Do You Feel Trapped In Your Consulting Business?
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I’ve met a lot of women over the last 6 years who in their heart of hearts want to be coaches, but feel trapped in their consulting business because that’s where the money comes from.
This situation nearly always brings with it a sense of frustration – because you don’t get to do the thing you truly want to do. You might be thinking of setting up a second business devoted to coaching.
In nearly every case I can think of, the women who are operating two different businesses feel pretty crushed by the weight of their consulting brand, and a lot of frustration that they don’t have the space to do the quantity of coaching work they actually want to do. It’s hard to run one growing business. It can be really intense to run two.
If you are feeling this frustration about your work, you may be surprised to learn the issue here isn’t whether you offer coaching or consulting, or whether to split them and run two businesses simultaneously, but an issue with mindset. There is a belief that the coaching, the thing you really want to do, CAN’T provide the money you want it to.
The internet is full of women who want to work as coaches who spend years and years making no money, and in the worst cases, building up debt they have no chance of repaying.
You don’t want to make that your aspiration. There is so often a whole ton going on behind the scenes of coaching businesses that these big names DON’T talk about. There can be a lot of smoke and mirrors.
If you’re going to set up a coaching business, do it properly.
Here’s how: either build up your consulting brand and sell it, or get it to run without you. In either case, you need a team. You’ll need a team for both businesses. This isn’t the moment for bootstrapping. And if you have capital from your original business, you don’t need to play scarcity games.
Get the help you need. Get the tools you need. Get the team you need.
I know that often when you’ve stepped out of a consulting business that exhausted you, it’s tempting to make your coaching business as different to that as possible. Just you. No team. No commitments. That was actually where I was when I started coaching. I didn’t want the stress or the pace or the responsibility of all the money and having to make decisions about investing it in the right places.
I think when some women aspire to this, they are actually saying they want to take a year or two off from working altogether and do a hobby business. This is fine on one level – if you’re financially covered then you can do whatever you want. But if you’re a high-achiever, it won’t necessarily bring the fulfilment you want it to.
And ultimately, if you want to have an impact on the world, which is very often the big why behind women-owned coaching brands, it’s much less about the money if you already made your money from your first business. You will make a much bigger impact if you involve other people from the start and build your coaching business without bootstrapping.
Start working on a plan that enables you to build the coaching business you want, with a team in place to support you.
Let me know, are you considering running two (or more) businesses simultaneously?
Free Report – The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Consulting Business
I’ve created a free PDF report called The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business. It’s my most popular free resource and in it I outline the 6 areas of unscaled businesses that need to change in order to move past being ‘booked up and burned out’ and shifting into that higher gear that gets you cruising again.
It’s the framework that helps consultant women like you find their feet and get back to leading the business, rather than being buried in client work and back-end business operations.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your feedback and future topics you’d like me to feature. You may also enjoy The Seven Figure Consultant Podcast, the show that takes you from booked up and burned out in your consulting business to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure enterprise.