Advice on Building a Life Coaching Practice
Advice on Building a Life Coaching Practice
If you are looking at building a life coaching practice there are several important aspects you should think about before you get started. The most important one is to decide what your focus will be. You need to have a unique selling point in order to attract people to come to your practice rather than anyone else's.
Choosing Your Focus for Building a Life Coaching Practice
Many life coaches concentrate on a specific area of coaching rather than trying to cover all eventualities. For example, one might cover anything to do with wanting to improve your working life; so people wanting to get more from their working lives or change to a more purposeful career might see this kind of life coach. Another coach may have a specific interest in time management and the effect this has on our lives, so that could be another good focus to follow.
You might think that if you are building a life coaching practice you would be better off making your skills available to as wide an audience as possible, but this can actually backfire as people won't know what specific problems you are good at helping them with. Having a cast iron selling point will automatically market your skills to the right people, and attract a lot more potential clients in the future.
Marketing Your Practice
In the early stages of building a life coaching practice particularly, you will need to find ways of promoting yourself and your skills in order to attract a good client base. Word of mouth is always a good option - tell everyone you can to tell people about your new practice, and make sure you have plenty of business cards printed to hand out to people. If you have enough you could always hand a few to everyone you know to distribute for you.
Generate Some Interest
Some coaches offer a free initial consultation to get past any hesitancy a person might have about seeking help. You could also offer a generous discount in the early days of building a life coaching practice - perhaps five consultations at a reduced rate for example.
It's always worthwhile to have a brainstorming session to see how many methods you can come up with for generating interest and attracting clients. Once you have started your business you will find that previous clients will bring in new ones for you as word of mouth helps to build your business without the need for advertising.