Should I Treat My Consulting And Coaching Businesses Differently?
This was originally posted on my Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter. Subscribe today to get insights about how women are building powerful and impactful consulting businesses.
Have you found your business leading in two directions and you’re not sure what that means for you? Recently I’ve been having a lot of conversations with women about offering coaching and consulting, and whether doing both in one business is an issue.
You might be wondering what the difference is, and how much of a gap there is between the two. When you are consulting, you are playing an advisory role or an implementation role, in a hands-on way. You are showing your clients the best way they can do something. You’re being parachuted in as an expert to run a project or programme, or to advise your client on how they should run it.
Consulting is very much centred around expertise and this is why it’s such a crucial part of the process for you, as the consultant, to brand and position yourself as the expert in your field.
Coaching on the other hand is more about the person. It’s far less instructional than consulting. More time is spent looking at behaviours, motivation, and internal narratives. Coaching is more about getting the client to identify the options and the path they want to take.
In a coaching relationship, some people would say the coach shouldn’t imprint or share their own experiences or opinions to the client. Ultimately, it’s about equipping the client to achieve more than they can on their own. It’s helping them fill the gap between where they perceive themselves to be, and where they need or want to be professionally.
In this episode of the Seven Figure Consultant Podcast I am discussing the dilemma of how best to run your business if you are offering both consulting and coaching, or thinking of branching out from one of these into the other.
I talk about:
● Whether you need to be accredited
● Researching qualifications
● Paying attention to the norms in your industry
● Mapping out your business
● Whether you have two distinct businesses
● Avoiding building up debts
Let me know, are you a coach, a consultant, or do you do both?
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Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your feedback and future topics you’d like me to feature.