WHY MOST COACHES FAIL AND WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED

“WHY MOST COACHES FAIL AND WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED”–excerpts from Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid Program

Before I show you exactly how to implemented the four key building blocks of all successful coaching businesses: Foundation, Trust and Credibility, Super Simple Selling and Perfect Pricing and Marketing, here’s something really important that you need to know first:
There is ONE major differentiator between successful coaches and coaches who are struggling.
That differentiator is what you sell.
The most successful coaches in the industry sell their services bound up in comprehensive, proprietary intellectual property.
The rest sell general “coaching.”
There’s a big difference between selling general coaching services and selling a very specific system that produces a very specific result for a very specific client.
Book Yourself Solid is that kind of system. It’s why I’ve been so successful.
If you don’t have a system like that to offer potential clients, what do you have that they’d be compelled to buy?
You ARE compelling on your own. That’s for sure. But, is it enough to have a never-ending stream of new clients clamoring for your services? Probably not.
Here are three solutions. Choose which is right for you and you’ll see an immediate change in your client-flow and as a result, your cash-flow.
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SOLUTION ONE
Create your own extensive, comprehensive intellectual property that makes a major statement in your industry.
This is what I have done with Book Yourself Solid and it’s one of the main reasons I have been so successful.
I’m not alone.
Dale Carnegie’s leadership and public speaking coaching business all stemmed from his seminal work, How To Win Friends and Influence People. Without this crucial piece of intellectual property, his hugely successful training company wouldn’t have got anywhere near the amount of traction it has.
Ken Blanchard is another example from the same industry. On the back of the success of his short book, The One Minute Manager, he now runs a worldwide coaching and training company.
But you don’t need to have an international best-selling book to get these results; we can look at other examples.
Who is the world’s most successful sleep coach for babies and toddlers? You might not know the answer to that, but Kim West dominates the industry based on her proprietary Good Night, Sleep Tight solution.
Bikram Choudhory is another example. He created a copyrighted, proprietary yoga system based on existing principles and became a huge commercial success in the health & wellness industry.
Admittedly, this approach isn’t for everybody, but if it IS for you, then you’re backing a winner.
Here’s a potential downside: it will probably take you years. If successful, these will be years very well spent.
Ultimately the market-place will decide if the intellectual property you create is actually worth paying for, but in the meantime, let’s see if you are, at heart, an intellectual property creator, or if your true calling is to be a coach.
Right now, take a pen and paper and jot down a title for a four-part program.
Within that program, create seven unique components for each part, each one addressing an urgent and compelling need for your target market and delivering a single big result for your audience.
Each of the 28 steps should contain new insights and actionable content. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel at this stage – most skilled intellectual property developers are adept at repurposing (but not stealing) existing content – but your result should be brand new to the marketplace.
Once you’ve done that, can you formulate, on no fewer than, say, two pages, a comprehensive year-long marketing campaign to get people into your programs based on this intellectual property? You’ll first have to design the format, delivery, pricing and structure of these programs.
It’s a lot of work, huh? But don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t come naturally. Whilst content creation is something that can be learned, it isn’t necessarily going to be the best use of your time and resources.
Many of my Book Yourself Solid Coaches, for example, are fantastic at the coaching side of things, but haven’t the inclination or skill-set or desire to go about creating proprietary intellectual property. Instead, they use mine.
Decide if this course of action is for you. If it is, then run with it. As I said before, the market will ultimately decide if it wants to pay for the fruits of your labor.
But if you don’t try, you’ll never find out.
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SOLUTION TWO
This solution allows you to use other people’s intellectual property. You can’t, of course, do this by stealing it (but I know I don’t have to tell you that again).
Coaching franchises exist that will give you the tools and marketing materials you need to sell their products to your audience.
In buying into a coaching franchise, you’ll be given the opportunity to use materials previously developed by somebody else, and sell them to your own clients under that original brand name.
In return for a lump-sum payment and an on-going monthly fee, plus a percentage of your sales, you’ll be given the right to sell the franchisor’s materials to individuals or companies within a defined geographic area.
There are several opportunities like this available, ranging from sales training schools to marketing programs and entire top-down business coaching.
The franchisors — and this differs from organization to organization — will be keen to make sure that you have the necessary tools to sell their products and programs. After all, the more money you make, the more money they make.
The most successful coaching franchises have a strict Red Velvet Rope Policy in place, which means they put a meaningful barrier to entry in place to ensure that only the most committed coaches become franchisees.
This barrier is primarily financial. The two leading business-coaching franchises will not let you become a franchisee unless you are prepared to make an initial investment of the better part of $100,000.
That means that only those who have the means apply.
The advantages of this system are that you have the materials already created for you and some of your fees and monthly royalty payments back to head office go towards having a structured back-office in place. Some of them will even allow you to rent a virtual office assistant to answer the phone on your behalf.
This is a viable solution for many new coaches out there who feel comfortable within a more corporate structure. With monthly financial reporting to head-office, the accountability factor is high. Also, in order to succeed you’ll have to reach for the skies with your pricing, as the continued cost to remain a franchisee is considerable.
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SOLUTION THREE
The third solution is to license the use of somebody else’s proven intellectual property. This is different to the franchise model, as it is often against a one-time investment and you will have the right to re-fashion and repurpose the material as you see fit.
Sometimes, you can even put your own name to the material, mix it up with your own ideas and intellectual property and rebrand it as something that you can legitimately call your own.
All of my Book Yourself Solid coaches, for example, have a full legal license to use all of the material that I have put together over the last decade, including course structure, marketing material and even promotional graphics. This is in return for a one-off investment and a period of intensive personal training with me.
Another advantage of this method is the advantage of transferred credibility.
Surgeons, musicians, hypnotherapists, athletes and life-coaches boost their credibility by making reference to their mentors. If you’re looking for an NLP trainer, you’ll be reassured to know that your trainer has studied personally under Richard Bandler. If you’re looking for a chess teacher, then a student of Kasparov is almost as good as Kasparov himself.
So it is with Book Yourself Solid coaching. Teaching a system that is proven to work and that is internationally respected will confer the benefit of recognition and credibility to your own practice, even if you’re just starting out.
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So there you have it, the single biggest difference between very successful coaches, and coaches that are just getting by: intellectual property.
You mustn’t forget this as you forge ahead with your career as a coach. It should be the cornerstone of the services that you offer and the brand that you create for yourself.
If you’re just starting out, or you’re already a coach without recognizable IP, it’s never too late to start.
Choose one of those three options above:
• Create your own IP
• Become a franchisee
or
• License proven material
And don’t stop until you hit the top!