Business Coaching Freedom: Two Ways to Get Leverage in Your Business Coaching Practice
I’m guessing that when you began your coaching practice, your goal was freedom.
Free time, free cash flow, freedom of lifestyle, freedom to choose what you do with your life and when you do it, freedom to hang out with the people you want to hang out with, freedom to work with the people you want to work with. You just wanted the freedom that business ownership and entrepreneurship promise.
Now that you’re into your business coaching career, how’s it going?
Many business coaches realize that they spend more time than they wanted working, worrying about where the next new client is coming from, and taking on problem clients just to get the bills paid.
But that freedom is still possible. It just requires some shifts in the way you think about your business.
Why You Need More Leverage
Leverage is commonly defined as “any influence which is compounded or used to gain an advantage.” So with that general definition in mind, I’m gonna share with you my definition of “business leverage.”
In my thinking, business leverage is anything you can use to compound the results of your own personal effort to grow your business for the benefit of all. Notice that I’m saying “compound the results of your own personal effort.” Business leverage is anything you can do to compound, grow, and magnify the results of your own personal effort—and it’s what creates the freedom you crave!
Business leverage is anything you can use to compound the results of your own personal effort to grow your business for the benefit of all.
Now, there are really only two ways that I know of to leverage in business coaching: people and technology. Let’s look at each in turn.
People-Leverage
Back when I was building my first firm, I used people-leverage.
I had seven coaches working for me, delivering these KPIs:
The average coach produced $214,000 in revenue and took home $107,000 per year.
There were about 11 clients per coach, and an average sale per month of $1,800.
There was an average 10-month retention for coaches in their first year.
The firm generated about 23% operating profit on $1.1 million in sales.
This means that it wasn’t incumbent on me to do all the coaching and selling; I had empowered others to do it on our behalf. I gradually extricated myself from the day-to-day operation of running the firm, and eventually, I was able to sell it for $1 Million. And because they didn’t pay the entire thing in cash up front, it produced a passive income stream for me, while the business continued to produce essentially the same amount of revenue for them—without me!
Technology-Leverage
The other form of leverage that translates to freedom for business coaches is technology-based.
It’s now possible to build a business coaching firm with substantial amounts of revenue based not on your personal coaching production nor the coaching production of associate coaches, but based instead on passive income from things like information products and certification programs.
Once you get these products up and running, they have nothing to do with your personal revenue production day in and day out. It’s going to cost you some cash upfront, typically anywhere from $500 to $5,000 depending on how complicated the product is. It’s also going to cost you some time upfront, could be 20 hours or even 200 hours. But once you get it up and running, and you’ve marketed it effectively, it’s going to produce positive cash flow! That cash flow could be $500 a month, or it could be $5,000 a month, or even $50,000 a month if you’re a real legend at this!
Once you’ve got the initial investment down and the marketing going strong, your Effective Billable Rate is infinite! You’re spending no time, week in and week out, to produce totally passive income—and you’re generating lower-priced clients you can convert to higher-paying clients down the line.
If you want more freedom in your business coaching practice, it’s time to start thinking holistically about business leverage, so that you can create the business and lifestyle that made you choose business coaching in the first place!
To learn more, download our FREE ebook: Seven Figure Business Coach Blueprint.
