How to Write A Mission Statement for Your Coaching Business

Most coaches don’t have a clue how to write a mission statement for their business. In fact, most don’t realize they should have one at all.

When you started coaching, it was probably a heart-felt choice. You felt called, you wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives, you realized you could help others, that the work coaches do is incredible and totally necessary…something along those lines. And that makes you an amazing coach.

But it doesn’t necessarily give you a solid understanding of what your purpose as a coach really is. And that’s where a mission statement comes in.

Your mission statement provides you (and your potential/current/future clients) with a tangible purpose they can follow. You and your clients can definitively say that you’re not just coaching people for the money…you’re on a mission to change the world. Or at least a part of it.

What Is A Mission Statement, Really?

Your mission statement is essentially a quick summary of your business and what you aim to accomplish. It’s not so much about what you do, as how and why you do it.

When you write it well, it should clearly explain what your company’s purpose is. It describes why you are in business, and usually translates into the good you are doing in the world.

Lovely Impact’s mission is not to sell website templates to coaches so we can make money. It’s to help coaches build better, stronger businesses in a fraction of the time so they can focus on the work of coaching their clients — work that’s changing the world one person at a time.

We feel strongly passionate about helping coaches with their businesses. Because we’re coaches too, and we know exactly how important it is to coach your clients. But imagine if coaches were always spending their time working on their website, their marketing, or whatever other business tasks they had to do in order to find clients…that would leave them no time to actually work with their clients. And that’s what our mission is. Giving them more time to work with their clients.

So now you understand what drives us. But there’s another side to your mission statement.

It guides you in the things you choose to do within your business.

For instance, with our statement of wanting to help coaches build their business, we could expand into selling things that help coaches other than just website templates, but we couldn’t expand Lovely Impact into the environmental realm. That wouldn’t make sense.

Your mission statement helps you stay aligned with the original intention of your coaching business. It’s that simple, and that powerful.

A Great Mission Statement Example

Coca Cola’s mission statement is not: “to make money from selling sugary drinks”.

Instead, it’s: “Our mission is: To refresh the world in mind, body and spirit. To inspire moments of optimism and happiness through our brands and actions.”

This is important because that’s an idea that you can really get behind. Don’t you want to feel optimistic and happy? Coca Cola wants to help you with that!

And it doesn’t only help you (the consumer) to know that that’s their mission. It makes it much easier for them to start visualizing their marketing campaigns, and create something that will really inspire people.

It’s out of this initial statement that the company has gone on to create logos that look refreshing, colorful and cheerful. And it has helped them come up with marketing campaigns like their Christmas polar bears, who charm the hell out of me every year.

You know what they do? They make me HAPPY. Which is their entire mission!

But here’s the whole point: they’ve developed a clear mission statement, stuck to it in their branding and marketing, fulfilled it by making me happy with their polar bear commercials, and now I think about Coca Cola fondly.

I may not directly think “they made me happy once with a commercial so I’m going to buy their product,” but they’ve seen to it that I think about them positively, so when the question of which sugary drink to buy comes up, I’m more likely to go with them than a brand I’ve never heard of before.

How to Write A Mission Statement

Writing your mission statement isn’t as simple as jotting down what you want to create or build with your coaching business. It’s a little more formal and focused than that.

But that doesn’t mean it has to be hard.

Step 1: Get Inspired

First up, get inspired by the best. Our favorite book is Mission Statements from Top Companies: Plus Guidelines for Writing Your Own Mission Statement by Jeffrey Abrahams.

Inside, Jerry has collected over 100 mission statements form the world’s most recognizable brands. They’ll inspire you to really think through your mission statement and develop one that inspires not only you, but your team and your coaching clients too.

Step 2: Answer These 3 Questions

1. What is my purpose?
2. What do I stand for?
3. What actions do I take to manifest these?

When you can answer all three of those questions in a single sentence, you’ve pretty much got a mission statement. Sure, it might need some pretty-ing up, but that’s the gist of it.

Step 3: Start Writing Using These Mission Statement Tips

1. Keep your mission statement short, to the point, and simple. Use direct language. Be sure that a 12-year-old could understand the statement, and you’ll be more or less on track.
2. Make it memorable so it can be burned into your consciousness. The rule of thumb here is if you can’t recite it from memory, its too long and too complicated. Simplify it, condense it, and laser your thought process until you’ve said everything you need to say in the fewest and strongest possible words.
3. Write it from your clients’ point of view. What benefits do they get from the services you provide? What’s in it for them? Think about what motivates them to purchase products and how your business could persuade them so they feel that you’re a credible and valuable partner in helping them achieve their goals.
4. Eliminate excuses. Before you can write an effective mission statement you must clear away the excuses that prevent most people from writing one in the first place. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the work you do IS your mission. It’s only part of it. Remember that a mission is larger than the work you do. The way you work with clients may change, but your mission will not. In fact, there are times that your work must change in order to fulfill your mission. So don’t lock yourself in a box that says that you ARE your work. You’re far more than that.

Step 4: Still Stuck? Grab Our Mission Statement Worksheet

Ready to create your mission statement but need some help? We’ve got you covered. Sign up to access our free resource library for coaches, and you’ll find a ton of things to help you build your coaching business, including our How To Write Your Mission Statement worksheet.

It will walk you through the questions you need to answer in order to write a compelling, effective mission statement for your coaching business, and you as well.