Discover Your Coaching Niche

Archive for December, 2006

Having explored the tasks we can Eliminate, Automate, Simplify and Execute leads us to the final part of the EASED model – Delegate.

Delegate

After you’ve gone through the Execute phase, you’ll have some tasks that are candidates for delegation. These will probably include aspects of the administration of your business and aspects of the process of your marketing. They may also include elements of your home-life like childcare or cleaning.

Your potential task list may be quite long, and you know there are many tasks that you could usefully delegate. But, I also know what you’re going to say next.

But I can’t afford to pay staff…

No, not many start-up coaches can afford to pay full-time, permanent staff. But you don’t need to do that yet. Just look at the list of tasks you had from above, and the ones that you could delegate.

Now consider these options:

• Get yourself a cleaner, order groceries online and delegate other non-business related time-consuming tasks.
• Consider getting part-time typing assistance from a temp agency or from personal contacts.
• Hire a VA – a Virtual Assistant.
• Use resources for specific tasks from www.elance.com .

But, But… Don’t All Of These Cost Money?

Yes they do. And that’s the wrong question. The right question is, if this frees me up and allows me to get one paid coaching session extra per week, what is that worth?

Let’s say it costs you £15 per hour for admin support – for a VA perhaps. And let’s say your coaching fees are only £80 per hour. You could pay for five hours of your admin and marketing time a week, if you got just one ongoing coaching session per week.

Now, what would five hours of marketing per week, every week give you, or get for you? Hmmmm… Just a thought…

Summary

These postings have outlined my EASED process for categorising tasks in your coaching practice that can be Eliminated, Automated, Simplified, Executed by you or Delegated. Now, what from this article could you put in place in your coaching practice this week?

Alun Richards helps coaches find and reach their coaching niche. Discover yours with the free mini-course, “Discover Your Coaching Niche”, available from http://www.brandingyou.org/ecoursesales.html

In looking at the tasks that we peform in our coaching practice, we’ve identified the tasks that we can Eliminate, Automate and Simplify. Next we need to identify the tasks only we can do – the tasks we must Execute.

Execute

We’ve now arrived at the core activities of our business. These are the tasks that need to be performed for our business to operate effectively. We only have two more categories left – those only we can do and tasks that could be completed by others.

Execute tasks are those you must do yourself – this naturally includes the delivery of your coaching services. But it also includes a proportion of your marketing tasks.

Content vs Process 

Here, it’s helpful to distinguish between content and process. You need to provide the content for your marketing – the text for your sales letters and your website content.

But others can manage the processes of marketing for you. This might include setting up your website or blog in the first place, uploading your sales pages to the internet, sending out your weekly newsletter, managing your autoresponders and making telephone calls to arrange coaching sessions or meetings.

The key is being ruthless about what do you HAVE to do. If a task is not focused around your core skills, and high-value added activities, you shouldn’t be doing it.

So have a long think about where you add value to your clients, and where there are routine, lower-value tasks that can be delgated to others.

So make a list of those coaching delivery tasks that you cannot delegate, and those marketing activities, or parts of them, that only you can undertake. Once you’ve made the list, look again at what you’re doing. Are you sure you HAVE to be doing all of each of those tasks?

We’ll look at this more in the final part of the EASED model in the next post – Delegate.

So far we’ve examined the tasks we’re performing day to day and we’ve identified the tasks that we can Eliminate or Automate. Next on our list is what we can Simplify.

Simplify

Once you’ve Eliminated and Automated tasks, what tasks can you Simplify? How can you make what you have to do easier and have it take less time?

It’s true in organisations that business processes get more and more complex over time as they have to deal with more and more different situations. These processes then take more effort, manpower, time and cost to operate. They only ever get simpler if you take a long hard look at the purpose of the process and consider whether each activitity within it is actually still required.

Simplifying, therefore, means making processes easier to operate by taking out non-essential activities from them. It differs from Eliminate, where you stop doing the entire process, by looking at specific tasks you perform in operating the process.

Simplify also means organising the resources required so they’re close at hand. And it can also mean reducing the standards for completion of non-essential tasks.

You can simplify not only your marketing and coaching delivery tasks, but also your home management activities. For example, could you use online shopping and delivery to save yourself two hours a week?

So let’s start to Simplify your what you do in your coaching practice and in your private life.

Of the processes you undertake:

1. What non-essential steps can you take out of them?
2. How can you make the tasks easier?
3. How can you reduce the time it takes for the tasks, or the whole process?
4. Are there resources – material, space, machines, instructions, templates, checklists, pre-prepared or part prepared documents, tools and other aids that can be more readily at hand, and in a state ready to use?
5. Bearing in mind the required standard for completion of the tasks by your client, do all of the tasks have to be completed to the standard they are today?
6. Could you meet the requirements overall, while lowering the standard of individual tasks? Negotiation with your client on this may surprise you.
7. Can you make your home management processes more effective by simplifying them in the same way?

Summary

Simplifying your tasks and activities may initially seem time consuming. And it can be. But you’ll see the benefit immediately, and for every day you use the simplified process.

In fact, only doing what you have to do in your business and in your life, and no more can release huge amounts of time for you to spend marketing.

So far we’ve examined the tasks we’re performing day to day and we’ve identified a number that we can Eliminate. Next on our list is what we can Automate.

Automate

The next category in my EASED process is Automate.

Have another look at the remaining tasks you perform. The increasing numbers of online and PC-based tools available mean that today many tasks can be automated. What are the marketing and administration tasks that you can automate? Talk to other coaches to see what systems they use.

The secret here is to find automated systems that do the work for you. Examples here might be 1shoppingcart or other autoresponders to keep in touch with your client and prospect list. It might include having an online system to take booking requests and accept client payments automatically.

As this area of technology moves fast, it pays to check often on the current position.

Of course, there may be tasks other than those to do with business administration that you could automate. If your weekly shop has a percentage of recurring items, perhaps you could order these via the internet, for home delivery. Most such systems allow you to use a saved online shopping list.

So what can you Automate to give yourself more time?

I’m delighted to report that ezinearticles have just granted me Expert Author status. This is based on the articles that I’ve submitted on discovering your coaching niche and marketing for coaches.

You can read my latest article by going to http://EzineArticles.com/?id=371326

I mentioned that the key in being able to deliver coaching services AND market yourself is my EASED process. EASED stands for Eliminate, Automate, Simplify, Execute and Delegate. It allows you to categorise the work you do and find more effective solutions for its completion.

So by now you’ve had a look at a typical week to see where you spend your time. You’ve written down all the major tasks you undertake. This includes your delivery of coaching services, your marketing activities and everything else that doesn’t contribute to your business.

Let’s look at that list and let’s ask ourselves – “Do I really need to be doing all of that?”

In other words, we start the EASED process with Eliminate.

Eliminate Tasks

We will get the biggest payoff from Eliminating tasks which we do not really need to perform.

Looking at your list, what can you Eliminate from your stack of work with no impact to your marketing or delivery? In this category you might find time spent watching TV, playing video games, surfing the ‘net – stuff you like but that doesn’t contribute to your business.

Now, I’m not going to suggest you’ll eliminate all of your TV watching. But when you look at the time you spend per week doing it, you may surprise yourself with how many hours you could save per week when you cut back.

Low Value Tasks

Also in the Eliminate category is low value activities – things you don’t get paid for and that would have no real impact if you didn’t do them. You may find many of these, too.

Frequency of Tasks

With some tasks you could cut down the frequency with which you perform them – for example – food shopping or dusting.

Are there things you do automatically, that are more the result of habit rather than need? Now’s the time to examine these. Often we can get into patterns of behaviour that are comfortable, but don’t take us where we need to be.

Take Action

Once you’ve identified potential activities from your list – just stop doing them! You will probably find you will immediately have more time on your hands. You might want to review the situation in a month or so, to see if there’s any adverse reaction. If there isn’t, keep on not doing these tasks!

I thought that I’d take a short break from supporting coaches to introduce you to a coach you may like to meet.  His name is Geraint Powers and his speciality is WifeCoaching.

There may be someone in your life who needs WifeCoaching(TM).  You’ll know if your Wife is not going in the right direction.  If your Wife seems to be falling apart on you.  If your Work/Wife balance is all wrong. 

You’ll know the symptoms only too well – so quick, go to Geraint’s site to find the solution: 

http://www.wifecoaching.co.uk

 

We’ve established that as coaches we must deliver and we must market. But how can we do both? The challenge is to find the time to market while not spending money that start-up coaches simply do not have.

The answer is in my EASED process. But allow me to digress for a moment, to help you understand where this process came from.

I’m a consultant as well as a coach. And as a consultant I’m often asked to redesign business processes to make them more efficient. Here, I typically eliminate waste – in the form of time, effort and money, as a first step in the redesign.

Yet when I looked at the tools I use day to day, they were more suited to the processes of a large organisation, rather than those of a single coach. So I decided to re-engineer the redesign processes I use to make them more suitable to coaches in the field.

The result is the EASED process.

The EASED Process

The key to redesigning your work processes – your day-to-day business procedures – is in my EASED process. EASED stands for Eliminate, Automate, Simplify, Execute and Delegate. It allows you to categorise the work you do and find more effective solutions for its completion.

And it will help you deliver your coaching services and still have time to market. Impossible? Read on…

What Do You Spend Your Time Doing?

First, let’s see what you’re actually doing. Take a look at a typical week and see where you spend your time. Write down all the major tasks you undertake.

This includes your delivery of coaching services, your marketing activities and everything else that doesn’t contribute to your business.

Look at your list – it’s probably quite long. For each item, we’re going to be asking – “Do I really need to be doing all of that?”

So as you consider that, I’ll start the next post with Eliminate.

How do coaches find time to market when they are busy delivering their coaching services?  My research indicates that this one of the biggest problems faced by coaches in their practices.  And it’s particularly acute with coaches who are beginning to get clients.

When I asked coaches, they expressed the problem like this:

• “…creating a balance between spending time selling and marketing and actually coaching.”
• “Finding the time to win the business as well as deliver.”
• “…getting the ‘Marketing and doing’ balance right.”
• “Finding the time to do everything myself (produce product, market, deliver).”

You Must Market Your Coaching Services

Of course, unless we’re actively marketing, our flow of work is going to dry up.  So marketing is vital – it’s the lifeblood of our business.  If we are not working on our marketing every waking hour while we’re not actually delivering, what are we doing in business?

To paraphrase Dan Kennedy, from his book No BS Direct Marketing – “Your business is the business of marketing of your coaching practice”.

So we must deliver and we must market.  But how can we do both?  The challenge is to find the time to market while not spending money that start-up coaches simply do not have.

The good news is that this is not a new problem, and is common to consultants, therapists, trainers and solo entrepreneurs of all kinds.
So are there generic solutions out there that we can use?  If so, are these applicable to coaches, and are they affordable?

I’ll begin to reveal some practical, implementable solutions in the next post…