In the infancy of your coaching business, people will approach you with various business opportunities. Often times the opportunities will not align with your strategic business goals. Those people will tell you to recognize other revenue streams to enhance profitability. They’ll offer you get-rich-quick schemes and fancy propositions that sound amazing. You may even give in to the temptation of making a quick buck and say, “Yes, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll sell jewelry or makeup on the side. How can saying yes to a new opportunity hurt my coaching business?”
Let’s break it down.
Saying “yes” can distract you from reaching your revenue goal.
All opportunities take time, investment, and work to make profitable. Like your coaching business, you need to earn the trust of your leads by sharing content, demonstrating the benefits of the product or service, and sharing testimonials. Nine out of ten times, this “new opportunity” is not in alignment with your coaching business strategic goal, which will confuse your coaching clients. Instead of building a reputation for facilitating transformations, you become known for selling someone else’s product or service. Quickly, your coaching business revenue goal is taken a back seat to your “new opportunity.”
Saying “no” is about prioritization — identifiying what really matters to you and focusing on that.
Ryan McGrath, Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor
Saying “yes” can erode your reputation as a coach.
Your coaching reputation is essential to growing and maintaining a healthy and wealthy coaching business. Being reputable takes focus and consistency. Leaders in the coaching industry focus on activities that align with their strategic goals and favorably enhance their professional reputation. Many leading coaches are so focused that their audience only knows them for excellence in a specific coaching niche. When you deviate and participate in opportunities that are not aligned with or support your coaching reputation, you are essentially delaying and possibly eroding it.
Saying “yes” may violate your professional boundaries.
Ryan McGrath said it best in his Entrepreneur article, Why Saying ‘No’ Can Actually Help Your Business or Starup, “Saying “no” is about prioritization — identifiying what really matters to you and focusing on that.” When you inappropriately say “yes,” you are saying “no” to what is important to you, which includes critical strategic goals, personal time with family, and an opportunity that contributes to your professional reputation.
“physician compensation for specialists was 45.6 percent more than primary care providers earned in the past year.”
Jacqueline LaPointe, Revcycle Intelligence Contributor
Saying “yes” can make you a generalist instead of a specialist.
Wealth is where the niche is. The more you specialize, the more money you will make. Primary care doctors are great for family care and general health issues. However, brain surgeons, GYNs, and other specialists make more money. You want to be known as the brain surgeon, not the primary care doctor. When you say yes to misaligned “new opportunities,” you are saying no to being a brain surgeon, and people will see you as a primary care doctor. You don’t go to a primary care doctor for brain surgery. According to Jacqueline LaPointe’s Revcycle Intelligence article, Physician Compensation for Specialists 45.6% More than for PCPs, “physician compensation for specialists was 45.6 percent more than primary care providers earned in the past year.”
Brain surgeons say “no” to anything that does not relate to the brain.
Evaluate your list of active endeavors, and begin to prune those that are not aligned to your strategic goal.
To help you stay focused, grab a copy of our free Priority Matrix.
