Navigating & Leveraging Opportunities in the Coaching Industry

March 25, 2022 by Lauren Gombas

As a coach, there are a seemingly endless number of opportunities to explore, educate and expand. Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned coach, you may be missing critical opportunities to leverage your personal, professional, and financial growth. 

Navigating the Industry: where can you work?

As a coach, you can work in a number of surprising places. For example, Health and Wellness Coaching may seem like something confined to a gym or wellness center, but this profession can also flourish in various organizational environments. Coaches can find their way into hospitals, educational institutions, corporate business settings, military bases, even Silicon Valley. 

Take, for example, an academic coach partnering with teachers in a rural community, or a life coach working in a homeless shelter to better serve homeless youth. Where there are people, there are coaches. 

Here are a few tips to consider as you search for a place to utilize your coaching skills.

Explore Your Curiosity

In coaching, you tell your clients to follow their intuition and reach out to opportunities that light up something inside of them. It’s important for you to do the same. Maybe, you're an executive coach who takes an interest in hearing about your friend's small business ideas, and you know that you feel the most dynamic in a fast-paced environment. In this case, you might explore coaching startups or businesses that have just left the startup phase. 

Brainstorm the Possibilities

Suppose you couldn't connect the dots between an interest and a specific work environment. Sometimes taking a little bit of time to reflect on your interests and their connection to the professional world can have big payouts. Try the same journaling exercises you give your clients, such as carrying a notebook and writing down ideas when inspiration strikes. Later review what you've written down and make connections between your curiosity and your new sources of inspiration. 

The next step is considering how to get into various spaces. 

In our Coaching to Flourish Live Chat, we highlight a few tips:

Do Your Research

Examine what your coaching expertise means to an organization.

1. How might they already be implementing parts of your practice? 
2. What values do they exhibit and uphold as an organization?
3. What additional value can you bring in as a coach? 
4. What gaps are they missing that need to be filled to help them continue to live up to their values?

Leverage Your Connections

Your current connections want to help; they just need some insight on where to begin. Consider engaging within the coaching community and connecting with others who have expanded their practices into exciting areas. Maybe they have the insight to help you explore where you want to expand your reach. Try inviting old contacts to conferences or approaching others who share similar interests. In addition, Coach Training EDU offers a slew of coaching events that all current coaches and CTEDU alumni can take advantage of.

Remind Yourself of Your Strengths

The best way to support yourself is to remember what powerful questions you'd ask your client. How would you help them if they were in a similar situation? As a coach, you have superpowers and skills that you've worked hard to establish. Use this to your advantage. 

Beyond Coaching: Workshops, Speaking, and Writing for Coaches 

Every journey needs fine-tuning. Outside of new or unique places to practice, there's also the opportunity for financial and growth gain. For example, speaking and writing can give your career an extra kick while also providing an additional avenue for income. 

Workshops

Workshops can be an excellent place for you to explore group coaching and to practice creating new systems and structures. Many coaches take the opportunity to run workshops to get out of their comfort zone and meet new prospective clients. In the words of Carl Rogers, "The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change." 

Consider asking yourself a few questions when setting up a workshop. 

1. What workshops might be helpful? Maybe you've noticed that many of your clients keep mentioning feeling stressed about the uncertainty of the Pandemic. If that’s the case, you might consider doing a mindfulness and resetting workshop. 
2. What exists already, and what gaps can you fill? Perhaps you have a specialization in a specific kind of meditation or mindfulness practice. Use your expertise to serve a need. 
3. What are your clients thoughts on your ideas? Elicit feedback from your clients to see what kind of workshops they might find most useful in their life. It’s important to collect small details, such as the time of day that works best for this target audience and any prep materials you may need to prepare for your clients. 
4. What does a successful test run look like? During this step, it’s important to plan out all aspects of the workshop. Have someone test your links and read through your material to make sure everything makes sense. Make adjustments based on the feedback you receive.

Speaking

Speaking is an opportunity to share knowledge and help others using your coaching experience. Speaking provides the opportunity to become a recognized expert on a subject and often opens up a more extensive network. It gives your audience the opportunity to find your work which can lead to more significant conversations and stronger self-confidence.

Consider building extra income with speaking by agreeing to be interviewed for written pieces, being a guest on a podcast, running a podcast, or attending speaking engagements. 

Writing

Like speaking, writing can be another way to showcase expertise and learn new skills. Tim Ferriss' vlog on How to Use Writing to Sharpen Your Thinking articulates well the opportunity writing gives to refine our thoughts. By thinking about what’s the most important idea to share, a coach can maximize the clarity of their message.  

As a coach, you can increase the reach of your practice through:

• Blogging as a guest 
• Running a blog with sponsorship
• Writing articles for magazines or publications 
• Editing or collaborating on a written piece

There is no shortage of opportunities in the coaching industry. No matter which direction you pursue, we wish you luck and offer our blog as support. Have you found any other tips for leveraging new coaching opportunities? Please share with us in the comments.

Enjoy some of these discussions that further expand upon these topics:

Works Cited

“Coaching Styles.” Life Coach Directory, https://www.lifecoach-directory.org.uk/content/coaching-styles.html#holisticcoaching. 

EDU, Coach Training. “Coaching to Flourish .” CTEDU Blog RSS, https://www.coachtrainingedu.com/blog/coaching-to-flourish-2-1-2022/. 

Knight, Rebecca, et al. "How to Make the Right Connections When You Don't Already Have an 'in.'" Harvard Business Review,   2 Nov. 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/11/how-to-make-the-right-connections-when-you-dont-already-have-an-in. 

“Your Mindset Coaching Guide: Best Questions, Courses, & Tools.” PositivePsychology.com, 5 Feb. 2022, https://positivepsychology.com/mindset-coaching/#:~:text=References-,What%20Is%20Mindset%20Coaching%3F,thought%20(Kholghi%2C%202021).