Most people don’t think about the mistakes they are making when they create a coaching business plan. They are usually striving to include everything they can. Coaches are especially prone to mistakes since they often enter their profession with little real world business experience – they think all they have to do is learn about being a good coach. They forget that they also have to be a good business person!
Why Do I Need a Business Plan?
This could be classified as the very first mistake – you shouldn’t even be asking this question. You shouldn’t even be thinking about this question! But, here’s the first answer to this question.
- It’s a must-have if you are planning to look for a loan, approach investors, or bring in a partner.
This first answer doesn’t apply to many coaching practices, but the next few are explicitly for coaches who think a coaching business plan is a waste of time:
- It will help you make decisions – about what to offer, what niche to enter, what to charge.
- It will serve as a reality check – big ideas are great, but goals that are unreachable aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
- A coaching business plan also serves as an action plan – composed correctly it offers a step-by-step guide to starting your business and getting off to a great start.
- It will help you develop new ideas – if it’s a flexible document it can be used as a creative tool to come up with new coaching and marketing ideas and solutions.
Now that you know why you need a coaching business plan, let’s explore the most common mistakes business owners make when creating this all-important document.
The Top 6 Coaching Business Plan Mistakes
- Writing it because you know you’re supposed to write it. If you just go through the motions, it won’t serve it’s a purpose as a founding document for your business, a step-by-step guide to starting your business, and as a creative tool to operate your business.
- Writing it all at once. Think it’s best to sit down one night and get it all done, just like you used to do for your college essays? Nope! It’s best to create it over a period of time – writing it in sections and adding to those sections as you come up with additional ideas.
- Not making it a document of priorities. Though a coaching business plan will contain an abundance of information about your business, potential clients, and market, you need to create priorities. What should be done first? In what order should specific tasks be completed? It helps you get the bigger tasks done first and then move on to the other ones.
- Don’t finish your coaching business plan. Huh? Don’t finish it – why should I leave it incomplete? You don’t want your business to be done before it starts, do you? Leave your business plan open-ended – this will allow for changes, flexibility, and adaptability. Your business is on-going – your business plan should be, too!
- Not being honest. When you forecast the future or predict client numbers and revenue – be honest. Optimism is good, but your optimism and excitement when starting a new business must be tempered by realism. It takes time to build up a coaching business – many coaches take years before they are pulling in the big bucks!
- Don’t over-emphasize the business idea. Yes – you have to include a mission statement, but there is much more to a coaching business than that. Coaching business plans must be detailed and comprehensive. It’s great to say that your goal is to be a great coach with plenty of clients who pay a high fee for your services, but it’s the details that will help you reach those goals.
A Business Plan is Your Founding Document
A coaching business plan is your founding document. Create it with care, treat it with respect, and update it as market and business changes happen. It is one of the foundations of your coaching practice – without it, your business may crumble and break apart!
Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!
Your article is very informative and helpful. To see how to do better with correcting their mistakes is ideal. Great job with the article.