Deciding to relocate the Illuminated Mind Base Camp to Portland this February (2011) was easy, but I’ve been struggling with a making a another big decision for a while now.
After much deliberation, I’ve decided to stop offering hourly coaching on Illuminated Mind.
This wasn’t an easy choice to make, but ultimately it’s in my best interest and more importantly, in the best interest of my clients. Over the past few months I’ve been realizing that I can’t best serve my people with single sessions or even monthly coaching packages.
The main goal of my coaching is to help people quit their jobs and create meaningful, exciting and purposeful self-employment from their passion. It’s really hard to help people accomplish this in one session (or several sessions).
Instead I’ll be working with a small handful of people (six to be exact) for six months at a time.
Here’s why I decided to make the change:
- I can serve my people better. My core offering with coaching is to help people create meaningful work, and greater freedom through self-employment. While I can often help people with specific problems in a single session, most progress demands a long term partnership. I’ve decided it’s time to start honoring that demand.
- Fewer clients means better service. While I always go the extra mile for my clients, it can be difficult to serve people at the level I would like when I’m working with 15 or 20 people a month. A smaller number of clients means I can give more of my attention at a greater depth.
- Less time spent marketing. When you work with people on an hourly basis there is a much higher turnover, which inevitably leads to more time spent marketing. By working with people for a longer period I reduce the client turnover and can spend more time helping my people get the results they want. The side benefit is a much more sustainable and predictable income stream.
- Better results. It’s difficult to get people results and achieve specific outcomes in 1 to 4 sessions. While limiting beliefs can be broken and clarity on the path that needs to be taken can be achieved, these also don’t make for the best testimonials. It’s all well and good to move past a limiting belief or get clarity (that’s where progress starts, after all), but it doesn’t equate to directly verifiable results. Results with my offering are better achieved over a longer period of time. Businesses don’t just sprout up overnight. They take careful nurturing and cultivating to grow.
I know this might not be the right coaching model for everyone, but it definitely makes more sense for me.
Now that I’ve closed the doors to my hourly coaching, I’ll be opening up six spots for my new coaching program in the next few days. It’s likely that they will fill up quickly and I may not advertise the offer here. The spots will be filled by application (I’m going to be very careful about who I accept; I want the best results for my clients) and will include some nice benefits, one of them being a behind the scenes look at how I run my business and shape every promotion that I do.
If you’d like to get on the advance notice list, please email me at [email protected] and I’ll make sure you get first dibs.
That’s all I have to share for now. In the next post I’ll be sharing what went well in 2010, mistakes I made, and lessons learned.
Happy New Year!
photo courtesy of lrargerich
