Top Ten Mistakes Wellness Coaches Make When Growing Their Businesses
Growing a strong, healthy Wellness Coaching business is not all that different from growing a strong healthy crop. A good farmer knows to prepare the soil, choose the right seeds, provide the best fertilizer, manage the irrigation, and harvest when it’s time. A good farmer also knows to avoid mistakes that will compromise a good harvest. Do you know the mistakes to avoid as you grow your Wellness Coaching Business?
• Part I: The Top Ten Mistakes
Most of the Wellness Coaches we’ve worked with through the years make one or more of the following mistakes and wonder why they have trouble growing their businesses. Do you need to correct any of these mistakes in your own business? First identify which mistakes you’ve made, then find out how to correct those mistakes in Part II.
1. Failure to define market or niche: This mistake is made by the Wellness Coach who’s trying to be all things to all people and fears choosing a specialty or target market. No target market means no one knows who to send your way.
2. No vision, mission, goals or revenue model: The coach making this error has no direction or business plan and hasn’t defined success in personal terms…there’s been no decision as to whether to grow a business that can run itself when you’re away (a “B” as Robert Kiyosaki describes in his book Cash Flow Quadrant) or to stay as a self-employed solo-preneur (an “S” in the Kiyosaki model).
3. Guilty of the “Lone Ranger” syndrome: In this case, the Wellness Coach tries to do everything without help. There is no team – no bookkeeper, attorney, CPA, assistant, and no business coach. Feel stretched in too many directions wearing too many hats? Yup, that’d be this mistake.
4. No wellness plan for the Wellness Coach: This mistake finds you consistently not walking your talk, overworking, not living in “wellness” as you define it and thinking that you’ll get to it for yourself “someday”. What does this have to do with growing a business? Everything! Watch how long Wellness Coaching (and all) businesses last when owners fail here!
5. Fear and avoid the competition: Wellness Coaches making this mistake stay far away from the competition, wouldn’t consider partnering with others and have no clue how to pursue joint ventures.
6. Failure to leverage content: Wellness Coaches making this error work “hard” not “smart” and keep reinventing the wheel. (i.e. give presentations but fail to record them with audio or visual to “repurpose” later on.) They forget to think continuously about leveraging all content provided to clients.
7. Non-effective website or blog: This mistake includes websites or blogs that are “brochures” only, non-interactive sites, and sites not converting traffic to leads or sales. It also includes the error of simply not having a website or blog at all.
8. No social media presence: Wellness Coaches not visible in the social media world are making a giant mistake. The error includes not having a Twitter, Facebook, and/or Linkedin account and/or having only inactive accounts and not regularly participating.
9. Not providing your market what it wants: Assuming you have targeted a market, this mistake finds Wellness Coaches providing services and products that they want to produce and provide, rather than offering what the market wants. There’s been no market research or interaction, and focus is more on getting clients than it is on giving.
10. Undervalued services and products: This mistake stems from a fundamental lack of belief in what you offer. It includes viewing yourself as a “starving artist”, being afraid to ask for money, fearing clients will jump ship if you ever raise prices and not charging top dollar for your products and services.
Part II: How to Correct the Top Ten Mistakes
Inherent in any error, mistake or oversight is an opportunity waiting to be taken. This premise underlies our belief that it’s a good idea to take a quarterly S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) inventory of your Wellness Coaching Business. Consider any of the 10 mistakes above as a current weakness in your business AND a key to a future opportunity as described below.
Which of the following opportunities await your business right now?
1. Define your market or niche. Identify exactly whom you serve. Describe your ideal client, the top problems they face that you address, what they have tried before that hasn’t worked and any traits and characteristics that you will target. Write out the description, keeping in mind one or two specific people who you would love to have as clients, or who are already clients. (example: stressed-out business men age 40+ who have traded success for their own well-being and now want to create balanced lives.)
2. Get clear on your business strategy. Write an overall business plan. Read Robert Kiyosaki’s book, Cash Flow Quadrant and decide which business direction you want to go…a solo-preneur Wellness Coach practice, a Business that can run itself, something in between. Spend time writing your mission, vision, values and goals. Use our FREE planning and action calendar to help guide you in your Wellness Coaching business success.
3. Get a team…now! Even if you choose the self-employed solo-preneur business model and don’t hire other coaches to work for you, you do need a team. Rally your colleagues and get a mastermind group together, making them your Board of Directors. Immediately hire a business coach, preferably one who knows the Wellness Coach business well. Hire a part-time bookkeeper, virtual assistant for a few hours a week, and a CPA to do your taxes. If you think you can’t take this opportunity yet, think again. It is critical to your business success.
4. Draft or revisit your own wellness plan. Change is constant. Priorities change, circumstances change, goals change. Bring your own wellness plan up to date, recommit to what is important. Be sure you walk your talk. This doesn’t mean being the perfect model of perfect wellness. It means being human, embracing the very things you hoipe for your clients and following some form of wellness plan that has meaning to you. Don’t have one? Ahh…what a great opportunity before youJ
5. Form partnerships. Embrace the idea of joint ventures. Step forward to your competitors and form alliances. There is more than enough business for everyone who wants it. Contact another Wellness Coach and brainstorm ways you can partner. (example: do a joint live presentation or teleclass and each take a different aspect of the topic. Each of you invites people. Give discounts on services or products for those attending. Offer something else the two of you provide together.)
6. Leverage your content. Repurpose something you have already produced. Transcribe an audi0-taped talk you gave and turn it into a pdf document you give away for free on your website. Have a friend do a video of your next presentation and put it up on YouTube. Write an article and submit it to an association and also post it on your blog. Pull together your past blog posts into an e-book. Make everything count. Haven’t produced anything to leverage? Hmm…when would now be a good time to start?
7. Update that website or blog. Be sure your website has a client-capturing element…a place where visitors give you a name and email in exchange for a free article or other product. (In the spirit of transparency, this is an opportunity we have missed and will need to address right away!) Hire a great web wizard to help you do this. Update your content, clear out irrelevant links, update your profile, add an audio welcome. Remember the goal of the site is not just to look great – it needs to work for you…it needs to welcome clients, give them many resources and reasons to return, and many reasons for them to tell others about the community you have created. Make your website sing. Make it interactive. Make it effective.
8. Develop a social media presence. We won’t go into the how to’s here. We think the bigger picture and important stuff’s covered in The New Relationship Marketing book by Mari Smith. Read it. Do your homework and take a step. Get a Twitter account. Join Linkedin. Step into the Facebook world. Overwhelmed? Take baby steps. Start small and be consistent. If it’s too much for your plate, hire someone for a few hours to begin the journey for you. Give us a shout and we’ll give you some names of social media rockstars who can help.
9. Give ‘em what they want. Time to do some market research. Start giving those in your market what they want and need, not what you think they should want or assume that they need. Put a poll on your website. Make calls. Engage in conversations and ask questions. Listen more than talk during your next interaction with a potential client. Give free content in exchange for someone taking a short survey. It’s all in the giving…and you need to give away the right stuff.
10. Step up and charge what you’re worth. Are you undercharging for the incredible Wellness Coaching and results you know you deliver? Are you afraid to ask for what you want? Are you trading your time for money but haven’t a clue how to put together an information product? There are wonderful resources out there to help you with all of this. You can work with someone who’s skilled at helping you do the inner work that has you getting in your own way. You can read a book, take a class, take a teleclass or attend a retreat to help you create your first product. Browse the web, check out your favorite on-line or live bookstore or give us a call and we’ll get you referrals for any or all of it. Just take the first step today!
Okay, we’ll stop here so you can get started! Opportunity awaits!
To Your Wellthy Business,
Erica
P.S. This post focuses on Furthering the Action of the business side of your business. Next up will be a post featuring advanced tools for your practice itself – to help you grow the inside of your Wellness Coaching business! Be on the lookout:)
