Everyday I ask life coaches and business coaches alike this question: what’s the most pressing problem (or issue) in your business right now?
Most of the time the coaches give me answers that have to do with getting more traffic to my website, getting more people on my list or getting enough coaching clients. The interesting thing is even my other clients – healers, therapists, authors and other service providers – give me similar answers.
While it true that as a life coach you may need more traffic to your coaching website or you need more coaching clients in your practice, it may not be the most pressing problem in your coaching business. And often, getting more traffic to your coaching website isn’t.
But for most of my coaching clients, the most pressing problem can be elusive. This is because usually the most pressing problem in your business has nothing to do with your marketing or generating traffic to your coaching website. Rather it usually has to do with how you actually DO your business.
Think about it for a moment.
Let’s say I could triple the number of contacts you get from your coaching website in the next month (which is possible, by the way). What would happen? Could you actually manage having that many more potential coaching clients contacting you about your coaching services? How effectively would you be at converting these potential clients into actual coaching clients? Or would you end up dropping the ball on a whole bunch of your potential clients?
If you’re like most life coaches I’ve spoken with, you likely believe that more people contacting you means more coaching clients paying you.
Yet, that’s not always the case. More often than not, you need to prepare yourself, your business, your business processes and your coaching practice for this sort of growth. So you need to know how to deal with such a large influx of potentially new coaching clients. Which means to continue to have a successful coaching practice you must have solid systems in place to manage these sorts of situations.
Now how these systems get created is neither difficult nor overly complex. It’s simply a matter of knowing what your business problems are and what you need to do about them in order to grow your coaching practice. After that, you simply figure out how to adjust your already existing business practices to support the growth. But if you don’t make adjustments to how you do things, the growth you experience will likely not be significant and will almost certainly not be sustainable. So if you want to get more clients in your coaching practice, you must consider how you’ll handle not only the coaching sessions, but all the things that happen to gain that coaching client.
So as a life coach, how do figure out what your most pressing business problems are?
The easiest way is through Reverse engineering. Start with the end result. Consider what challenges you’d face if you had double, or even triple, the number of people contacting you about your coaching services, for instance.
Another way to find your most pressing problems is think about the task in your coaching business that you least enjoy doing. It’s pretty likely that you’ll find some issues there. For instance, there was a timein my own business when invoicing my clients was a pain for me. Of course, it presented a huge problem for me that I dreaded doing the thing that got me paid. So I had to look at this and find a new way to invoice my clients – a way that would be easier and much less time-consuming. I found my invoicing solution and now I can invoice clients so quickly and easily that I rarely even think about it, let alone dread it.
So you want to look for the things that aren’t working in doing your business. Find the holes in your coaching practice and fill them. To fill those holes, start thinking in reverse and consider what you’re doing well, don’t enjoy or simply don’t know how to do. Start there. Consider all the steps along the way. Write it all down, turn it upside down and now you’ve got the outline for a plan. Focus on the issue closest to where you are now, and you likely have, at least one of, your most pressing business problem.
Plan your coaching practice for success
We so often tell our coaching clients to plan for success. Why couldn’t that mean imagine the success you want and work backward to where you are today? It’s a little secret – and it works!
What is the most pressing problem in your coaching practice? In your business? And what are you doing about it?
Let’s talk about it!
note: image from tashland on Flickr, 
some rights reserved)
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My name is Dawud Miracle and I'm a 
31 responses so far ↓
You have some honest ideas here. It looks like you have done a research on the issue and discovered.Anyway thanks a lot.I think most peoples will agree with your blog.Keep it up.
i think business coach is a great job and you can help many people that needs..
Thanks for the post. I do agree that at times increasing your client base may jeopardize the quality of your work.
To be successful, you should consider the outcome from the current clients that you have, and not the number of people calling you for your services. Cheers
I think you raised an important point in your article.
usually the most pressing problem in your business has nothing to do with your marketing
- a good point.
Sometimes you are so close to something its difficult to see the forest for the trees. A coach sometimes helps bring a new perspective.
Very interesting article Dawud.
While I admit I’ve never been a life-coach or a ‘coach’ in any business capacity, I have coached a football team, and the challenges I faced along the way are much the same.
In my case, I had to figure out how to relate to my quarterback (kid had a golden arm) in such a way that he would follow my instructions, even when he didn’t understand the “why” part of the equation.
Since the team was in the semi-finals at the time, it all boiled down to trust. I told him, “Look, we’re one game away from the championship. You’ve had a lot of success this year, but you’ve had a lot of success doing exactly what I told you to do. Now is not the time to question that formula.”
It resonated with him, and he played two outstanding games after that conversation including a blowout win in the semis and a gritty performance in the championship game (which we won 16-12) against a team that had beaten us 26-0 in our only other meeting that season.
I guess my point is that the principles you espouse in this article are true in an even broader concept than discussed here.
Great article, by the way.
Thanks for the post, it makes me think of how to get prepared for more business.
great article. Im really inspired by what you have done here and I hope I can apply it on myself
I’ll bookmark this one, the content is interesting.
I somehow agree to Parking Solutions that most pressing problem in coaching practice has nothing to do with marketing.
It all boiled down to trust. I told him, “Look, we’re one match not here from the title fight. You’ve had a lot of victory this year, but you’ve had a lot of victory doing closely.
This is an interesting article and thanks for this business tips.
Reverse engineering, an interesting way to look at problems and business growth together.
Thanks
if you want to get more clients in your coaching practice, you must consider how you’ll handle not only the coaching sessions, but all the things that happen to gain that coaching client.
nice post. Since the team was in the semi-finals at the time, it all boiled down to trust. I told him, “Look, we’re one game away from the championship. You’ve had a lot of success this year, but you’ve had a lot of success doing exactly what I told you to do. Now is not the time to question that formula.”
nice to read ,,, its really give point before i start any work and step for my business
i agree with the second point you make.. i didn’t knew that ” nice post” has another meaning in it…
“Consider what challenges you’d face if you had double, or even triple, the number of people contacting you about your coaching services, for instance.”
We did that a lot when we were starting up – trying to pinpoint the problems before we scaled up.
Thanks for the reminder to keep on doing that.
OK, I am not a coach of any sort. I just got a promotion and was goggling about how to teach and coach employees. So far I have read a few posts. And even though it is a different genre the fundamentals are still the same. Thank you very much you have given me a lot of useful tools to use when deciding what to say.
Most people would consider too many clients to be a good sort of problem, but quality does suffer and it won’t be a problem for long when word spreads. An optimistic attitude and realistic goals is a great way to plan for future success.
The most pressing problem is consistency: delivering the same high level of quality to all your clients.
Think about it: having more clients is fine but if you cannot meet or exceed their expectations, this will only be a short-term benefit…
ITz really nice and helpful… Thank you so much…
Having too many clients and feeling you are losing the grip on things – that’s by far the most pressing problem.
Success doesn’t come with more clients – it comes with more happy clients!
Every successful business need a proper idea, batter analysis technique & require a good judgment about situation. You have share some batter ideas here & i agree with you.
Thanks for business tips.
As you all know, the site content is also increased with increasing number of your views. Effortless in a way that if a way to improve the site content is to take advantage of RSS feeds. Feedzilla the site name in different categories, gathered together from different sites that offer RSS feeds as a widget. By selecting the category you want your site titles and descriptions where put this widget. In this way the traffic is increasing because of the content of your site.
I guess after reading your post, which I find honest and excellent. I’ll be starting my own blog very soon and this is an excellent topic that can be added.
I will be back to follow this thread and in meantime bookmark it.. thanks again
I think this topic can help us all. No matter who you are and what you do, we all need a coach… the greatest at anything always had a mentor.
Thanks for the topic.
The issue with business growth is that most individuals are not able to visualize what’s needed if they’ve never experienced it before. Perhaps you could develop a short online coaching course that showcases the common challenges, opportunities and solutions.
I totally agree with you. We first need to evaluate our problems and targets and then start for work. I have seen many businessmen and even bloggers, they just want to earn money like every one but they want it in a minute. Thats not the way nature follows. Since, the Slow and the steady wins the race
Any business require a proper control & for proper control require a good coach. I always try to find some helpful technique which is used by a establish businessman. Which technique they use in different situation. I like one of the point in your post is first need to find problem & targets and then start for work. This is true sentence in business world without finding your target & problems you can’t grow.
Excellent insight and I concur with your topic. Thanks again I will be back more often to see your updates.
Absolutely brilliant addition, Dawud!
You have raised realistic points and challenges and shown a way how to overcome them.
Thanks for sharing.