6 Tips for Writing Usable Coaching Business Plans

Think coaching businesses don’t need coaching business plans? Well, think again. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have – life coaching or selling lemonade on the side of the road, you need a business plan!

Does a Coach Really Need a Business Plan?

The short answer is YES. The long answer is Of course!

The Small Business Administration notes on its website that “the importance of a comprehensive, thoughtful business plan cannot be over-emphasized.” William Bygrave, a professor at Babson College conducted a study in 2006 in which he studied several years’ worth of Babson College graduates to determine if the ones who had started their businesses with a formal, written business plan were better off than those who started their businesses without business plans. The answer he found was surprising – it didn’t seem to make a difference.

So – what’s the answer? Prevailing wisdom and the advice of many experts is to write a business plan, and coaches, coaching business plans are needed, too!

You Can’t Write a Business Plan Just to Get it Done

Perhaps one of the problems with some entrepreneurs is that they really don’t put much effort into writing the business plan. A coaching business plan, or a plan for any type of business needs to be comprehensive. Research, effort, and time is required to create a functional business plan.

It’s not a repot for school that you do at 11Pm the night before it’s due – it’s a project that will take some research time and more time developing the concepts. Just like a coaching practice, coaching business plans aren’t created in a day!

6 Tips to Creating Usable Coaching Business Plans

Here are a few quick tips on writing a business plan for a coaching business:

• Give yourself plenty of time to write the plan. A few days, a few weeks, whatever it takes to finish a comprehensive business plan.
• Don’t write it during normal working hours. If you are working another job while starting a coaching practice, don’t even think about trying to compose it in between meetings, phone calls, and conferences with the boss!
• Make it comprehensive – cover areas such as Administrative, Vision, Values and Core Principles, Desired Goals and Outcomes (both short term and long term), and Marketing.
• Include a SWOT analysis. What’s SWOT? S -strengths, W – weaknesses, O – opportunities, and T – threats.
• Don’t forget to include a section on marketing. Most coaches hate marketing, but it is an absolute necessary part of running a successful coaching practice. It must be comprehensive and include different possible types of marketing and ways to assess success or failure.
• Be sure to look at examples of other coaching business plans. This is a good way to find an outline for your own business plan.

If you are ready to start a coaching practice, you should invest the time in creating a comprehensive yet concise business plan. It should be a formal, written plan that will serve as a guide and reference for as long as you own your coaching business.