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In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, more people are taking baby steps toward setting up their own ventures. Therefore, the need for business coaching has risen exponentially. This creates a unique opportunity waiting to be tapped.
COVID-19 has no doubt turned our world upside down. Yet there are some silver linings. For example, more and more people are taking action to realize their dreams. This is true whether their dream is to form better relationships with loved ones, focus on health and fitness, or start their own business.
Do You Dream of Becoming a Business Coach?
If you plan to become a business coach after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, here are a few things to consider.
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Understand the Requirements for Being a Business Coach
A business coach must have professional training and background in helping small businesses grow. In other words, you’ll need to understand the process from ideation and inception to growth and scale.
Your clients will most likely have half-baked business ideas, enlisting your help and expertise to translate them into feasible business plans. Therefore, you need to be able to extract goals and objectives from your clients’ vague notions and formulate roadmaps to achieve these milestones. This includes general business planning, marketing or social media consultancy, financial planning, and so on. Some clients might need help in specific areas, while others might need a well-rounded success plan.
Success here means multi-faceted, holistic success. And so, you might also have to help your clients with work-life balance issues, aligning business values with personal morals, and the like. As a business coach, your end goal will be to help your clients achieve clarity and success by solving their problems effectively and efficiently. You can leverage the power of technology for this and conduct your coaching online so that you can overcome the restrictions due to the pandemic.
Develop the Necessary Skills
Based on the requirements, it is evident that a business coach needs experience, expertise, and exceptional insights to be able to guide clients. If you have formal education in business management, that’s a great start. If not, or as a supplement, you could enroll in business coaching classes.
Additionally, it will help to have excellent presentation skills, data analytics expertise, and sound reasoning. It can also be useful to have trend spotting abilities. You should be able to identify opportunities and niches that will bring maximum gains to your clients. Also, you will need to motivate your clients at times, so having pep-talk and soft skills could be a major plus.
You will need a positive yet realistic outlook with an unshakable determination to succeed. Also, you should be able to wade through other people’s problems as if they were your own to find apt solutions—and repeat the process for every new client. In addition to having a commendable IQ, you need a strong EQ, or emotional quotient, and a genuine desire to help people.
Build a Solid Reputation as an Effective Business Coach
In the coaching space, your reputation and credibility are the most important endorsements. Conduct yourself mindfully, and make a good impression on people. There is a reason why business coaches are always well-groomed and presentable. For instance, look up Ofer Valencio Akerman from Rigstone Capital. As a coach, everything about you must inspire your clients. Make yourself an aspirational figure they would want to emulate. Live the life they would like to live. Lead by example.
Start Small and Grow
Business coaching is more complicated than any other form of coaching, so it might take more time to pick up momentum. You might not get clients immediately upon starting. But instead of lamenting the lack of clients, use this opportunity to test the market and your skills.
Start small by helping people without any monetary expectations in return. See how your advice and coaching pans out in the real world. Once you fine tune your approach and enough people start seeing your guidance’s substantive value, you can monetize your coaching.
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Invest in Marketing Your Coaching Business
For people to become paying clients, they need to know your services exist.
Build a website detailing what you do, why you do it, and why anyone should care. Communicate clearly what value your coaching will bring.
Back this up with credibility reinforcements like your educational and professional qualifications and testimonials from those you’ve helped in the past. Write a few case studies—if you have enough data—showcasing how your coaching helped your clients resolve problems and achieve goals.
Adapt all this content for various social media platforms and promotional campaigns to attract clients. Keep posting regularly on social media and engage your audience with customized content.
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Leverage Your Network to Build Your Coaching Business
Most of your clients will come to you via word-of-mouth publicity. In other words, they will seek you out because someone in their network was so impressed with your coaching that they recommended you to them. You will also find unique opportunities via your network, so keep it strong. Interact with new people and stay in touch with them, even if they don’t fit into your ideal customer profile right away. Build relationships selflessly and forge trust. Your efforts will eventually pay off in one way or another.