How to Become a Successful Business Coach or Consultant

Michael Port

How to Become a Successful Business Coach or Consultant

There is ONE major differentiator between successful coaches and coaches who are struggling…

That differentiator is what you sell.

The most successful coaches in the industry sell their products and services neatly wrapped up in comprehensive, proprietary intellectual property. Everyone else sells general “coaching.”

There’s a big difference between selling general “coaching services” and selling a very specific system that produces a very specific result for a very specific client.

Book Yourself Solid is that kind of system. It’s why our coaches and consultants are recognized as the most successful in the world.

If you don’t have a system like that to offer potential clients, what do you have that they’d be compelled to buy? You ARE compelling on your own, that’s for sure. But is it enough to have a never-ending stream of “likes” on your social posts? Maybe…but usually not.

Fear not; we come armed with three solutions. Choose which is right for you, and you’ll see an immediate increase in your client flow and, as a result, your cash flow…

Solution One? Build it from scratch.

Create your own extensive, comprehensive intellectual property that makes a major statement in your industry. This is what Michael Port did with Book Yourself Solid, and it’s one of the main reasons it has been so successful for over fifteen years.

Dale Carnegie’s leadership and public speaking coaching business stemmed from his seminal work, How To Win Friends and Influence People. Without this crucial piece of intellectual property, his hugely successful training company wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the amount of traction it has today.

Ken Blanchard is another example from the same industry. On the back of the success of his short book, The One Minute Manager, he now runs a worldwide coaching and training company.

But you don’t need to have an international best-selling book to get these results; we can look at other examples.

Who is the world’s most successful sleep coach for babies and toddlers? You might not know the answer to that, but Kim West dominates the industry based on her proprietary Good Night, Sleep Tight solution.

Admittedly, this approach isn’t for everybody, but if it IS for you, then you’re backing a winner.

Now, ready for a potential downside?

It’s likely to take you years rather than months to get this off the ground. But if you do, these are years that will be very well spent.

Ultimately the marketplace will decide if the intellectual property you create is actually worth paying for. In the meantime, let’s see if you are, at heart, an intellectual property creator or if your true calling is to be a coach.

Let’s try a quick exercise:

Grab a pen and paper and jot down a title for a four-part program.
Within that program, create seven unique components for each part, each one addressing an urgent and compelling need for your target market and delivering a single big result for your audience.
Each of the 28 steps should contain new insights and actionable content. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel at this stage. In fact, the most skilled intellectual property developers are adept at repurposing (but not stealing) existing content – but your result should be brand new to the marketplace.
Next up, can you formulate a comprehensive year-long marketing strategy to get people into your programs based on your intellectual property? You’ll, of course, have to design the format, delivery, pricing, and structure of these programs.

It’s a lot of work, huh?

But don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t come naturally. While content creation can be learned, it isn’t necessarily going to be the best use of your time and resources.

Many of our Book Yourself Solid Professionals, for example, are fantastic at the coaching and consulting side of things but haven’t the inclination or skill-set, or desire to go about creating proprietary intellectual property.

So instead, they use ours.

Decide if this course of action is for you. If it is, then run with it. As I said before, the market will ultimately decide if it wants to pay for the fruits of your labor. But if you don’t try, you’ll never find out.

Solution Two? Become a franchisee.

This solution allows you to use other people’s intellectual property. You can’t, of course, do this by stealing it (but I know I don’t have to tell you that).

Coaching franchises exist that will give you the tools and marketing materials you need to sell their products to your audience.

In buying into a coaching franchise, you’ll be allowed to use materials previously developed by somebody else and sell them to your own clients under that original brand name.

In return for a lump-sum payment and an ongoing monthly fee, plus a percentage of your sales, you’ll be given the right to sell the franchisor’s materials to individuals or companies within a defined geographic area.

Several opportunities like this are available, ranging from sales training schools to marketing programs and entire top-down business coaching.

The franchisors — and this differs from organization to organization — should be keen to ensure that you have the necessary tools to sell their products and programs. After all, the more money you make, the more money they make.

The most successful coaching franchises have a strict Red Velvet Rope Policy in place, which means they put a barrier to entry in place ensuring that only the most committed coaches become franchisees.

This barrier is usually financial. For example, the two leading business-coaching franchises will not let you become a franchisee unless you are prepared to make an initial investment of the better part of $100,000.

That means that only those who have the means apply.

The advantages of this system are that you have the materials already created for you. Some of them will even allow you to rent a virtual office assistant to answer the phone on your behalf.

This is a viable solution for many new coaches who feel comfortable within a more corporate structure. In addition, with monthly financial reporting to head-office, the accountability factor is high.

Also, to succeed, you’ll have to reach for the skies with your pricing, as the continued cost to remain a franchisee is usually considerable.

Solution Three? License proven material.

The third solution is to license the use of somebody else’s proven intellectual property.

This is different from the franchise model. It often requires a considerably lower initial investment, lower monthly fees, and no percentage of sales – whatever you make is yours.

In addition, you’ll have the right to re-fashion and repurpose the material as you see fit for your audience. Sometimes, you can even put your own name to the material, mix it up with your own ideas and intellectual property and rebrand it as something you can legitimately call your own.

Our Book Yourself Solid Professionals, for example, have a full legal license to use all of the material that we have put together over the last decade, including course structure, marketing material, and even promotional content. This is in return for small a one-off investment and a period of intensive personal training with me and Matthew.

I’m fully aware of my bias to this solution because it’s the one we offer. I do so because I think it’s most profitable for you as a coach or consultant (and the fastest way to get in the game).

Another advantage of this method is the advantage of transferred credibility.

Surgeons, actors, designers, athletes, and life coaches boost their credibility by referencing their mentors.

Looking for an NLP trainer? You’ll be reassured to know that your trainer has studied personally under Richard Bandler.

If you’re looking for a chess teacher, then a student of Kasparov is almost as good as Kasparov himself. So it is with Book Yourself Solid training. Teaching a system that is proven to work and that is internationally respected will confer the benefit of recognition and credibility to your own practice, even if you’re just starting out.

It's never too late.

So there you have it, the single biggest difference between wildly successful coaches and coaches that are just getting by?

Intellectual property.

Remember this as you forge ahead with your career as a coach or consultant. It should be the cornerstone of the services you offer and the brand you create for yourself.

If you’re just starting out, or you’re already a coach or consultant without recognizable IP, it’s never too late to start.

Choose one of those three options above:

Create your own IP
Become a franchisee, or;
License proven material

And don’t stop until you hit the top!

We’re always on the lookout for genuine, motivated, and ambitious coaches or consultants to join our network as Licensed Book Yourself Solid Professionals.

Click here to find out more about that