A Podcast for Coaches

Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are
listening to a podcast for coaches.

Today I wanna share with you an
abbreviated call from my Office Hours

community, and it's the call in which
I articulate for the first time a new

hypothesis I have around how coaching
practices can actually get full

without the coach having to spend too
much time or money pursuing clients.

If you like what you hear, you
really should consider giving

the Office hours community a try.

You can go to office hours with mark.com

and do a 30 day trial for just $1,
but whether or not you join us in the

Office Hours community, I would ask you
to seriously consider the concepts and

the ideas that I share in this episode.

I think they're different.

I think they're compelling.

I think that if you can buy in to
these ideas, you could transform the

way you think about your practice.

You could go from having to think
about yourself mostly as a marketer to

mostly as a coach, and in my opinion.

That's what we all want, so enjoy the
episode and I will talk to you next time.

Mark Butler: Hello, I'm Mark
Butler and you are watching this or

listening to this because you are
a member of Office Hours with Mark.

And when I launched Office Hours, I
launched the website with a specific

headline and the headline said, fill your
coaching practice without advertising.

That's an exciting promise to me.

The truth is I had a lot of confidence
that I could guide people in the

direction of how to fill their
coaching practices without advertising.

But I don't know that I could
have spoken in very clear terms

about how I think that happens.

I think it's finally coalesced in
my mind and do a, a single kind of

mantra or hypothesis that I believe
works reliably for anyone who wants

to fill a one on one practice.

So let's start today by.

Reminding ourselves of what the objective
here, the objective is to create a one

on one coaching practice that delivers
five to 15 coaching sessions per week

without spending too many hours or
too many dollars pursuing clients.

That's the objective as I understand it.

That's the objective as I've proposed it.

That's what we're shooting for here.

If that's not what you're excited
about, you probably won't be

excited about this approach.

This is a way to have a one on
one practice fit in your life.

Without having to give it a bunch of
extra resources, this is a way to approach

your practice patiently so that as time
passes, you notice that more and more

of your week, more and more of your
available coaching time is filled by

clients without you ever having to hire
a Facebook ads contractor or, you know,

whatever.

That's the objective.

This is the hypothesis.

This is the mantra.

As I spend time in spaces and with people,
I enjoy becoming more interested and

interesting coaching clients will appear
confidence, curiosity, and patience.

Save me from anxious, desperate chasing.

I build my practice in a way that feels
good now and will feel good later.

Never believing the lie that
misery is the price of success.

So let's go through it sentence by
sentence and see if I can make the case

that this is maybe the right plan for you.

So first let's talk about
spending time in spaces.

And with people you enjoy, you're
going to go where your people are.

You're going to go where
your people are online.

You're going to go where
your people are offline.

It's total personal preference.

Some people really enjoy
spending time in Facebook groups.

Around specific topics and around specific
communities, those Facebook groups may or

may not have anything to do with coaching.

They may relate to other
hobbies, other passions of yours.

I'm not a person who likes to
spend time in a Facebook group or a

slack channel or group or whatever.

That doesn't appeal to me very much,
but I have Watched my peers and some

of my clients have great success in
building relationships and then through

those relationships seeing client
relationships Spark by hanging out in

online spaces of all kinds same thing
with offline spaces Hanging out at the

gym you like to go to the yoga studio
You like to go to the church you like

to go to your work your office Your
neighborhood community get togethers

affinity groups like hiking groups and,
networking groups, which sometimes can

get a bad rap because networking groups
can often be seen as highly transactional.

I get that.

But the key to this is that you're going
to meet and to listen and to connect.

You are not going to sell.

Other people might be there to sell,
but you are not going there to sell.

You are not going to spaces
because you believe they are

the spaces where you will.

Find your clients.

You're going to those spaces and
meeting with those people, hanging out

with those people because you want to.

The idea of quote, getting clients
may or may not even cross your mind.

I would hope that your primary
motivation would be, I like these

people and I like this space.

I like this activity.

That's why I'm going there.

And that's my intent in going there.

It's to meet, it's to
listen, it's to connect.

If you don't feel enthusiastic
about going, go somewhere else.

I don't think it's a long term
winning strategy to go places and

do things just because you believe
they will quote get you clients.

It's not that I think that's
an absolutely losing strategy.

You can do that and you can have
client relationships start as a result.

But in the long run, I think the winning
strategy is to go where you want to

go and be there with people you enjoy.

So that the dread doesn't creep
in to the habit and start to build

resistance and friction such that
eventually you quit that activity.

These things change over time as well.

There was a season roughly, let's say 2016
to 2019, where I really enjoyed getting

on an airplane and flying to an event
where there would be a bunch of coaches.

It was fun.

I enjoyed the travel.

I enjoyed the content.

I enjoyed the people.

Somewhere around the end of 2019.

That itch felt scratched.

I was noticing I didn't
really want to travel anymore.

I wasn't excited to go.

The content wasn't as
interesting to me anymore.

The communities didn't feel as
aligned with my values anymore.

And so early 2020 around the
time COVID hit, in fact, I had

already decided I don't really
want to travel for work anymore.

It doesn't appeal to me.

So I decided that I wasn't really going
to many coaching events from then on.

So when I lost the enthusiasm, if
I couldn't generate the enthusiasm,

I just stopped going there and
I decided to be other spaces.

In my case, I had built enough
relationships during the season where

I was willing to get on a plane.

And connect with other coaches that when
I do things like a podcast for coaches

and when I do things like office hours
with Mark, and when I very occasionally

send newsletters, there are enough
relationship seeds already there that my

newsletter and my podcast end up being a
space in which people hang out with me.

And build enough affinity that eventually
I, you know, I get messages asking

if I have coaching availability.

So I only want to do these things, not
if they just always feel so easy and

so fun, but if I feel a lot of dread
around it, I'm just not going to do it.

There is a space and there are people
that I'll be excited to spend time with.

And the job is to find those and
spend time there, even if they

seem to have nothing whatsoever
to do with your coaching practice.

This by itself, I believe it's the
foundation of a winning strategy

for having, not an easy, but
maybe an ease full way of growing

your, your coaching practice.

So that's where we start
spaces and people we enjoy.

So next up we have
interested and interesting.

It might seem to you that interested is
the thing that you've already got covered,

that everybody already has covered.

They're entertained
and they're fascinated.

They're curious about coaching
topics and people's psychology, their

behavior, their relationships, and
helping them thrive in those things.

So you might say, I'm already
definitely interested.

I've got it covered.

I'm talking about a different
type and level of interest.

Obsession is too strong a word, but
it moves us in the right direction.

The person who is truly interested
in their work goes into what my own

coach Liz has called a scholar phase.

And in a scholar phase, the
person is paying a price in

time and effort and ego to.

Know something about a thing
that other people don't know to

experience it in a way that other
people have not experienced it.

So the way to get interested is to
make more effort with more intention

and more focus in developing your
knowledge and experience in an area

then other people are willing to pay.

So if I were to describe my interested
phase in the world of coaching, my

scholar phase, my phase of deep interest
was kind of 2015 to about 2021 ish.

And in those six years, I was deep in the
trenches of a bunch of coaching practices.

And it was hard work and it was costly
in time and it was costly in ego and

it was costly in freedom because I
didn't always love the work I was doing.

I mean, I was up to my elbows
in coaching businesses in all

different kinds of coaching.

Models, tens of thousands of
coaching transactions because

I was doing accounting.

And when I came out the other side of
that, I believe that I'm in the top 1

percent of the world's population of
people who really know what coaching

businesses look like from the inside.

So almost anything that anyone
says about a coaching business.

I have experienced it.

I've seen it.

I can ask them questions to tease out what
they actually mean, how it actually works.

That was a price paid over the course of
years and a few thousand hours to where

I can say, I know coaching businesses.

I know training businesses.

I know them inside and out.

That was my interested phase.

What does it look like to bridge that gap?

My interest in coaching
businesses and in coaches.

Are what created this mantra,
this hypothesis that I'm

sharing with you today.

It's a lot of hard thinking.

So we listen, we learn, we read, we care,
and we hang out there for a long time.

In my opinion, truly becoming interested
in a topic goes beyond consuming

what other people have said about
it in the most consumable, Places.

YouTube, social media podcasts for
me, depth looks like primary research.

It's, it still could be books,
but maybe it's older books.

Maybe it's thicker books.

Maybe it's books that don't necessarily
seem completely related to the thing,

but they might have some nuggets
and I'm willing to dig through them.

It looks like trying to get experience.

So this is not a consumption.

Interest that I'm talking about here.

This is effortful and costly.

Is it effortful and costly beyond
the 5 to 7 hours per week that

we're hoping to spend in session
with our clients eventually?

Anyway, probably not.

What I am saying is, if you will become
unusually interested, In the thing that

you're trying to help people with, and if
you will direct your effort accordingly

and make a sacrifice that maybe other
people aren't willing to make, you're

showing a higher level of interest.

The payoff is that you
become more interesting.

It's really, really hard to
become interesting without

having first demonstrated a
high level of interest yourself.

So we're getting really interested
is about listening, learning,

reading, caring, experiencing.

Being interesting ends up being
practice, writing, sharing, and teaching.

So you're taking what you learned in the
interest phase, or in the scholar phase,

and now you're sharing it and teaching it.

In the process of being very interested
over an extended period of time, you

become harder to ignore, because you have
more experience and more insight, and more

opinions, defensible opinions, than people
who have invested less time, effort,

energy, ego, in the interest phase.

The more we're regurgitating and
rehashing what we've been taught,

the easier we are to ignore.

This is why one of the things I
talk about so much with people

when it comes to content is
practicing productive disagreement.

If you will take what you've been
taught or what other people say,

conventional wisdom, if you will take
it and you will try to find ways to

productively disagree with it, you
become more interesting in the process.

Just recently to a group here in
office hours, I said, I think that

really the 11 years that I've spent
in the coaching world are defined by.

Number one, me having the great
opportunity and blessing of working

with incredibly high performing
coaches, high performing in terms of

content and sales and numbers of people
served and all of that, and being

in a support role for those people.

And eventually finding ways to
productively disagree with them.

Now, I still agree with a
very high percentage of what

most of my former clients say.

So this isn't about
me versus them, right?

Versus wrong, good versus evil.

This is, you have a way of doing things.

You have a way of seeing things.

You have a way of saying things and given
my experience and my values and my bias.

I disagree with points A, B, and C, and I
think I can back up my disagreement with

stories and data and in that disagreement,
people suddenly have a reason to pay

attention to the other person and me.

But I've said for a long time now, if
you're saying the same thing in the same

way to the same people in the same place
at the same time as many other people,

you are not necessary to the equation.

You may get some attention.

There may be some interest coming
your way, but if I know that you're

teaching exactly what the other
person is teaching and I'm human.

So if I know that more people are paying
attention to the person who taught

you the thing that you're teaching
me, unless there's some big friction

in my ability to consume it directly
from them, I'm going to consume it.

Directly from them

I think in the long run if we're talking
about investment Versus return the person

who will in the long run get more return
per effort will be the person who finds

a way to be just a little bit harder
to ignore a little bit differentiated

from the person they learned from or
from the group of people that they

learned from what is going to be.

My disagreement with them and on the
basis of what learning, what experience

and what stories can I disagree with
them in an interesting way so that people

find me harder to ignore and have a
greater desire to pay attention to me.

So, we're going to be scholars and we're
going to dig in and learn and experience

and disagree and practice and fail all in
pursuit of having something useful to say.

But then in saying it,
we've got to not be boring.

We've got to be interesting.

So the job is to become harder to ignore.

Coaching clients will appear.

I phrased this in a specific way.

Because I feel quite strongly that in
the long run, you want your coaching

practice to, get full and stay full as
people reach out and ask you for coaching,

not as you become the best at reaching
out and offering coaching to them.

The issue is if my objective is to
deliver 5 to 15 coaching sessions per

week without spending too many hours or
too many dollars in the pursuit of the

client then As an efficiency factor, I
need people to reach out to me because I

don't want to close 50 percent of consults
because I don't want to do any consults.

I want my coaching practice to be filled
mostly by people reaching out to me and

saying, Mark, do you have availability?

Me saying yes, them saying great.

When can we start?

That's not always how it happens, but
in my case and in many of their coaches

cases, that's usually how it happens.

I think it's a function of being
interested, interesting, letting

people have an awareness of the fact.

Yeah, I'm available to coach you
and then waiting for them to ask.

So just the other day, a client texted
me and said, I just got another client.

She stays pretty full, uh, over time.

She fits our model.

You know, the five to 15 coaching
sessions per week, not too many hours or

dollars spent in the pursuit of clients.

She fits the model perfectly.

She texts me and says,
I just got a new client.

And she said, you were right.

The best clients are the ones who find us.

That is another truth that I think I've
discovered and that I think I can defend.

You will find that the clients who are
happiest with your work, easiest to serve,

most likely to renew and refer, will
be those who started the relationship.

By reaching out to you,

if you can buy fully into this idea
that I want to be asked for coaching,

not ask people if they will allow
me to coach them, then what you

will do is in the time between those
yeses, those difficult, quiet times

between when a client is saying yes
to you, you'll refocus your effort.

On where you're spending time with
whom you're spending time and becoming

more interested and more interesting.

So that it becomes inevitable that
a person, and then people ask you if

you have availability and could we
have a conversation about coaching?

The really uncomfortable reality
here is that if no one is ever asking

you for coaching in the long run, if
you're finding that you have to go

sort of hunt every coaching client.

You ever work with first of all,
you've created a job for yourself.

That isn't very appealing to me.

Secondly, You may be promoting something
in the world that doesn't have enough

intrinsic appeal that people pursue it.

Confidence, curiosity, and patience.

A confident person says, I know who I am.

I value and validate myself.

Now, many of us, maybe most of us
would say, of course I feel that way.

I know who I am and I
value and validate myself.

But if I watched the silent movie of
their lives, I would see a lot of anxious

chasing behaviors and, Looking for
other people to value and validate you

so that you can feel good about yourself.

All of us do some of this.

I do some of this, but in my
coaching practice, I am now

confident enough that I know who I
am and I value and validate myself.

Enough.

People resonate with me and my
work that I will have a full

thriving coaching practice.

That's what I mean by confident.

Curious is just this ongoing.

I wonder.

I wonder what else I
could learn about this.

I wonder who else I could connect with.

I wonder where I could go spend time
that I would enjoy spending time.

It's curiosity as opposed to anxiety.

And then patience is the constant
reminder that there's no hurry.

I'm living a full life.

Coaching clients will come into
that full life in their own time.

We want to pursue more
fullness in our life.

Let's do that.

And the coaching clients are on their way.

They're on their way.

Saves me from anxious, desperate chasing.

That's where we are in the mantra.

Saves me from anxious, desperate chasing.

I believe that most courses, most
trainings, most masterminds are

purchased by coaches who cannot
cope with the silence between yeses.

When people buy a course, when
they attend a training, when

they buy into a mastermind,
that's mostly an anxiety driven.

Not only does it not necessarily
accelerate the arrival of the next.

Yes.

It muddies the water around
what actually impacts the next.

Yes.

It puts coaches in situations where they
buy a course, the yeses don't arrive.

They join a mastermind,
the yeses don't arrive.

And they start to think
that it was the courses.

Or the masterminds that were wrong, but
what might have actually happened is

the courses in the masterminds actually
increased their anxiety because they

looked around and got the idea that
everyone else is winning and I'm losing.

Everyone else is smart and I'm dumb, etc.

So their anxiety increased.

So it actually had the opposite effect.

So courses, masterminds and trainings
are usually not the antidote

to anxious chasing behaviors.

Usually that's getting internally
regulated, finding our own inner peace.

And that ends up being the thing that's
attractive to the people we hope to serve.

Our job is to avoid through our internal
peace, through our genuine interest

and curiosity and confidence and
self acceptance is to avoid anxious,

desperate chasing when we know.

Because we check in with ourselves.

I'm desperate.

I'm anxious, and I'm chasing.

We know that whatever we're doing
can be stopped without any negative

consequence to our practice.

In fact, if we stop anxiously
chasing, there will be positive

consequences to our practice.

Because Never forget the chased
animal always runs, the curious

animal always approaches.

The chased coaching
prospect will run away.

The curious coaching prospect,
the person who's observing you and

wondering how you've made the changes
you've made and who's remembering the

interesting thing you said the last
time you were together, that person,

the curious person will approach.

The chased person will run away.

I build my practice in a way that feels
good now and will feel good later.

Now, when I say feels good
now, I don't mean this whole

process is devoid of discomfort.

It's going to have discomfort, but it's
going to have discomfort now and later

there'll be discomfort and awkwardness now
and later there'll be fun and connection

now and later there will be learning.

Now and later growth, now and
later boredom, now and later

there will be disappointment and
exhilaration and hope all of it.

You'll have it now and
you'll have it later.

You should never buy into the lie,
which we'll talk about more in a second.

That I'm in the uncomfortable part
of growing a coaching practice and

then the uncomfortable part will end
and then I will be in the comfortable

part of having a coaching practice
and that there will be a dividing line

between the two and I'll cross over a
threshold and I'll throw a party and

oh boy, it used to be uncomfortable.

Now it's comfortable.

But I would say about myself
now having done some form of

coaching since 2000 and eight.

Yes, we move the needle.

I'm a lot more comfortable more
of the time than I was in keeping

a full coaching practice, but
I'm still uncomfortable a lot.

I have very uncomfortable
interactions with clients.

Sometimes I say and do the wrong thing.

I have to apologize sometimes a person
who I thought would renew doesn't renew.

Sometimes a person quits in
the middle of their sessions.

There's discomfort available to me at
every stage of having a coaching practice.

It never goes away, but it never
has to be something that feels.

At a basic level, wrong or
inauthentic to me or dishonest

or incongruent with my values.

That this isn't honest versus dishonest.

That's not what I'm saying.

This is true to myself and to who
I want to be or not as true to

who I am and who I want to be.

So.

There are some people that I really
think that once they get into

coaching, they're going to discover,
they just don't like it very much.

I mean, it's just, that's just the deal.

If I get into it and I, find that the
work of developing a coaching practice

and then of maintaining that coaching
practice, if I find that they just

don't feel good to me and right to
me, it's okay to go do something else.

We can express our genius elsewhere.

Everybody has some genius.

It's a question of looking for the place
where that genius is best expressed.

So if a person feels miserable,
there's a lie that I think we hear

in the personal development world
that misery is the price of success.

Now, we also hear a lot that
discomfort is the price of success.

And of course, I agree with that.

But sometimes the way people frame this
idea is like we're in the trenches and

it's so hard and it's, uh, this is awful,
but eventually we'll make it through.

And when you make it through,
then the vacations and the houses

and all of it's going to come.

What's truer is that it's not miserable.

And the discomfort is
actually not terrible.

Most of the discomfort is the discomfort
that we generate with fear and impatience.

That's where most of the discomfort is.

There's some discomfort and feeling
like we completely blew it on a coaching

session, which I still experience.

There's some discomfort
and having a person that we

thought would say, yes, say no.

There's some discomfort there, but
overall, I don't think growing a coaching

practice offers a lot more discomfort
or more extreme discomfort than getting

into a car at seven in the morning and
commuting to an office and being in a

cubicle all day and then commuting home.

That's not necessarily
a bad thing either, but

if the thing that you feel like
you're supposed to do right now

feels very miserable or very
dangerous, I would suggest that.

That's something, true
and correct inside of you.

It's telling you it's just the
wrong thing to do, maybe not

for someone else, but for you.

And that there's some other way for
you to spend time in spaces and with

people you enjoy working to become more
interested and interesting, staying in

confidence and curiosity and patience.

That will have discomfort in it,
but then the clients will arrive

and you'll realize, Oh, number one,
it's not as exciting as I thought it

would be when the clients arrived.

I'm thrilled about it, but it's
not the fireworks necessarily

that I thought it would be.

And number two, you'll
realize, wait, that's it.

Isn't there a lot more to it than that?

No, there's not a lot
more to it than that.

But what we find is that because
people can't cope with the silence, the

space in between yeses, And they get
involved in a lot of frantic activity

and then they talk about the frantic
activity that they're involved in.

You fall prey to the idea that it's
all much harder than it actually is.

You'll notice as I conclude,
this whole conversation didn't

include anything about niche.

It didn't mention anything about
content or content strategy.

Not that those things have no place,
but those things do not matter.

The way our industry culture talks
about them, because if you're a

person who spends time with other
people in places you enjoy, you have

real enduring curiosity and interest
in the problems you hope to solve

and the people you hope to support.

If you're willing to share that
interest as you accumulate it in the

form of sharing, teaching, writing.

Speaking, et cetera, clients will appear,

they will,

my focus from now forward will be
to try to back up my words today.

I don't want to be guilty of presenting
a simple case like this one and

then teaching complex topics or
implementations of those topics.

I don't want to be guilty of saying.

Here's how to do this very complicated
thing in order to get a client.

I will teach things like, you know,
I'm working right now and how do I

write 52 newsletters at once, but I'm
only trying to write 52 newsletters at

once because I want to be interesting
and trustworthy in a specific context.

And I think that might be the best
way for me to get that done, but I

will never say that somebody else
needs to do that, that they need to

implement things the way that I am.

For me, I'm just expressing this
principle of being interested

and interesting in that way.

But you're not going to
hear me do challenges.

I'm not going to say, okay, for the
next 30 days, we're all going to

try to go have 16 conversations.

I might say, oh, consider this.

Consider this way of engaging with
the activity, but I'm just going to

keep teaching these principles and
inviting you to consider how you

want to express these principles.

My goal, if you and I share the
same objective of delivering five

to 15 coaching sessions per week,
Without spending too many hours

or dollars pursuing clients.

My goal is that in the months and years
to come, I'll be hearing messages

from you that say, yeah, I do have
five clients a week right now.

And it hasn't felt very hard.

I'm almost wondering if it was too
easy or if it was a fluke, because I

didn't suffer very much along the way.

And I'll say, no, by my
standards, you did it right.

You did it right.

And now I want there to be thousands
more of you and thousands more of me

whose primary focus is supporting those
five to 15 clients a week so that as a

group, we move the needle in people's
happiness, health, and relationships.

That's where we're going.

And with that, I will leave you
to consider these ideas and to

ask me questions about them in
an upcoming open coaching call.

Thank you for being here.

I will talk to you soon.