The 4 Keys to Business Success as a Coach or Therapist

The 4 Key areas you MUST be working on in your business are:

1) Private Clients

This is probably the first thing you thought of when setting up your business, if you are a one to one therapist or coach it is the most common way of making money for your business. Although it can be the largest income stream, it shouldn’t be the only income stream.

If you are a teacher (such as Yoga for example) you still need to consider doing one to one sessions for people who want them. Just teaching classes is only part of the mix of being a successful coach, therapist or teacher.

2) Products

Products are an essential stream of income for your business. They are low cost to produce and once you have made them you will be able to “make money in your sleep”. Not only are they an excellent way of making residual income, they are useful to use as promotional aids, free gifts and “bonuses”.

It is easier than you think to create and sell products, and can be done at home on most modern PC’s or (especially) Mac’s, I will talk you through the process in a later entry.

3) Seminars or Workshops

Maybe you are already a teacher or trainer (such as a Yoga or martial arts instructor, business or personal development trainer), if not you should still consider running short talks and workshops on the subject that you do.

The bare minimum you should be doing in this area is offering free introductory talks to groups or organisation you think would be a good potential client base.

Unhappy with your teaching or training ability? You can invest in “presentation skills training” to help you brush up and build your confidence. They are worth every penny.

Learn more about the presentation skills training here.

4) The Corporate Market

The corporate market is not just for executive coaches or business trainers. More and more companies are employing the services of alternative therapists and coaches to work with their staff.

I know of several therapists who make the majority of their income through corporate clients.

They may employ you directly through the company or offer your services at an “employee benefit scheme” where they pay a percentage of the cost for the staff member.

It is very easy to contact local businesses and offer your services, you can collect information and do a mail-shot yourself (using things like the Yellow Pages) or use the services of a professional mailing company (you can find one with a quick internet search).

The secret to succeeding in the corporate market is to show the benefits to the company (such as higher productivity, less sick days, etc) as well as benefits to the staff members. It is a good idea to be able to quote some studies showing the benefits of what you do to business (again, a very simple internet search will reveal a wealth of information.
In my next few posts I will break down what you must be doing in each of the areas to make sure your therapy or coaching business succeeds.

Matt

How Much Should You Charge?

After my last post, where I briefly mentioned you shouldn’t ever reduce your prices or get into a price cutting strategy, I have had some people get in touch and ask me a few questions. The 2 most common ones were:

1) How much should I  charge?
2) If I shouldn’t cut my prices, what can I do to encourage clients to book?

So I thought I would do my best to answer them here. I will tackle the first one first with the below extract from “The Professional Practice Builder Handbook”:

“A lot of people ask me how much they should charge their clients. Some may look at the “competition” and see what they are charging and just copy (or undercut) them. The fact of the matter is in professional therapy or coaching practice there is no recognised fee structure.  In NLP for example, I have seen people charging between £45 and £500 per season. Some, even more!

By all means check around and see what the other people in your field in your area are charging, but if you are creating your own niche, you are by definition unique, so there is no benchmark for a fee.

The truth is you can charge whatever you want.

But DON’T just pick numbers out of the air!! That is a disastrous idea!

To calculate your fee structure, you need to work out how much money you want to earn and how many clients you want to see a week.

Assuming you work 48 weeks of the year (everyone wants some time off!) and you want to earn £/$25,000 per year and you want to see 10 clients a week the calculation is:

Annual Income
——————–  = Charge per Client
Weeks X clients

So in this example it is:

25,000
——— =  £/$52 per client
48 X 10

Make sense?

However you need to take into account cost, tax, etc, so your £25,000 will not be “take home”, much as your salary at the moment isn’t “take home” (you pay tax and NI and have the “hidden costs” such as travel to and from work). I would calculate approximately 30 – 50% of your income will be spent on these costs. Bear that in mind. You will get a better idea of a budget when you do a detailed business plan.”

I will answer the next question “If I shouldn’t cut my prices, what can I do to encourage clients to book?” in my next post.

Matt