Depending on who you listen to, there’s so much you need to do in order to successfully launch your business. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re a life coach, business consultant or holistic healer, launching a successful business takes time, energy and even a little bit of money.

More than anything, you need a plan. You need to know what you’re about and how your service will help other people. That’s the first step. Some would say you next need a business plan, a marketing plan and a clear revenue model (you do need to know how you’re going to make money, after all).

But I think it’s much simpler than all that.

Sure, a business plan is good. I coach my own clients on creating business and marketing plans so they can both keep themselves on track and see their progress. So using traditional business plans is something I highly recommend.

Yet, I’ve found it helpful to begin any service business with 4 simple questions. These questions provide the foundation for all else. Answer them fully and you’ll have the beginnings of your business plan, an outline for your marketing plan and you’ll know how you’ll make money. You’ll also have an idea of who your client is and what their needs are.

What’s more, these four questions give you a chance to simplify the whole business development process. You may still want to formal business plan or work through how you’ll market your business. Yet it can be less necessary as long as you can stay focused. I’ve had a handful of clients take just the answers to these four questions and go on to both build successful life coaching and holistic healing practices.

So what are the four questions?

1. Who you are?
2. What you do?
3. Who you do it for?
4. Why do you do it?

See how simple this is? Now there can be other questions to add. Depending on the client I might add ‘how do you do what you do’ or ‘what do they need.’ But honestly, even these questions are pretty much covered in a thorough answers to the four questions. Plus, I find simplicity wins out most of the time.

Now I know that the answers to each of these questions can be full of complicated processes, complex systems and overwhelming business structures. And having run a business for more than ten years, I know there’s much to do to be successful.

Yet clearly answer those four questions and you have a basic business plan. Answer the four questions and you have the outline for a marketing plan. Answer the four questions and you have, at least a beginning, for how you’re going to make money in your coaching or healing practice.

To be continued…

My Friday post this week will dive a little deeper into the four questions. We’ll take a look at just how answering these questions leads to a solid plan that even you can execute. And we’ll see what happens if you don’t know the answers to these questions. So stay tuned…

In the meantime, I want to hear from you. How would you answer the four questions on your coaching practice, holistic healing practice or other type of service-based business?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from laurakgibbs on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Do you know that you’re not really marketing your coaching practice to a target audience, that you’re not communicating to a niche market, and that you won’t find your next coaching clients if you ‘engage a marketplace?’

It’s so true. Yet most of the websites that promote life coaches seem to think that’s exactly what they’re doing – talking to a market or an audience.

Is your life coaching website getting you coaching clients?

If you ask a life coach whether their website is getting them coaching clients – most often the answer is no. I know this for a fact because I teach coaches how to use their websites – really their entire web presence – to build a following and get more coaching clients. And most of the life coaches I work with come to me with website copy that is trying to speak to an audience.

So if you’re not speaking to an audience, who are you speaking to?

Now let me clarify for a moment. I do use terms such as target market or target audience all the time. Sometimes I add purposefully add ‘the people in your target audience’ to a statement. And, every single time I say talk about markets or audience you can assume I’m saying ‘people.’ And to be even more specific, I actually mean talking to a single person – one-by-one – over and over so that you’re really talking to thousands of individual people.

And this, it seems, is where life coaches – and business coaches, spiritual coaches, leadership coaches and just about any other type of service provider – get their marketing all wrong. You’re not talking to a market, you’re talking to people.

Your coaching clients are not an audience, they’re people.

Of course you know this. But do you use it in marketing your coaching practice? Do you think about it when  you’re speaking with a new potential coaching client? And do you keep it in the forefront of your thoughts when you’re making decisions about your business?

If not, you need to. You need to remember, all the time, that you’re talking to people.

People aren’t interested in hearing from businesses.

Are you? Do you want to hear from a business or would you rather hear from a person?

Well, you potential coaching clients aren’t any different. They don’t want to hear from a business. They don’t want to talk to a service provider. And seldom do they seek coaching.

Now that’s not to say that don’t want coaching or that they can’t benefit from working with a life coach. That would be like saying that you shouldn’t eat vegetables because the don’t taste good. That’s not true.

But what is true is that you, as a coach promoting how your coaching service can benefit people, want to know what people want. More specifically, you want to know what the people you can best serve through  your coaching practice want, need and even expect.

Show your future coaching clients who you are

The way to do this isn’t by crafting more enticing marketing messages. It’s not by creating some fancy sales materials or producing some slick product. Rather, you meet people by first being a person yourself. Show them your human side. Let them see that you’re not just a coach who runs a business and wants to get more clients. Instead, show them that you’re a human being who cares about people and want to serve them by helping them overcome their problems and concerns.

And there we find the most important point – meet the people you want to serve – the people you can best serve – where they are. They’ve found your coaching website most likely because they’re seeking answers, wanting help, looking for direction or needing to solve a problem in their life. Meet them in it and then show them the way out. This is what makes an effective coaching website.

Just remember, people are seeking answers and direction, not marketing messages and sales pitches. Meet them where they are.

As a life coach, or any other sort of coach, how are you best meeting the people you want to serve with your coaching practice?

Let’s talk about it.

note: image from caruba on Flickr, some rights reserved)