Award-winning business coach, Melitta Campbell, shares key ways you can secure sustainable growth in your coaching business in 2022.
This issue: give your coaching business an MOT
Businesses improve, evolve and grow from learning. Regularly reviewing progress towards your goals is an important opportunity to find the lessons that will highlight what it takes to make your coaching business successful.
This is especially important in these uncertain times. What’s right for your business may have changed over the past few months.
To conduct a meaningful review, set aside an hour or two of ‘CEO time’ and work through the following questions, some of which are typical coaching questions we sometimes forget to ask ourselves!
What great things have been accomplished?
It’s easy to focus on what we need to do next or dwell on what has gone wrong, but it’s also important to identify what has gone well. This will enable you to capture what works for your business and highlight the learning in each success, so it can be replicated. Understanding what made an activity successful will support your personal growth.
What didn’t go as planned?
Be completely honest, and don’t judge. Reflect with curiosity and kindness, rather than being critical or disappointed. Often there are good reasons why things didn’t happen. Understanding these reasons can help you improve future plans, as well as highlight the need to upgrade skills or update resources.
What has worked best?
Consider which marketing strategies, relationships, products, processes and clients have worked best for your business this year. Brainstorm everything that’s had a positive impact and what this means moving forward. Look at what can be improved, adjusted or even stopped.
Analyse the finances
It’s vital to keep track of finances. Look at how much income your business was expected to generate by a certain point and what it actually generated. Any patterns emerging? What costs did you incur – expected and unexpected. Are there ‘outdated’ costs that can be got rid of? You should also plan for quiet periods, such as key holiday times when business activities can slow down. Use this information to ensure a steady income flow.
Most enjoyable?
During the review, it’s worth taking time to think about what you’re enjoying most about running your business. This can be a revealing exercise about you, your values and ambitions – it’s something we may do with clients but forget to do for ourselves. Such an exploration could lead to a shift in approach or reassurance you’re on the right path.
The next six month goals
The final step is to set goals for the next six months. These need to be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. Once goals are set, break these down into clear plans and activities, then schedule and assign them. This ensures you know what actions need to be taken, when and by who.
Conducting a regular business MOT captures personal and organisational learning points, and enables changes to be made to the strategy, processes or resource allocation, so you can continue to build on strengths and are fully prepared for a successful future.
- Next issue: niching with confidence
- Listen to Melitta Campbell’s podcast, The Driven Female Entrepreneur, for more tips for conducting regular reviews: www.melittacampbell.com/podcast
- Melitta Campbell is an award-winning business coach who is passionate about helping business owners build and grow a profitable, and meaningful business. Her expertise comes from 25+ years of experience in communication, marketing, and leadership, including more than a decade of running her own successful business.
- For more information visit: www.melittacampbell.com