Tweet

How Small Business Coaches Are Missing the Boat

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Coaching is the second fastest growing industry and executive coaching accounts for an estimated $2 billion annually. With high return on investments, coaching appears to be the entrepreneur’s dream. Yet, most coaches from executive to life are missing this high pay boat because of one critical factor. Can you guess what it is?

How Small Business Coaches Are Missing the Boat

Coaching is the second fastest growing industry and executive coaching accounts for an estimated $2 billion annually. With high return on investments, coaching appears to be the entrepreneur’s dream. Yet, most coaches from executive to life are missing this high pay boat because of one critical factor. Can you guess what it is?

Small business is exploding. The entrepreneurial “bug” has infected many discontented corporate types who are seeking a better way of living, a higher quality of life. Many of their efforts have probably contributed to the second fastest growing industry within the United States after information technology - coaching.

Coaching as a service can produce significant results according to a 2001 study completed by Dr. Merrill Anderson of MetrixGlobal for a Fortune 500 company. In this study, coaching resulted in a 529% return on investment. Additional studies from Dell and other companies have helped to catapult this fledging industry.

Given all this good news, then why does the research conducted by Stephen Fairley, author of "Getting Started in Personal and Executive Coaching" suggest that only 9 out of every 100 coaches make more than $100,000 per year? Additionally, 53% of all coaches make less than $20,000 a year and almost one out of every three coaches (30%) have never exceeded 10 paying clients.

Since this $1 billion industry and growing at an estimated 40% annually, why are the business results for coaches not in alignment with the growth? Possibly, the answer lies within continued research such as from Dun & Bradstreet that failure for 90% of all small businesses can be traced to 3 key factors:

 Lack of planning
 Poor management
 Under capitalization

Lack of planning is probably the most detrimental factor. The other 2 factors are in many cases a direct result of poor planning. NOTE: Within a solid strategic plan, management and capitalization are addressed.

Consider the following:

FACT: Most people spend far more time planning their weekly grocery list or family vacation than they do their businesses.

How many individuals do you know that spend 15 to 30 minutes per week planning the grocery list or spend 4 weeks to several months planning a vacation or honeymoon? Now imagine if these same individuals set aside the same amount of time to plan their businesses, what type of outcomes they would receive? In the book It’s Not the Big that Eat the Small…It’s the Fast that Eat the Slow, the authors Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton said that most business owners spend more time in yesterday and today than thinking and planning about tomorrow.

FACT: If you don’t have a plan, you are on someone else’s plan.

Successful business owners use their plan to ensure that they are not on someone else’s plan. By having a plan, you accept personal responsibility for your own success. Additionally, someone else won’t beat you to that customer or that niche market.

FACT: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

Without planning, failure is the only option. Planning also supports critical thinking skills because individuals are always asking “What if?” Their proactive actions create the destiny that they desire for themselves and allow them to quickly make course corrections when necessary because their eyes are on the target.

So if you are a executive, personal, life or career coach and are not making over $100,000 a year and have not exceeded a total of 9 paying clients, maybe now is the time to create or review your strategic plan. NOTE: A strategic plan states who does what by when as compared to a business plan that provides a general overview along with financial documentation.

Of course, if you like being in the majority of those making under $20,000 a year, then please continue to do what you have always done while hoping for different results.

Related Articles
  Financing A Boat Trailer
  Can You Afford A New Boat Loan
  Getting Boat Finance For Your Dream Boat
  Riveria Boat Loans
  Luxury Boat Sales - Hitting A Sturdy And Happy Agreement Associating Shopper And Retailer

Article Tags:



Related Forum Posts
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
These maybe the coldest franchises out there: - Here are the worst 15 performing franchises in regards to having the highest Small Business Administration (SBA) loan failure rates. The list is dotted with sub sandwich shops, fitness centers and car shops. WORST FRANCHISE LOAN FAILURES Failure % 1 OBEE'S SOUP SALAD SUBS 55.56% 2 LADY OF AMERICA 41.94% 3 COUNTRY CLUTTER (BED & BREAKFAST) 41.18% 4 COPY CLUB 36.36% 5 ALL TUNE AND LUBE 35.71% 6 PICKERMAN'S 35.71% 7 PHILLY CONNECTION 35.59% 8 ROLY POLY ROLLED SANDWICHES 34.78% 9 COTTMAN TRANSMISSION 34.48% 10 HAIR COLOR EXPRESS 33.33% 11 LEE MYLES AUTOMOTIVE TRANSMISSIONS 33.33% 12 GODFATHER'S PIZZA 33.33% 13 SMOOTHIE FACTORY 33.33% 14 BLIMPIE 31.39% 15 GOLF U.S.A. (RETAIL GOLF EQUIP.) 30.77% Source: Small Business Administration, SBA Loan Performance Within Franchise Code for the Period of FY 2001 - 2005
Exclusive: Interview with Results - Hi Forum Members, I'm helping start up a Business Coaching and Consulting company here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (a Subsidiary of RSC Business in Los Angeles). As a Research and Development Intern I am required to practice my listening and interview skills by surveying Small and Medium Businesses on thier Business. This Survey is designed by RSC Business to also assist the Business being interviewed more insight into their own business. I am looking to interview about 30 businesses across North America over the span of 3 months. At the end of these interviews I will be publishing a report of the results and they will be made available for free to the Interviewees. The Report data will include responses from a minimum of 100 interviews. I would like to extend this opportunity to members of the Forum. If you would like to have this short 20-30 minute interview conducted on your Business and you reside in North America please send me an email or PM. Please contact me at andy[at]jvprosperity[dot]com to arrange our interview and to get free access to the results when they are published.
Re: Biz Plan Competition - i just wanted to say that posting Small Business Events on CanadaOne is a great resource. Thanks Julie!
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why Small Businesses Don't Survive

Tips to Take Control of Credit Card Debt

Leading with Discernment

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.