Entries by Rhonda Hess

In our role as Coaching Business Owner, we take many significant actions that greatly impact our success. Big decisions and tasks usually get our concentrated focus. Day-to-day tasks often go overlooked, but they can make or break a coaching business.

The Right Stuff

Even if you're just getting started as a coach and have no clients on board yet, put on your business owner's hat every work day with 100% commitment to the life of your coaching business. True commitment means dedicating resources of time, energy, money and attention to detail.

Take Care of Your Baby

Take your business seriously. If you are only giving it ten hours a week, it will take years to "make it" professionally. You might give up before your business really takes off.

Think about it. Building a business is much like raising a child. It is a full time process. Healthy gestation is critical. Birth is laborious and joyful. The early stages of development take tremendous energy and focus. Certainly, less attention is needed in the later stages, but there are times right up through maturity that require dedication.

Treat your business like a living entity. Give it your 100% commitment. With that and these secrets, which are just simple, smart systems, success will come more easily.

1. Plan the work and work the plan. Whether in a simple Day Timer or a Palm Pilot, schedule your time and honor that schedule. In addition to coaching time slots, plan in your breaks, lunches, exercise, admin, writing and marketing time. If you have an empty calendar, you're more likely to get distracted on things that steal energy from your business. If you've recently found yourself doing things for friends and family during the business week that you didn't intend, it's probably because you have no serious plans for your coaching business.

2. Use the one touch method. Touch everything -- emails, bills, other mail, everything -- just once. Download your email, read through it, toss it, respond to it, file it -- get it out of the inbox now. When you get your mail, open it, recycle the junk, pay the bill, file the document, make the call -- whatever is required, do it now. If you use this system faithfully for a few months, you will teach yourself how to be efficient and organized all the time.

3. Tame the email monster. If you have more than ten emails in your inbox and any that are more than two days old, tame the beast or you'll slowly and painfully lose grip on your business. Email is a valuable tool if you keep your inbox cleaned out every day using the one touch method.

4. Create easy filing systems, then keep them updated. Create a backup of electronic files every day. If you like database programs to keep organized, use one for your clientele and prospective network. I prefer simple email and paper files. For clients, I have a paper file with a one page document listing out the session number, date, time, length of session, agenda topics, achievements and next steps for accountability. Keep minimal notes. Or, if you tend to write copiously, clean out notes from time to time. You'll find you rarely, if ever, return to your previous notes if you have the streamlined one page document.

5. Keep your financial books up to date or hire someone to do it. Use the one touch method here too. Balance your statements when they come in. Make entries when you write the checks or pay electronically. Quicken or Quick Books are relatively easy applications for keeping books. If you use a CPA, find out what they prefer so that you can share files electronically for tax preparation. And set up your accounting as simply as possible. If you take fees using credit cards through a system like Practice Pay Solutions that deposits directly into your account and emails a receipt to your client, then you need never write a bill or collect overdue fees.

6. Intend to get everything out of your court and onto someone else's as soon as possible. Teach yourself to be responsive with fast and thorough turnaround. Then, keep tabs on the other party. If you turned over all your content to your web designer three weeks ago and haven't heard back, that relationship needs more attention from you. Create ticklers in your scheduling program to remind you to follow up.

7. Reply to all phone calls immediately. And never later than 24 hours on business days. This will not only keep you organized, but it will win you new clients and other opportunities that slower responders don't get.

8. Follow through on networking leads within 24 hours. If you forget to follow up with the stack of leads in your pocket from the last networking meeting, you've let the lead go cold. They will remember you if you remember them in a timely way.

Apply these smart systems to your business today and watch the positive impact it has on your coaching business!

The decision to become a full time professional coach is what shamans would call a "bid for power" -- making your vital essence manifest in the world. It's no small thing.

Reading the Signs
I know you've felt the pain and glory of walking on and wavering off the path of entrepreneurial coaching. Starting with a lot of passion and maybe even a sense of calling, you dive into it, learning skills and setting up your business. The closer you get to the moment of transitioning full time into your business, the more you feel pushed out of your comfort zone. There is nothing for it but to forge ahead.

All bids for power come with an assortment of encouraging and not so encouraging signs:

1. Synchronistic events -- allies, breakthroughs and quick successes that seem to confirm you're on the right path.

2. Challenges -- the discomfort of the unknown, trials of patience and steep learning curves.

3. Petty tyrants -- individuals or groups that cast aspersions on your visions and goals.

4. Tests -- competing opportunities or set backs that test your resolve.

5. Sacrifices -- things you have clung to that now you must let go of in order to succeed. This is the price for the new power you will gain in doing the work you are called to.

Putting Both Feet on the Path
I've seen it so many times with my clients and students and know it for myself: the point of fully transitioning is the hardest step. It requires sacrificing other work that brings you income, obligations you're used to: the safe things. Before this point you've kept one foot on the path of your new life, hopping along in baby steps. And yet you know in your heart that to make real progress requires that both feet be firmly on the path.

Embracing the Inevitable
Often, out of fear, we'll put off the inevitable transition, until the dynamic tension between the unaligned old life and the more appealing new life creates tremendous pain and pressure. I witness many coaches opting for joyless choices just to avoid taking the risk of transition.

It takes great courage and commitment to believe in yourself enough to take that leap of faith. In the end, we'll remember those leaps as the most meaningful and rewarding decisions of our lives. The path with heart is risky and that's what makes it the path with heart.

I wish you many blessings and great courage as you transition into full time coaching!