Mark Butler: Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are listening
to a podcast for coaches.
Couple of episodes ago we talked about decreasing.
Unpredictability in a coaching practice and how it has its unpredictable parts
and how we have to use our mindset and our care of relationships as a way of
reducing that unpredictability so that we as coaches are able to sustain ourselves.
While we're serving our clients today, I wanna come back to this topic, but
instead of approaching it through the lens of what does my mindset need to
be and how do I need to approach my relationships such that the practice is
as predictable as possible, I wanna talk about the actual business model itself and
how we approach the coaching containers that we create, and how those containers
could have more unpredictability or less unpredictability in them.
Now, before I do that, I want to say that I'm looking at this as a coach
who uses the money in my coaching practice to pay for my family's, life.
There's another type of coach who gives great service and takes great care
of their clients, but the money they generate from their coaching practice
is not necessarily consequential to their household consumption.
There's nothing at all wrong with this.
It's a great thing.
There are people for whom the financial stability in their coaching practice
is actually rooted in the financial stability of the household because
either the coach has a day job or a business that they run, and coaching
is the thing they do on the side.
Or the coach has a spouse who has a day job or a profession, or a business
that provides the stability in the day-to-day finances such that the coach.
doesn't have to be very concerned with the unpredictability of a coaching
practice because their finances are going to be fine either way.
This episode and the last one for that matter, are really geared toward those
of us who in order for us to stay happy and healthy in our practices, we want
to have enough financial stability.
That we can keep doing the work we do.
Without thinking too much about the money, in my episodes that I've done
in the past about ethics of coaching, one of the things that can have a
negative impact on the ethics of our practice is if I'm so consumed,
With my financial situation
that my focus is on generating a transaction instead of giving the
best possible care and service to the prospective client that's in front of
me, or the client that's in front of me.
So if we're gonna be pro coaches who actually use our practices as
our vocation, as our way of making a living, we need to bring enough
financial stability to our lives that we can keep our focus on
the client and not on the money.
So now that I've established who this episode is for, it's really
for people who are relying on the money they generate through their
coaching practice to keep their families consumption at normal levels.
I wanna talk about the different types of coaching there are and how tailoring
our practices to one or the other.
It could actually increase or decrease the unpredictability in our financial lives.
Now, as I say, types of coaching, I acknowledge that I've done many
episodes about the difference between training and coaching.
What I'm talking about today is different types of coaching within a
conversation based coaching practice.
And the two types of coaching that I'm thinking about are number one,
hygiene coaching, or number two.
Repair coaching.
Now I just made these up.
You can decide whether they're useful to you, but I'm describing hygiene
coaching as the type of coaching that I do with clients who are so
converted to conversation-based coaching that they always have
coaching sessions on their calendar.
They always have a relationship with their coach.
They view coaching as utility, and I did an episode about that a few months ago.
They view coaching as a utility where they kind of see it as the brushing
and flossing of their thoughts, their feelings, and their relationships.
It's how they stay healthy.
Hygiene based coaching is what I'm calling it.
Then we have what I would call repair coaching.
Repair Coaching is the type of coaching that happens with clients who.
Don't always have a coaching session on their calendar.
They view coaching as something they do on an as needed basis.
They tend to reach out to their coach when they're having an acute experience.
It could be an acute positive experience, as in I've just realized
that I have these huge goals and aspirations that I wanna pursue, and
I really want to get the collaboration of a coach to work on these things.
I.
Or they could be having an acute negative emotional experience.
I have a family member in crisis, or my relationship has really hit a rough patch,
or I'm really struggling in my confidence or my business isn't working, and it's
time for me to reach out to a coach.
If I were to label hygiene coaching and repair coaching in another
way, I would say hygiene coaching is coming from a place of want.
And repair coaching is probably coming from a place of need, I'm
not judging the people who engage in these two different types of
coaching because I think all of us, I.
Engaging in these different types of coaching at different points in our lives.
But when people approach a hygiene based coaching, I tend to hear them say things
like, I just want to have a coach.
I just love having a coach.
I never want to be without a coach because it just really
helps me stay on track in my life.
Repair type clients or repair type coaching tends to sound like, well,
I reached out to you because I really need some support right now.
Or when they're not engaging with coaching, they tend to say, I don't
really feel like I need it right now.
So that's why I'm saying hygiene coaching tends to be want based and
repair coaching tends to be need-based.
Hygiene coaching tends to lend itself better to stability
in a coaching practice.
If I can build enough relationships and serve those relationships well enough
that I maintain this nice pool of clients who just tend to renew and value our
time together and want to be present with me in conversation over the long haul.
I don't need a ton of those in order to have a very.
Healthy and stable coaching practice.
The issue is that even the healthiest hygiene based coaching relationships, I.
Come to a natural conclusion.
There's nothing wrong with it.
In fact, when those relationships feel like they are at an end, I think we
get into ethical trouble if we try to find a reason for them not to end.
If we go into a persuasive mode, or at worst, a coercive mode
where instead of having a.
Healthy long-term hygiene coaching relationship, and we
try to coerce it into continuing.
I think we're outta bounds ethically.
So there's a challenge that can come up in a coaching practice that is
largely hygiene based, which is.
What happens if you've got a very small, happy, healthy group of clients who
renew and renew and renew, and then within a period of just a few months,
they don't renew the relationships, reach their natural conclusion?
Well, now I don't have clients and I don't have the money that the clients
are paying me, and it feels a little bit not quite right to frame it that
way, but in dollars and cents terms.
That's what we're facing.
Also in a practice that's almost exclusively hygiene based.
Because the relationships tend to last a long time.
These practices may not start many new relationships in a given year.
The practice itself can get out of the habit of starting new relationships.
That are available for invitation into a coaching relationship when the time comes.
Yes, I talked about that in the previous episode about how to reduce
unpredictability in a practice.
But as I sit with that idea myself, I have to acknowledge I.
When I'm settled into a nice groove with a great group of long-term
hygiene clients, my mind starts to slip away from the starting and
the nurturing of new relationships.
And I have found myself at times with a mostly blank calendar and not quite
sure who's gonna be my next client.
And because I count on the money from the practice to make my family's
life work, that can get stressful.
So a hygiene client driven coaching practice is very appealing,
but it's at risk of dry spells.
Well, let's talk about a repair based practice.
In a repair based practice, which is one in which the coach tends to
be very flexible and very open and say, look, I wanna support you in
whatever way you wanna be supported.
You reach out to me when you want to do some coaching together.
Ethically, I think this is.
Really strong because the coach is saying, not only do I not need you, but
I'm going to take a role in your life where when you put out the bat signal
and you need some support, I'll be there.
I think a repair based practice is especially great for people
who don't need the money.
If they can go through their life living the way they want to, functioning
in the way that they want to.
And not have to worry about whether the email is gonna land in the
inbox or whether the phone is gonna ring or the DM is gonna arrive.
That's great.
The issue that I think those coaches face is they will tend
to work with clients in crisis.
And having worked with clients in crisis, I can tell you that
mentally and emotionally it is much more demanding than hygiene.
Now on the financial side, a purely repair based coach is going to have
a very hard time creating a stable income stream unless they have so many.
Relationships, so many people who are converted to them and to coaching
that in any given month, enough of those people will be in crisis,
which is a slight overstatement.
I acknowledge they don't have to be in crisis, but enough of those people have
to get to the activation energy that it takes to send that coach a message
and say, could we have a session?
The pool has to be so big and the percentage so stable of that pool that
reaches out for help that the repair based coach is able to make the living that they
want to make and feel solid themselves.
My argument against a purely repair based coaching practice is that
no one wants to call a plumber.
I would guess that if a plumber were to have a hygiene business where they
say, oh yeah, you set up, we'll set you up on a, on a subscription, and we'll
come clean out your pipes every six months and you'll pay a fee for that.
It might be a great idea, but I don't know of any plumbers who are doing that.
As far as I know, plumbers tend to be almost purely repair
based, purely emergency based.
So in order for plumbers to have stability in their businesses, I
think plumbers have to be really good at positioning themselves in the
places where people go when they have that particular type of emergency.
When we were kids, that was the phone book, 15 years ago.
That was search engine optimization.
Whoever had the best local business listing was gonna
get the plumbing clients.
That's probably still true, but in a coaching practice, if I'm gonna
run a purely repair based business, I've gotta be present in the minds
of enough people that when they get into crisis, they reach out for help.
And it's not that, I think that's a.
Bad thing.
It's that I think if you were to do that exclusively, there'd be a lot of
up and down and a lot of volatility in the practice, and I think the work
you did would be particularly intense.
So what are we to do as coaches?
Are we to take a primarily hygiene based approach, long-term relationships,
accepting the dry spells that can come in that kind of practice.
When these healthy long-term relationships reach their natural conclusion and we're
in a little bit of a rebuilding phase, or do we go with the repair based route
where we build a bunch of relationships and then we wait for some percentage of
those clients to have a crisis moment in their life and they reach out for help.
As I've been sitting with this over the last few weeks,
I think the answer is both.
If I want to start my month with the highest possible confidence,
that enough money will come in that month to make my family's life easy.
Yes, I wanna be nurturing relationships, and I think I want
to have containers in my practice coaching containers that facilitate.
Long-term hygiene and short-term repair.
And it's funny that I use the term hygiene because as I was whiteboarding
out, this whole concept, it occurred to me that I'm describing a dental practice.
Now, some of you listening got there way before I did, but
I realized dental practices.
Do hygiene and repair.
They do both.
Dental practices also deal with the reality that nobody's really
excited to go to the dentist.
So dentists are wise to make hygiene as frictionless as possible.
Which is why usually you're still in your dentist's chair when the hygienist or
the dental assistant are asking you if we can go ahead and schedule your next
appointment for six months from now.
That's the lowest friction moment for them to introduce that idea.
Because dentists do both hygiene and repair, and because they have extremely
high overhead in the form of buildings and equipment and staff payroll and
the whole thing, they have to be really good at creating stability in their
cash flow such that they don't have to wake up on the first of the month and
worry about keeping all the bills paid.
I'm sure this is true in a lot of professional services.
By the way.
It just happened that because I was thinking about hygiene and repair,
suddenly dentistry comes to my mind, and then as I'm thinking about dentistry,
I start thinking about the dentist I've been seeing for the last, I don't know,
two, three years, Kate found them.
A couple years ago.
We were transitioning away from another dentist.
We found this dentist.
And when we got into their practice, we found out they
do a very interesting thing.
It's probably getting more and more common in the world of dentistry,
but this is the first one I've dealt with and this is what they do.
Kate and I both pay a monthly membership fee to the dentist.
I.
It's a small enough amount that I don't really feel it on a month to month
basis, even though I'm paying it times two, because it's both me and Kate.
Our kids go to a pediatric dentist, which is somebody else.
So now I'm paying this monthly fee, and the monthly fee entitles me to two
cleanings per year at no cost, which has this nice psychological benefit that when
I go to the dentist now for a cleaning.
If I don't need any repair, I walk in, I receive service, and I walk
out and no money changes hands.
And I have laughed at myself at what a psychological impact that has had.
I know that I'm paying for those cleanings.
I might even be paying more for those cleanings than I would if
I just paid for them one off.
Although when I do the math, I don't think so.
I think it's probably about sixes, two cleanings per year for
the amount I pay in the monthly subscription, and same for Kate.
But there's such a, psychological win to going and receiving a
service and feel like you're getting it, quote unquote for free.
So that's really interesting to me.
They've really reduced the friction by having to pay that monthly subscription.
They do.
Another interesting thing that when there is a repair.
Required.
I get 25% off repairs
early in my relationship with this dentist.
I think I needed a crown.
It was probably 1500 bucks or something like that.
I can't remember the amount.
Well, that's annoying.
I never want to spend $1,500 on a dental repair.
But again, it was fascinating to watch my psychology when they said, oh, but
you know, as a member you get 25% off that repair and suddenly I felt smart
and my embarrassment about having to pay for this expensive repair and my
anxiety about it, suddenly it goes down a little bit just because I.
They've discounted it by 25% because I'm a member now, I'm
not in the dentist finances.
I don't know whether the dentist inflated that price 25% so they
could drop it right back down 25%.
I don't think so because I'm a person who's paid a lot of money
for dental work over the years, and their price for that service was in
the neighborhood of what I expected.
So I got to have this nice little emotional bump from the
fact that because I'm a member, I get this discount on repairs.
I love that this dentist does that.
I don't know whether this is true, but I wanna say something
about the ethics of this.
There's another thing going on here that relates to the ethics
of both dentistry and coaching.
Dentists have a financial incentive to find repairs to do.
They get paid when they fix teeth.
That creates an incentive for them to sometimes see repairs that may
or may not be absolutely necessary, and they have to really check their
ethics to say, well, we could do this, but we don't really need to.
For some reason, the fact that I pay a monthly membership for the dentist.
Increases my confidence that they're doing right by me when I'm in their chair.
Now, that's emotional.
I don't know that I could justify it with math, but there's something
that feels right about it to me where I say, I hope they have thousands
of people in that dental office who are paying the monthly membership.
Because if they do.
The dentists who work there wake up on the first of the month and know
that it's gonna be a great month, and they never have to be in my mouth
looking for a way to pay their mortgage or to pay for their kids, whatever.
Now do I know that's the case?
I do not know that's the case.
I'm hypothesizing, but it's one of the reasons I like
paying that monthly membership.
I think it aligns my desires with the dentist's desires.
Okay, what do we do with this dental model?
Am I proposing that I should charge my coaching clients a monthly membership
and then add on to that AEs price Maybe.
I told you I was just thinking out loud.
I don't really have a solution here.
What does seem true to me is that I want to be a coach whose
full-time vocation is coaching.
I also want to be a provider who sees to his family's wants.
Many of you would also say needs, that's not the language I typically say with
finances because what I mean is I want my family's consumption to be smooth and
normal across the months and years, and I want my attention to be able to stay clean
around both my family and my clients.
I also believe that my coaching clients want me to be healthy and happy and clear.
I think my coaching clients want to know that when the zoom room opens
and there I am, they want to know that a happy, healthy, clear-headed
coach is sitting in front of them.
Somebody who's able to be present and positive and hold clean space.
Not have his mind on, I don't actually know how we're gonna
pay the mortgage next month.
It is not my client's responsibility to keep me happy, healthy, and clearheaded.
It's my responsibility.
I think it's my job as a coach to say.
If you want your coach to be happy, healthy, and clearheaded, we need
to arrange this relationship in such a way that I don't just disappear
one day and say, oh, sorry, the coaching thing didn't really pan out.
I went and got a job.
I also don't want my clients to have the experience where they
say, oh, mark used to do one-on-one coaching, but he started to pursue
other business models that really.
Set aside one-on-one work because he was trying to create more
predictability in his income stream.
Now, my clients might not agree with that.
They might say, look, dude, really, it's not my problem.
And they're right.
So the question becomes, can we as coaches.
Organize our practices in such a way that we're happy, we're healthy, we're clear.
Our clients feel like they have access to both hygiene and repair,
so that all of us are the best that we can possibly be in the relationship.
I'm gonna keep thinking about this.
I think there's something here that makes all of us better off.
Now I wanna be clear.
I am happy and healthy.
I'm incredibly grateful and sometimes a little bit shocked that for
about four years now, session-based coaching has reliably provided a high
percentage of my family's income.
That is the coolest thing to me.
In the world.
I love it.
What I'm looking at now is, is there a way for me to evolve
the practice in a way that I'm delivering higher and better service?
My clients are the happiest they've ever been,
and it's financially more level and smooth.
Maybe then it's been in the past because it does have its natural fluctuations.
It's just food for thought.
As coaches, I think we should be trying to innovate and as we try to innovate,
we want to innovate in ways that make our clients better off and make us better off.
'cause remember, I believe in session-based work.
As long as session-based work is a thing that people provide and people
purchase, I'll be doing it I think for the next 30 or 40 years, well
into my seventies and eighties.
If there's a hygiene and repair hybrid approach that can support that
longevity in my work and my practice, then by all means, let's figure it out.
And with that, I will talk to you next time.