Back to pricing.

What makes it hard?

Why do women undercharge?

Here are some thoughts to consider:

Limiting beliefs get in the way.

• What will they think of me?
• Will I look greedy or arrogant?
• They won’t be able to pay that.
• That’s what everyone else is charging.

Do these sound familiar? If so it’s time to catch yourself and question your fears.

Another challenge is self-doubt or lack of confidence.

So you might think:

• I’ll charge less than other people while I’m new.
• I don’t feel confident so I’ll charge less.
• Will people really pay that for my coaching?
• It just sounds too much.

Undercutting “the market price” is a bad strategy. There’s an erroneous belief that charging less than others is a brilliant way to gain more clients.

Yes it may bring you clients but some say the ‘cheapskate’ client is often the most picky.

Your low price may communicate that you are inexperienced or not much good. Or that your business is struggling. None of these are helpful. Confidence is everything in business, as anyone who follows the stock market knows.

What to do instead

I recommend these as first steps:

1. Get clear on your value to clients, what specific results clients achieve with you. Include so they can. For example: Increased confidence so they can ….
2. Get comfortable with money and money conversations. If profit still feels like a dirty word, something needs to change urgently in your money thinking so you can let your business thrive.
3. Work with the right people. You can’t serve everyone and charge specialist prices so choose carefully who you want to work with.

Alison Haill is an Executive Business Coach running her own coaching business for the last 25 years, Alison knows what works in business today. It worked for her coaching practice during COVID too, and for the women in her ‘Charge What You’re Worth And Get It’ groups. It wasn’t always like this though. At one point after years of struggle, she knew she had to give up or change. She chose to change and invested £££s to learn from business and marketing experts. Distilling the essence of that learning and combining it with her own practical business experience, Alison has created a system that works for her own business and works for other women coaches, consultants and trainers too. 

The post 80% More Women-led Businesses Fail Than Those Led by Men appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

If you want to avoid the downward spiral of competing on price, here are 3 ‘P’s of branding which will help your business be recognised and remembered:

1. Positioning
2. Proposition
3. Personality

Please note that building your memorable brand is strategic and you’ll need to invest time, patience and commit to consistency to gain recognition.

Positioning (who, why and what)

You’ll have heard about the benefits of focussing on a clear niche. This is because it helps prospective clients to choose your business when you’re clear on who you want to attract (your brand positioning) and why you want to help them (your brand purpose).

Your niche could be narrow and deep, or wide and broad. You could focus on people who work in specific market sectors e.g. finance and tech or education or retail e.g. women HR managers over 45 years working in retail, or ambitious millennials working in media agencies.

When you have these start points, you can now go deeper and describe the typical attitude of mind of your target clients, along with how they feel about what is holding them back, troubling them or driving them forward. Having a deeper understanding of clients will help you to develop engaging and compelling messaging (P2 – proposition).

Now you have clarity on who you want to attract – you know their demographic and psychographic make-up – what about you? What is the inner spark that drives you to help them? When you clarify your why and the emotional connection you feel with clients, it will help ensure your messaging is authentic.

There’s one more question to answer on your brand positioning – what could make your approach, services or packages meaningfully different from other coaches in this space?

Proposition (why buy from your business)

This is all about the value you bring your clients. It’s bigger than a USP which is often summarised as “a specific, differentiating factor that sets a product or service apart.” Instead, consider your Brand Value Proposition, because this embraces the complete value of what your brand promises to your clients.

Start by clarifying the 3 levels of benefits or transformation your client enjoys when they choose to work with you:

• Functional – practical results
• Emotional – how they feel about these results
• Identity – who they are now

You can also interweave your brand story, origins, purpose and values into your brand messaging to reinforce the reasons why clients will prefer to choose your business services.

People tend to make their buying choices based on how they feel about the purchase and the people behind it, and then back up their decision with the rational arguments and functional benefits. It’s one of the reasons big companies invest in the emotional power of branding.

Over time, the totality of your brand value proposition creates a memorable experience of working with your business – and can generate referrals and recommendations.

Personality (who)

The who of your business brings together your personal brand within your business identity – the relatable, human characteristics of your business including:

• How your business behaves (based on values)
• Your brand voice and tone
• Imagery, colours and style

Once you’ve defined your brand personality, it’s vital that you express your brand identity consistently over time.

It may feel boring, yet gaining recognition for your business relies on consistency. By consistently reinforcing your brand colours, fonts, logo, imagery, tone of voice and so on, will help your target clients to remember and recognise your brand.

Extra tip – Brand Style Guide

Keep a record of your brand positioning, value proposition, personality and more, in your Brand Style Guide. It’s an invaluable reference point for creating consistency in your business and brand evolution, and for briefing the people you outsource to.

Remember that consistency is key. Repeat, repeat, repeat for brand standout, awareness and memorability.

Lynne Stainthorpe is a brand strategist who works with coaches, consultants and therapists to make your brand human, relevant and distinctive, so that your business stands out, grows affinity and creates impact. She is a LinkedIn Top Voice.

Lynne uses a proven process to develop your brand identity, personality and tone of voice, based on your brand vision and values. She gets to the heart and soul of your brand and brings it to life throughout your branding and marketing collateral. She helps position and package your services, and develop your value proposition, so that you can communicate your brand message effectively and consistently within a flexible framework.

The post 3 Branding Tips to Help Clients Remember your Coaching Business appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

• Increasing your brand attraction factor
• Growing affinity with clients
• Creating authenticity
• Building competitive advantage

As Scott Talgo sums up “A brand that captures your mind gains behaviour. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment.”

Creating the ‘who’ of your brand may not be on your radar, yet it’s one of the foundations of your marketing strategy and approach.

ChatGPT put ‘develop a strong brand identity’ 2^nd in a list of 15 activities that could make your business attractive to clients. Here’s the list for reference:

1. Identify Your Niche
2. Develop a Strong Brand Identity
3. Professional Website
4. Content Marketing
5. Client Testimonials and Case Studies
6. Offer Valuable Free Resources
7. Networking and Industry Involvement
8. Professional Appearance and Demeanour
9. Certifications and Qualifications
10. Transparent Pricing
11. Client-Centred Approach
12. Continuous Learning
13. Referral Programme
14. Thought Leadership
15. Professional Partnerships

The explanation for developing your strong brand identity is summarised as:

• Create a clear and compelling brand identity that reflects your coaching style and values.
• Ensure that your brand messaging is consistent across all platforms.

Both of which are excellent aims, so in this blog I’ll focus on brand identity.

Craft your brand identity 

You’ll notice that I say brand identity and not brand logo. This is because your brand identity comprises much more than your brand logo, whilst the role of your logo is to express your brand identity.

Here’s a definition of ‘brand’ from the Chartered Institute of Marketing:

“The best brands create a special relationship with customers, based on intangible qualities that evoke strong emotional responses.”

So, once you’re clear on your target clients, coaching focus and your value proposition (the reasons clients will prefer to buy from your business instead of another), you can begin crafting your brand identity which starts with your key brand intangibles.

I like to describe these intangibles as the:

• Why (why your business exists)
• How (how your brand operates) and
• Who (who your brand is and what it stands for)

The magic of these core brand intangibles is that your combination of why, how and who is very difficult to copy.

‘Why’ is your brand purpose 

Why did you set up your business? You may have a personal ‘why’ aligned with your business purpose. Simon Sinek says people buy into why you do what you do, more than what you do.

So, your aim is to align your brand purpose and passions with your target client wants and needs (even if they don’t know it yet).

You could consider:

• Why you want to make a change in the world
• Who you want to make a change for
• How it will make a difference – however big or small

.

‘How’ is your brand values 

Your key question is what does your brand believe in?

Your brand values matter because they set the moral compass of your business and determine how your brand behaves with others – from clients and employees to suppliers and stakeholders. In a nutshell, your brand values shape the attitudes, behaviour and culture of your business.

And brand values matter because shared values attract like-minded clients. As Howard Schulz says “If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.”

When shaping your brand values, you could consider:

• Desired Behaviour and Traits
• Commitment to Rights and Causes
• Unshakeable Business Practices
• Distinctive Company Culture

.

‘Who’ is your brand personality 

Having a distinctive brand personality – irrespective of your brand name and the number of people in the business – helps to develop your brand ‘know, like, trust’ factor.

It’s an essential component in creating affinity and emotional connections with your target clients.

“It’s about bringing who you are to what you do and how you do it.” Say PwC

When determining your brand personality you could imagine your brand is a person and consider:

• How your brand behaves (based on your brand purpose and values)
• How your brand looks – your brand style (based on your brand colours and imagery)
• How your brand speaks and listens (your tone of voice and vocabulary)

I’ll give the last word to Walt Disney who understood about creating emotional connections “Until a character (your brand) becomes a personality it cannot be believed”.

Lynne Stainthorpe is a brand strategist who works with coaches, consultants and therapists to make your brand human, relevant and distinctive, so that your business stands out, grows affinity and creates impact. She is a LinkedIn Top Voice.

Lynne uses a proven process to develop your brand identity, personality and tone of voice, based on your brand vision and values. She gets to the heart and soul of your brand and brings it to life throughout your branding and marketing collateral. She helps position and package your services, and develop your value proposition, so that you can communicate your brand message effectively and consistently within a flexible framework.

The post Make your Brand Human appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

With over 15yrs of experience creating videos, and years of helping other coaches to get started, today I share with you my top 4 tips helping you to overcome the nerves and create quality videos for your coaching business.

Here are my top 4 tips to creating quality videos:

1. You don’t need a studio

One of my members told me she hated videos and didn’t want to produce any. But as soon as I showed her a video of me walking through a forest speaking to camera, she got excited and said, oh I can do that.

She’d got into her head that business videos needed to be in a studio. She didn’t like this style of video and felt overwhelmed at the prospect of creating one.

Studio style videos are only one option, you can be creative with your locations.

Perhaps you could inspire your clients whilst you’re out walking your dog. You can create amazing quality videos on a beach, in a forest, or sat in your car.

BONUS TIP: I do advise recording a little test video to check that the lighting and audio work well in your location. This way you won’t record a long video and then realise it’s no good because of wind noise or low light.

2. Don’t wait until you have the fancy equipment

There is so much tech you can buy to enhance your video quality these days, but I’ve seen lots of people hold themselves back because they ‘need’ the microphone, lights, stabaliser etc etc.

They often never actually record a video, spend a fortune on tech they either don’t need or spend ages researching the technology they need.

Smartphone technology is amazing these days, if you have one, you have enough to get started and create some great quality videos. I’m always reminding my members that action is better than perfection.

Focus on connecting with your clients through the videos you create. The tech can grow as your business and confidence with video grows.

3. Lighting and audio are key

Good lighting and great sound create good quality videos.

Having natural light in front of you will create the best video. Sitting in front of a window works well. Just don’t have the light source behind you, it will make you dark and hard to see.

If you need them, you can buy lights very cheap these days. Personally, I love the ring lights as this gives you a nice all-round light.

Most Smartphones have a great microphone but again you can buy pretty good ones for as little as £20. If you want more help choosing the right microphone for your needs, I’ve created a video sharing the microphones I use on my YouTube channel.

BONUS TIP: Check what’s in the background of your video before you hit record. I’m sure you’ve seen many faux-pas’s made over the lockdowns!

4. Practice makes perfect

It’s the practice which helps you to banish the nerves, refine your style and improve your impact.

No amount of researching, reading and learning will equal the knowledge you gain from doing. If you want to become good at creating videos quickly, choose something simple, press record and keep creating videos regularly.

BONUS TIP: I never watch my videos back, I’m too critical of them and they’d never be published. Instead, I record, edit and publish. For me, it’s more important to share what I know than it is to sit worrying about how I sound on video, or what I look like.

If this has sparked your interest and you’d like to learn more, I have more videos on the Build it Brilliant on Youtube channel including:

• Video editing basics
• How to avoid creating ‘waffly’ videos
• How to transcribe videos for free
• And more.

Videos are a fantastic way to build your coaching business and connect with your customers and you can have lots of fun creating them.

Zoe Thompson is a Business Development Maverick for the helping professions. She uses her wonder skills of strategic thinking, endless creative ideas and a love of technology to help you find simple and effective ways to connect to more customers and build the business you’d love.

Author of The Build it Brilliant Blueprint, Zoe is passionate about helping you to simplify, automate and grow your business without wasting time and money on tech you don’t need.

Take her FREE Strategy Quiz and receive a super-tailored report with recommendations for your business. https://builditbrilliant.co.uk/

The post Lights, Camera, Action: Tips and tricks to create quality coaching videos appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

In the early days I had heard about the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but didn’t really know what it was about, why I should have it or how it works.

What I know now is that there was no point having poured my heart and soul into creating beautiful content and been brave enough to press publish, when the website wasn’t designed in a way that would be found by the search engines – such as Google, Bing etc.

I am often asked, “What will SEO do for my coaching business?”

Well, most people start off by writing content with only their audience in mind, but the truth is your content has two audiences.

1) The human who reads it, they want it to be engaging and interesting.
2) The robot, who needs to know what it’s about quickly and that it’s a high-quality suggestion to show to other people.

SEO is the process of optimising your content for the robots, so the search engines can help more people to find it. Tricky when you’re new to this.

Back in 2011 I’d never heard of the Google algorithm, keyword research or meta tags, and I meet many new small business owners who are getting to grips with this terminology even now.

I’m on a mission to demystify and explain the technology so that small business owners can make informed and educated choices for their business.

Professional coaches positively change people’s lives and there are millions of people who could benefit from coaching services, but not understanding the technology can:

– prevent you from connecting to the people who need you.
– stop you from building a profitable business that you would love.
– make you waste time, money and effort on services you don’t need.

The best time to start your learning journey is today, understanding SEO will help you have informed discussions with SEO professionals and make educated updates to your content so more people find and connect with you.

Top 3 Tips to Get Started with SEO

1) Tell Google your information.
SEO on your website/blog/videos is a long-term marketing strategy but you can show up on Google within 48hrs by having an up-to-date Google My Business Account. When people search for your business, this comes up at the top.

Set up your Google My Business Account video: https://youtu.be/mz99FJ3jwn4

2) Understand Keywords and conduct some research for your business.
Keywords are the phrases people will use when searching for your business e.g. UK performance coach or coaching for CEOs. Use these in your titles, descriptions, and text so that when people search, Google knows your content is relevant.

How to Conduct Keyword Research for your business video: https://youtu.be/N8NphFTW5zo

3) Optimise the functionality for your website.
Do you have a sitemap, what’s your site speed and is your site mobile friendly? These are things you can find out about your website. Improving your functionality will help your SEO.

How to optimise your site speed video: https://youtu.be/ZSptQN-WyCE

When I started my business most of the professionals I asked for support were out of my budget or didn’t understand the needs within this industry. My mission for Build it Brilliant is to demystify technology so together we can have a greater positive impact on the world. I have over 150 videos on my YouTube channel so feel free to watch any you feel would be helpful.

Zoe Thompson is a Business Development Maverick for the helping professions. She uses her wonder skills of strategic thinking, endless creative ideas and a love of technology to help you find simple and effective ways to connect to more customers and build the business you’d love.

Author of The Build it Brilliant Blueprint, Zoe is passionate about helping you to simplify, automate and grow your business without wasting time and money on tech you don’t need.

Take her FREE Strategy Quiz and receive a super-tailored report with recommendations for your business. https://builditbrilliant.co.uk/

The post Cracking the Code: How to use SEO to expand your coaching practice appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

Other coaches tell me that they do email marketing and they send out a quarterly newsletter.  Again not enough.  You need to be mailing at least fortnightly and ideally weekly.

Picking up the phone is another one!  If you want to win business, then pick up the phone and talk to people.

Another big mistake is waiting for perfection.  I have known people to write and re-write their marketing materials ten times and they are still not happy with it.

Keep it simple stupid!  Today I listened to Frank Kern.  Frank is one of the world’s top marketers and he was talking about a KISS marketing system that anyone can use.  Here it is:

1. What have you got
2. What will it do for them
3. Who is it for
4. How you can prove it
5. What do they need to do next

There you are a simple system for you to use that really works well for putting together your:

1. Website pages
2. Blog posts
3. Email campaigns
4. Podcasts
5. LinkedIn profiles
6. Etc

If you like my open and honest approach and you want more help then I work with coaches who have one of three problems:

1. Some of them don’t have time to do their own marketing and they outsource it to us
2. Others just don’t get this digital marketing world we live in and so I coach them
3. And a few have never really done much marketing preferring to rely on referrals to survive, but they are now looking to thrive.

Steve Mills has been a  coach, trainer and consultant for over a quarter of a century.  Steve specialises in marketing and in that time has worked with thousands of businesses and one thing Steve can tell you is that the businesses that are successful are those that are good at selling and marketing their products and services.  So, if you want to grow your business, then you had better get better at sales and marketing.

Want to know more?  Book a meeting, or sign up for Steve’s next webinar at www.steve-mills.com

The post Keep It Simple Stupid appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

Five years into running my own business I don’t have time to dwell on working on my own, but I do remember what it was like in the first year. It was lonely because, as with all entrepreneurs, it takes time to build a business and, if you have chosen to leave a job to build your new career as a self-employed person, you start to miss your team environment and even the odd “thank you” for your efforts at work! It also took me some time to learn about what was needed and how to make the necessary changes required to run my own business.

Coaching is a support profession and we give our all to help our clients with change and make their goals come to fruition. Clients will come and go and, after receiving your help, will be ready to change. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we need the same support to effect our own change and transition to being a Solopreneur.

As a Supervisor to many newly qualified coaches I have noticed that in the first few years of business they arrive in Supervision with more business build questions than client work questions and this was the insight that drove me to write the resources “The Coaching Solopreneur” Book. It launched this week and as hoped many Coaching Training companies are very keen to support it as we all feel that there is a gap in coach training that prepares people to go into business.

The coaching profession is growing by 7% year on year according to the latest ICF report and I would like to be part of supporting coaches to take a share of that market after their qualification. I want to see more coaches succeed in business and see more newly qualified coaches make a faster start to getting the return on their qualification investment.

The insight that coaches were losing confidence in their coaching abilities due to lack of support for their business build was enough to collate my learning into a model – ‘The coaching house’ which is core to the book. It is simply a guide for newly qualified coaches or those stuck in their business build to understand their Why and What is needed to build a coaching business to house their coaching services.

The Coaching Solopreneur: How to build a coaching business with sustainable foundations eBook : Freedman, Kate: Amazon.co.uk: Books

The writing of the book has led me to believe that we all need a sense of Community to be a Solopreneur so I hope use of the book will help coaches to find that community within the profession of like-minded coaching business builders. Launching with the book is a community forum and support membership pages filled with additional resources for coaches to reflect on their Why, What and How! They will be ready for joining the TCD for example as they will be clearer on their offer and how they want to be found.

Why have I done this? In its foundation year I hope that the book and community mean fewer coaching businesses fail and we all get to share in the market growth and do the good work that society, organisations and the ecosystems we live in need right now.

I plan to work with the community to share more of my experiences and encourage all the coach members to do the same – we all have so much to give our profession to make it a happy, successful choice to be a supported solopreneur.

Kate Freedman – ICF Professional Certified Coach, Coach Supervisor & Author – Kate is dedicated to helping new coaches make their mark on the coaching profession and build the business that supports their coaching offer.  Over the last 5 years Kate Freedman has taken many wrong turns on the way to building her successful and sustainable coaching business. In her new book, The Coaching Solopreneur, she offers up a refreshing slice of honesty about the challenges we face along our journey as solopreneur coaches and a roadmap to avoid the many pitfalls that hide round every corner.

“This is the go-to book for setting up a coaching business. This is rocket fuel, practical, accessible and confidence building. I wish this book existed when I was starting out.” Jackie Sanders, PCC Coach

“The central metaphor of this book is such a gift for coaches building solo practices outside the safety of an employment setting. No such thing existed when I trained a decade ago. The Coaching Solopreneur can serve as your way to navigate the nuts and bolts of starting up. I picture coach wariness and weariness melting away thanks to the practical wisdom Kate so generously shares.” Kate Hammer, PCC Coach

Read more blogs from Kate: Does a newly qualified coach need supervision?

The post The Coaching Business Builders appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.

Follow these fives easy steps recommended by our PR expert Tracy Dickerson to get you started on your media journey.

1. Identify your business DNA

A common marketing term is USP (unique selling point/proposition). This may sound like jargon so let’s talk in terms of your business DNA. These are the things make your service unique. To identify this, think about these six key things;

• Do you enjoy working with clients from a specific sector?
• Do these clients have a common range of issues you work on?
• Which elements of coaching do you excel at?
• What makes your heart sing?
• What are the issues you are passionate about resolving?
• How does your personal career or life journey make you stand out?

Everyone has their own unique business DNA – you just need to dig deep.

2. What’s your story?

Your story and unique selling point is identified by who you want to speak to, what they want to read about and where they are likely to read it. If you’re seeking investment for your business, or trying to champion bullying in the workplace, these will be very different.

3. Share your knowledge

Sharing your knowledge is a great way to get your media machine fired up.  Why not contribute articles to sector specific publications, talking about the issues business leaders face such as imposter syndrome, isolation or conflict resolution? Make best use of this content by repurposing for your blog, newsletter and social channels.

4. Don’t forget regional media outlets

Don’t forget your local media contacts, particularly if you’re based outside of London. A thriving business in the local community is a great local story and can really help your business.

5. Jump on the topics journalists are writing about

A great way to get your business into the news on a shoe string is by jumping on news stories that journalists are already writing about. With world mental health day and stress awareness on the agenda in the coming weeks, this might be a good place to start.

Getting your brand into the media is a great way to take your business to the next level and demonstrate your unique selling point. When potential clients see your brand in the press this really makes you stand out from the coaching crowd.

If you would like a free consultation to discuss your public relations journey, please get in touch with Tracy at PR by NorthStar.

Join the TCD Community Coach membership for more ideas on how to grow your business.

The post How do you Stand Out from the Coaching Crowd? appeared first on Trusted Coach Directory.