The coaching and consulting industry have traditionally been built on two ways of getting clients. And I think BOTH of those models are broken.
So the journeyman worked hard, practiced (often doing work for free just to get the experience), sat the many professional tests, and one day they got their professional certificate, complete with gold letters, a wax seal, and letters to put after their name.
But no clients came.
So the newly qualified journeyman went back to the school that trained them to find out how to get clients. "Get some business cards, and put the letters after your name. Then get some brochures printed with our crest on. THEN clients will come." So the journeyman got business cards, and brochures, and went to network breakfasts. And lunches. And conferences. They asked craftsmen in other trades if they would put their brochures and business cards on display in their shop.
And they did MORE free work, in the hope that people would be overcome with gratitude and hire them, or else send them more clients.
With little variation, it’s the model still recommended by about 90% of training schools, whether you're training to be a coach, therapist, accountant or lawyer!
It's hard work. It's thankless. And very few manage to make a decent living from it.
As I pointed out in my first book, "More Clients, More Money, More Fun", a survey by the International Coaching Federation found that coaches around the globe earn an average of just $50,000 (£30k). 79% of dentists feel they are working too hard and make too little for the amount of training they had to do. In the UK only one accounting firm in three reports annual turnover of more than £100,000, and a third make less than £50,000. And the average salary for a lawyer is £51,000.
Welcome to the professional treadmill!
So what's the alternative?
So far, it's been what I call the "Guru Model".
Here, you go out and find a niche - but one that's large "enough" - and gather a list of tens of thousands, or better yet hundreds of thousands of people who might be interested in what you do, then you start to feed them information, and every so often you give them a hurdle to pass (like buying something) so you can slowly whittle the list down to a few thousand who want to pay you money, and a few dozen who want to pay you SERIOUS money.
It's the Guru model, because the idea is to position yourself as the guardian of some deep dark secret reserved only for a hidden few. You hide yourself at the top of a metaphorical mountain and wait for the select few who are devoted enough to make it to the top.
The problem is, it used to work but it doesn't any more.
Getting thousands of people to sign up for your list is hard work, and the blighters keep unsubscribing. Even if you can get them on your list, and keep them there, there's no guarantee they'll open your emails.
Worse still, though, the guru model relies on selling information. Well information these days is pretty much free thanks to the internet, so why would people pay you for something they can find out for free?
In my Six Figure Blueprint Intensive workshops I've started sharing a third alternative: the Natural Expert System.
Implementing The Natural Expert System means you'll never have to go networking or cold call a prospect ever again. The System is about positioning yourself as being so clearly different from the other coaches and consultants who claim to do what you're doing, that it makes no sense for your prospective clients to hire anyone but you.
You'll leave the workshop knowing who exactly you need to be getting in front of and what you need to tell them.
I don't have time to explore the whole system in blog posts, so if you want to find out the 16 mindset shifts you need to make to break away from the old ways of building a business, and the 9 Coaching Cash Machines that you need to implement, you know where to find out about them: http://robcuesta.com/6figureblueprint
OK, that's enough for today.
Next time we'll look in more depth at the leaky sales funnel.
Until then, here's to your success!
Rob
