I’m not selling magic, or positive thinking, or anything, come to think of it. All the guidance and tools in this series are free, to legal extent.

I’m teaching you to get your coaching business off the ground, how to measure its progress, identify pitfalls, show you the tools you need, when you need them, and what you do not need. I’ll borrow and share what I admire from the web, books or personal advice. If I really want or need something that doesn’t exist, I’ll create it myself. No reinventing the wheel. In fact, it is so crucial to manage your time well, I’ll often say “good enough”. Perfect is not the goal. A thriving business based on your insights and creativity is.

Why a ‘Brave’ business? Simple. Because that’s who you are.

It took bravery to return for an MSW or take coach training, and the call does not end there. Maggie Craddock, successful coach, consultant and all-around decent human recently said, “In the past it was enough to be smart and work hard. Now, to have a great career, you need to be brave.”

You, like my career coaching clients, want a great career. You recognized in yourself a desire to help others make change and have experienced the powerful sense of satisfaction as reward. Now you’re considering starting your own business, which according to Seth Godin is the new hard work.

How do we start?

1. The fastest way for me to cut through the noise out there is to talk to people who have been coaching for 1, 3, 5, 10 years and ask about their experiences. The results will be posted here.
2. At the same time, I’ll post to “Build a Brave Business”. The posts will cover stages of business, diagnostic questions to allow you to identify where you are, the tools most needed for that stage, and questions to prod yourself forward.

What questions do you want answered most by coaches and solo-preneurs? What kinds of tools perplex the most? Comment with your questions and I’ll go get answers.

Hey coaches! Are you sick of all the “make more money” talk not grounded in your experience or the reality of business?

I believe that we, the coaching industry, are creating anxiety and misperception about the earning capabilities of coaches. How many of our conversations are about money? I’m proposing we change that.

Here is a sample of the e-mails I receive from other coaches touting their wares, “Join the Six Figure Club”, “Are You an Underearner?”, “Special Issue on Money”. You would think that all coaches are starving or close to it.

I’m a bit concerned and irritated, quite frankly, when the industry that puts itself out there to help people with problems like money can’t come up with a better money story. It just doesn’t add up.

So I’m asking myself and you readers, “What is the story with the coaching industry and money?!”

Here’s where I think our ability to be effective about money in our coaching business fails:

1. Shallow Cheerleading. We are overly enthusiastic about the flocks of folks becoming coaches that we don’t want to “burst their bubble” and address realistic earnings and business planning.
2. LoA Confusion. The concepts and behavior of money, energy, and LoA are inseparable (check out GoodVibe blog to get up to speed on this topic). Once we are a coach, we fear that if we’re not making lots of money our vibration is “off”. It becomes a dirty little secret. We fail to look at where we spend our time and energy in the real world, which is what ultimately determines our degree of success.
3. Lack of Consistent Business Tools. Established industries have consistent tools to run the business (P&L, performance metrics, risk analysis), regardless of the company. Coaching has lots of different tools.
4. Practice Variations. Most coaches earn money from training other coaches, or selling to coaches. There are few proven models out there because few coaches are truly flourishing financially, and fewer are doing it the same way.
5. Remedial Business Skills. This may be the biggest gap. With the low barrier to entry for coaching, many enter with zero business experience. Are we doing them a disservice to not provide that as part of training?

This month’s issue of Choice magazine focuses on money, and making more of it. It’s the second time in about two years that Choice has dedicated an all-money issue. I looked up several coaches who specialize in business management; all of their tools are on-line, for a price.

I’m on fire about this one because the basic coaching model is simple: Xhours x $Y per hour = cash. And just like any business, it can be diagnosed for specific problems (lack of hours, no clear business plan) and consistent, effective solutions applied.

So if it’s so simple, what trips us up?

1. Action Paralysis. We don’t know what NOT to focus on. From add-on software, ad-words and websites to everything in between, we are constantly bombarded with products and training to purchase and use without any idea which is effective.
2. Zero Financial Planning. Lack of a template to map out projected monthly income and expenses. This is a business basic, but most coaches haven’t a clue.
3. Wasting Time. No correlation between the quality of effort and the income generated.

So here’s the bottom-line. I got so excited that I committed to Jeannette that I would have some truly useful tools for coaches soon. I don’t know what this will look like or how the heck it will happen.

Tell me coaches, what do you want to see? What would help you the most in your practice now, regardless of how long you’ve been in the biz?

Be the first to hear it,  join Jeannette’s open course on Manifesting Money, starting July 8. Check it out here .  I’m going to be there drinking in the smart sense Jeannette always comes through with and leading a session on “How Would Animals Behave Around Money”.