Coaches Make Money and I Can Prove It
Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are
listening to a podcast for coaches.
It used to be called the beautiful
business as of a week ago, but
I changed the name and I hope
that when I changed the name.
It didn't break everything.
I hope that everyone's
subscriptions still work.
And if you're listening to this, I
guess that proves it did work out.
And if no one listens to this, then I'll
know it's back to the drawing board.
I'm back after about a one year
hiatus I talked about in the
episode that was published two
weeks ago in that same episode.
I talked about how much money my
coaching practice generated in 2023
and in this episode I want to talk
about how much money other people's
practices are generating in the recent
past and how much I think they'll be
generating in the near and distant future.
Now this came up for me because.
A few weeks ago, I had a call with
a client whose business is thriving.
She's reaching all time
highs in kind of every area.
And as is usually the case, when a person
reaches a new level, whether that level
is 1, 000 per month or 150, 000 per
month, when we arrive at the new level,
there's excitement and there's also this.
Surge of fear.
Now I want to talk about it because I've
observed after 10 years in this business,
this month, I'm actually celebrating
a birthday 10 years in my business.
I've seen people struggle with
two flavors of the same fear at
every level of their business.
And I, I described these
two fears this way.
The first fear is that
it's never going to work.
My business will never become
what I want it to become.
I'll never have what I
think other people have.
I'll never get where I think
other people have gotten.
And so it's this constant fear
that it's not going to work.
It's been interesting to me over the
years to observe how quickly the fear
that it will never work converts to
the fear that it will stop working.
That's a little bit more where
my, my successful client was
when we talked a few weeks ago.
Now she wasn't falling apart.
She's doing great.
She knows this is amazing.
Her clients love her.
She loves her clients.
She has this amazing community.
It's all going really well.
But there is that little voice in
her head that says, is this gonna
keep working or is it gonna go away?
Is it sustainable?
Will I lose it?
And it's the same fear.
All of it is a fear that I'll lose
what I never had, or that I lose what
I, or that I will lose what I do have.
It's all the same fear.
And by the way, I'm not
immune to these fears.
I'm not sitting up here on the pedestal,
looking down at everyone who's struggling.
I, of course, I experienced
these same things.
Like I said, my business started
10 years ago in 2014 and from 2014
all the way through 2018, 2019.
My business was paying
all of my family's bills.
It was going fine.
I had happy clients, and my
revenue was growing, and my
personal income was growing.
But it wasn't until around
2019, I remember vividly, I was
on a walk with Kate one day.
Kate's my wife.
I was on a walk with Kate one
day, and I said, You know,
I think this is gonna work.
And we were five years in, and
it had been paying our bills
pretty much the whole time.
But throughout those five years, most
days I would wake up with some version
of a sentence in my head that sounded
like Today's the day that they're all
going to realize how silly it is to pay
you money and All at once they're gonna
send an email that says you're fired.
It's completely irrational It of
course never came true Although there
was a moment a couple of years after
that, maybe three, four years after
that, where my business did evolve
significantly and it did involve moving
on for most of the clients that I had
up until that point, but none of that
justified or validated the fear that I'd
experienced because the fear was just
this irrational, illogical idea that
what I had was all going to go away.
There's no real reason to believe that.
But because it was new and because
I really loved it and because
humans seem hardwired with this
fear of loss, it did for years, it
kind of hunted me and haunted me.
You're going to lose this.
It's all going to go away.
Then what?
Then what?
You're going to lose the house, et cetera.
It was there.
It was there for five years.
It creeps in sometimes still.
But at this point, I don't know if it's
age, I don't know if it's experience,
but now I just have this persistent
thought that just says, you know,
whatever, it's all going to work out.
It's not even some aspirational thing.
It's not some, like I can
conquer the world thing.
It's, it's almost like.
The grizzled old man
being like, Oh, whatever.
It's all going to be fine.
It was fine before it'll be fine tomorrow.
It might not look exactly like it looks
today, but it'll look like something
and it's all going to work out.
It's all going to be fine.
So, my point is that I, I do struggle
with the same kind of fear that
I see my clients struggle with,
that I see my peers struggle with.
And I think these fears are made
worse by the way coaches constantly
reference each other and look
to each other for reassurance.
Now, I see this happening in two ways
and my client and I talked about how
she was doing these same two things.
Number one, coaches will look
to content for reassurance.
So they'll go to their podcasts, they'll
go to their social feeds, they'll go to
newsletters and they'll hunt for evidence
that everything's going to be okay.
They'll hunt for evidence that
their enthusiasm and their
confidence are still safe.
And valid.
And the other place they
tend to go is to community.
They go to Facebook groups, they go
to their, uh, co coaching groups that
they're members of or masterminds.
They're they're members of, and
they're looking for other people
to signal that they are safe.
They want to be able to say
things like she's doing great.
That means I can do great.
Or they are all doing great.
That means I can do great.
Something else that happens in the
coaching community is that we create
settings in which we attempt to.
Manipulate is not the right word.
It might be the right word, but I
don't, it, that sounds too cynical
and I don't want it to sound cynical.
What we do is we gather a bunch of
coaches into a conference room with a
hundred or a thousand coaches in it.
And then we have five of those coaches
come sit up on the stage and tell us
how successful they are and how they're
successful and on its worst day it sets
up this greater than less than they're
up on the stage I'm not on the stage.
They're successful.
I'm a failure.
It can set up that dynamic, which I
of course I do not like but It's an
example and sometimes it's a positive
example of coaches being able to say.
Oh, it's working for
her It can work for me.
It's not that I think
that is 100 percent bad.
I do think it's part of an unhealthy
overall long term Dynamic, where I'm
having to look to other people to reassure
me that it's all going to be okay.
Especially in the coaching community,
we have this tendency to say, Oh,
well, what they're doing is they're
showing examples of what's possible.
And yes, they, they are sort of, but
they're showing such an incomplete
picture of what it takes to be successful.
All we're really hearing are
the highlights of this is how
much money I made last year.
This is how much money I made this year.
It was 10 X more and Oh,
it's inspirational, but
it's not necessarily useful.
And I believe it's extremely fragile.
If I'm having to reference other people,
if I need someone to go up on a stage
and tell me that I'm going to be okay,
then the day there isn't a stage for
someone to go up on, I'm in trouble.
By the way, I want to say something
about coaching because sometimes cynicism
does creep into the coaching community
where people say, Oh, this is all.
Nobody makes money.
There's just a few people
at the top who make money.
It's like network marketing.
This is all kind of scammy.
And I just want to say that
I wholeheartedly disagree.
I think there are some unsavory aspects of
the coaching community, but you know what,
if you go out into the greater world, you
go to any place where a bunch of people
are trying to achieve something and
where there's a high variance in results.
And you will find exactly in, in that
setting, you will find exactly what
you find in the coaching community.
You'll find some people on the stage
talking about how they succeeded.
You'll find some people in the audience
wishing they were on the stage.
You'll find some other people
in the audience feeling
terrible about themselves.
You'll find some other people in the
audience criticizing the whole thing
and saying how it's all a racket.
It's all a scam.
Human psychology pops up
wherever humans gather.
Yes, it does happen in network marketing.
Yes, it happens in the coaching community.
If you go to a sales conference,
a national sales conference
for any big company, the same
exact dynamics will exist there.
The only place where you're really not
going to find this probably will be in
departments of companies or in communities
where there's not a high degree of
variance amongst people's results.
So if you go into the accounting
department of a Fortune 100 company,
You will hear people complaining,
but they won't be complaining about
the fact that Jim made 400, 000 last
year and they made only 30, 000.
And what's Jim's secret?
Well, no, we're all just calculating
numbers on the same spreadsheet
because we're accountants.
So there's not that much variance in
results other than the politics that
come up that got Jim promoted and
that, you know, got Mary left behind.
These things are real,
but that's different.
I'm talking about Communities and
environments where people have
the perception that hard work will
deliver a disproportionate result.
And then we get a lot of drama around
people feeling like they've worked
hard, but not gotten the results.
And does this even work anymore?
And am I wasting my time?
And I think many coaches, because they
came into the coaching world from a
life where they weren't employed at all.
And then they came back into the
workforce as a self employed coach.
So that they think the coaching community
is unique among human communities.
And it's just not, it's in many ways
identical to other human communities.
It has different tribal language.
There's a little bit more, probably
a little bit more sort of law of
attraction, manifestation, woo woo kind
of language in a coaching community and
the coaching community skews toward women.
And so.
There's going to be more of a
feminine energy in the whole thing,
but human psychology is human
psychology and wherever humans gather,
their psychology presents itself.
So I have a love hate relationship
with those communities.
On the one hand, it's amazing to
get together with people who are
like minded and to get to know each
other and to celebrate each other.
And on the other hand, we can set
up some really gross dynamics where
we have in crowds and out crowds.
And the primary measure between
those two crowds is how much
money a person generates.
But we don't have any other real
context or details about their business.
And so, it's kind of a coin toss
whether it helps or hurts a person to
be hanging around those communities.
We have this other dynamic in the
coaching community, and this is
what my client was struggling with,
is that we look to certain coaches
around whom the attention pools.
They have the biggest podcasts, they
have the biggest social followings, they
have the biggest newsletters, and we
look to them to signal what's possible.
In the community, what's
possible for a coach.
Here's the thing about
most of those coaches.
I want to say, first of all, that I
think as a community and I personally
owe them a great debt of gratitude.
And I'll explain why in a minute,
but these coaches tend to make very
similar offers to very similar people.
So their businesses overall
tend to be very similar.
So if you hear one of them sneeze,
it's likely they all have a cold.
There isn't real diversity
between these businesses.
So when one of them is thriving,
it's likely that the others are
thriving because they're making
the same offers to the same people.
And then if one of them is starting to
struggle, the other start to struggle.
Well, how does this show
up in their content?
You might think it doesn't
show up in their content.
Well, I think it does.
I podcast episodes and newsletters and
sales copy that start to say things like.
How to make money in a down economy what
to do when your offers aren't working
anymore So it's couched in this language
of how to succeed But in that language,
they are revealing their current state
of mind They wouldn't be talking about
how to succeed in any economy if they
weren't perceiving a change in the economy
In my own coaching with my clients,
one on one, which is not based around
a content relationship, it's a, it's
based around a one on one relationship.
There's really no
discussion of the economy.
For example, there's no
discussion of this used to work
and that doesn't work anymore.
We're just talking about
what's going on with you.
What's the evidence in your business?
What relationships are you fostering?
So I think some of these coaches
who have so much attention,
so much of our attention.
As their businesses struggle and the rumor
mill has made its way to me and said, Oh,
their numbers are way down or whatever.
I have no idea if it's true, then it would
make sense to me that that would make its
way into their content and their copy.
And if I'm a person who is particularly
susceptible to the signals that they
give positive or negative,, then
my mindset is going to be shaped.
According to the messages
that they're sending me.
And I'm not a fan of that.
So I'll say to you what I said to my
client when she was talking about, Oh,
she named a few big coaching brands.
Oh, I've heard they're struggling.
I've heard she's not making the
money that she used to be making.
I said, look, all the data
and all the evidence that you
need is right in front of you.
It's in your business.
It's in your numbers.
There is nothing at this point that
that coach, that coach, and the other
coach know about growing a successful
community and coaching practice.
There is nothing that
they know that you don't.
Their data is not worth more than yours.
Their opinion is not worth more
than yours to continue to get
the result that you already have.
Continue to treat your audience
the way you have engage with them.
You know what?
In fact, engage with them more than
ever engage with them better than ever.
As you continue to love them,
they will love you back.
As you continue to love them, they will
bring more people to you for you to love.
This is universal.
, this endures across generations.
This is how humans operate.
When we're treated well, we
tend to treat someone well back.
When we love something, we tend
to introduce other people to it.
This happens independent of
the current economic status.
It happens independent of any
particular trend in, , an industry
like coaching or any other industry.
These things are true.
And in her case, she has so much
evidence and so much data and such
a large community that it should be
fairly easy for her to turn her focus
entirely back to her community and to
remove her focus from some of these
big name, high attention coaches.
I want to tell you it is
safe to ignore these people.
If you're finding that their
message doesn't serve you.
You won't miss anything.
You won't miss anything.
Many of us don't have the revenue,
the data, the numbers that the
client I'm talking about has.
So we need to seek evidence elsewhere.
The same principles apply instead
of listening to what someone
else says about the environment.
I can consider the environment on my own.
If I have clients already, I can
look at the relationships I have
with those clients and I can say,
ah, these are amazing relationships.
And I can trust that relationships
create relationships.
This is a universal truth across
the generations of humanity.
Relationships create relationships,
but I can also, if I don't have that
many clients, I can also look at just
the world around me for evidence.
For example, I would have you ask
yourself a couple of questions.
Number one.
As I look around my world, including
my immediate family, my extended
family, my close friends and neighbors,
the people I go to church with, the
people in other communities where
I spend time, do I observe pain?
And if you do this for about
10 or 20 seconds, you will
see, oh yeah, I observe pain.
I observe pain in relationships.
I observe pain in finances.
I observe pain in the
physical, mental health realm.
Of course I do.
And, and sadly, I probably observe
as much or more pain than ever.
Number two, do I see any compelling
evidence that the abundance of free
and cheap information in the form of
podcasts and YouTube and Audible and
Kindle, do I see any evidence that all
of that free and cheap information.
is meaningfully addressing
all the pain that I see.
Now, for me, the answer is yes and no.
And when I say yes, what I mean is
I'm a beneficiary and I am grateful
to all of the people, including by
the way, the people I'm talking about
that are safe to ignore, but I'm also
very grateful to them because so many
of these people are so consistent in
delivering so much good intent and good
value through their content over the
years, podcasts, newsletters, all of it.
I'm grateful for how they raise the whole
community when they raise the community.
I actually believe that coaching itself
is something that has been a little
bit on the fringes in the modern world.
But many of these coaches.
Who are safe to ignore Can also be
thanked for the fact that over time
They are making it more and more normal
to get the support of a coach They
are making the market for us, and I'm
grateful for that So am I happy that
there's never been more good free
and cheap content to help people?
Consider their lives consider their
feelings consider their circumstances.
I am so grateful for it And all the
pain that I mentioned a second ago
is still there and may be growing.
So if I'm a person who wants
to support people one on one or
in small groups, there is still
plenty of pain for me to address.
Plenty of support for me to give
that's not, that's not shrinking
and it's certainly not going away.
One of the last big signals
I'll have you look at is what
is your own desire for support?
Do you have the desire to
get the support of a coach?
Now, don't misunderstand, I think
sometimes in the coaching community,
we're a little bit manipulative
where we say, how can you coach
people if you don't have a coach?
Well, I'm fine with you coaching
people and not having a coach.
I don't think it makes you unethical.
I think sometimes it may
hurt your enthusiasm.
I think you might have more
enthusiasm selling coaching if you're
currently benefiting from coaching.
But all of us go through seasons
in our life where we need more
support versus less support.
And if we're in a low support season.
Congratulations to us.
Maybe we don't want the support of a
coach as much right now, but overall,
I would hope that a coach would say,
yeah, my desire for support averaged
out over the long run is high.
I believe in one on one support.
And if you can look to that as a
signal and combine it with your
knowledge, with your awareness,
that people are in real pain.
Then you don't really need anyone else to
tell you what's true or not true about the
greater economy, community environment.
You don't need that.
What they say doesn't actually matter.
So let's get to the promise that the
title of this episode makes coaches
make money and I can prove it.
I'm in a unique position because
I have this bookkeeping service
called let's do the books, which
does bookkeeping for coaches.
I have a sample.
Not a huge sample, but it's a non
trivial sample of coaching practices.
And because of the way my bookkeeping
is, because of the way I charge for it
on a sliding scale, my sliding scale
revenue Is a reasonable indicator of
how coaches are doing right because
the more money they make the more
money I make and it's even more useful
than that because my sliding scale fee
structure is capped so my revenue can't
be disproportionately propped up by the
clients that I have who are making tens
of thousands or hundreds of thousands per
month Because they pay me the same fee
as a person who's making seven or eight
thousand a month So the average is made
a little bit truer by the fact that those
outliers can't skew that average And
all I can tell you is this, my revenue
per client is steadily trickling upward.
I'm not trying to hyperbolize that.
I'm not saying that it's easy.
I'm not saying everyone's
making a jillion dollars.
I'm not saying any of that.
What I'm saying is.
With a non trivial sample,
people's income is trending upward.
The end.
Now, would I love to dig into
each and every one of those
businesses and do case studies?
Sure, I would.
That would be a lot of work.
I don't know that I'll ever do it.
And I don't know that the information
is available to me in that way.
But at the very least, what I can give you
is a counterpoint to any rumor, any piece
of content that you hear that says, it
used to work, but it doesn't work anymore.
If you're a person who wants and has
the ability to support people one on
one in self actualizing, in solving
the pain in their life, figuring out
their relationships, figuring out their
health, figuring out their finances.
If you're a person who wants to do
that, has the ability to do it and
is working to increase your ability,
your prospects are as good as ever.
And so are mine, by the
way, I'm in the same boat.
I pay my family's bills
with one on one support.
And if I didn't believe that was
going to be there, I would switch.
I would pivot.
I've had other businesses.
I can have other businesses.
I'm not saying it would be easy, but I
could, but observing the relationships
that I have, observing the business that
I have, all the signs point to me that I
can have a nice, steady, stable income.
That increases gradually over time from
offering people one on one support.
Coaches are making money
and I can prove it.
And I am proving it.
So if you're getting messages that go
contrary to your confidence, your hope,
your optimism, I would encourage you
to cut those messages out of your life
and to redirect that
energy and that attention.
To building relationships,
increasing in confidence and
skill and supporting your clients.
Have a great couple of weeks and we'll see
you back here on a podcast for coaches.
