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7 Lies About Scaling your Coaching or Consulting Business
There are a lot of coaches and consultants who buy into several lies about scaling their business. So many people use the term scaling, however it is very broad. A coach or consultant could be scaling to 5-figures, 6-figures, or even 7 or 8-figure months. There are different things needed to scale a coaching or consulting business for each of these levels. Since I have successfully scaled my business to 7-figures, I know what it takes and can explain each of the seven lies I have come across.
Here are the 7 lies about scaling a coaching or consulting business:
#1 It’s Easy to Scale a Coaching or Consulting Business
The first lie that I hear people say all the time is that scaling a business is easy. In theory, the principles of scaling are simple, but executing those strategies and getting everything right is not easy. It’s a lot of work. If someone tells you it’s easy to scale your business, just know if it was that easy everyone would do it. If you’re an entrepreneur, then you know that being an entrepreneur isn’t the easiest path. It is why a lot of people may dip into the water of entrepreneurship and quickly give up.
Although scaling a business is not easy, you can build a model that is simplistic in nature which is what I teach. However, there’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done. In its simplicity, you must still have the right product, the right marketing coupled with building the right team and the right systems and having the right client delivery. All of these things take time and the right skill set to build.
#2 Faster is Better
The second lie when it comes to scaling a coaching or consulting business is that faster is better. This happens when people who start making money become so focused on making more money and acquiring more clients, that they forget about everything else. I know many coaches and consultants who grew their business so rapidly that it “broke” when they hit a million dollars. When I say “broke,” I mean I have colleagues who lost everything with the sudden influx of clients, because they didn’t have the systems, the team, and the back-end delivery to support them. Imagine what a customer service nightmare that would create and the hit your brand reputation would take.
I also know people who have scaled so fast at the expense of everything else in their lives, that they wound up hospitalized with a heart attack, or gained one hundred pounds, or destroyed their relationship with their spouse or their children. I am a proponent of growing your business, but I am very passionate about helping my clients grow in a much more balanced way. This means I help my clients with the balance of client acquisition, building the right support systems, and client delivery all while focusing on self-care. There are many successful entrepreneurs who are near suicidal and no one talks about it. You may hear the stories after they received help and healed. I believe that this happens because they are so focused on the money that they get caught up with having more and they don’t have the right people around them. They are also not taking care of themselves and they are neglecting their relationships with their family, God/spirituality, friendships, and health.
I’d rather scale with intention (like I did) and have it all then scale just for the sake of having more and more money and then lose it all.
You can make massive leaps in your revenue, but do it with intention and make sure that you can deliver quality service while still taking care of yourself and make time for other things that matter in your life.
#3 You Have to Sacrifice your Values
The last lie segues into lie number three which says you have to sacrifice your values or integrity in order to make a lot of money. This one bothers me because it’s simply not true. A lot of coaches and consultants do take this route and it gives the industry a bad name. What do I mean by sacrificing your values or integrity? It can show up in a lot of different ways such as paying for fake awards, taking credit for an award when you played a small part in it, or buying a bunch of your own books so you can claim you are a best-selling author.
It could also include scamming people, treating your team poorly, or not paying contractors. I’ve seen it all, and unfortunately I’ve been on the receiving end of some of these. It takes more energy and effort to stay in integrity. This is why it’s so important to have the right circle of influence around you so that you can stay true to your values.
#4 Client Delivery is the Easiest Part
The fourth lie was inspired by a coach I recently heard who claimed that client delivery is the easiest part of scaling a business. This is one of those lies that is laughable. Whether you are selling a physical product that is dependent on the supply chain or whether you are selling a service which depends on relationships, client delivery is not the easiest part of scaling. In fact, there are whole industries dedicated to supporting companies with customer service.
I have a client who runs a multimillion-dollar customer service support company. If that was the easiest part, everyone would have super successful businesses. It takes a lot of effort to keep people happy and the better you get at keeping your clients happy, the more your brand reputation will grow. As your brand reputation grows, there will be more people who will want to buy your products and services. However, getting this part right is not the easiest part of scaling a business and is going to require the right strategy, the right systems, and the right team to help you.
#5 Quantity Trumps Quality
The fifth lie you may have heard about scaling a coaching or consulting business is that quantity trumps quality. This can play out in a number of different scenarios. For example, some people believe that putting out massive amounts of subpar content is better than worrying about the quality of their content. I disagree. If there’s no depth to what you’re saying, people are not going to book calls. This is evident when you see leadership or executive coaches, for example, posting inspirational quotes. It does not get their potential clients to book a call. If you are a thought leader and in the arena of the big gurus who have massive teams that can assemble tons of content and you’ve reached that point of widespread recognition, then it’s possible that you can focus on quantity versus quality.
However, for most people when they are trying to grow their authority and trying to get people to pay attention to them, they need to put out quality content. In fact, I created my whole expert platform by building a body of work online and continuously providing value to my audience. I made sure to educate them and to nurture them and this all paid off in terms of my brand recognition, my reputation online, and ultimately the growth of my company.
#6 Revenue is the Most Important Number
Another big lie which you may have heard about scaling a business is that revenue is the ultimate number. There are many coaches and consultants who make a lot of money but because their expenses are outrageous, they keep very little of that money. I had a prospect apply to work with me who on paper looked really good. They had a 7-figure business and yet when I had a conversation with them I learned that their profit was less than $100,000. In fact, they were seriously struggling because they had tried to build a bigger company than they were ready for.
They had a massive team, physical offices, were severely under-charging, and still stuck in a volume based business. This was coupled with a large ad budget which meant they didn’t even break a hundred thousand dollars. The business owner was exhausted working 60 to 70 hours per week. Imagine generating 7-figures in revenue and only keeping less than 10%. That is not a good scenario. The reality is you can have a high profit coaching business. In fact, you can make seven figures and keep seven figures if you structure your business the right way. This is where having an outside expert who has created that for themselves can be really beneficial in helping you set yourself up for success.
#7 You Can Do it On Your Own
This is where lie number seven comes in and that is you can do it on your own. I have occasionally heard a story of someone who did not have an outside coach or consultant and they were still able to make millions, but I personally don’t know anyone who has achieved that. Those would be outliers. The most successful coaches and consultants I have ever met, have seriously invested in getting the help they need. Sometimes I have prospects who fill out applications and they are making 400-500 thousand a year but they refuse to invest in the help they need to get them to 7-figures. If you’ve been grinding away at your business for 4 years and you’re stuck at the same income level, then doing more of the same is not going to help you achieve your goals.
Having an outside expert that can come in and look at your strategy, find the holes, and shift your perspective of what’s possible, can literally help you scale to the Next-Level-Revenue even in a very short time frame. My client Maureen was stuck at the same income level for years. She joined my program and 5 weeks later we doubled her prices and she landed a $180,000 contract. I had another client, Carl, who has successfully scaled multiple companies. He said he thought it was going to take him 3 years to scale his consulting business to the next level. I was able to help him do it in just 10 months. If you want to scale your business, don’t wait to invest in the help you need.
What did you think of the 7 lies to scaling a coaching or consulting business? Which one resonates with you the most? Is there another lie that you’ve been told? Please let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear it.
