When I started my business, I had absolutely no idea what went into running a small service-based business. I started off hiring coaches, a business coach, a sales coach, and a messaging coach. I even hired two sales coaches.
For many of these coaches, I read all of their content, watched every video, and enrolled in every course. I even hired people for a team because I needed more time to learn.
I learned bits and pieces along the way and was able to eventually gain a full understanding of what my next steps were.
Finally, I joined a program, about six months ago, that ended up seriously changing my business and stopped the endless cycle I found myself in.
The thing about all those courses I bought, books I purchased, and coaches I hired is that when I initially found them, they were geared towards coaches, service providers, and consultants. This tends to be a group that gets lumped together.
What I’ve learned indirectly through this new program is that I'm primarily a service provider and I provide a “done for you” service to each of my clients. I am not a coach.
The coaches I hired were great, but because the goals of these two niches are so different, I was applying the wrong advice and going down the wrong path for a while.
I got to where I needed to go eventually, but the point of hiring someone is to take a shortcut, not the long way around.
Coaches and service providers are not the same. They need very different things in their businesses and I wish I’d known that at the start so that I could’ve hired appropriately for my own business.
If you need help figuring out what you are, a coach or a service provider, take the quiz here!
I work with service providers to help get clarity in their branding so they can easily communicate what they do to attract their ideal clients. If that's something you need help with, check out the Clearbrand Interview.
Today, we're diving into one of my all time favorite topics. Service providers and coaches are often put into the same bucket. Only these two different titles couldn't be more different. What a done for you service provider needs in terms of branding and marketing are so very different from what a coach needs in terms of branding and marketing. And often these two are lumped together, so service providers are using tactics that are not suited for their business. We're going to jump into this topic today, talk about it in all different ways, shapes and forms, and really start to separate why these two are so different. By the end of the episode, you'll understand that when you start seeing these tactics that are really focused around coaches so that you can separate yourself out from that and realize that that's probably not the best advice for you. How did you learn to be a business owner? When I started my business, I had absolutely no idea what went into running a small service-based business. I went to school to study software engineering with the intention of someday becoming a project manager for a software company. While I didn't really know exactly what path I wanted my career to take. I knew I wanted it to involve working in software or web design. I'm really good with computers. So I felt like it was the logical path. I'd taken a few business courses, but they were all focused around management. For example, how to be a good manager, how to handle a team, how to handle projects, project schedules, and all sorts of other topics. Based on the goal of working in a corporate space. After I graduated with my master's in software engineering, I ended up getting a great job with a large corporation. I was fascinated by the products and services the company offered. And I was a really happy there at the end of my four years with that company. However, it was pretty clear that if I wanted to move ahead in a management role, I needed some outside experience. So I left that position for one at a much smaller company. It was a very busy time in my life. As I had started a family, while all of this was going on, I found out the hard way that if you don't have strong sales and marketing and a small business, that small business simply cannot survive. So I was laid off and the company ended up going under shortly after. It was a really unfortunate since it was so great company and the software, they were developing, had the potential to change. So, I didn't know what to do next. I knew that I needed flexibility and even after a month or so of job searching, I hadn't found anything that made me super passionate and going back to corporate didn't hold the same appeal that it used to. So what did I decide? I decided I was going to start my own business. I had always loved web design and I had that background since it's what I had originally planned on doing with my life. I have always been designing websites for friends and family with small businesses. Reviewing websites was a passion of mine, so I thought I can do this so much better than all these other people out there who were doing it. If they can do it, why can't I? I started my own business with little to no idea of what I was doing. I knew I'd figured out that I had no money in the bank had been laid off unexpectedly and I had a small child at home. And let me tell you they are real money pits. My first thought was how hard could it be? Well, anyone that's just jumped off the deep end knows that starting your own business is extremely challenging and it's extremely difficult. So what did I do? I hired coaches. I hired a business coach, a sales coach, a messaging coach. Heck I even hired two sales coaches. For many of these coaches I've read all of their content, watched every video and enrolled in every course. I even hired people for a team because I needed more time to learn from these coaches. I picked up bits and pieces along the way and was eventually able to gain a full understanding of what my next steps were. Finally, I joined a program about six months ago that ended up seriously changing my business and it stopped the endless cycle. I had found myself in with hiring all these different people. The thing about all the courses I bought, the books I purchased, the coaches I hired is that when I initially found them, they were geared towards coaches, service providers and consultants. This tends to be a group that gets lumped in together. What I've learned indirectly through this new program is that I'm primarily a service provider and I provide a done for you service to each of my clients. I am not a coach. When I began hiring coaches, I was hiring coaches who primarily worked with other coaches since they're the ones who were promoting themselves the loudest on social media. They said they worked with service providers and consultants as well. But what they were teaching was mainly geared towards coaches. In fact, I myself have lumped those people together in the past. However, when it comes to being a done for you service provider who provides a certain level of service versus a coach, these are two completely different business models. So let's break that down a bit. A coach will typically spend a lot of time creating resources, such as extra videos, workbooks, worksheets, checklists, all sorts of other content. These things usually take a long time to create. So coaches will typically put in an extreme amount of effort at the beginning of their coaching career. They'll update these elements as their skills improved and as the needs of their ideal clients change, but this is a massive effort and it enables them to reuse a lot of what they've already created. With this approach, they're not making a custom course for each individual client that comes through their program. What they're doing instead is creating one course and introducing multiple people to that program. As a coach, it won't matter if you have 10, 20, or even 200 clients, they're typically going to receive the same resources you've created. Assuming you sell your program in the right way. These coaching resources serve the same niche who have the same set of problems. And coaches are basically reusing a bunch of content that took a long time to create. Because a coach is meeting with a client also for a limited amount of time, and they're spending the rest of their time, redistributing resources and working on their business, they're able to take on a higher number of clients. I'm not discounting the time that it took to develop those resources and the content, but in doing so, a coach is able to take on many more clients, and they're not as limited to time as a service provider would be. When it comes to a done for you service, it is a whole different ballgame. I cannot provide the same brand and website to multiple people. Each brand has a different way to differentiate itself from other brands, and unique messaging. It need specific colors along with a unique logo. Each website needs to have a different layout, copy and messaging. And each one of these components is created custom for each business. It's the same for other service providers. For example, if you're a bookkeeper, you're going to have a bunch of records that you'll have to clean up. Each business owner is going to have different expenses and bank accounts. So your approach in providing this service is going to be in that context. With my business, it typically takes me about a month to develop a complete brand for a client. This includes all the messaging, copy, logo, colors, website, et cetera. I know other brand strategists that will provide the same amount of services, but they're going to do it over a course of say six months. I'm personally able to meet this time commitment since I only work with one client at a time, whereas a lot of other brand strategists will work with more people at a time. It really depends on the business model for the service provider, but even with six clients at a time over say a six month period, it is still far less than what a coach can typically provide. Looking at the difference between these numbers and the amount of clients that a service provider can take on versus a coach, it's clear that these are two very different animals when it comes to the goal of branding and marketing a coaching business versus a service based business. So when it comes to the goals, marketing for coaches very different. The coach's goal is to get their message out to the masses in order to sell to as many people as possible, because they can take on that higher number of clients. This is necessary because in the coaching world, you need a lot of clients in order to make the money that you could otherwise make as a service provider. A service provider on the other hand works with less people, but they can typically charge more because they're giving people their time back. And what is that time worth to them? The goals of their marketing becomes less about getting in front of a lot of people, but more about getting in front of a small group of the right people. We're going to explore this a lot more in future episodes, but for brief example, It is not unheard of to pay tens of thousands of dollars to a service provider without blinking. However, it's not as easy when it comes to coaches to raise their prices, to that point, they need to be extremely established to charge the same amount. Coaches and done for you service providers are very, very different. The marketing and messaging is very different. I wish I had known that I wanted to be a done for you service provider, and I wish I hadn't worked with coaches who primarily worked with other coaches or with service providers who want to eventually become a coach because that's a thing too. The coaches I hired were great, but because the goals of these two niches are so different, I was applying the wrong advice and going down the wrong path for awhile. I got to where I needed to go eventually, but the point of hiring someone is to take a shortcut, not the longer way around. Coaches and service providers are not the same. I know I've said that a lot during this episode, but it is so important to understand that when it comes to hiring other people for your business. These two different models need very different things in their businesses. And I wish I'd known that at the start so that I could have hired appropriately for my own business. And that's what I want for you. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you want to learn more about the differences between the done for you versus coaching business model, check out the small business boss podcast episode. I have linked in the show notes. I've also linked to the no BS agency program that I talked about In the next episode, we'll be really digging into the differences between coaching strategists and consultants. So you'll know exactly what to call yourself and even better who you should hire for your business based on where you're currently at. If you're struggling to define your own role, check out the show notes for a quiz that will help you gain clarity for your own business. And don't forget to hit that follow button to be notified when new episodes.