Hey, I'm Mark and this is the beautiful business podcast.
Although I think I'm going to change the name to a podcast for coaches.
And there are two reasons for that one, I'm a branding genius.
So if I think that a podcast should be called a podcast for coaches, then
really that's the end of the discussion.
But two, I want to call it a podcast for coaches because that's what it is.
It's a podcast for coaches.
And I actually kind of like the forced constraint or narrowing that that
could come from that, because if I call it a podcast for coaches, it'll
probably be a small hedge against my.
Tendency to get distracted, tendency to kind of get outside my lane or
get outside the lane of the thing that I'm currently working on.
Anyway, I'm Mark Butler and you might be listening to a podcast
called a podcast for coaches.
So it was almost exactly a year ago to the day that I published the last episode
of this podcast and it was a wild year.
I did a lot of coaching and had a loved one, my, my wife.
Go through a cancer diagnosis and cancer treatment.
And very fortunately she is on the other side of that now, or at least as much on
the other side of it as a person can be.
Many of you are way ahead of me in this experience of cancer.
And you know that you don't get to say cancer free after
a person goes into remission.
You say they are in remission and then somewhere between five and 10 years later.
Um, if it works out that way, then you get to say cancer free.
Anyway, Kate went through cancer treatment.
She came through it really well and heart goes out to any of you who
have had a similar experience because now that we've been through it,
and frankly, I think that our, our experience of it, um, was not what a
lot of families experience of it was.
Kate, of course, had a brutally difficult time with treatment.
Uh, but even then, you know, her prognosis was good from the beginning.
So heart goes out to any of you, any families whose prognosis
was different or is different.
Anyway, this episode is called 377 sessions, 149, 000, because
that's the quickest summary of my coaching practice in 2023.
And I wanted to kick off 2024 by talking about what.
I experienced and what I learned in my coaching practice in 2023 and how
I feel about it and how I think it might look in the near and far future.
So four topics I want to talk about today.
Number one is the workload of a 377 session.
Um, coaching practice, number two are the relationships that are, are part of that
practice that grew from that practice.
Number three is the finances.
What was the actual financial experience of a 377 session coaching practice?
And last we'll talk about the marketing and what I think it looks
like to sustain and maybe grow a coaching practice like this.
So first let's talk about the workload.
If you've listened to this podcast before, you know that I coach on average
two days a week, three weeks a month.
I coach Tuesdays and Wednesdays with some rare exceptions.
And I coach the first, second and third weeks of the month.
So.
Those 370 sessions were completed in roughly 36 weeks of the year, which means
roughly I was doing about 11 coaching sessions per week, which averaging
out is about five coaching sessions per coaching day throughout the year.
Now, at the beginning of 2023, I was busier.
I had as many as seven sessions per day on a Tuesday and a Wednesday.
And I've got to say those were more tiring times.
There were plenty of Tuesdays where I was scheduled to go nine o'clock
in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon without even a lunch break.
I do 50 minute sessions.
So the intention would be that I would finish a session, have a minute to sort
of clear my head, use the bathroom, grab a snack, whatever I need to do,
and then jump on the next session.
And.
So after a month or two of that, I realized I don't
think this is sustainable.
I think I do much, much better with sort of a three session morning and a three
session afternoon or even a three and two.
And that feels very, very good, very sustainable to me.
I don't schedule coaching on Mondays, Thursdays, or Fridays for the most
part, those are the days when I run my bookkeeping service at letstothebooks.
com, the bookkeeping service for coaches.
So Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my coaching days.
And as the year progressed and my coaching load lightened a little,
I found that I really, really look forward to my coaching days.
It's a very different kind of work.
In my bookkeeping business, I do a lot of software development.
And so it's a big context switch to go from my bookkeeping
work over to my coaching work.
I'm really grateful that I enjoy them both.
And so that's interesting to me.
One of the biggest takeaways for me is how important batching seems
to be to my, to my way of working.
I don't think I would do well with, say, two sessions a day, five days a week.
Or I wouldn't do as well.
I think that it would be a harder switch if I were to, say, be working
hard on my bookkeeping business from You know, eight in the morning to
three in the afternoon and then do two coaching sessions or even to do two
coaching sessions in the morning and do bookkeeping for the rest of the day.
I haven't run the experiment, but for me, batching feels really good.
Part of the reason batching to Tuesdays and Wednesdays feels good and to batching
to the first three weeks of the month.
is because it creates a lot of white space.
It feels extremely sustainable.
I look forward on Monday nights.
I'm able to look forward to my Tuesday coaching sessions on Wednesdays.
I'm happy to be having my sort of coaching Friday, if that makes sense.
I have a great client and she knows that she's usually my
last session on Wednesday.
And as we finish our session, she very often says, have a great
weekend because she knows that my coaching weekend is starting.
It feels great.
I used to think that coaching was an easy way to make money.
In fact, I thought, it's such a cheat to make the amount of money
as coaches that we do because coaching is, you know, it's easy.
Well, 377 sessions isn't even that many sessions.
I know coaches who coach much more than my average of 10 hours a week.
Much more.
For me, anything beyond that 10 or 12 hours a week starts to
feel like a much heavier lift.
And it starts, for me, it starts to call into question whether I could do it or
would want to do it for the long term.
So The way I'm currently operating, I could see myself
coaching at this pace forever.
I'm 44 years old now.
I could see myself as an 84 year old waking up on a Tuesday morning and saying,
yeah, I've got my six sessions today.
It just, it's a very good rhythm.
Talk a little bit, maybe more about this later, but I think that
developing a healthy coaching practice.
can potentially flip the whole concept of retirement on its head.
Because if I can make the living that I'll describe later in the episode,
working two days a week, well, how different is that from being retired?
Especially since the work that I'm doing has a lot of meaning for me,
has a lot of intrinsic value to me.
So this is why I think I've said before, and I will say again, I encourage my
fellow coaches to work in the way they hope to succeed for the long term.
Now, I do think there's a benefit to getting too busy for a period of time.
I think it stretches you.
I think it builds your muscle.
There's a lot of good that can come from getting too busy for a short period
of time, but the goal in my mind is to then settle in to a nice, sustainable.
Rhythm.
Unfortunately, and I've talked about this before, I know I will talk about it again.
Unfortunately, I think what happens is coaches let themselves get into that too
busy phase and then they think the only way out of that too busy phase is to
change their business model to go from a one to one model to a one to many model
or from a coaching model to a training model according to my definitions,
which I've shared in past episodes.
It's not that that's wrong, although I do think there are some hidden costs there.
What I encourage people to consider is.
Um, let yourself get pretty busy and then look for sustainability inside the current
model because my current coaching life, now that I'm building the muscle and the
stamina to pretty comfortably, pretty easily, pretty happily do an average
of 10 or 12 sessions over the course of two days, it is starting to feel easy.
And I have to ask myself, do I want to go from having something that feels
really good to, Really value added in my life and in the lives of my clients
and feels pretty easy To something that feels hard Without necessarily a
big change in the benefit to me or to my clients So Something to think about
when it comes to the workload is am I working in a way that I want to sustain?
Or am I working in a way that feels like in order for it
to be successful long term.
I will have to change it I think I've found a groove where it could be
exactly what it is for the long term.
And that's very interesting to me.
It's especially interesting to me to think about the possibility that someday
maybe I will sell my bookkeeping business, or maybe I will build a team that runs
the bookkeeping business without me.
And in that case, now I am kind of functionally retired
with my coaching practice.
I'm working my two days a week, my three weeks a month, and the rest of
the time I'm doing what I want to do.
Now, the reality is I probably wouldn't change my other days that much, but
it's nice to know that you have options.
So the workload feels amazing to me.
The business model feels amazing to me and the relationships feel amazing to me.
So let's talk about those.
I probably served 20 ish clients in 2023.
We'll talk more about that in the marketing section.
The thing that has surprised me is what an affinity I feel for my coaching clients.
I'm invested.
Now I'm not invested in an enmeshed way where I'm laying awake at night.
Losing sleep over whether they're going to do this or do that.
Although I definitely did go through that phase in my coaching practice back in
probably 2015, 2016 at this point, it's, it's this very differentiated affinity,
this differentiated investment that I feel in my clients where I do think
about my clients outside of our sessions.
I pull for my clients, I hope for them and I care about them
and I care about the friendships.
I care about the friendships that, that exist outside of our coaching sessions.
Uh, I really believe in long term coaching.
I really believe in the power of spending dozens of hours and
beyond with a single client.
I've experienced it as a client working with my own coach or therapist.
And now I'm experiencing it as a coach where we are having Sometimes
dozens and dozens of conversations and what it does is it opens the
door to two things in my mind.
Number one, it opens the door to seeing patterns that you're
then able to show your client.
Now you might have had an instinct about those patterns early in the
relationship, but as time goes by, sessions go by, and trust and rapport
build, your client finds it easier to trust the insights that you're sharing.
Because they don't think you're just dropping in, you know, sort of
parachuting into their life, dropping opinions on them and then bailing.
I've had experiences now where I can say to a client in our
34th session, look, I think this thing is just like those things.
I think this is all part of a similar pattern.
Does that resonate with you?
And sometimes it does resonate with them.
I also think that as a coach who works with a client for the long
term, I'm able to celebrate things that they might not even notice.
I'm able to draw attention to wins that they probably think
are too small to celebrate.
And this is the reality of experiencing change in our own lives
because we're living our lives.
It's hard to notice changes that are happening in our lives,
especially as they come slowly.
But if I'm working with a coach for the long term.
Um, the coach can say, and actually this happened a couple of months ago.
It's vivid in my mind where I was able to say to a client who is sharing
some experiences with me, I was able to show that client contrast.
Hey, notice how you used to react this way to that kind of situation,
but now you're reacting that way.
Notice how you used to feel this way about that kind of situation.
And now you feel that way.
I'm also able to say things to clients, you know, because we're
meeting on zoom and I can see them.
Hey, You are physically different in my eyes today.
You just look different.
You look lighter, you look happier.
Something is going on, tell me what's going on and then we can explore that.
It's not that that can't happen in a short term coaching engagement, but
I think it's less likely to happen in a short term coaching engagement.
Another thing that I experienced recently was the opportunity to
tell a client that I was wrong.
in some of my early assessments.
This happened literally yesterday.
I said to a client, Hey, do you remember that thing I said
to you, whatever, a year ago?
And I was putting you in a certain kind of box.
And she said, yeah, of course I remember it.
I said, I was wrong.
I don't think that's what's going on here.
And I'm sorry, I don't think that's what's going on here.
I think it's something different.
When you're in a long term coaching relationship like that, you have
the opportunity to come back and say, yeah, that was a guess.
That was a hypothesis with more data.
I'm coming to the conclusion that I was not right about that.
Here's what I'm seeing instead.
So it's this amazing collaboration where the client has.
Uh, a chance to reveal themselves to you and to themselves over the long
term, learn from it and grow from it.
These relationships mean the world to me.
I look forward to continuing in many of these relationships because my clients do
have a tendency to renew and I love it.
I'm grateful for it.
It has marketing and business benefits that we'll talk about in a second,
but it also has amazing relationship benefits where over the long term.
You can come to deeply know a person and to help them know themselves.
And I think only good things come from that.
So that's the state of the relationships that came out of
this, you know, 377 sessions in a year practice about the money.
I did go look it up and my coaching work generated 149, 000 in change in 2023.
That's higher than I thought it would be.
I wasn't paying very close attention throughout the year, ironically,
because I'm the bookkeeping guy, but it ended up being about 149, 000.
That's an amazing amount of money.
Going back to what I said earlier about the possibility that if my bookkeeping
business were eventually to be sold, which I don't think is the more likely outcome,
what's more likely is probably that the bookkeeping business will be run by a
team and my main focus will be supporting them and developing the tools there.
But mostly coaching my clients and creating content.
When I think about having my, my only intensive work days be Tuesdays
and Wednesdays, three weeks a month, and having that translate into an
income stream of 150, 000 per year, or, you know, maybe I can grow that.
That's incredible.
The coaching industry has its quirks.
And one of its quirks is I don't think that.
A lot of people consider 150, 000 in a year to be a lot of money.
I think they consider it sort of middle of the road.
I think in the coaching industry, we're all very anchored to very big numbers.
I think there's some benefits there because it can expand our vision.
And of course that can be powerful.
Also, if you go to anyone in your life, almost anyone in your life, And say,
I work two days a week, three weeks a month, and from that I generate 150, 000.
Who's not going to be shocked by that?
I think it's shocking.
I think it's an incredible outcome.
I think it's an incredible outcome that's available to thousands
of, I mean, so many coaches.
I'm working with 20 clients.
I'm mostly at capacity.
I've got some room.
I plan to assign, I hope to sign some clients in the next few months, but
if I can do this, I think thousands of other coaches can, can do this.
For me, that's a very exciting result.
I'm proud of it.
I enjoy it.
150, 000 does not cover my family's lifestyle.
So at this point.
I do need other revenue to support this lifestyle, but I do find
myself thinking about well, okay How does this hundred fifty thousand
become three hundred thousand?
I'm not especially goal oriented and I don't really, you know, buckle
down and say it's 300 or die this year It's not how I really function.
Also, I'm not sure that's the healthiest way to function.
I've been Coaching, you know, I've really been in my, in my
coaching business since 2014.
Now that's, that's really where the coaching business kind of solidified
and became a thing and started to support my family between my money,
work, bookkeeping, CFO ing and coaching a decade now is where I am.
And I think that there's a lot of hidden cost to trying to
grow your income too quickly.
I think that it has some big psychological costs.
I think it has some big emotional costs.
It of course has big benefit as well, but I think the cost gets ignored.
So when I think about my 150 and how it might become 300, that
does sound really great to me.
But I don't intend to make that transition quickly.
I intend to allow it to happen naturally.
It would of course happen through some combination of more sessions at the same
price, same sessions at a higher price.
Or the introduction of other business models.
This podcast might give the impression that I'm opposed to training business
models, but I'm not, I have a, I have an ongoing vision or fantasy for selling
a very expensive training program.
Very expensive because I think there can be incredible value in those two.
The reason I haven't offered it yet is because it doesn't exist.
I have not gotten to total clarity in my mind where I could
sit in front of a prospect.
And say, I am 100 percent confident that you will be glad you paid me that
amount of money for this experience.
But I promise you, as soon as I do fill that, that program will exist
and I'll sell it so enthusiastically.
So that can be a way to grow the income stream and also bring some leverage
into the income stream if it's done thoughtfully, if it's done with care.
So that's the finances.
Let's talk about marketing.
At the beginning of the episode, I think I said that the last time
I published on this podcast was almost a year ago to the day.
In the meantime, I have been very consistently participating in my
other podcast, which is called beginning balance, which I do with my.
Very close friend, Jesse Mecham, who's the founder of YNAB, the software company.
Beginning balance is the most consistent thing I've ever done in content creation
in 15 years of content creation.
Cause I really started content creation about 2008,
but this podcast did not get published since late January, 2023.
I don't think I sent any newsletters in 2023.
If I did, it was a very small handful and I didn't make any social media posts.
And as I was prepping for this episode and acknowledging myself that I
published almost zero content in 2023,
I had a few emotions.
One emotion was surprise.
I feel to a certain degree validated and vindicated because I have said in
the past, when it comes to a one on one coaching practice., you don't have to
think about , content creation at the same rate or volume as someone who's in a
training business, someone who's selling courses or group coaching or memberships.
I published almost no content in 2023 and I made 150, 000.
Now, how did I do that?
Well, because of the relationships I'd been building.
Over the previous decade.
I don't mean to make it sound like an overnight thing.
The point that I'm trying to make is the 150, 000 happened in
2023 without content creation.
I feel that some of the things I've said in past episodes are validated by that.
Where the job is actually.
To go build relationships, connect with people and where appropriate
offer coaching or honestly wait for people to ask for coaching, because
that happens to, that's pretty wild.
So one emotion about my lack of content publishing in 2023 was surprised.
Another one was actually guilt.
Now people get, especially in, you know, 2024, people get very weird
about the word guilt and how, you know, we shouldn't feel guilty.
No, I think guilt is appropriate in some scenarios when you,
when you feel deep down.
That there was a right thing to do, and that you either didn't
do it or you did the opposite.
That's a case where guilt is the appropriate emotion.
And I have this sense, a person, maybe one, but a person could benefit
from me talking into this microphone.
And I have some evidence that that's true.
And so when I think about the ability to transfer some experience, maybe
help a person shift their thinking or their emotional state, just by
talking into this microphone, and I think about that I don't do it.
Yeah, I feel guilt.
And I think that guilt is appropriate and I think the risk, the appropriate
response to guilt is a decision to, to change and to be better content
creation is a, is a puzzle to me.
It is strange to me how I don't seem to be able to crack the formula for
talking into this microphone by myself.
On a regular basis.
I think that's weird.
I do think I have at least a partial solution beginning balance.
The podcast I talked about earlier that that consistency it's been running since
2021, it has almost a hundred episodes.
I think I don't really check or pay that much attention.
The consistency there is built on the fact that one of my very best friends in the
world and I have a calendar appointment.
And during that calendar appointment, we record a podcast.
We miss often like we flake we're scheduled to meet every week.
We probably cancel 30 or 40 percent of those appointments.
One of us will cancel.
He no showed today.
I'm going to send him a text and say, Hey, back in my day, a man's calendar.
RSVP was his bond, but we recorded two last week.
Who knows?
It doesn't matter.
Trust me.
No one in the world is going to be less annoyed by a person flaking
for an appointment than I am,
But it's been so consistent because I've had a collaborator.
And so I am thinking about this podcast.
Tentatively named a podcast for coaches and how maybe it requires
collaboration in order to thrive.
Another thing that will help is that many of my clients have been using this
forever and I'm just late to the party, but a good friend of mine, Josh, told
me to check out this software Descript.
Holy moly, I have not been more impressed with a piece of software
in probably the last 10 years.
The friction that Descript removes from content production is mind blowing to me.
And I think that's going to help me be more consistent here.
So I do have every intention of pushing publish more often in 2024 and beyond.
Partly because I do think it will keep my relationships fresh and fresh,
healthy relationships contribute to a thriving coaching practice.
And partly because I believe it's the right thing to do.
It's the right thing to share an experience that could be
helpful to one other person.
And I don't care if it's only helpful to one other person
that's leverage enough for me.
Yeah, I think that's it there's some nuts and bolts about you know marketing
and Running the practice that I will talk about in upcoming episodes I
have an episode coming up that I've already recorded a draft and I think
I'll rerecord it about Marketing coaching and how I really think it boils
down to how we need to be interested in our clients and their problems.
We need to be interesting to our clients and then we need to
connect and share and converse.
That episode's coming up in a couple of weeks.
I've got an episode coming up about how coaches are making money.
And how I think it's weird that we even have to say that because of
course coaches are making money.
And yeah, that's where we are.
Thanks for tuning in.
My intention is to have an every other week published schedule.
So a couple of times a month, enjoy your coaching practice.
What an incredible way to make a living.
I'm blown away by it.
We'll talk to you next time.