S5 Episode 38: Everything You Need To Know To Build A High-Value Coaching Business (With Actual Numbers) with Gary Crotaz (Extended Edition)

Episode Transcript
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(00:15):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn, which I think is going to bebumper long because we've got lots to talk about.
Just a reminder to subscribe or follow if you don't do that already and check out InsideThe Coaching Inn on Substack if you want to see some behind the scenes writing and things.
uh Today...

(00:38):
My guest has come to talk about everything you need to know to build a high value coachingbusiness with actual numbers.
uh And I've known Gary for a few years now and uh we're also neighbours and go walkingtogether.
So some of this has been created in conversation, walking on the hills with the dogs,hasn't it?

(01:01):
Exactly, more people should come.
And in conversation with you, Gary, and also following Andrew Richards on LinkedIn, who umwas on the podcast at the end of season four.
One of the things I like about both of you is quite how honest you are about real factsand not just vague things, because there is something, isn't there, in the coaching

(01:25):
industry about, about, this is top secret.
I'm not, I'm not going to tell you details about my
fees my anything and actually that makes it really hard doesn't it for our listeners tohave any idea where they fit in anything.
So before we dive into the wheres and hows and whats, tell us a little bit about yourjourney into coaching Gary.

(01:51):
Claire, thanks so much for having me back.
It's always a delight to like to come and join you on The Coaching Inn.
And my first experience on The Coaching Inn was one of the many participants in thatroundtable, actually talking about the early stages of business building.
And that inspired me to talk to you about coming and having this conversation.
So I mean, prior to coaching, had an eclectic career path still do trained in medicine,but never practiced, spent 10 years in strategy consulting.

(02:21):
took a career pivot in my late thirties to move into retail work for mother care and forself-discharge group as group strategy director and then on their executive teams.
And then in the pandemic, actually, I'd speak, I'd begun my journey of untrained, butoptimistic coaching in 2019.
And in 2020, I decided to give it a go properly went to Henley, did my PCEC at Henley, didmy Gallup.

(02:47):
uh, strengths coach training as well in early 2021, um, got my ACC in late 2021.
And since then my, would describe my primary focus has always been to build the coachingbusiness, which, which, which I'm doing.
And then alongside it, I always have other stuff going on.
So, um, I'm a board member of a couple of organizations in the Rom-Bear world, theRom-Bear dance world.

(03:13):
Um, and I'm currently.
uh working three to four days a week as an advisor to the Tony Blair Institute for GlobalChange, where I'm advising the senior leadership on organisational change and leadership,
but not coaching, interestingly.
And I think that's quite relevant for the conversation we're going to have about how doyou have a high value coaching business that could be a full-time thing or could be

(03:35):
something alongside other things that you do.
And everybody's business is different and everybody has a different view of the kinds ofpeople they want to coach.
So your view is one view.
And we had Mark Bickster on a few months ago and his preferred audience and therefore thefees he charges are very different from yours.

(04:00):
And it's an absolute delight to hear one view today, which is your view.
So what's your definite, go on.
it's a really important point that what I'm going to talk about is only my experience.
And it's not, I think other people should do it.
But I think that if you're wondering what other people do charge, it's a point of view.

(04:23):
And if you're wondering how you could charge more than you currently do, or build morerevenue to build a more sustainable business, it's a point of view.
There's many different ways to do it.
Yeah.
So what's your definition of success, Gary?
Well, it's a really interesting question.
My definition of success is more about lifestyle and freedoms.

(04:49):
There's a big underpinning thing for me about freedom.
um I realized quite recently that a lot of my career pivots along the way have been drivenby the option that helped me feel more free to make my own choices, not necessarily the
most lucrative path to take.
um Sometimes, you know, it was a lucrative path to take, but that wasn't why I was doingit.

(05:13):
And why today I have uh a diverse and eclectic portfolio career is because I love allparts of it.
And if there's a part of it that I don't love, then I try and stop doing it.
Sometimes I have to make compromises.
And we made a huge compromise uh last year in terms of our cost base, because in order tohave the freedom to be doing the kind of work I wanted to do,

(05:37):
that wasn't going to bring in as much money as what it's costing us to live where we live.
And so we explicitly decided to move from St.
Albans out to here in the Morphin Hills.
And I've talked quite a bit about this idea of half your costs to double your freedom.
And so when I'm talking to people about building their business, knowing what success isand knowing what you're compromised to get it is really important.

(06:02):
For me, you we compromised
proximity to London to have the freedom to do the work we wanted to do.
and who wouldn't want to live in the Malvern Hills as well?
Exactly, exactly.
So how do you think about who your customer is?

(06:25):
Well.
The reason that I think about this question a lot is because a lot of people think one wayabout who their customer is, and they will say, I think my customer is people in marketing
because I've been in marketing, or they'll say, it's people in retail because I've workedin retail.

(06:45):
So they think about role or they think about sector.
Sometimes you hear people saying, you know, uh my audience might be people returning towork after being
after having a baby, or it might be people who are neurodiverse.
So they start to think different lenses on people.

(07:05):
When I started in coaching, I didn't particularly have a mission.
didn't, I like the freedom.
So I didn't like putting myself in a box and saying I am the person to coach senior retailleaders, for example.
I did coach some senior retail leaders, but I also coached an actor and I also coached adancer and I also coached somebody in consulting, a variety of people.

(07:28):
And then I started to think about who are the people that I really love working with?
And that I think is a really important thing to think about.
Who are the people who, if you could only coach those people, who would that be?
And I realized that the people I really liked to work with were people who I figured outmy description was people with extraordinary goals.

(07:49):
So when people say, who do you like to work with?
go, I like to work with people with extraordinary goals.
Some of those people, the extraordinary goal might be...
I want to be the best in the world at what I do.
And sometimes when people look at places I've worked or people that I work with, they seethose people.
But sometimes somebody with an extraordinary goal could be the person who's trying to getpromoted and their boss isn't really sure they could make it.

(08:12):
And I think that's an extraordinary goal.
So I work less with people who are going on a generic journey and more people who aretrying to break the mold in one way or prove somebody else wrong or
aim to, you know, beat their own expectations, something like that.
There's something in that.
And my secret double life in the past as a professional ballroom dancer is kind of a bitin that I spend a lot of time in the dance world being around people trying to become

(08:40):
really the very best in the world at what they do.
And there's something for me that I just think there's something so exciting about peoplewho have that level of ambition, even if they don't have the talent and skills quite to
get there, but they want it.
And it's that drive.
So, so yeah, I think when you think about who your customer is, don't just think about asector or a role uh or a function.

(09:05):
Think about who the people are.
Think about what kind of personality they have, the people that really tune into you andyou just go, that was not like work at all.
I just loved spending time with those people.
And I do think that if your work becomes like that, then it's going to grow.
because you're going to love it and if you love it you'll probably be good at it andyou'll probably find more of it to do.

(09:30):
And what I love about the way you said that was that those people know who they are.
don't they?
They go, yeah, that's me.
I think that's right.
How would you describe it Claire?
What?
who your customer is.
Who my customer is?
Now, my customers are coaches who want to do less.

(09:58):
And that means less in lots of ways.
Less work, less hours.
if you read what a lot of early stage coaches are busy doing, they're busy trying to writea description of what they do.

(10:19):
And they will write some version of, it's always correct, but also slightlyundifferentiated.
They'll say, you know, I love to coach, uh I've trained in Henley or
and a mass or barefoot or wherever I've trained.
I work with people and I create space and I encourage them to think for themselves andtake ownership and you're describing yourself.

(10:46):
And it's true and it's lovely.
And if you read a hundred of them, you realize that they will say exactly the same thing.
And so if you think of the customer, well, how would they know to come to you?
If you say,
Think of me when...
Think of me when you've got somebody in your team who is super intelligent, but theystruggle to integrate with everyone else.

(11:12):
Think of me when you've got somebody who should be promoted in next two years, but needssome support to get there.
Think of me when you've got somebody who's got something significant going on outside ofwork and it's making it difficult for them to also achieve in work.
And then think of, why should it be you?

(11:33):
So I have this little thing that I say to people when I'm helping them to think about whotheir customer is.
I say, what is the question to which the answer is you?
Nice.
And when you can answer that question, so mine might be, um you've got somebody withextraordinary goals and you want them to be surrounded by people that will grow them,

(11:57):
think of me and some other people that you will want to put around that person.
If you've got somebody who's returning to work from pregnancy and struggling withintegration, don't think of me.
I'm not the right coach.
Could I coach that person?
Yes.
Would I be good?
Hopefully.
Am I the right coach for that person?
No.
many other better coaches.
So it turns you from, kind of can coach anybody, but it's not quite clear who it should beto, it doesn't mean everybody I work with is in that bucket, but I can start to really

(12:31):
focus in and be clean and clear on who I am.
And I noticed Claire when you said it, coaches who wants to do less.
If you're listening, notice how few words we use to describe it.
People with extraordinary goals.
coaches who want to do less.
And ultimately, you talk about who your customer is, you might talk about what your visionis for your coaching practice.

(12:56):
The definition of a great vision is something that enables you to allocate scarceresources really effectively.
So if you say, for example, your example, Claire, coaches who want to do less, your scarceresource is you.
You could work with coaches or
anybody else and you're saying, well, if I had the choice of two people, one's a coach andI work with a coach.

(13:20):
If it's a coach who wants to work seven days a week and 12 hours a day, or there's anotherone who wants to work less.
I want to work with the one that wants to work less.
So your vision, your clarity for your customers is helping you to make choices betweenwhat you do do and what you don't do.
Mine, to work with people with extraordinary goals.

(13:42):
It helps me to go, well,
What kind of things should I post if I'm going to post on LinkedIn?
And what kind of things should I not bother posting?
If you say, I like to work with people who are stuck, it's kind of everybody, or mostpeople.
If I go, I want to work with people who are looking to grow, you know, again, true, butit's kind of everybody.

(14:02):
So, so getting really focused on what that looks like, who that customer is rather thanwhat you give is super powerful.
And I think it's a real foundation for building a successful.
business.
And it reminds me in a way I've not thought about before of the podcast I did with GinnyCarter, the ghostwriter at the end of season four, because she was talking about writing a

(14:26):
book.
And she said, if you think about writing a book as an upside down triangle, no, atriangle, think she had a triangle.
So the bottom bit is a book that anyone could write because your stuff isn't very unique.
The middle bit, the layer of, and she said, don't write that book.
The layer above it, it says that your take is slightly different on some common stuff.

(14:50):
So you can write that book, but what she says is the most useful and the best book towrite is the one that's the top of the triangle, which is something that you do and no one
else does.
And when you have that imaginary book title for the imaginary book that you plan to writeat some point in your coaching career, and imagine that your audience could just read the

(15:14):
title and know something about you.
You know, two of your books, Clara, Simplifying Coaching and The Human Behind the Coach.
And I could go, you know, the books are also great to read, but read the titles, and theyalready know something about you.
You know, I love Marshall Goldsmith's book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

(15:35):
I often wave it in front of camera for people and say, you may also get benefit fromreading this book, but remember the title.
You know, and there's something in that because, you know, when people go, I don't know,unlocking leadership, is there anybody could write that book?
And if they could, then it's not clear enough who you are.

(15:56):
And you're always going to struggle unless you have
remarkable breakthrough moment like you're on BBC News, or you do a TED talk that goesviral or something like that, or you're independently famous, or you work in a high
profile role in a famous business, you know, then then you can manage with that.
But most people are not that and therefore they have to find a way to cut through.

(16:20):
And if you're wondering why you're not cutting through, it's probably because you're notclear enough on what makes you
distinctive.
In strategy, there's this little phrase which I really like and I repeat all the time,that if you're trying to scale a business, you want to be simple, scalable, repeatable,

(16:40):
defensible.
So simple, you should be able to explain it in a sentence.
Scalable, what you're doing should be somehow something that you can do a lot of withouttoo much variation.
So for example,
And if you're sitting in studio at home and coaching on zoom, you can do four sessions ofcoaching pretty much as easily as you can do one.

(17:03):
So that's scalable.
But if you're having to travel all over the country for each session, at some point thatbecomes not scalable.
And so I think for a lot of coaches pre pandemic, ultimately, that was a bit of alimitation on the scale of the business.
Repeatable whether you're doing one to one coaching groups coaching.
You know, if you're doing group coaching or doing workshops, try and do a workshop thatyou can do again for a different client and you can reuse some of that content, then it's

(17:29):
repeatable and defensible.
If somebody else could just show up and do the same thing as you, it's not defensible.
But as you start to build a personal brand, as you start to build an online community,like you have Claire with, with, with Patreon, it starts to become defensible.
can't come and reproduce what 3d coaching and what you have.

(17:51):
You know, I can't, I can't do that because you've got a podcast audience, you've got aPatreon community, you've got coaches walking and all of that.
So simple, scalable, repeatable, defensible is actually a really helpful mantra for thefoundations of something that can become bigger.
However you do it, whatever your audience is.

(18:13):
that's all about how do we stand out, isn't it?
In those, in the reams of stuff that makes it feel like everyone's a coach and there's alot of competition in the market.
Be different is what you're saying.
I think so.
I think so because in reality, when it comes to it, when it's the right client for you,there's only one coach they could possibly work with.

(18:37):
And that's you.
So you don't have to find all the clients.
You've got to find a very small number.
And here's reality.
Right now, give or take, if you add up all of the ICF accredited coaches and all the otheraccredited coaches,
There's probably around about 100,000 coaches in the world, something like that, oftrained and accredited coaches.

(19:03):
Each of them has probably on average got, let's say five clients at any one time.
So any one time, there's 500,000 people in the world who working with an accreditedexecutive coach.
How many people in the world are there who could work with an executive coach?
And I'm saying executive coach, but...
but any kind of coach really, know, millions, tens of millions, possibly globally,hundreds of millions of people, and most of them aren't.

(19:32):
So it feels when you look on LinkedIn, because we're coaches, you see all the coach feeds,that everyone's coach.
But in reality, there are maybe 1 % of the number of coaches we really need to serve theneeds of all the people who could benefit from coaching.
So don't get stuck on there's a lot of other coaches out there, because in reality,there's an
awful lot more clients who need support.

(19:55):
that says, be wise about where you move and who you're connected to, and be connected toand move with people in your target market.
Exactly, exactly right.
And again, don't think about your target market just through the lens of industry orsector or role.
Think of it in terms of type of person, community, you know, all sorts of different waysof thinking about it.

(20:20):
So how long has it taken you to build a sustainable business, Gary?
depends on your definition of sustainable.
And again, that's that's going to vary by different people.
And I don't know other people's circumstances.
um I was fuelled in the early days by the fact that in our household, I've tended to bethe major breadwinner.

(20:44):
So if I wanted to only do coaching, then I did have a, okay, you know, I need to earn acertain amount to pay the bills at the end of the month.
And and we
absolutely had times in the last few years where that's been very stretched.
For some people, they might not be in that situation, therefore their definitionsustainable is different.

(21:06):
So what I'll describe is, is my experience.
um And, you know, and it's only mine.
I started, I started coaching at the beginning of 2019, when I left one of my retailroles.
And I
didn't have any training.
hadn't at that point, really thought about getting training.

(21:27):
was just, I'd always done this kind of informal checking in with people, know, mentoringslash coaching, something like that, didn't really understand the rules of coaching and
all of that kind of stuff.
And so at that early stage, my when I started beginning 2019, I literally went

(21:47):
I think I want to turn these free conversations into paid conversations, but I have noexperience in coaching.
I don't know what market rates are.
don't know whether I'm any good.
So what should I charge?
And right at the beginning, went, well, I'm working with people.
My first coaching clients were people I'd known for years actually.

(22:08):
And one of them, an actor had no money.
So I did it for free.
Somebody else had been in my team probably 15 years before.
And I think I charged her like 60 pounds or something.
And my justification for 60 pounds was if she was doing personal training or having amusic lesson or something like that, people pay around that amount of money.

(22:30):
So I thought that's kind of reasonable if I think I could add that much value.
18 months later, in and I didn't do many hours 18 months later, in total, I'd made lessthan 1000 pounds.
Luckily, I didn't look at that number.
If I had I might not have
left my job and decided to start coaching, you know, more more formally, but I just, whatI got in that first 18 months was I love it.

(22:54):
And I think there's something in it.
And I feel like this could go somewhere.
Actually, the numbers did not justify that, but I plowed on regardless.
So 2021 was when I started to scale up a bit, I started doing my Henley training.
And I spoke to quite an experienced coach who gave me some really good advice.
And she said, charge market rate.

(23:16):
And I went, but I'm not very experienced and I've, I'm part way through my training.
And she said, no, but if they choose you over another coach, then you're good enough to dothe coaching.
And I went, that's interesting.
And I've given that advice to people time and time again, if they choose you and theyprobably won't because you're early stage, because you're part way through your, you know,

(23:38):
your training, but if they do, you should charge market rate.
So I started charging market rate, what I thought was market rate.
In my first year, so in 2021, I did in total 175 hours of coaching.
Some of that was for free.
Some of it was paid.
Probably two thirds of it was paid something.
My average hourly rate across 175 hours was 246 pounds.

(24:04):
So I made in 2021, 43,000 pounds in coaching.
So that was the most hours I ever did per year in coaching was 175.
But my average was 246.
In 2022, I was doing other things alongside the coaching.
So I only did 100 hours of coaching.

(24:25):
But because I was doing more paid at that stage, starting to do the odd piece of corporatewhere I was charging a higher rate than for private coaching clients.
And I was starting to work with people who are a bit more senior and we'll come back andtalk about sliding scales.
My average
hourly rates move from 246 to 395.

(24:49):
So I did 100 hours at 395.
So I generated about the same revenue, but I was working a lot less.
In 2023, I moved a bit further forward.
So did 125 hours coaching, I averaged 440 pounds an hour, so generated 55,000 in 2024.

(25:11):
So in 2024, I've been at it
professionally, professionally in speech arts, for about three years.
And I did start to have a number of clients who were senior and corporate, and then therates go higher.
So my average in 2024, I did 109 hours in the year, so not a lot of hours, but my averageuh per hour was 779.

(25:37):
So some was for free, some was low rates, some was higher rates.
So I generated 85,000.
And then this year we're part way through the year, but if I forecast out across the year,then I'll do a bit more.
So I do about 130 hours average of 800 an hour.
And that'll generate about a hundred thousand now.

(25:59):
And I'm doing that on two and a half hours a week of coaching.
So there's a key thing that, that we've talked about before, which is you will receive, Ireceive every week, multiple emails coming in.
from people going, hey, we haven't connected, but I've been in business two years and haveany kind of business two years, so about 24 years old.

(26:23):
And they say, come to my weekend retreats, pay me 20,000 pounds and I will give you thesecrets of a five figure a month or six figure a month coaching business.
And of course, they're not coaches, they're not business builders, they're notstrategists, they don't know how to do that.
um But they make a lot of money because a lot of people get seduced by that.
And one of things that I really want to do is

(26:44):
to help share.
None of it is rocket science.
It's just the basics of thinking about a bit strategically about how you build yourbusiness.
And the reason I'm sharing the numbers is because not to say, you know, I think I'm reallysuccessful, because actually, there's loads of coaches out there who are much, much more
successful than me and charging much, much higher rates.
But I think that this is the reason that this curve has happened is because I've been

(27:14):
thoughtful and intentional about the business I'm trying to build, which for me is a lowvolume, high value business.
I could have chosen to do a high value, a high volume, low value business.
I could have focused on workshops and training.
could have focused on group coaching.
I could have focused on all sorts of different things.
I focused on this and that's where it's come to.

(27:34):
So I'm now coming into year four, know, partway through year four.
And now I'm at that sort of stage about a hundred thousand.
And you have a history and a biography that is unusual.
Mm-hmm.
Well...
you have monetizable credibility.

(27:55):
I think that's true.
I think that, that is undoubtedly helpful.
Is it possible to coach the people that I coach without that?
Yes.
Is it possible to open the doors?
Yes.
Is it a bit more difficult?
Probably.
But I have to say, think when, when I look at the high value people that I work withtoday, as in the clients that are paying the higher value rates, very few of them are

(28:22):
coming through my personal network.
Almost all of them are coming because they've known me as a coach.
So in that four year period, I've worked hard to talk about coaching, to build a brandaround coaching, a little personal brand.
You know, I don't have a big personal brand.
didn't have a big following, but people now see me as a coach.

(28:44):
When I first started out, people saw me as a strategist because that's how they knew me.
And they would come to me for change and transformation and organization design.
you know, whatever it was, or warm dancing.
And so what I couldn't be then was credible as a coach.
And actually, some people in the early years said, but Gary, how are going to do this?

(29:06):
Because you're really good at coming with the answer.
And so a thing that I did early on, quite intentionally, because I saw that I saw thatpeople were not seeing me as a coach, and therefore not employing me as a coach, or
recommending me as a coach.
um
There's a thing called Forbes Coaches Council, m which I was a member of for a couple ofyears, and it's a pay to play thing.

(29:34):
So they need you to have three years of experience of being in business doing what you do.
And they need your work to have some resonance to the US market.
So you need to probably have either one or two US clients or you've written articles thathave been picked up in the US or something like that, because they're mainly US
organisations.

(29:54):
And it costs something like 2000 to 2500 per year to be a part of it.
That's a lot of money.
And when I did it, it was kind of all the spare money that I had.
If you do it, it enables you to do two things.
It enables you to be a part of these group posts where they will go, we're talking aboutpeople who are becoming C-suite leaders for the first time, or we're talking about people

(30:23):
overcoming trauma in the workplace or people coming back to work after pregnancy.
And then they'll say, if you've got 100 words of a thought on that, post it here.
If we like it, we'll include it in the article.
So each time they publish an article about 15 coaches for members, get their littlesnippet posted.
And then you can say, I'm part of Forbes Coaches Council, I've been published on theForbes website.

(30:47):
You can also through Forbes Coaches Council do up to 10
what are called bylined articles.
So your own article, which you submit, their editors will read it and they'll either go,this is rubbish or boring, we're rejecting it, or they'll help you edit it and turn it
into a good article.
And I published three or four articles.
They didn't get a lot of coverage.

(31:09):
They haven't built me any kind of profile, but a number of those people who knew me overthe years as something else, as a strategist in my case, suddenly went, oh, well, you're,
associated with Forbes, this, tell me more about this coaching thing.
And it was just the cue that helped people to see me differently.

(31:30):
And often people are coming into coaching from a different place, or they do two things.
And so the thing that I learned from that was, sometimes you just need to give people alittle hook to help them to come on the journey with you in coaching, and then they will
say, come to Gary for coaching, as opposed to come to Gary for strategy or

(31:50):
whatever the other thing is that you're known for doing.
And that's really interesting, isn't it?
Because there are so many paid for awards.
Mm-hmm.
But that wasn't a paid for award, that was a paid for connection that you shared.
And I think that's really interesting because actually the paid for awards are now too apenny.

(32:11):
Right, right.
And I think that there is something about Forbes where, you know, they are selling theirbrand in this way, for people who are coaches, they have a technology council, they have a
leadership council, they've got all sorts of different ones.
And rightly or wrongly, for the audience, just helped them go on that journey that Icouldn't do before.

(32:32):
I did it for a couple of years.
And then I went, it's probably had the value it's needed for me.
I don't have the
time to be writing articles all the time.
So I'm going to say no for now.
I might come back to it later.
There's another thing that I did.
There's a group called light bulb, which is a paid Facebook group, and it's six pounds amonth, something like that.

(32:54):
So so tiny amount.
It's a closed Facebook group of journalists and people with a thing to say.
So there's about, I'm going to say three to 5000 members, something like that of whom
2000 to probably journalists.
So a journalist will come on and they'll say, you know, on this morning tomorrow, we'retalking about this topic, has anybody had this experience?

(33:18):
And it could be anything.
And there'll be somebody in the community who will go, yeah, I've got multiple sclerosis,or my child got thrown out of school, or I've got twin dogs, or whatever the thing is.
And occasionally, they'll say, we're writing an article in Stylist magazine about, youknow, how to give better feedback in the workplace.
And all the coaches will come forward and the ones that respond in the first 20 minutesmight get picked up.

(33:43):
So through light bulb, I had an article about my stuff in the Daily Telegraph, in theSunday Times, in the Metro, in Stylist a couple of times.
And weirdly, I was on talk TV, which is a little bit like GB News.
Luckily never recorded for posterity.

(34:03):
I'm happy about that.
But again, building that social proof.
if that's the way you want to go, there are specific ways of doing that.
Before I went on this journey, what I didn't know is there's a route to doing these thingsif you want to do these things.
And often like you're saying at beginning, people don't always talk about it.
So I wanted to say to people, you know, if you want to be one of those people who getsfeatured in stylists magazine when they're quotes from coaches, the way you do that is you

(34:30):
sign up to light bulb for six pounds a month and then
You sit on the Facebook group and when that journalist comes forward and says, I'm doingthat article, you go, here's a couple of bullet points and they go, perfect.
I'll put you in and you'll be in the next day.
So there's ways and means.
thank you.
Such useful tips and tricks, really.

(34:51):
And it shouldn't be a secret.
But in the coaching industry, sometimes it is.
And that's a shame for me, because I see a lot of coaches, we talk a lot about this, a lotof coaches who are worrying about whether they're doing the right thing.
And often the worry comes from, they imagine that the right thing is one thing.
But in fact, it's as complicated as that.

(35:14):
But no one's going to talk about it.
But what you've described in the last few minutes is being out there in places that matterand can be useful and have strategic reasons behind them.
And I'd add to that, choosing not to be in some places where it's a waste of time.

(35:34):
So in my early days, I post on Facebook, I post on Instagram, I post on Twitter, I post onLinkedIn.
And I've stopped posting or even logging into Facebook now.
I stopped posting on Twitter, stopped posting on Instagram because there's no value in it.
So my client is not there.
I post on LinkedIn and I post on TikTok because it's fun and I don't know anybody there soI can

(35:58):
try things out and kind of nothing can go wrong.
So that's kind of why I play around on TikTok.
And also TikTok broadcasts to people that don't know you, whereas most of the otherplatforms are talking to people that you're already connected with.
So if you don't have much for following and you want to have fun talking to people thatdon't know you, just to try ideas out, then TikTok is quite an interesting place to look

(36:24):
actually.
Nice.
So Gary, lots of coaches go and do associate work because there's great benefit inassociate work, isn't there?
Because you don't have to get the work and you take home less of the money.
What are your thoughts about associate relationships?

(36:45):
I think it's great.
And it can also be um challenging.
So it's great for an early stage coach to get experience.
m And it's great for a coach to get exposure to clients that they wouldn't get exposureto.
So um for example, an organization I've been working with recently has just signed up withAsra to coach hundreds of their senior leaders and

(37:14):
somebody like an Ezra can provide that.
And there are a handful of individual coaches who also work with this organization, butmost coaches would never have access to working with this kind of organization, if not
through an associate model.
The thing that makes me nervous about the associate model is that the price point for thecoach is so low.

(37:34):
And that is just the business model, I get it.
And it's, it's, it's a marketplace out there.
But if you think about, you know, the numbers I shared in my first year when
I was partway through my Henley training and I didn't have my ACC.
My average rate that I was earning, including the pro bono, my average was 246 and thefollowing year was 395.

(37:54):
A lot of associate models you might be earning, I mean, I don't know the latest numbers,but 60, 80, 100 pounds an hour, something of that order.
So, so again, good for the experience, good for the exposure, good for the practice.
Sometimes I think
associate models can build a bit of imposter syndrome in the coach where they start tothink that part of the reason that they're getting coaching is not because of them.

(38:22):
And something about being independent is, you know, whether you're any good becausecoaches come back or not, you know.
The other thing that is challenging with the associate model is that if you're successfulin it, then it can make you very busy.
And you have to be busy if you're going to make significant money.
So
If you're earning 60 pounds an hour and you're five hours a day, which is a lot ofcoaching, you're very tired, five hours a day, you're making 300 pounds a day, you're

(38:52):
making 1500 pounds a week.
So, you know, you could be making 75 to 80,000 pounds a year, but you're almost workingfull time to do that.
You know, equally, if you're running your own coaching practice, and we're on thetrajectory that I've described before,
maybe you could do that with an hour a day, or a couple of hours a week, something likethat.

(39:17):
And with the rest of your time, you're developing yourself, you're growing yourself,you're building your business, you're networking, you know, and all those things.
And I think if you've done five hours a day, you're not going from there, and going andmeeting central new clients.
And if you do, when you show up, you're exhausted.
So there's just that balance of, I think that

(39:39):
If your objective is to build a higher value practice over time, associate can only takeyou so far.
And at some point, it needs to be either be a part of the whole, or you need to move awayfrom it.
The challenge for the associate businesses is how do they retain really high qualitycoaches at that price point.

(40:02):
because it goes onto your biography, doesn't it?
Yeah.
And, you know, I look back, some of the some of the most senior people I've ever coachedhave come through an associate model, one or two people, and my associate model.
So I'm not an associate for an Ezra or a coach hub or one of those.

(40:25):
I'm associates within a couple of the global headhunting firms, which is different,because the price point is different.
not they're not paying £60 a coach.
So I do think that
it's good to have those relationships.
And I would say, maybe that's a that's a little segue into what's the size of the pipelinethat you need to build your business.

(40:49):
In my early years in coaching, you know, I was being quite successful, I think that doesplay back to what you said, you know, that I do have an established network, I did have an
established profile, not in coaching, but a good profile.
And I wasn't talking to enough people to build something.

(41:11):
And at some point I went, I need to be talking to more people.
Because if I'm only having conversations with 20 different people, maybe within the 20,only three of them is a conversation that's really going to potentially convert into
anything.
And again, we've talked before the average time I think

(41:34):
from going from an initial conversation with a company to doing a piece of paid coachingwork with one of their employees is maybe 18 months to two years.
You think it might be three months and at the beginning in the first conversation, itfeels like it could be three months.
And it very rarely is.
You know, I've got multiple relationships I have now that took, you know, 18 months to twoand a half years to start to become, they call me from time to time and send me another

(42:00):
client they'd like me to work with.
So I built a spreadsheet.
And I started to track and I said, okay, this organization, this is who I'm talking to.
This is the first conversation I had.
This is the next steps.
This is the second conversation I've had.
This is the next step.
This is the third conversation I've had.
I got to 55 live conversations.

(42:22):
So 55 different streams of conversation with different organizations or privateindividuals.
I just capture it all.
And then I had a little key on the spreadsheet.
So it was like green.
is
positive and moving forward into something red.
I kind of think this is dead.
Grey it out.
It's gone cold.
Amber could be interesting.
Maybe I should keep prompting.

(42:45):
And about 55 and I was spending quite a lot of time doing this, I started to drop theball.
And there was a particular person where they emailed me one day and they said, are westill meeting tomorrow?
And I realized that I'd blanked it.
I should have sent a reply.
I hadn't sent a reply.
And that was the moment when I went, I need to get myself some help.

(43:11):
And I was at that stage in my growth where, you know, I was doing okay, but I wasn'tmaking a lot of money and I didn't have piles of free cash sitting around the place.
Had I done so I might have gone, I can just get some help.
It's easy.
It wasn't.
So I looked at getting a virtual assistant.
And typically when you start to work with a virtual assistant,

(43:32):
the minimum number of hours they'll do with you in a month is about 10.
You might find somebody who'll do five, but typically it's about 10.
Typically a virtual assistant is going to charge you somewhere around 25 to 35 pounds,something in that kind of range.
So the sort of entry price point is can you afford something like 250, 300 pounds a monthto pay somebody who's going to connect in on your, on your email and help you with stuff.

(44:00):
So
I signed up there's a big agency called time, etc.
That's why I started time, etc.
dot k dot UK, and they've got a network of 20,000 virtual assistants.
And you say this is me.
em And then they um send you within about 24 hours, we think this is the person you shouldstart working with, it doesn't work out, come back and we'll send you a different person.

(44:22):
They connected me with a really great assistant.
And I felt really bad because I had 6000 emails in my inbox at that point.
And I thought if I
start the person with 6,000 emails, they will get drowned in the volume.
So I spent the first week, the weekend before she started organizing my inbox, and I wentthrough enough files, 6,000 emails.

(44:44):
In doing so, I learned something I didn't know before.
I started to see certain conversations, so would filter by person.
I went this person, I've been going to and fro a lot, but I sort of lost track of howmuch.
I went to and fro with this person over 20 times and we never did any paid work.

(45:04):
Ah, okay, I hadn't seen that.
And there were lots of people like that.
So in the process of just getting organized, I suddenly realized how unproductive I wasbeing and how much I was wasting time with people because I wasn't identifying who was
worth spending time with in progressing them forward.

(45:25):
So I got organized, I brought
a virtual assistant on and they were doing 10 hours a month and doing basic scheduling.
That was all it was.
I can't tell you how much of an impact it is when you have the same experience now.
When somebody else does just the to and fro, or I was available this time has changed, canwe get a new time?
It enabled me to have twice as many conversations because I wasn't spending timescheduling.

(45:51):
So I went from having 50, 55 live conversations to having a hundred.
because I would go, I'll have the conversation, shall we follow up?
My EA will be in touch.
And then I could copy them in and I could almost forget about it.
So long as it was captured on the tracker and my EA and I will sit down once a fortnight,we'll just go through the tracker and go, yes, yes, yes, here's an update, here's an

(46:14):
update, yes, yes, yes, that's fine.
It's the best investment I've ever made.
And now I have an EA still only working 15 hours a month, probably with me, that's all.
um So, so not hugely expensive, brilliant value.
um And I would, I've been doing that now for, I think coming up for three years.

(46:39):
And it's underpinned that growth actually.
and you're saying no your numbers.
Because I heard a real fundamental in that, which was when you sorted out your emails, youcould see that you'd had 22s and throws.
Yeah.
Because one of my very senior coaching clients says something like, you know, if it's thethird day and you haven't got together yet, then it's not happening.

(47:06):
Something like something like that.
And I think that one of the hardest things when you're trying to build a business is sayno.
One of the most important things that you do when you're trying to build a business is sayno.
It's really important.
My EA was talking to me actually, she's called Fran, she's brilliant.
And
m She was working with somebody who where it wasn't enjoyable, but it was lucrative.

(47:32):
um And she let it go.
And she said, what do I need to do to fill the gap?
And I said, keep doing great work.
And about two weeks later, I was talking to somebody and they said, I'm getting aoverwhelmed.
And I went, oh, talk to my EA, she's got capacity.
He signed up a week later.
and within another week he'd sent her another client.

(47:55):
So there is this thing, if you do good work with the right people, you can worry lessabout struggling where am I going to find the next client because...
good work, people talk about it, people refer you.
Some of my longer standing coaching clients regularly point people in my direction.

(48:15):
And I have a little referral fee.
So I go, you know, if you refer me a coach, and I start doing work with them, then I'llpay you an amount to say thank you very much.
You know, and it's just all those little things you start to do, they are the right thingto do.
you know, it's, I'm not doing it because it's on a spreadsheet.

(48:36):
But at the same time, it's intentional, you know, because it doesn't happen by accident.
And if you sit staring at the phone or staring at the email and expecting that someone'sgoing to contact you with opportunities, you know, the risk is you run out of cash before
the opportunities come in.
So you do have to get out there a bit.

(48:57):
the right places.
people.
Bye.
I like talking about funeral directors.
because most people aren't coaching funeral directors.
if you are, you know, funeral directors is where you are and where you, the answer to thequestion is you, we need to be where funeral directors are.

(49:21):
Right, right.
And you know, when you think about the conversations you're having, m even if you're notyet converting into sales, have the conversations m and do have coaching like
conversations, because it's a really powerful thing to drop into a conversation in areally authentic way.

(49:45):
That's interesting, because I was talking to somebody else last week about
becoming a leader for the first time and they talked about this thing.
And the person listening to you hears that you're in the conversation, hears that you'reworking with people, hears you talking authentically and confidently and interestingly
about the topic.
you know, again, that thing about talking about you and what you offer, if you say, let metell you about me as a coach, let me tell you about I do gestalt coaching or whatever,

(50:14):
whatever, whatever.
Interesting, true, sort of.
But not a good way of building relationships.
When you go, I had this amazing conversation last week, and you never talk about anythingthat's, that's specific, you it's not, you know, you don't breach people's

(50:35):
confidentiality.
But you can say, I was working with this brilliant young person who's being touted for asenior leadership role in the next couple of years.
And they were saying that
It's about building their communication skills.
And actually, for me, I think it's about building confidence.
And then the person you're talking to goes, Yeah, you know, actually, I think confidenceis the thing.

(50:57):
Isn't it?
You know, and immediately, then you're in a conversation.
So there's just a way of finding a way to tell stories and less stories about you.
More stories about the conversations you're in.
Be in the conversation.
I interviewed Marshall Goldsmith on my podcast, who in many rankings is ranked sort of theworld's number one executive coach.

(51:23):
um Normally on my podcast, people tell me a lot about their personal story.
He told me virtually nothing of his.
And I thought that's really interesting.
And I was I was fascinated because I actually don't know much about his personal story.
And he just wasn't going there.
Because for him, it isn't about that.
It isn't about his personal story and what he brings.

(51:43):
And I thought there was something
really interesting to take away from that actually.
So Gary, I've built 3D coaching significantly on single session coaching, lots and lots ofthe work that we do is coaching over time.
um And single session coaching, breed single session coaching, because people go, oh, Iwork with these coaches and uh you should have a conversation with them.

(52:14):
How do you get people to move from one to many?
only when they want to only when they need to.
You and I are going to agree on that.
If you want people to have multiple sessions of coaching, you need to make it really clearthat they don't need to do that.

(52:38):
Because they don't.
Because if it's right for them to have one session, then you'll do that.
You know, I talked to people about paying for coaching and I say, you know, even if youwant to have multiple sessions, some people pay in a block.
and they'll pay for two or three or four sessions of coaching, or they'll pay for one at atime, whatever suits you.

(52:59):
Then people don't feel they're being sold to because they're not, because you're nottrying to sell to them.
But there's a value that comes from a coaching journey that is different from and additiveto what you get in a single session of coaching.
I've done a lot of single sessions and maybe I've got over the years 25, 30 clients,something like that, who would have had six plus sessions of coaching.

(53:30):
The coaching client I've done most sessions with, we've probably had 65 sessions ofcoaching over the years.
And again, I let go of the idea of the frequency of them.
sometimes it's, average, it's probably once a month.
But for some of my coaching clients now it's once a quarter, once a year, whenever it's,whenever it's needed.

(53:53):
But typically it starts about once a month.
The key thing I've learned, if your objective, strategic objective is to build peoplegoing from one session to multiple is they've got to feel
in session one, and ideally in the chemistry session, they've got to feel the value ofcoaching.
So they've got to have one little moment somewhere in there that told them a thing theydidn't know before, that they went, oh yeah, I understand something, I see myself in it

(54:25):
doesn't mean I've got all the answers, but I, I get something from this that's differentfrom other conversations I have with other people.
this isn't the only way of doing it, but a way it worked for me in the early days was, I'dalways been fascinated by strengths and the Gallup Clifton Strengths Assessment.

(54:46):
um
15 years ago, a coach took me through my strengths assessment and I found it fascinating.
And over the years with people in my teams, em
people we taught as professional dance coaches, we got them to do their strengths, becauseit helped them to understand why they argued, or help them to understand how they work

(55:08):
really well together.
And so it was very natural for me when I started my coaching training at some point to go,yeah, it would be good to understand more about this.
So I trained with Gallup Clifton strengths.
But you could train with any of many psychometrics.
I like that one.

(55:29):
Often the first session I had with people was talking in part about their strengthsprofile.
that served as something that made them go, I know a thing I didn't know before.
That wasn't really a coaching conversation, but it was just giving them something theydidn't know before.

(55:50):
And then they would go, oh, I'm starting to see things a bit differently.
I'm starting to see some of the things that I thought were my weaknesses.
But really, they're my strengths.
I just don't know how to play them.
We should talk about this more.
So for me,
psychometric was one way of having that kind of impactful first session.

(56:13):
As a more experienced coach now, I often have a first session that doesn't talk about apsychometric.
But I think in those early days, I certainly talked to a lot of coaches still talked to alot of coaches who go, we had a session, I'm not sure they were quite clear by the end of
that first session, really what
coaching ears, not quite sure whether they thought it was valuable, and they're not quitesure whether they're going to come back.

(56:38):
And so the thing that that you've got to balance, because the conversation has got to beright for the person.
And, and I would always say that you're there for them for their needs.
And sometimes, the conversation just doesn't unlock the thing.
And that's okay.
But I, I sometimes say to people, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but I do say I say, um

(57:03):
I think that coaching when it's really working is impactful quite quickly.
And I think that you know that it's different quite quickly.
It doesn't mean you got all the answers.
It doesn't mean you figured everything out quickly.
But I said, I think you should know after one session, possibly two, that this isdifferent and this is something or not.

(57:29):
And if you don't feel that we should have conversation.
about whether this is right for you, whether I'm the right coach for you, and all of that.
Is it coaching?
it now?
Is it me?
Those things.
Early on, I remember meeting a coaching client and I said, have you had coaching before?
And they said, yeah, I have.
I had 12 sessions of coaching, and I'm just not sure I got anything out of it.

(57:51):
And I went, someone told you those 12 sessions of coaching, and you bought them.
And neither of you at any point in the 12 sessions until the end went
not sure this is doing anything.
And I remember that point going, I never want to be in that place.
I never want to be the client turning around and saying, you know, and I use the termclient here sort of shorthand really, but I don't want them turning around and going, I

(58:15):
invested a lot of my money, a lot of my time in this thing, and not sure it wasworthwhile.
Let's have a conversation after a comp after one session, or possibly two.
And I also, I mean, some coaching relationships naturally come to an end, and they sort ofdon't.
It's sort of like when coaching is really good, you're always there.
You're just not having coaching sessions right now.

(58:38):
So again, I don't think about what's a program of coaching.
People say to me all the time, how many sessions is normal?
go, it's whatever you need, right?
It could be 20 minutes, it could be an hour, it could be, you know, once a fortnight for ayear, but only if that's helpful.
And I always feel like no more than three months ahead.

(59:01):
you know, I don't want to go, let's plan out the rest of the year, because who knowswhat's going to happen.
Let's figure out where you want to be in, you know, we're sitting here in May, let'sfigure out where you want to be by the time you go on some holiday.
And then let's discuss there whether whether that's enough or whether you want to do more.
The more you try not to sell more, actually, average, the more people will go, yeah, Ilike working with you, because no one's trying to sell anything here.

(59:26):
You know, it's free.
It's it's it's freeing.
And because we don't know how much, many, how often, until we start working with somebody.
But I think the thing that you really emphasised there was that this is about doing somework and it's about getting to the heart of something and unlocking something.

(59:46):
And it might be a massive unlock or it might be a little unlock, but there is a tangiblesomething, something.
And actually, I want listeners who aren't coaches to hear that.
If it's just a conversation.
You don't need to be keep going if you want something else like work.

(01:00:08):
going to say something else that that some people might react to but I'm going to sayanyway because like with everything I'm saying I'm saying this is my opinion there is a
bit of coaching that can be positively and I use this word cautiously a little bitperformative if I

(01:00:29):
ask questions, that's fine.
It's fine.
If I ask the same questions in a slightly aware manner, by which I mean, I'm aware of whatthe question is.
I'm aware of the tone of voice I'm using when I'm saying it.
I'm aware of the pace at which I'm speaking.
I'm aware of the silence that I'm leaving.

(01:00:52):
That same question can have a deeper resonance.
Now, you have to be really careful about that, that you're not leading or you're notmanufacturing.
But at the same time, when you say you have your little sounds that you make, which areincredibly powerful, and they're very deliberate, I know that you've shaped them with

(01:01:13):
experience over time.
I have a drop in tone.
So I talk to people about breathing and I say, you know, if I'm
working with people on public speaking, say, when we breathe, we breathe a little bit inand out all the time.
That's our normal respiratory breathing.

(01:01:37):
We can breathe a little bit in and out with a full lung, or we can breathe a little bit inand out with an empty lung.
With a full lung, it sounds high and a bit nervous, and it makes the other person a bitnervous.
If we breathe out, and then speak with the same little in and out, your voice drops by anoctave.
And
It sounds, it has greater gravitas.

(01:01:59):
If I put the microphone further away, I sound like I'm on a Zoom call.
If I come right into the microphone and say, and now what do you know?
I sound like I'm Jazz FM late at night.
And I'm really aware of, you know, sometimes when you want to help somebody notice a thingthey just noticed, you go, and what was that?

(01:02:22):
And then you shut up and you hold the shut up-ness.
really quite a long time until you feel a bit uncomfortable and they feel reallyuncomfortable and then they'll go I've never thought about that before and then you go you
know so there's a bit and and that performance and it is a I call it performance I meanit's deliberate I talk about you know this thing about you have verbal language and

(01:02:55):
nonverbal language
So verbal language, the words, nonverbal language, the body language, whether you'resitting down, standing up, the paraverbal language, how you said what you said, with what
tone, with what pace, with what intonation, with what accent, with what silence, that'sthe paraverbal language.
think I would say that's the most powerful tool that I'm continuously developing.

(01:03:20):
And actually podcasting helps because
it makes me listen to myself a lot.
And it makes me notice the way I asked a question or the way I created a space thatgenerated some new thinking in the person I was talking to.
that's, that's the kind of little thing that if you have a moment of that in a coachingconversation, people want more of it, because it takes them to a different place.

(01:03:54):
Yeah, because it's not what they experience in many other conversations in their world.
One of the developments I noticed for coaches a lot, and when I listen to recordings,often I notice that the coaches got the timing right.
So they're making interventions in really useful places, but the intervention isn't asuseful as it could be.

(01:04:20):
And a lot of that is about sound.
and space and silence and all sorts.
Fascinating.
So.
it?
This is a bumper episode, lovely people.
You could press pause now and come back to the rest later.

(01:04:41):
But this is so worth it and really grateful, Gary, for your generosity in sharing thetruth and the numbers.
How do you get people to recommend you?
we, you got to start with doing good work.

(01:05:01):
And good work means not necessarily they've solved all their problems, but they found it apowerful thing.
There was a good investment of time or money um for a period of time.
And you could get a recommendation from somebody who's had one session with you and Ihave.

(01:05:23):
um
or you can get know, the really powerful recommendations are from people who who say, I'vebeen working with Gary for a year, two years, three years.
Now, that's not every month for three years.
But it's and we still work together.
And and it's sort of, we've gone on a journey together, that as they've progressed intheir, in this case, career, that, you know, coaching is still useful.

(01:05:52):
And it shows something about sort of the evolution of it.
The people you're working with need to know that you're building a business.
So they're not going to recommend you if they think that you don't have any capacity oryou're not interested in taking on new clients.
But you don't want to say to them, I haven't got any clients, because that sounds likeyou're not very good.

(01:06:13):
Very early in my coaching, I was talking to somebody new to coaching in coaching training,but really senior and experienced in a people related area, who
was naturally just going to be a brilliant coach because of their 20, 30 years experience.
And they said, I can't get anybody to sign up for coaching with me.

(01:06:36):
And I said, how are you describing yourself?
And he said, you know, I'm early in my coaching journey, I'm doing some training.
I've got loads of capacity.
I'd really like to work with some people and it's free.
want to work with me?
And he said, no one's taking it up, but it's free.
And I said, it sounds too cheap.
Sounds not good enough.
And I said, if you say, you know, I've been working in this space for a long time.

(01:07:02):
I am now adding coaching skills.
I have got a little bit of capacity to work with a couple of people over the next threemonths.
And I'll offer you a really reasonable rate because part of my training, so it helps metoo.
But you know, you're getting value from it.

(01:07:23):
So I'd like you to contribute something.
And he went, that sounds really different.
And I said, it's the same time and it's the same coaching.
So, so when I'm talking to people, I say to them, you know, if I'm in a place where I'mtrying to take on more clients, I say, you know, if you know anybody who is in this very

(01:07:43):
specific place, so again, I come back to who is your customer.
I don't go anybody for coaching because then it sounds a bit desperate and it sounds likeyou're not good enough.
You can't find coaching clients.
But when you say,
You know, you know how you were in that place where, you know, if there's anyone elsewho's like that, where you think they would find something like this or a bit of this

(01:08:04):
useful, I'd be really happy to have a chat with them for free.
then, you know, and if that's helpful, that's great.
And if they'd like to spend more time, then then we can talk about it.
Then you're just indicating to them referrals would be really helpful.
Testimonials, softly, softly.

(01:08:27):
limited time, you so sometimes, you know, in my early days, I would have a day that wascompletely free.
And I would say, I've got availability at two o'clock or four o'clock.
I wouldn't say I've got availability anytime between nine and seven.
even though I did.
Because again, you think about well, what message are you conveying?
You need to convey a message of being, you know, good at what you do.

(01:08:51):
Low ego, you know, it's not about being I'm amazing, or I'm super expensive.
But you go, you know, I work with people, I talk about this stuff when I'm not working incoaching.
It'll be interesting, it'll definitely be interesting, it might even be helpful.
And there's a value against it.
I think about that.
testimonials are also, yeah, be normal.

(01:09:14):
testimonials are really important and helpful.
You need to ask people for testimonials.
Ask people where they've genuinely had an impact.
People, it's quite difficult to write a testimonial from scratch and to know really whatthey want.
So if you write an email to the person you say, you know, I'm building up my website,

(01:09:40):
or I'd like to share two or three stories on LinkedIn so that people who were strugglingin a place that you were struggling could also see that this could be beneficial.
Here's an example of a testimony or somebody else wrote for length and style, couple ofsentences.
Or I wondered whether you might be able to say something about this.

(01:10:03):
Here's some language.
Feel free to use a bit of that or come up with your own thing.
And often they come back and go, yeah, I liked what you put with a few tweaks and makes itreally easy for them to do.
ideally you want your testimonial to be named that makes it much more powerful.
When you say, you know, I have a testimony from one of my, um, early coaching clientswho's a senior leader at ASOS.

(01:10:27):
Um, and because it's quite easy to say a person who did coaching with me once said I wasamazing.
There's no value in that testimony.
When you say this person who founded, you know, a cake business said I was really helpfulwhen they were building that team for the first time and building that culture of

(01:10:48):
leadership.
Amazing.
You know, really simple.
So try and get the name testimonial.
When you get a testimonial, you could send them a little form and you could say, pleasetell me how you're happy for me to share the testimonial.
Only in private with other people that I'm thinking about coaching.
on my website but without your name, on my website but with your name, because as soon asyou your name, their name, then they're going to be Googleable.

(01:11:16):
So it's really bad form if they Google their name and they find themselves out theresaying I was really struggling at work and then carry some of my leadership.
But you'd be surprised how many people are happy to share their name if you ask and if youmake it their choice to do it.
permission.
The most powerful testimonial is actually the one that's just shared in private.

(01:11:37):
It doesn't have to be on your website on LinkedIn.
And the other thing that you can ask them is, would you be happy if I had somebodythinking about doing coaching with me to have a call with you to ask about what the
experience was like, the good and the bad?
yeah, I'd be really happy to do that.
I've probably done that three or four times.
I've had quite a senior coaching client, they said, could I talk to somebody that you'veworked with before?

(01:12:02):
very happy and I know who those people are.
And I have a little spreadsheet with that listed.
So you make sure that if they've offered it to you, you keep it tracked, you know, becauseit's it's so valuable and people want to know it.
Yeah.
Do you pay for marketing?

(01:12:25):
And I have um sometimes and it's never generated a return.
So I don't now.
um Why I don't and I do.
So that's complicated answer.
When I published my book, The Idea Mindset, I thought it was a hybrid self published book,which meant I wrote it.

(01:12:51):
I paid for an editor to help edit it.
I paid through a company to
get it printed.
And then they handled all the actual printing and Amazon and all that kind of stuff.
But it didn't have a like a, you know, Harper Collins publisher, given me some advanceslike that.
I didn't know
I didn't know, like, whether it was going to be successful or not successful, whether itwas going to go viral.

(01:13:17):
I didn't know.
I thought I probably should spend some money on marketing, but I didn't know whether it'sgoing to make a return.
I spent quite a reasonable sum of marketing.
And then when I did the analysis afterwards, I found that it was costing me £20 inmarketing spend for every book that I sold.
And I was making in return £1.

(01:13:38):
for every book that I sold in the margin that would come to me.
So I was paying 20 to make back one.
So I was losing 19 pounds every time I sold a book.
So I stopped doing that.
I had a period of time where I was working with a social media marketer because in myworld, I'm choosing, people don't have to, but I'm choosing to do some work around

(01:14:01):
building personal brand because I like to.
It's not critical to building the coaching business, but I like to do it.
em And I had a trial period where we tried to do some quite focused work on, you know,building consistent posting and those kinds of things.
When I looked at the data, the reality was nothing really changed.

(01:14:23):
So the thing about marketing is it's worth it if you get a sudden viral response and youwould say, oh, because I did marketing, then that post suddenly took off.
and got a million views and suddenly I'm Stephen Bartlett.
Possible.
Possible for that to happen without active marketing.

(01:14:46):
But in reality, uh most online marketing won't help coaches.
The pay per thousand views is much more expensive than on LinkedIn than on the otherplatforms.
And in reality, for many executive coaches, depends where your coaching client base is.

(01:15:06):
most of your clients going to come through LinkedIn.
So actually, I would say that virtually none of my revenue has come through paid marketinghas paying for marketing helped?
Like I said before, paying over the course of two years, around about 5000 pounds to be amember of that Forbes Coaches Council, I think is a pivotal thing.

(01:15:30):
And if I knew what I knew now, going back, I would pay for that again.
I would pay for the Gallup training because that took me from one session to multiplesessions.
There's other ways of doing it, but that I would do that again for that reason as well asthe fact that Gallup is, I think Gallup is really good.
Knowing what I do now, would I have spent as much money as I did on book marketing?

(01:15:53):
I wouldn't have spent any of it because it didn't return.
Would I have spent money on social media marketing with a professional marketer?
No, but I needed to try it to know that that was the case.
Otherwise, I'd just be sitting there going, wonder whether.
What I do now is my EA, who's brilliant and multi-talented, helps me with some of myposting.

(01:16:17):
So she will help create some ideas and I will edit them and we work together in that way.
What I have done, which you can now do with ChatGPT, is I created a little version ofChatGPT trained on some of the things that I think
So I went, uh I'm going to write on a piece of paper, something around my philosophy incoaching, um my um view on how people can develop as leaders, some things that I think are

(01:16:47):
really important.
uh And then I'll get chat GPT to be trained on that you can do that with chat GPT plus for$20 a month.
And I get my team to create content ideas using that.
So it is trained on me.
So it's not like
it's the universe writing this post, it's actually a version of me writing the post.

(01:17:07):
But there's ways to do that now that, you know, don't require you spending huge amounts ofmoney at all.
Where I do invest is...
Sorry, go on.
I was just going to say one of my philosophies ever since I started my business in the1990s was never to spend money that wasn't being generated from the business.

(01:17:32):
So never to spend.
So when I, when I started 3D Catching, I think, I think I put a hundred pounds in the bankbecause you had to, because you had to have some money to open it.
But ever since then, I, I have made a deliberate decision not to spend any of my own moneyon
training or marketing or anything.
it might be, I mean, in those early days, it might mean that I didn't earn anything, but Ialso didn't spend anything because I was reinvesting the money that I was earning back

(01:18:00):
into the other thing.
But you learn, don't you?
Because I've learned so many things when I've in the days of glossy leaflets.
We did a glossy leaflet thing for a big conference.
That was a complete waste of money.
Most of the money I've spent on marketing.
hasn't delivered what the hope had been.

(01:18:23):
Although we are going to get a book publicist for the next book, but that's because theaudience for the next book isn't just coaches, it's people.
And therefore it's worth the book publicist to try and get into some of the newspapers.
So here's the thing about investing in stuff to build your profile in your business, ifthat's your route.

(01:18:46):
Rarely does the revenue come back from the thing that you invested the marketing in, butit's associated.
So.
I committed to talking numbers, I talk numbers.
The total investment end to end that I made to put the idea mindset out as a publishedbook, including editing, printing, recording or audio book, cover design, internal design,

(01:19:17):
marketing PR was £50,000.
Bye.
in book sales ever, I have made back 1 % of that amount.
It paid back as a project within two months of me publishing the book.

(01:19:37):
Why?
Because when I was writing the book and publishing the book, I posted about it onLinkedIn.
And everybody was fascinated in going on the journey with Gary about, now I've written mybook, now I've done my first draft, now I'm thinking about cover designs, what do you
think?
Which one do you like?
And so it wasn't that loads of people bought the book, some people bought the book, but

(01:19:59):
people thought of me as in coaching.
And I signed up coaching relationships and some corporate coaching relationships based onprofile and awareness that came from I had a book to talk about.
I was talking to an author recently, who has just made, I think he's made the Wall StreetJournal top 10, something like that.

(01:20:21):
His marketing investment in the book he's just published, which is a business book, was$250,000.
somebody else has come on the podcast who every time they publish a book, they receive anadvance of a million dollars for the books are very high profile coach, and they invest a
million dollars in marketing.

(01:20:42):
Why do they do that?
Because having that book that's very, very successful, um gets them speaking engagements.
Their speaking fee in the US could easily be 50 to $100,000.
for a keynote.
So you're not thinking about I'm going to make it back in the book sales.

(01:21:03):
So you have to see yourself.
If you're building that kind of business, a portfolio business, you have to think of it asa system.
You don't sell coaching just by talking to people about coaching, you sell coaching alsobecause you have a point of view, people are interested in your point of view, you em win
an award, you publish a book, not because people are going to read it in large volumes, ifthey do, that's wonderful.

(01:21:26):
But it just tells people that you're serious about what you're doing.
It tells people something about what's important to you, whether they're aligned withwhat's important to you.
So you have to be thinking about and building this platform.
If that's the kind of business you want to build, there's a completely counter way ofbuilding this business where you go, you know, I am a very exclusive, very high value

(01:21:53):
coach in a very discreet way.
I have no public profile at all.
I don't post out there.
You wouldn't know who my clients were, but they're very important people.
If you want to come and work with me, it's very expensive and I don't take on many people.
You'll be able to charge a lot for coaching if you think it'd be good.
But you know, you could have a high profile way of doing it.

(01:22:14):
You could have a no profile way of doing it.
um Interestingly, in the advisory world, people think about companies like McKinsey arethe
uh most expensive consulting firm to work with.
They're not.
There's another firm out there that is a multiple more expensive than them.
And you will never have heard of them.

(01:22:36):
And they position themselves as if anybody else could solve your problem, use them becausethey're cheaper.
At the point they come back to you and they say we can't solve it come to us because weprobably can.
Interesting.
So as we begin to wrap up, Gary, a lot of what we've talked about today is about high networth, high value coaching businesses.

(01:23:00):
So what do you want to say to listeners who don't want to do high value coaching becausetheir view is about accessibility and democratization of coaching and enabling lots of
people to get coaching.
I think you heard a different thing from what I was actually saying.

(01:23:22):
So when I describe a high value coaching business, what I mean is I am doing average year,a low number of coaching hours.
two to three hours a week on average.
uh Some months I might do one hour of coaching.
Over the course of a year, the average coaching rate is such that it's a good business.

(01:23:47):
Some of the people I'm working with are senior or high net worth or ultra net worth andpaying a high rate.
And over time, more people in that category.
over time, no fewer in the category of people that don't have a lot of money, m or don'tpay for coaching at all.

(01:24:10):
So my philosophy has always been that my goal is to broaden access to coaching.
That's why I do the podcast.
It's why I wrote the book.
m It's why I like to do this kind of thing, which is like, it shouldn't this thisinformation, and it's in my perspective, shouldn't be behind a paywall.

(01:24:33):
should just be available to people.
So I have this thing, sliding scale for coaching.
And I did write an article in Forbes, when I was a member, um called something like, umhow much should you charge for coaching?
And I describe
I'm gonna put that in the show notes, Gary.
Right.
So what I described in there is a sliding scale.
So my view is that coaching has a value and the value is different depending on who youare.

(01:25:00):
Now, there's a really important distinction.
Coaching has a value to everybody that's significant in a human value, in a personalvalue, in an awareness value, whatever.
I'm talking about business building.
So I'm saying, if you are the CEO of an organization and you improve your performance by5%, it improves
your revenue improves your cost base and improves your leadership of 100 other people.

(01:25:22):
So it's really valuable to the organization.
They will pay a lot of money for that.
The leader might get a pay rise, might get a promotion, might get a bigger next role.
So they will personally pay a lot of money for that.
If they are a junior person in the organization, the organization isn't going to valueinvestment in them so highly.

(01:25:42):
They might be somebody who deserves coaching, will benefit from coaching, cannot affordit.
So I've always said that I think coaching should be on a sliding scale according to valueslash ability to pay.
And I've always believed that I should be doing pre-boner work.

(01:26:03):
So my aim in my mind is that 10 to 20 % of the time I'm spending coaching should be forfree at any one time.
Is it exactly that?
It goes up and down a bit, but I always have two or three people that I'm...
I'm working with on a a pre-bono basis.
And I think that's really important.
Marshall Goldsmith has this pay it forward thing.

(01:26:25):
So his philosophy is, how can I help the next generation to learn from what I've learnedover the years?
But the people that he works with, he says, well, I'm only offering it to you in thecommitment from you that you will do the same.
If you get to where I've got to.
The sliding scale is a difference in price of a factor of

(01:26:47):
something like seven.
So the people paying the most are paying something like seven times the people that arepaying the least.
So you'll see in the article that Claire's going to put a link to the exact numbers, but Iwill tell you in the spirit of openness and sharing the numbers last year what my sliding

(01:27:07):
scale was.
So I have two sides to it.
One is if the company's paying.
So if the company's paying and you're a senior leader,
and you're paid all in over 200,000 pounds a year.
So typically a C-suite leader or a, you know, a director in a big company, you know, Iwould have been charging a thousand pounds an hour for that session.

(01:27:31):
Some people would charge more, some people will charge a lot more, some people will chargeless, but I charge a thousand.
If you're the next level down and you are being paid between 100 and 200,000, I'd becharging 720.
If you were level below that and being paid between 16 and 100, I'd be charging 430.
If you're the level below that and you were under 60k a year, but somebody would stillwant to invest in you and coaching, then I'd be charging 300.

(01:27:57):
And if you were any role in a charity arts organisation, and I wasn't pro bono, then I'dbe charging 300, including if you were the CEO.
And some of those people I would go notice a pre bonus situation.
So you just make a judgment call, but that's basically where my tears are.
And often, actually, the most senior people will go, well, I want to pay less.

(01:28:21):
And I would say, but other people who don't earn what you're earning are paying that rate.
And so it wouldn't really be fair to them to have you at that rate, too, because otherpeople and less than you are paying a payment.
So that's the rate if the company's paying, and then I would take about a third off that.
if they're paying for themselves, because if the CEO is earning 200,000 a year and takinghome, you know, whatever 10,000 a month or more, then they can afford 650 pounds an hour

(01:28:48):
for coaching, and they will pay that not for, you know, 20 sessions through the year, buta session, and then maybe we should have a couple more of those.
Why?
Because it unlocks something for them.
And when you are coaching in that high level, in reality, they people are
perfectly used to paying that rate.

(01:29:10):
In the US, the coaching rates, the highest level are a multiple higher.
So if you're a C-suite executive in a Fortune 100 company, you your firm may well beinvesting 5, 10, 15, $20,000 a month in your coaching relationship.

(01:29:30):
So sometimes and I say this, again, I share the numbers because
I'm talking to coaches all the time, I'm sure you are too, who will go, I really worrythat 230 pounds is a bit high for the CEO.
And I'm going, that's why they're not taking you seriously and you're not getting thework.
Because the fact that you quoted that number suggests that you're not as good as theperson that charged a thousand.

(01:29:55):
Over time, I've charged higher rates, you know, as I built my business.
There's data that says that the higher the rate, the longer the coaching relationshiplasts, which is fascinating.
People value the coaching a little bit based on how much they paid for it, as well astheir actual experience of coaching.

(01:30:17):
So yeah, I think sliding scales are really important, personally.
Gary.
Thank you so much for being so open about your numbers.
I know that some of our listeners are on fire in a good way from having some good data tohelp them work things out.

(01:30:44):
And there's somebody listening who says, I'm not making enough money from coaching.
Should I quit and go and get myself a day job?
What do you want to say to this person?
The beauty of coaching is we're all going to continue coaching for the rest of our lives,not even till we retire.

(01:31:13):
it's a beautiful thing that you can keep doing a bit with the people you've worked withfor a long time, for as long as you want to.
So it can feel like a race to build my business in three years, if it's taken me fouryears that slow.
It's like, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
You know, I look at my total coaching experience, I compare Claire with your totalcoaching experience.

(01:31:37):
And I am a little bit overwhelmed by
what it feels like to have, you know, 10 to 20,000 hours of coaching experience, you youbuilt it over long period of time, not because you rushed at the highest number you could
get, but because you've built it over time.
And so, in actual fact, I think the question is, what do I have to be doing to be able topay the bills and be comfortable and continue coaching?

(01:32:09):
the amount that I can, the amount that I want to.
And I think if you let go of, have to achieve a certain number from coaching, you're morelikely to actually build a sustainable business that's right for you.
And I'll say again, I'm sharing my own personal experience.
It's one way of doing it.

(01:32:30):
uh And everybody else's experience will be different from mine, but it is aimed to breakdown some of the, talks about it.
and there's all of this sort of rumour and counter rumour kind of flying around.
I just say, find the people that you love working with and work with them.
And if that's a session a month, it's great.

(01:32:50):
And they might refer you to somebody.
One of my most valued coaching relationships today, I work with somebody on a monthlybasis.
She's in Bolivia.
When we first met, we had a couple of conversations, and then it sort of went cold.
And I thought,
that would have been really interesting because she was very interesting person with veryinteresting sort of things she wanted to work through.

(01:33:14):
And she came back two and a half years later.
And she said, now's the right time.
I always remember our conversation.
It was really effective.
was really interesting, really powerful.
But it wasn't the right time.
Now's the right time.
And that was probably two years ago.
And we've worked together every month.
And she's a high value client.

(01:33:35):
It's just about waiting until
they're ready and not trying to force it, not trying to push it.
And if you need the money from that person to pay your shopping, your food shopping, thenyou probably need to be getting a job and doing a little bit of coaching on the side.
Right, right.
And the beauty of something that averagely is a higher value coaching business is you cando that.

(01:34:01):
My non coaching job right now is four days a week.
and that works okay.
Would I love to be in a place where I was just doing coaching?
Yeah.
Would I currently be doing more than two and a half hours a week of coaching?
If I was only doing coaching?
I don't know.
I wouldn't be doing 10.
And that's okay.

(01:34:25):
Thank you, Gary.
That was a lot.
for coming to The Coaching Inn for an hour and a half.
ah Thank you everyone for listening and I'm sure you've got questions and all sorts ofthings.
So I'll pop Gary's something in the show notes so that you can contact the bit of him thathe'd like to be contacted by.

(01:34:54):
And thank you Claire for hosting as ever.
This is a brilliant podcast and you have so many amazing guests.
I think that the best way to build your business is to just hear people's stories andlearn from them.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I'll see you on the hills for an in real life walk, Gary.
Thank you everyone for listening.
Thank you, Gary, for coming.

(01:35:15):
Bye bye.

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