The Business and Practice of Coaching: Finding Your Niche, Making Money, & Attracting Ideal Clients

An estimated 30,000 coaches have entered the coaching profession during the past five years. Unfortunately, the majority report they are unable to earn a living wage from their coaching services. Competition is high, and the knowledge of how to succeed in the business is often lacking. To survive today, coaches must match their enthusiasm with strong business and marketing expertise. Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen are veteran business coaches who understand how to strategically approach the business and the practice of coaching as well as how to mentor new coaches entering the profession. The Business and Practice of Coaching is the first text to combine a coaching approach (step-by-step exercises, direct suggestions, insider's tips, and motivational plans) with solid business information and ideas in order to give new and experienced coaches exactly what they need to prosper in the competitive business of coaching. Grodzki and Allen help coaches succeed by giving them the right information, showing them how to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set, and demonstrating how to customize a business plan that can spell the difference between accomplishment and collapse. Grodzki and Allen gives each reader the ability to: * Build a coaching business that has relevance to the larger community around it and be aligned with the new realities of the coaching profession. * Refine your coaching skill set to incorporate the five coaching competencies that signal to the public that you are a masterful coach. * Define your innate coaching specialty and target a profitable niche market so you can make a bigger impact as a coach. * Implement the eight best marketing strategies to attract coaching clients (and know the marketing ideas that coaches do best to avoid). * Set and raise your fees the right way, develop multiple streams of coaching income, and build a six-figure business that you can own and sell. * Institute risk management policies that ensure your practice is legally safe, ethically sound, and trouble free. Covering all of the territory from positioning your coaching business, differentiating it from the competition, acquiring basic entrepreneurial skills, and learning from profiles of master coaches The Business and Practice of Coaching offers a wealth of information and accessible, yet expert guidance. Readers will discover how to take advantage of current trends and avoid distracting hype within the quickly changing coaching profession so that the coaching business they build today will be viable tomorrow.

Wendy Allen, Ph.D., is a psychologist and business coach working in Santa Barbara, CA. She is a contributor to The New Private Practice: Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies, and Advice as well as a graduate of CoachU and the Authentic Happiness Coaching Program.

Positioning: Getting Prepared for Coaching. 1. Coaching Made Easier; What you first need to know to make it as a coach in today's competitive coaching market. An overview of the book.. 2. Coaching Then and Now; How the profession of coaching has changed in the past 25 years and the differences between therapy, consulting, and coaching, including the trends and realities that influence your coaching business path.. 3. Becoming a First-Rate Coach; A better understanding of what coaching is and is not, four skills you can develop to achieve coaching competency, and the training and resources can help you feel more confident.. 4. Five Questions to Your Perfect Fit; A process of inquiry and insight that will help you define your specialty and niche and case studies that demonstrate how coaches find the right area of specialization and their ideal niche.. ; Differentiation: Finding your Niche; 5. The Executive Coach; 6. The Leadership Coach; 7. The Professional Coach (for lawyers, real estate agents, entrepreneurs, salespeople, etc); 8. The Career Transition Coach; 9 . The Organization Coach; 10. The Personal/Life Coach; 11. The Peak Performance Coach; 12. The Money/Financial Coach; 13. The Wellness/Health Coach; 14. The Spiritual/Creativity Coach. The Business of Coaching: Strategies for Success. 15. Entrepreneurial Nature or Nurture; The basic tenets of developing an entrepreneurial mindset that can help you to become easily successful when building your coaching business.. 16. Your Emotions and Your Business; How to handle the difficult feelings that building a coaching business creates -- anger, anxiety, and disappointment-- and develop business resilience.. 17. Delivering Your Coaching Message; The most useful business skill for a successful coaching practice: How to present who you are as a coach, what you can do for clients, and why you services benefit them.. 18. Targeting Your Market; Finding your ideal clients, marketing do's and don't for the coach, what works and what doesn't in terms of finding great clients who will pay you a full fee. 19. Why Good Coaches Go Broke; What a coach earns, how to handle fees, how to charge, where to work, perceived value. 20. Staying Legal and Safe as a Coach; Handling competition, practicing confidentiality, and minimizing ethical risks