One of the things that I LOVE about coaching businesses is that you don't have to live in a major centre like New York, Los Angeles or London to have a successful one.
I'm in Moncton, New Brunswick (on the East Coast of Canada) and while it's not a small place - there are about 140,000 in the Greater
Moncton area where I live - it's not exactly a major metropolitan centre.
I've had guests on my podcast who live in tiny towns, yet they're still successful coaches. A couple come to mind right away:
Christine Beeby Odle is in a town of just 400 people
in Colorado (you can hear my interview with her here). Christine has worked with Dave Ramsey and done some cool things in her coaching career.
And Bob Prentice is in a small town town of just 170 people in South Dakota!(here's the link to our chat - Bob was just the third guest that I had on the show, waaaay back when ...
so cut me some slack if my interviewing skills weren't at Larry King levels yet!)
You may be thinking:
"How can they do it in such small towns? They'd have to work with almost everyone in town, right?!"
Both Christine and Bob got creative to grow their coaching businesses, and they venture around their surrounding areas to work with clients (Bob does speaking as well).
Both go into further detail re: how they have built their businesses in the interviews that I linked.
But what if you don't want to venture around to other areas? Is it still possible to build a successful coaching business in a small town?
Of course! As long as you have an Internet connection ...
I'll let you
in on a secret: I don't do any local business.
Well that's not true. I have had a few local clients over the years, and I have one that I'm working with at the moment (shout-out to Jen!)
All of my other clients are far away, and most are in places that
I've never been to in my life.
The handful of local clients have come to me by referral or by accident, and we still do all of our sessions via Skype (I'm not a coaching-at-Starbucks-kind-of-guy.)
I get approached by local organizations and events from time-to-time, asking me if I'd
like to be a sponsor for their event, or buy a table at a conference, etc.
I've never done any of them. I'm just not focused on the local market, so why would I?
Here's how I look at it: why would I put all of my eggs in the small, local
basket?
My home city has yet to fully embrace coaching. It's getting better, but my business would look much different (worse) if I stuck to my neck of the woods.
My home province is bilingual, and my city is 1/3 French. Although my name is spelled the French way (long story
about the Marc with a "c" thing), my French stinks. I'd be cutting off a lot of potential clients just with my lack of French ...
I look at any local business that drifts into my orbit as a bonus. If I get a local client that fits my criteria for who I take on, then great!
But I don't bank on it, or even factor it into my business-building plans.
I'm amazed at how in 2016, I still hear coaches using their location as an excuse to as why they think they can't make it as a coach.
We aren't in the early days of the Internet. This
isn't the mid-1990's, or a time when it seemed like the only people making money online were selling Beanie Babies on EBay.
We've hit a tipping point, where it's not considered strange to have an online business anymore.
Even just three years ago, when I jumped into the
coaching world, I got some strange looks from friends, family, and people I bumped into at bbq's and parties when I told them I'm a coach.
They asked where my office was. They asked if I buy billboards (yes, I've gotten that question a number of times). They asked a lot of local-type questions.
And when I told them that I did everything online, I could tell there was a thought going through their minds of "Is this guy for real???"
I don't get that any more.
Maybe it's because they've seen that I've "made it" (whatever that
means), but I don't get challenged often.
Nowadays, I tell them that my business is completely online, and a lot of people think that's cool and ask how I do it.
A couple of years make a big difference. 2016 is much different than 2014 for us coaches who are building global
businesses, and it's only going to get better with each passing year.
Don't let location or size hold you back. It's a big world out there with lots of people, and many of them would benefit from having a coach!
If you'd like to learn more about how you can build a global coaching
business like I have, check out the live webinar that I'm doing tomorrow at 6 pm EST ...
I'm laying out the structure that I recommend using for the quickest results, and I'm sharing things that I haven't shared publicly
before (including my recommended pricing structure for the global "sweet spot".)
If you want to know how to crack the online coaching nut, or are curious about the ideal price to get clients through your (virtual) doors, then you won't want to miss it.
And remember, if you hear someone say: "You can't do it - you're in a small
town", that's BS!
Marc
Marc Mawhinney
Coach, Host of
"Natural Born Coaches"
Passionate About Helping Coaches GROW Their Businesses!