Marketing and Life Coaching?

I have been doing some for of coach for about 12 years. The relationship I have with my clients is collaborative and co-creative  whereby they tell me what they want to accomplish and I offer tools, suggestions, my experience and my abilities to both “hear between the words” and help them get out of their own way. (NOTE THE WORD “COLLABORATIVE”.)

As coaches know or soon find out, we must market ourselves. Many years ago I went to some traditional networking meetings where what happened was – a zillion people passed me their card and tried to promote me into whatever they were selling. I hated it and stayed away from anything like that for years figuring it just isn’t for me. No collaboration apparent here.

Progress Towards Collaborative

Some years later I found and tried an organization that was somewhat more collaborative in its structure. It suggested and tried to support having a “how can I help you?” attitude in its members. I tried it for a year. It was very expensive what with dues and paying for fairly upscale meals each meeting. I met many lovely people but never got a client. When it came time to pay membership, I decided to not rejoin after having called about 10 other life coaches to ask their experience in the organization. Not one had gotten any clients. They stayed around because the people were nice.

What was wrong? I finally decided that what was necessary for a life coach was for people to really get to know them. Those meetings I attended had 50-80 people at each and even though I followed another suggestion to meet at least two members each week for coffee, that little amount of time just doesn’t create a strong enough bond.

A few years went by and they created exclusive groups where there is only one life coach who is a permanent member and 15 to 20 people. I joined. My year isn’t up for awhile but so far no new clients. Again lovely people who I really bond and connect to who are trying to help me get clients but I think they look around at those they know, think “He or she needs a coach. I’ll tell them about Maia” but still no clients from that source. I think people want to seek out a coach. They don’t want to be told you NEED a coach but the jury’s still out on that.

So back to COLLABORATIVE MARKETING. Well, I think I lost my awareness of what it means because I have been participating in massive connecting on social networking sites which now occurs to me is very much like the stick-the-card-in-the-face kind of networking of old. Where is the real collaboration? This became very clear in a conversation with a lovely coach who has helped me see the collaboration light.

So marketing for life coaches is very much a matter of creating relationships and collaboration.

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