Celebrating 5 Years in Business! New Business Goals and Action Planning Tool (limited time release)

https://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/affirmative-writing-to-get-clients-unstuck-and-connected-to-goals/

To celebrate 5 years in business and thank our amazing clients, we're releasing (free until March 31st 2014!)  the Business Goal & Action Planning Tool we use.

Sorry this tool is no longer available, however you may like our 20+ Free Coaching Tools & Exercises here >>

This exercise breaks down your busiess planning into achievable goals and steps. It takes just an hour to complete – but keeps you on track for 3 months!

According to a Market Data Report in 2007, approximately 40,000 people in the US work as business or life coaches. That report said coaching was a $2.4 billion industry growing at a rate of 18% per year. Also in 2007, the National Post said coaching is the second-fastest growing profession in the world, rivaled only by information technology. More recently, according to the International Coach Federation (ICF) the number of coaches globally has grown to over 47,000 in 2012, generating approximately US$2 billion in revenue.

Love goal setting? Get our Complete Guide to SMART Goals (with Special .PDF Report!) here >>

So, if this is true, why do so many of us struggle to build our businesses? Is the multi-billion dollar coaching industry - really only benefiting the coaching schools who train coaches, and then send us out into the world with little or no business experience, trying to sell an 'intangible' service to people who don't know what coaching is?

OK, so perhaps that's a whole different article. But it is true that while many people are training as coaches, the difficulties and challenges of running your own business makes it hard for coaches to succeed.

When I quit my 10 year career in technology (from programmer to project and progamme manager) I had run projects with budgets into the millions, teams of 20 people, "release managed" and tested almost 30 projects at once and got them successfully launched (running meetings of up to 50 people at once). Running my own business should be a breeze!

Hmmm. Well that's where I was wrong. Cocky even.

Suddenly I went from having a team of many to a team of, well, one. I had no-one to delegate to. No-one to discuss the pros and cons of decisions with - and MOST importantly, no-one to take my difficulties to.

When working for a big organization, I got very good at was knowing my boundaries - what was my responsibility and what was not. If I got stuck, I would simply set up a meeting with my boss, technical support or my business stakeholders and say, here's the problem. YOU decide.

BUT, when we run our own businesses, we have to do it ALL. Not only that, but we must market ourselves, run the sales operation and buy post-its and pens. All this in the same breath that we make decisions about what our logo or tagline should look like while we're preparing for a client or seminar, paying in cheques and making follow-up sales calls. Phew! It's exhausting. And it's overwhelming at times.

And finally, add in that many of us don't like marketing and selling ourselves. Many of us don't know HOW to market ourselves, when we do it often feels like we're being pushy or big-headed AND it takes time. A LOT of time. Shouldn't the fact that we're keen and good at what we do be enough to get us clients?

Frankly, no. I'd like to say yes, but in order to get clients - people need to know you're there. They need to know you exist, they need to see your company often enough that when they're ready for coaching they think of you. And they need to know enough about you so they feel that you're a good fit for THEM.

But all this running our business - and planning the marketing that lets people know we're there - can be overwhelming. It's a lot of work (in fact Master Coach and former ICF President Steve Mitten says in the early days of building our coaching practices it takes 3-5 hours marketing to acquire each new client).

So, to celebrate 5 years in business we want to share our secret - that you don't need a lot of time to make a plan, you just need to do it regularly. At The Coaching Tools Company we make a practice of sitting down every 3 months and writing a short plan that takes an hour or so. And this becomes our business GPS for the next quarter telling us where we need to focus and concentrate our time, efforts and resources.

We want to help coaches grow their businesses. And business planning is unique to each coach - there is no 'one size fits all' set of instructions. But with our planning tool we help you break down your business goals and marketing into achievable goals and steps - that work for and are unique to YOU.

So, as a thank-you to our new followers, loyal fans and newsletter readers, to celebrate 5 years in business we're giving away FREE UNTIL 31st March 2014 for a limited time again - our 3 Month Business Goal & Action Planning Tool.

Sorry this tool is no longer available, however you may like our 20+ Free Coaching Tools & Exercises here >>

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