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Imagine if you had a backstage pass to go behind the scenes and learn the secrets that worked for veteran coaches who’ve been right where you are today. That’s exactly why we created Coach Factory, a podcast for coaches at every level who are seeking to elevate their practice.
Guests pull back the curtain on their coaching journeys to reveal how they approach coaching, how they run their business and work with clients, why they do things the way they do, and what’s worked. We also flip the script to talk candidly about obstacles, challenges, and what they’ve tried that didn’t work, so you can avoid making the same mistakes.
Whether you're refining your niche, mastering client acquisition, or looking to develop your coaching skills, join us for expert interviews and the tools you need to thrive in today’s competitive coaching landscape.
Craig Rodney: And the analogy I used was I said, it's like a sports coach. I said, I'm like that old retired football player. I've got all the scars, you know, my knees are busted up, et cetera. I said, but I played the game for many, many years. I know everything there is to know about it. And I'm happy to impart that knowledge and I'll coach you and I'll make you a far better player.
But when the whistle blows, I can't run on the field with you. Like you have to go and perform. And so based on that analogy, I was a coach and the results started improving in our agency. And like, I think you can hear in my voice, I've been doing this for a long time now, like that, like it's the thing that gets me going.
I absolutely love having a positive impact in people's lives, in their businesses.
Shawn Hesketh: Welcome to the Coach Factory Podcast. Today, we're sitting down with Craig Rodney, a veteran coach who's built a thriving practice, helping agency owners scale and then position for exit. But as you'll hear, Craig's journey into coaching wasn't exactly planned.
Like many of us, he found himself at a crossroads after a successful but draining career. And coaching found him. As you listen to Craig's story, think about your own path into coaching. Maybe you were sought out for your expertise, or you actively chose this profession. Craig's journey reminds us that sometimes our calling chooses us, and that can be the start of something incredible.
Craig Rodney: I sold the business and I left at the end of 2016. I was quite battered. I was mentally and physically in a very bad place. So the decision was early on was to take 2017 off anyway. So I took 2017 off. I spent a lot of time with my kids. And I always thought I'll use the year to figure out what I want to do.
And I didn't. And so 2018 started and I was like, well, I'll just take 2018 off as well and figure out what I want to do. And I still didn't know what I wanted to do. But thankfully in the middle of 2018, I was approached by an agency owner who I'd worked with for a number of years, not a competing agency, but, you know, kind of someone from our industry.
And she got hold of me and said, we're struggling and, you know, you've done it, you've built this, you built this amazing agency, you've, you've sold it and please, will you come and help us? So kind of like a very subtle job offer. So she went, please, will you come and take the agency over from me? Right. And I couldn't think of anything worse.
Like I'd spent a lot of time trying to get out of an agency and I definitely wasn't running back in. So I had a bit of an arrogant. It's. Response to her. And I said, I don't want to do any work, right? Like I'm not interested in doing work. I will tell you what to do, but you have to do it. I said, I will happily invest my time and energy, but I'm not taking your problems away from you.
I'm going to help you become a better agency owner and you can pay me for that. And it wasn't her first choice. She definitely wanted me to just do the work for her, but she agreed. And she went, okay, cool. Let's go like that. And I went in and I started coaching her and that was pretty much the only client I worked with through 2018.
But I absolutely loved it. Like I realized that how much I love the marketing industry. I just hated running an agency because when it's your agency and, and you've got like 90 or 70 to 80 employees or whatever it is, like it's so emotional. Like it's. It's draining. And I was, I was anxious all the time. I was ill equipped to do it myself, but I knew what to do.
I just, I could never separate myself. So I, but I loved running someone else's agency. I loved having that distance and the perspective. And, and more than anything, I loved that my involvement and my input helped. And that this agency owner, her eyes lit up when we were working on things and she was realizing better ways to do things.
And the results started improving in her agency.
Shawn Hesketh: Even after finding early success as a coach, Craig struggled with fully owning this new identity. He grappled with imposter syndrome. At question whether coaching was a step down from his former role, Craig's turning point came when a trusted friend challenged him to either fully commit to being a coach or walk away.
Craig Rodney: For, for a number of years, I was, for lack of a better term, embarrassed. I enjoyed it. I got immense value from it, but I was still riding this kind of ego trip of. Having been this big shot agency owner, successful exit, you know, we sold to this British listed business called WPP that everyone knows about.
So I, you know, I thought I was a hotshot and. And I thought coaching was like the step down and I didn't, I didn't really, as much as I enjoyed it, I, I far from convinced that was what I was going to do. I fundamentally believe that is what I was doing to pass time while figuring out what next massively successful, huge business that I was going to go and start and build.
Or what was my step up from that kind of egotistical place that I was in. And honestly, like I saw coaching as a step down and I didn't like talking to people about it. You know, I wasn't proud of it. People would say, what do you do? And I said, I'm retired. My friend, Nick, is a very successful guy, been friends for years.
And he was doing business coaching at the time as part of his offering. And, you know, I mean, Nick's younger than me, but he had this perspective and I phoned him up and I said, I'm stuck. I said, I'm moving in this direction. It's happening naturally. I'm good at it and I enjoy it, but I'm still a bit nowhere with it and I don't know what to do.
And I also, I still haven't figured out what this thing is that I'm going to go do next. And so he was, he, he very smartly said, what do you charge your clients for coaching? And stupidly I told him, and he was like, okay, I'll charge you that same amount to coach you. And I was like, okay, fine. And so he said to me, he said, you either step up and own this and become proud of it or walk away.
But he goes, you can't sit in the middle anymore. And he goes, so you either need to become an agency coach and that becomes your thing and you take pride in it and you shout it from the rooftops and you update your website to make it, and he goes, you either become it or walk away. And it was some of the most valuable advice I've ever been given because it was a bit of a shock to the system.
And I remember driving back home after having met with Nick and I went, yeah, like that's it. And it was so much relief because it wasn't that I didn't want to do it is I needed my ego to get out the way. And Nick successfully helped me shift my ego out the way. And then I went, I am actually proud of what I do because I am good at it.
And it adds value and I improve people's lives. And so I, I got home and I went, I'm just going to call myself The Agency Coach. Like there was no thinking involved. I didn't have to come up with a company name. I went, I'm The Agency Coach. Like, that's how much I back myself on this. Like, that's how proud I am of this, The Agency Coach.
But I didn't even have an email signature in my email signature. It's like my name and my telephone number. I didn't even put anything, coach, nothing. Right. And so I came back and I went, this is the company name. Within two days, I had the website up, email signatures, like the whole shebang, and I went, I am now The Agency Coach and that is going to be my thing.
I wouldn't have believed myself if I'd said it to myself, it needed, I needed someone whose opinion I care deeply about to slap me in the face and go, like, get out of your own way here.
Shawn Hesketh: As Craig grew more confident in his coaching, he also got clearer on how to structure his offers to have the most impact for his clients.
And he learned that his pricing directly correlated with the level of service and results that he could deliver.
Craig Rodney: There's a behavioral element to this, and then there's a practical element. I'll start with the practical element. The practical element is if you're charging a significant amount of money, you have more time.
And availability to invest more deeply in the success of the client you're working with. If you charge too little, you will naturally be inclined to try and stay out of things as opposed to get involved in things. Um, and so just on a pure practical time basis, you should charge enough to be successful, to have an impact like that's at a base level, you should make a client pay you enough.
For you to not be counting minutes for you to be able to just go, okay, I'm here now. Let's fix this. Right? So that's on a practical level, your first approach to charging from a behavioral perspective, if you want your clients to actually implement your coaching recommendations, you Um, they only implement if they believe them and they only believe them if they paying a lot of money for them.
Your price determines your value, not the other way around. And I went for years undercharging clients and watching them not implement. Right. I mean, I've got my coaching program and it's interesting because on the few occasions I've given free seats to people. And if you want to see an agency owner underperform on a coaching program is allow them to not pay.
Right. The worst thing you could ever do to a client is undercharge them because then they're not committed to it. There's no financial pain, but if they're paying fair rates, if they're paying high fair rates, they are far more likely to implement than if it's closer to free. They have a pain point. It's a pain point.
Very few people need personal trainers. Why do you pay a personal trainer? It's not so they can count your reps. It's so that you go, if I don't show up today, it's going to cost me a hundred dollars. I lose a hundred dollars or whatever it is. Right. And so you show up and the guy counts your reps. The payment makes you show up.
And the, the person that's present helps you a little bit and they hold you accountable. And at the end of the day, you get some performance out of it, but you could go to gym anytime. Like you don't need to pay a personal trainer. You can go do as many hours as you want, but sometimes certain people need to have a financial pain to, to commit.
Shawn Hesketh: One of the key shifts that allowed Craig to scale his impact in business was productizing his coaching expertise. He began mapping out all the key concepts, tools, and lessons. That his ideal clients needed to succeed and then turn that knowledge into a structured program.
Craig Rodney: So the question is not, how do I edit my WordPress website and just put a higher rate next to my fees?
That's not the question because that's easy to do, right? It's how do you justify it to yourself? And the way you justify it to yourself is by knowing that you've had a positive impact in that business. So the question is going, what do you have to do within your coaching services to justify that? So it kind of links back to what I said earlier around going.
You have to charge enough to be able to have the time and the resources to actually make an impact. If you're charging so little that you get one hour with this client a month and you just give them some advice, that's going to be an incredibly expensive hour, right? For the client, because all you're doing is you're giving them advice over a one hour zoom call.
It's just advice. So my, my challenge to coaches is going, what could you give a person other than advice? Or how would you productize your advice? What tools could you give them to help them implement the advice, et cetera? Could you help them to develop a system? Could you work with them around how to structure their teams better within their business in order to implement the advice?
There is a lot of work that you can do beyond advice. And the moment you realize that there is. You stand a far better chance of having a positive impact and then it's easier to charge for it.
Shawn Hesketh: While Craig's reputation initially brought him coaching clients, he quickly realized that he needed a proactive strategy for building authority and attracting ideal prospects.
So he focused on positioning himself as a valuable expert on LinkedIn and then asking for referrals and recommendations from happy clients.
Craig Rodney: My first couple of clients, sure, like they were within the network. But they dried up like it it's, they were either going to hire me or they were not. And everyone made that decision early on.
And. So immediately I had to go, if I want this to be successful, I have to learn how to sell beyond my immediate network. And the way that you sell beyond your immediate network is by growing your network. And so I had to start working out, how do I attract more people into my network? And I will just use LinkedIn.
As the, kind of the base point here, because for me personally, LinkedIn was that, was that platform where I went, well, this is where I'm going to invest. This is the, this is where I'm going to build my network and my connections, et cetera. I didn't use Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, any of those.
I was like, well, LinkedIn's fine. And the truth is that you want to be doing two things. One, you want to be positioning yourself as an interesting person. And I didn't say thought leader thought leader is the correct term, but you'd rather be interesting, right? Um, in whatever way it is, just be interesting and people will take interest in you.
And if people take interest in you, they're going to connect with you. They're going to follow you. They're going to, they're going to find you interesting. And it's easy to initiate conversations with people if they find you interesting. And there's a lot of stuff you can do with that, right? You can do webinars.
You can just do simple LinkedIn posts every couple of days. So it's not even like wildly complicated stuff. I think the two rules be interesting and be consistent. And you do that over a long enough period of time and you'll be fine. The more important, or let me not say more important, the equally important tactic is.
Other people must talk about you. It is not enough to be talking about yourself. Other people have to talk about you. When you talk about yourself, this is my like social media agency guy kicking in right now. But when you talk about yourself, you're talking to your network of people who are already in your network.
And so it's preaching to the choir. If you want to grow the network, it happens with other people talk about you. And this is again, where being interesting helps, because if you are interesting, people are more likely to share your content. They're more likely to comment and challenge you, etc. And that kind of engagement definitely helps.
But the single most important person that can talk about you is your client.
Shawn Hesketh: Asking a client to write a LinkedIn post about their experience with your coaching may seem like a relatively easy task for some of you. For others, it takes quite a bit of courage. And it may even cause you to feel some imposter syndrome.
So Craig shares his experience and some practical advice for asking your clients to do this.
Craig Rodney: I'm not even ashamed of the first time I did this was terrifying. And if you think you suffer from imposter syndrome, wait until you have to do what I'm about to tell you. You have to email your clients and you have to ask them to write a LinkedIn post about you.
I'm not asking you to go and do a LinkedIn review. That's a specific thing where you go and give five stars. I'm saying, you're going to ask a client, you're going to say, Hey, listen, like, I'm really proud of the work that we did together. I imagine that it's been massive value to you. You're going to say to the client, the way that I win more coaching clients is through referrals and through references.
And here's what I would like. I would like you to write a LinkedIn post, talking about the coaching, talking about the value that you got from me. And here is the link to my Calendly. And I would like you to encourage people to book a call with me if they're interested, right? You must know how much courage it takes to do that.
It is absolutely terrifying. But if you were working with a client and you were genuinely empathetic and you were heavily invested in working with them to fix their business. It's not a big ask, right? And if it, if you feel it is a big ask, then rather question the value you offered and not any imposter syndrome.
That's not imposter syndrome. That is straight up. You don't believe you offered, you delivered enough value to ask a client to write in their network and go, guys, I've worked with this guy, Craig Rodney. He was amazing. He helped fix my agency. It was incredible. It was worth every penny. And I read, if you run an agency, you need to do it as well.
And I track every client that I've asked. I have a little track box and I say to them, absolutely no obligation. I know it's a big ask. Like I'm not even hiding the fact that I'm being bold here and asking, but this is what works for me. And again, like, I'm not going to judge you if you don't do it, it's fine.
But I can tell you it's at least 50 percent of the people I asked to do it, which I think is quite a high strike rate, but what's even more interesting, I have And this is over years now. This is over three years that I've been doing this. I have a 100 percent success rate. Of someone writing a LinkedIn post about working with me and me signing a client from that post.
One hundred percent success rate.
Shawn Hesketh: If you're like most coaches, you probably started out coaching one on one. But as you get more and more of your ideal clients, you may realize that your biggest limitation is your time. And if that sounds like you, You may have already considered creating a course or a group coaching program so you can scale your time and deliver your expertise to even more people.
But where do you start and how do you figure out what that looks like? Craig has some great advice for creating a signature coaching program.
Craig Rodney: The best advice I can give is to make a list of all the knowledge that you know that a client needs and then separate it into two categories. Absolutely has to be delivered by you.
And other, and what you'll realize is the value that you add as a human on a video call with a client is very narrow. You are probably the worst vehicle for delivering a large degree of the knowledge that you have available for clients. You're probably the worst vehicle because you mumble and you ramble, and you know, you have to get through the pleasantries on calls and you're inconsistent.
And some days you're high energy and some days you're low energy. But the client is also now limited to that timeframe for knowledge. And so when I look at my coaching program, if I had to. Take you through it personally. It will take us months and months and months by giving you the opportunity to read and watch videos and engage with tutorials and download tools and implement those tools, et cetera.
As a coach, if I'm like, if I do a little snicker, I'm like, Ooh, like you're doing it yourself, but it is actually the best way for a person to consume most of that content. They don't want to hear me rambling on it. They want to have the time and the patience and to sit and go through it. So someone who goes through the agency to exit, they still get private calls with me.
But when we go on a private call, I, the end of an exercise, I say, okay, now fill out the tool or restructure your financials into this format. Email it to me. We all then have a call and I will go through their work. So it's like, I'll go through their homework. It sounds demeaning, but it's not. Myself and that agency owner will get stuck in on the things that I cannot explain in text.
And the things I cannot explain in text is where my knowledge meets their agency. That touch point is where I need to be involved because I have to make it absolutely relevant to them, to that person, to that specific situation. The knowledge itself can be delivered in a number of ways. That's not you.
And so I love the fact that I can say to a client, complete this module, go through the theory, watch the videos, complete the exercises, phone me if you get stuck, WhatsApp me, I don't care, but go through it, create that base level understanding. Complete the exercise, then once you've done that, you and I will get together and we're going to talk about how do we apply this to your agency.
And that's where my private coaching, the value goes through the roof. So I bring the number of hours down, but the value of that time goes up.
Shawn Hesketh: When it comes to pricing your coaching program, many coaches underestimate the real value. Of their expertise and the impact they can have on their clients lives and businesses.
But underpricing can actually undermine your ability to deliver the kind of life changing results you want to give your clients. So as Craig shares, the key is to start with the outcome you help your clients achieve and then work backwards from there.
Craig Rodney: I did a lot of research around how to charge for this stuff and I came up at 250 and I launched it and I had eight people sign up and I was like, Oh, that's amazing.
And then no one else signed up and I'm like, wow, like I had to have a call with each of these eight people. I had to have a call and convince them and get them to sign up and had to help them sign up. And it was a lot of work to make 250. And then I realized if I'm not constantly marketing this thing, like no one's going to sign.
So anyway, I allowed all eight people to complete the course. And then I interviewed each person and I said, get some feedback. And a lot of people were like, It's quite expensive and I went, yeah, you know what, like that's fair, you know, 250 for a book, essentially what it, well, should have been a book is very expensive because it's just advice.
So 250 for 21 pieces of advice is very expensive. So I got into a conversation with a friend of mine, Richard Mulholland around this, and I was like, I can't drop the price. And he turned around and said, it's way too cheap because the problem is not that it's too expensive, it's too cheap. And I said, all eight people said it's expensive and he goes, yeah, but they don't know what they're talking about.
It's too cheap. And so he said. It's four and a half thousand dollars. And I was like, Oh no, come on, like calm down. And he went, he goes, he said, Craig, with all your experience, with all the success that you've achieved, what you are able to do, if you can help an agency owner turn around their agency, build it to a level of success and potentially exit one day, do you think that's not worth four and a half thousand dollars?
And I'm like, well, of course it is. And he goes, okay, so it's worth four and a half thousand dollars. He goes, now your job is to build something that delivers that in a way that makes it worth four and a half thousand dollars. So we started with the price, right? And then I had the challenge. I went, I'm charging four and a half thousand dollars for this.
That's the price. How do I make it worth it? And as I said, I know exactly where I was sitting. It's just, I get like, I even get like goosebumps now. And I went. Wow. And I suddenly was like, I could build this and I could create this tool and I can build a checklist for this and I can have a, this for this and I can bring, I've got like, I'll get my FD to do a full, like full mock up of how financial should be reported.
So we've got downloadable management pack templates and we've got like, and I just started building. And so I took this theory or 21 pieces of advice. Kind of threw it up in the air, let it scramble itself. And then I started restructuring and going, how do I go beyond advice? Yeah, I get it. It's good piece of advice.
It's clever. But how do I help someone actually implement this? Because if they can implement it, then they deliver the value and then it's worth the money. And that's what agency to exit is. And so end of 2021, I reluctantly with all the fear in the world and all the, every level of imposter syndrome went onto LinkedIn and did a post that said.
I'm launching a coaching program called Agency to Exit. It's 10 weeks. This is the price and I'm going to teach you everything I know and I'm going to help you with all the tools and the structures and everything possible on how to double the value of your agency in a year and position it for sale.
And I remember saying, I'm only taking five people through the pilot program and I had sold all five seats within two or three days.
Shawn Hesketh: As we wrap up this episode, Craig has some practical advice. For overcoming self doubt as a coach, and that's to lean into the specific areas where you have the deepest expertise and have seen the greatest results.
As Craig explains, this not only minimizes your own doubts, but also makes it easier for ideal clients to see the value in what you're offering and to trust in the transformation that you can provide.
Craig Rodney: If you doubt the value you offer, other people will doubt it as well. I had the luxury of being given opportunities by clients who knew my reputation, even though I doubted myself.
If you doubt yourself, then your potential customers are going to doubt you, right? The caveat to that though, is if you want to remove doubt from your offering, then only offer the one thing or the two things that you have absolutely no doubt of. They have, there has to be. A couple of things that you are, you know, a couple of Hills that you are willing to die on of what you believe is the correct way to do something and go to a kind of go, this is what I focus on and they go, Oh, can you add van view here?
You go, maybe I might be able to, so instead of. Having doubt permeate the entire offering. You might not be a brilliant business coach because the word business is so all encompassing, but you might be a phenomenal lead gen coach. You might know a lot about a very specific thing, sell that. And then if you're able one that will immediately remove self doubt, because you would bet you're going to be like, I know what I know here, right?
Like I can bet myself on this specific topic. And it's easier to sell because a person buying it goes, Oh, I know what I get. If I spend this money and you're likely to add a tremendous amount of value there. And once you add value in a specific area and it validates you, you're going to go. Well, what other areas do I think I could add value in?
And you get to expand. Yes. The one plus side where coaching is at the moment is. All of us have a global market that's limited only by our language. And so you can go as niche as you want and you'll never want for money if you're able to reach a global audience. Like you could literally teach the entire world one thing and you'd probably have a successful coaching business.
Shawn Hesketh: Thank you to Craig Rodney for sharing his incredible story and the lessons he's learned along the way from overcoming self doubt to building a successful and a scalable coaching practice. And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Coach Factory podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please leave us a rating and a review.
And to listen to more episodes, get the show notes, and learn how to start, run, and grow your coaching practice, visit CoachFactory.co. Thanks for listening!