Mon January 6 2025 3 things you must bring into your business in 2025
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the business of executive coaching podcast for 2025. I'm so pleased to be back here with you. If you have any suggestions or questions or things you'd really like to be covered in the podcast this year, I have a really simple form. And I'm going to put the link in the show notes that you can send through and just let me know what you'd like me to talk about.
If there's anything that is on your mind and I will do what I can. So today I want to share three things that you absolutely must bring into or give a more prominent role to in your coaching business in 2025. The first one of those things is experimentation. And by experimentation, I mean a mindset of experimentation.
I mean, a practice of experimentation. I mean, all of the things, when we have a, a mindset and a practice of experimentation in our businesses, it [00:01:00] is very freeing. And the freeing tends to come with. Better outcomes because we hold onto things less tightly. So we can hold our marketing more lightly. We can hold our sales approaches more lightly.
We can you know, feel a little bit less grippy and fearful about client acquisition. It allows us to think about everything we're doing as an experiment rather than as a win or a lose. And so when we are embracing experimentation, what does that really mean? Well, I think what it means is that we really get explicit about the experiments that we are going to put in place that we identify, for example, these are the things I'm going to experiment with in my marketing approach.
These are the things I'm going to experiment in my, my, the backend of my business, [00:02:00] the systems and processes that I have. This is what I'm going to learn, and I'm going to try out and see how it goes. So core to bringing experimentation into your business is that you learn and you iterate, right? So for everything you do, you reflect on it, you identify what you've learned, you figure out what worked and what didn't, and then you either decide to keep it as part of what you do, Or to move on to trying the next thing or iterating it to try something different.
I mean, it sounds a lot like using the grow model really, doesn't it? But, you know, I think it's also this mindset, which is that business is not something that has to be all or nothing. We don't have to. Decide this is our approach and you know, I'm never going to vary from it. What we get to do is we get to try and we get to learn.
And if we don't do that, we are, we're probably going to be in trouble. So also in experimentation, we need to remember to collect data. Data. [00:03:00] So we need to figure out how are we going to assess if these experiments that we're trying work or not. And so for example, if you're experimenting with a marketing approach, say you know, a particular type or frequency of posting.
Then we might want to collect data about engagement or, or, you know, how many people are seeing those posts? How many people are, are responding to them? Do any clients flow from it? And, and then we need to be able to make decisions based on that. And that's why we collect the data so that we can effectively learn and iterate and decide, you know, whether this is something we should.
Keep or not the other thing that a mindset of experimentation allows us to do is to roll with the punches a little more because being in business is, is tough. You all know it's tough and I like to normalize that it's not sunshine and rainbows all the time. But when we, when we [00:04:00] have those stumbles and, and the stumbles in business can be where, you know, something didn't work out.
We didn't win a client. We have a few months that aren't working well. We get disappointed by something something, you know, Surprises us that we weren't expecting, but when we have a mindset of experimentation, we're a bit better able to, to handle those for a few reasons. I think firstly, we recognize that we learned from all of those experiences, right?
So, so long as we are reflecting and learning. Then it is not the end of the world. And then I think also experimentation allows us to say that, you know, there's no, I guess we don't get stuck, right? Sometimes the problem with the, the, the downs or the punches that we get in business is that it can throw us off course entirely, and it can derail us from what [00:05:00] we need to do.
But if we have a mindset of experimentation, we get back up, we get back into action a lot quicker than if we, we aren't focused on, on learning and moving on and trying new things. So I would encourage you to definitely bring experimentation. You could even think of it as. You know, part curiosity, part action orientation.
Maybe that is what experimentation really is. But bring it into 2025 and get really explicit about it. So think about what are the things you're experimenting with? How can you look at the experiences you're having when you reflect as experiments and how does that help you to, to keep on going even when things are tough.
So experiment, experiment away. Number two, that you know, thing that I think you should bring into or give a more prominent role in your business in 2025 is warm outreach. Now, of course you [00:06:00] say that's everyone's doing warm outreach, but actually it is my experience that people are not doing it as much of it.
As you might think, and the reason I think we need to focus on outreach, particularly if we think about from a marketing perspective is that we are doing a lot of work on our content. So mostly on LinkedIn, but also elsewhere, a lot of work is going into that. A lot of energy is going into writing articles or posts to thinking about it, to engaging with people who comment on our posts.
But sometimes. We don't get the results that we want from the content on its own. And the truth is content in isolation is not going to sell your coaching services. It's going to help don't get me wrong. But it's not going to sell your services, particularly not to corporate audiences or organizations, [00:07:00] but.
What does work is combining your content with strategic outreach. And that means that when you are intentionally reaching out to your warmest audiences and ideally your warmest ideal audiences. Then what happens is that your content really steps up and it plays an important role because these people you've reached out to, what they're going to do is they're going to say, if, if they have any interest at all, which you'd imagine many of them do, given, given that you're going to be talking about things that they care about, what's going to happen is that they are going to come and say, huh, is this person legit?
Right. Is this person credible? Is this person, you know, do they really know what they're talking about? So what they're going to do is they're going to go to your LinkedIn page and they're going to validate you by reading your posts, by looking at your experience and by getting an overall sense of who you are and what you do.
So your [00:08:00] content. Is an important part of what happens when you do the outreach, but without doing the outreach, your content is not as powerful as it could be. Your content also plays an important role when it comes to outreach because it keeps nurturing those people. That you've connected with and that you are reaching out to.
So it means that when you reach out to those people you know, they are more likely to have seen you talking, or if you've reached out first, they are then more likely to see your subsequent content. So I think these two really go hand in hand. And I think in 2025, the thing that most coaches need to do is level up the amount of outreach that they're doing and the quality of the outreach that they're doing.
So I think you need to have a daily or a weekly rhythm of connecting with your warmest, warmest audiences or your warmest leads. And in the accelerator, actually, I'm really excited [00:09:00] in January. I have a new course coming out for my accelerator members that is called the business development accelerator framework.
And what that is, is our approach to how you do all of your marketing activities in five hours a week. And it makes it very explicit and includes you know, going from your pipeline, figuring out who your warm audiences are, what your warm outreach strategy is going to be. And then it, it breaks it down into how do you do that in five hours a week?
It is very exciting. I'm, I'm super excited about that. The whole point is. I think outreach should be at the very top of your priority list for 2025. The third thing that I think you need to give more energy to in 2025 is volume. And I really, I really hate saying this because I'm a very big proponent of work smarter, not harder.
And I think that does play out in, in this one as well. [00:10:00] But I think that coaches and coaching business owners. Underestimate the amount. Of volume that is required when it comes to sales and marketing and business development. So I like to think of, and the way I describe a sales in our business is thinking of sales as a funnel where your, all your leads come into the top of your funnel.
Ideally we're talking about the warm leads here. So people who've either responded to a connection request, people, you know, from your background, your, your past career. All of these people are in the funnel and gradually there are filtration points through the funnel, it narrows and narrows. And then eventually at the bottom, we end up with a group of clients.
And what that means is that there is a bit of a numbers game at play that the more people you put into the top of your funnel, the more clients are going to come out the bottom, right? So think of it as a formula. More leads. [00:11:00] Is, you know, is varied by a factor like times X, and that is how many clients that you are going to end up with.
And the problem is that that number, that X factor that we apply to the leads is probably a lot is reducing the numbers by a lot more than you think. So you need to put in more leads at the top to get a client, then you might be aware that you do. So. What I'm saying is that you need to do more outreach than you think you need to do.
You probably need to create more content on LinkedIn than you think you do, unless you're already doing it every day, in which case you are fine. I recommend three times a week as a minimum for coaches and most coaches I speak to want to do. Once a week. So there's usually a bit of a gap. And then just, just generally being more present, talking to more people and creating more leads than you possibly think.
[00:12:00] Now, don't be scared. It is actually a really liberating thing because if we decide that then, well, the issue that I'm facing, if I want more clients is that I just need more warm leads at the top of my funnel, then you have got a problem solving task, which How do I get more leads at the top of my funnel?
It is not a mystery. There's no there's no unknown factor here. It is just that you need more warm leads and you need to connect with them. So do more More experimentation, more outreach, and just more marketing activities in general. And you'll find that 2025 will bring you a lot more business and a lot more joy.
I think if we focus on those three things, so are these things you are already thinking about for 2025? If you would like to focus more on your business for 2025, now is a great time to book in a call with me. We will open the doors to the accelerator again in the coming months. And if we have a [00:13:00] call, this is the best way to figure out if the accelerator could be a good fit for you.
When the doors open, we will also in that call, go over your 2025 strategy. And I always have a few tailored suggestions for you. Regardless of whether you would like to join us in the accelerator. So have a great week and I will be back to talk to you next Monday.
