Building your coaching business is something that should be fun, but should also be taken very seriously. You don’t want your business to be created while flying by the seat of your pants. Instead, invest a little time in developing a vision for your coaching business so the process of actually building it is much simpler.
Having a vision ensures that you’ll build something you’re proud of. Something you enjoy, something you’re ready to work towards every day, and something that you’re willing to talk about and share with others.
You want to feel excited about what you’re growing into. Without that excitement, building your business becomes a chore. So make sure you understand what you’re growing towards by creating a vision for it.
Why you need a vision for your coaching business
Unless you’ve built several service-based businesses before, a vision for your coaching business is essential.
Most new business owners struggle to understand what’s actually important for them to be doing. They get caught up in implementing strategies they see others using, and skip a ton of essential steps trying to get ahead faster. And that usually ends up leading them down a path of wasted time, energy, and money.
But when you have a clear vision for your coaching business and know where it is you’re trying to get to, you can avoid making decisions that you’ll regret later.
The entire purpose of a vision for your business is determining what it is you actually want to build. You get to choose the things that sound like fun, understand where you want to be in a few years, and work towards building exactly that without getting distracted by what others are doing. Because copying what others are doing will never get you where you want to go. It’ll get you where they want to go.
So defining your vision is really about making and keeping yourself happy in your coaching business. What could be more important than that?
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What a solid vision helps you with
The average person makes an estimated 35,000 decisions per day. That’s a lot.
You decide what you’re going to wear, what to eat, when to do something, how to do something, whether you should do something…the decisions are endless.
When you’re running your coaching business, it’s no different. You’ll make hundreds of decisions about your business every single day. And eventually, the decisions you’ll make will become subconscious. You won’t even realize you’re making decisions about what to work on next or when to prioritize them in your schedule…you’ll just do it.
That’s why it’s massively important to have a vision for your coaching business. Because it makes your decision-making process much more simple.
If you know that priority number one for your business is meeting people who could become your clients, you’re going to make decisions that lead you to do that. You’ll choose to go to a networking event over writing content for your future book. You’ll choose to spend time having conversations with people over redesigning your website for the fifth time.
Your vision keeps you on track. It helps you choose the right things to work on, day in and day out.
How to create a vision that feels good to you
Let’s face it: when you follow someone else’s plan for your life or business, it doesn’t always feel right. That’s why you need to stop copying what everyone else is telling you to do and create a vision and plan that works for you.
Here’s how:
- Find a quiet place to work. Turn off or get rid of all the distractions around you. This means turning off Netflix, putting your phone on silent, closing your email and social media tabs, and shutting the door on noise. If music helps you concentrate, cool, do your thing. But if it distracts you, shut it down.
- Grab a piece of paper and a pen. We know digital is the way to go these days, but there are studies that prove you’re better able to get all your ideas down when you commit them to paper rather than typing. You can copy it to a digital version later.
- Think about your coaching business and what you want it to look like. What do you want it to look like now? In a year? In three years? In five? Use these prompts to help you clarify everything:
- How many clients?
- 1:1 coaching?
- Group coaching?
- Programs?
- Products?
- How will I market?
- What marketing platforms do I enjoy using?
- Do I want to run ads?
- Do I want to blog or podcast?
- What other things excite me?
- How will I reach people?
- How many hours will I work every week?
- Do I want to hire help?
- Will I need an assistant?
- How will my website play into this?
- Am I going to participate in in-person events?
- Do I want to be ‘famous’?
- Do I want to write a book?
- Do I want to become a speaker?
- Will I offer a referral program?
- How much time off will I take every year?
- When will I increase my prices?
- Who do I need to connect with to make this happen?
- Is there anything I need to learn to be successful?
- What can I realistically commit to?
- What things that I’ve written down do I truly love?
- Now that you have a bunch of ideas on paper, it’s time to organize them into an order that makes sense for you. Prioritize them by importance and how realistic they are. For example, it’s probably not realistic that you’d become a booked out speaker or write a best-selling book in year one of your coaching business. Those things take time and momentum to build. But you could definitely start your own podcast or be a guest on other podcasts during year one. So break it down by year.
- Review your vision and ask yourself if there’s anything missing that you desperately want to make happen. Also ask yourself if everything you have in your vision makes your heart sing…because if it doesn’t, you might as well ditch it now instead of later. Make whatever edits you need to until you have a vision that feels exactly right for you, your lifestyle, and the type of coach you want to be.
- With your final vision in front of you, spend some time imagining what it’s going to feel like to reach each of those milestones. You want to be excited beyond belief at the possibilities in order to reach those heights. And all it takes is choosing to believe that they’ll happen one day. That excitement is going to pull you forward into taking action to make it all a reality.
Your Next Step
Now that you have a solid vision for your coaching business, it’s time to take the next step and create a coaching business plan.
While the idea of writing a business plan might be super stressful to you, it’s actually more simple than you might think, and it gives you a solid understanding of exactly where you’re focusing your time and effort. Because without it, you might be spending your time on all the wrong things. And that’s the opposite of what you want to be doing.
So bite the bullet, girlfriend. Create a simple and effective coaching business plan.
About The Author
Hey! I’m Cass, a Certified Brand Coach and a Co-Founder at Lovely Impact. I help coaches elevate their businesses with beautiful branding and websites. Here on our blog, my content focuses on branding, web design, and storytelling.
