How-To Double your Income in Half the Time
Coaching is and always will be an exchange of time for money. Clients purchase our services to get them the results they desire. To get them to those results, we devote time to them each week to guide them with our expertise. Time in exchange for money. It then stands to reason that we can only look to scale our business in 3 ways:
- Carry more clients (more time)
- Charge more for our services (more money)
- Doing more within the same amount of time (efficiency)
Where most coaches miss the boat is simple – they want to be the hardest worker in the room. Well, I am here to tell you that working 90hrs a week doesn’t make you the hardest worker in the room. It makes you an idiot!
I fell victim to this and it almost ruined my life and my love for coaching. It wasn’t until I learned these 3 things that I unlocked my true potential as a coach and started living a life I never thought was possible.
Service delivery is always #1 priority
I have always prided myself on getting my clients results and I am extremely successful in that pursuit. But, in the past, the way I did it left me detached from the world, consumed by work and unable to enjoy the process.
There is a reason that McDonalds has the same sandwiches in Northern Kentucky as they do in Eastern Canada – they’ve standardized their service delivery. You need to do the same. Here are some very simple and actionable steps:
- Assign a specific platform for communication related to work.
- Provide realistic turnaround times for communication.
- Have a standardized check-in process.
- Use apps and tools to facilitate adherence and communication.
- Keep a regular work schedule and book meetings with yourself.
Setting very clear guidelines for what your clients can expect from you and what you expect from your clients is the key to providing the highest level of service and maintaining boundaries around your work and your life.
Optimize your systems and processes
Whenever someone tells me they’re the hardest worker in the room, I immediately assume they have horrendous time management. Working hard doesn’t mean you accomplish a lot and in fact usually means the opposite.
Once you have a standard of service delivery you can begin to identify bottlenecks in your process. Essentially, where is your time going and is that time being spent in the most efficient way possible? Implementing tools, systems, processes that can both improve the quality of your service delivery and do so in less time are worth their weight in gold.
Taking an inventory of your time, reviewing your processes and investigating alternate tools will allow you to reduce the time spent in delivering your service. Same amount of money, less time.
Charge what you’re worth
Hard work is the bare minimum requirement to achieve anything. Consider it the entrance fee to the night club. It gets you in the door, but it won’t get you a dance with the good looking stranger you’re eyeing. Clients are paying you for the results you get them, regardless of how quick you respond or how detailed and professional your spreadsheets look. If they don’t get their results, you’re worthless to them.
You’re worth whatever someone is willing to pay for the service you provide. Supreme makes a white tee shirt and sells it for $300.00. The Gap sells the same tee shirt for $12.00. The difference is the Supreme shirt gets the wearer something the Gap shirt does not and that something is worth $288.00 more.
Initially, when you enter the industry you’ll have to charge a little less, but as you gain clients, results, testimonials, social credit etc. you earn the ability to charge more for your service. My mistake was thinking that having 2 Master’s degrees and 1000’s of past successful clients didn’t afford me the ability to charge more simply because “no one could afford that.”
They can and they will, if they believe you can get them the results they desire. Same time, more money.
Putting it together is simple math
Once you have a set service delivery model and can optimize it for time efficiency using standardized processes and tools, you can handle the same amount of clients in less time. Propose this scenario:
- Coach with 40 clients
- Spends 15min each week with a nutrition check-in
- 15min x4 = 60min/month
- 40hrs/mo total
- Systems improved and time per check-in decreased to 10min
- 10min x4 = 40min/mo
- Scale for 40 clients
- Savings of 3hr20min/wk or 13hr20min/mo
- 27hrs total
Now, we increase prices to reflect the quality of service being provided.
- Same coach with 40 clients
- $75/client
- 40 clients = $3000.00
- Increases rates to $125/client, loses 5 clients
- $4375.00
- With improved system, can handle more clients and increase load to 60clients working the same 40hrs/mo (10min/wk/client)
- $7500.00
Now, we’re earning 2.5x per month working the same number of hours.
Stop trying to be the hardest worker in the room and start working smarter. I’ve done this for myself and I’ve done this for other coaches.
If you’re interested in putting these plans in motion, apply below and work with me.