My Business Journey

Hey all,



I thought it would be great to create a post that records my journey with building my Coaching Business.



The purpose of this is to journal my progress, keep myself accountable and get feedback from you guys. Once I've created a successful business it can help others by showing them what I faced and how I overcame it.



Where I am at right now.



So at the moment I am still working a 9-5 job here in Armidale. I spend about 1 hour each morning on my business before work, and try to organise any coaching or business calls after work. The weekends are my time to shine. I take on any larger projects then.



At the moment I have only one client that will be finishing up his coaching agreement in 2 weeks. So far I have been getting clients on word of mouth basis - usually I have max 2 at a time. However, now that I am looking to take this business full time I am looking to get at least 7 clients minimum before I leave my job.



How I am getting myself out there:

• Contacting people wihin my network to encourage referrals. So far I haven't gotten many hot leads however I have gotten some amazing opportunities as a result. I will be following up a couple of people over this week.


• Speaking gigs. I have my first one on the 10th of Feb in Sydney where I am part of a panel of experts talking about relationships. (let me know if you are interested a I can sent you the event details).


• I will be building a website. This has been something people have been asking of me. I plan to have it complete and ready with some high quality blog posts by the time the speaking gig comes along.


• Getting involved in relevant online forums and providing massive amounts of help and support (and not be spammy). Once I have a website I will include a link in my signatures and profile if guys want to know more.


• Volunteering at big events that attract the type of clients that I am looking for (Successful/Professional Men age 25-45 who are looking to master their relationships with their women and their work). So far I have only found one, which I have emailed but got no reply


• Getting involved in Meetup.com events. I don't live in Sydney but I have planned 1 trip in Jan and 1 in Feb. I plan to go to as much events as possible to network and be a massive contribution.

These are my ideas so far. I would love to hear what you guys suggest I could do to get myself out there?



Yeah this year is going to be challenging but incredibly exciting.



So my goals/actions for this week (by Sunday 11th Jan) are:

• Purchase domain name


• Order business cards


• Create content for website including:
  
  
  
  
  • Home page
  
  
  • About
  
  
  • Coaching info page
  
  
  • Speaking info page
  
  
  • Draft of two solid blog posts.
  
  
  
  
  


• Speak with at least 6 people from my friends and network. One will be a fellow life coach who I could potentially collaborate with - we have spoken about doing so. Its now time to pull that trigger.


• Spend 30 minutes each day interacting with forums


• Write up first version of speech and practice over the phone with mate (and receive feedback)


• Run website past my own coach, who is also an amazing internet marketer, and get his feedback

Thats plenty of actions.



On a side note: For some of the bigger projects (eg creating the website etc) I like to take myself out of the house and go to a new cafe around town over weekend. It keeps things fun and exciting. I also get an epic amount of work done as well.



Nathan