first smallest step into possibility. I created a $100 an hour coaching offer and decided that selling at least 10 packages would validate the offer and I'd take the next step. I drafted my offer in a Google Doc, added a PayPal payment link, and shared it with everyone in my network who had been encouraging me to go into coaching. I sold 11 packages, sealing my fate. Turns out I loved coaching and I was really good at it. And all I did was create an offer, share it with an existing audience, and employ the most basic sales strategy possible. What happened next? I completely screwed up a working business model. But before I tell you how, I need to introduce you to my friend Seneca.
