How to double your coaching revenue without finding more clients

What if doubling your coaching revenue didn’t require more followers, more sales calls, another offer or squeezing more clients into your already-full week?

Most coaches default to six sessions or three months without ever really questioning why. Beneath that arbitrary ending are often some very human doubts: What if I run out of tools? What if the client stops getting value? What if I can’t justify asking them to stay? 

But the business you want may already be hiding inside the depth of work you’re capable of offering.

This is an invitation to think differently about what makes longer-term coaching valuable, ethical and genuinely developmental. Because when you trust your capacity to offer both meaningful support and meaningful challenge, brilliant coaching becomes your greatest business strategy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, hello. Before we get going, I just want you to know that the wait list for the Self-Belief Coaching Academy is now open. SBCA is an ICF accredited certification where you learn how to coach the root causes of your client's self-doubt, create deeper lasting change, and build a business around your impact. The next class begins in October. There are just 12 places, and if you join the wait list, you get the private invitation before enrolment opens publicly, along with access to some very juicy waitlist-only bonuses. Of course, you'll find the link in the show notes. And today's episode will give you a bit of a glimpse into why I believe that deepening your coaching isn't only about becoming a better practitioner. I think it can be one of the most powerful ways to build and grow your coaching business. So most business advice assumes that more revenue is reliant on a bigger audience, more leads, more sales calls to get way more clients. And that just feels a bit exhausting, right? But what if you could actually double your revenue without doing any more marketing? Which means you're not endlessly coming up with compelling, hooky, top-of-funnel content, and you don't have to launch a new offer and you don't have to squeeze more clients into your week or even raise your prices. Seriously, if you like girl math, you're gonna love coach math. And the way to do this is to work with your clients for longer. We stop automatically giving every coaching relationship the same arbitrary end date. I know this sounds really simple, but is it? In this episode, I want to show you how you can double your annual revenue by working with your clients for longer, what this actually means and looks like, and the sort of first steps for you. So look, I've been coaching now since 2012. It is still incredibly common, as it was back then, for a one-to-one coaching container to be six sessions over three months. And I don't think enough of us question why, right? Now I'm not saying, of course, that this time frame is in any way wrong or not appropriate, but often it is just inherited from our training, from a kind of industry convention, and as well, for me anyway, it was just what felt safe enough for me to promise, especially when I was first starting out. And the thing that is implicit when there is that kind of finish line built into the container is that both the coach and the client start, maybe even unconsciously, arranging the work around what can be achieved in six sessions. But of course, the change that a client wants at the start might unfold over a much longer period. And frankly, we don't have much idea when we first begin where we're going to end up or when. So I remember my first one-to-one package was absolutely the six sessions over three months, and it worked great until session five, when we were often just starting to have that real trust and rapport. My clothes were often starting to get real traction. We were also seeing how that initial reason for coaching had opened up more possibilities for other changes they wanted to make, other things they wanted to explore. And then we have the fifth session, and our coaching has established this rhythm of support. And I need to say, okay, so this time it's next time it's ending. And it just became a bit awkward for both of us. It kind of interrupted the relationship, and then we'd have to talk about you know selling a new package, and I don't know, it just fell off for me. Now, I do think that there is this bias perhaps that longer-term coaching is only really for business coaching. I think this is a total myth. I mean, at the time I was coaching muggles, beloved humans, and they had self-doubt. They were from all walks of life. Some were employees or creatives, or maybe in their first leadership role at work, or stepping into dating again after heartbreak. I worked with a few new to retirement, the best. But I I was like, ugh, this doesn't feel right. Is six six sessions over three months? Is that genuinely the right container for the coaching work I want to do? Like, why have I decided this is how my coaching has to be? And at the time I was maybe two years out from my first coach training. Um, I just started my master's degree. Honestly, I was questioning everything about coaching. This was also the first year that I had been coaching full-time. I was still getting to grips with this idea that there were actually no rules, right? Which I think took me quite a long time to realise that I could just create what felt right for me and change as I went. But my fears and worries and doubts at the time were things like, well, what if we just run out of things to talk about? What if the client stops getting value? What if the sessions start becoming a bit repetitive? What if I run out of coaching tools? That was huge. What if they realise they don't need me but they don't want to share that and it becomes weird? Like, what if the relationship should actually end, but there's no organic mechanism for this, so that makes it weird. Like, how can I justify asking them to invest for longer? Does any of this sound familiar, right? And I can see now actually, these are pretty intelligent and worthwhile concerns about value and responsibility and ethical practice. But these were also the kind of beliefs that had shaped my one-to-one coaching offer well before I had started working with a specific client. And I think it really started to feel so off for me that I had to address it because one of my really core beliefs is that every single human is this fascinating, unique, one-off expression of the universe experiencing itself, right? So, why am I trying to predict and constrain our work together in this one size fits all container? So a really big turning point came for me when I discovered adult developmental psychology and how this is applied in a coaching context. This was a huge part of my master's research. I absorbed this whole body of work like a sponge. It really did feel like the missing piece for me. Because not only does this approach offer a kind of meta-map of adulthood, it's also about coaching at the level of identity. And as I started applying some of the developmental coaching concepts to my work, clients were re-signing their packages because they were getting so much value. Right? This wasn't just about figuring out their self-doubt, it was about exploring who they were underneath those protective patterns and what becomes possible when you start relating to yourself and other people with more discernment and compassion and a capacity for complexity, right? So I want to talk a bit about how to bring this kind of approach into your practice. I think fundamentally a longer-term coaching container holds a wider arc of change, right? So as you've probably found, a client's original goal, like what brought them to coaching in the first place, is gonna evolve as they do. Like sometimes I've found the goal they come to coaching for is just this socially acceptable doorway into deeper work. Like, I don't know how many clients have said, I want to go for the promotion at work, but I have imposter syndrome. And then over time we realize that actually they have the career they do because perhaps they're from a family of lawyers and they never felt they had a choice. And then we start looking at who wants to emerge from this realization, right? What choices are actually available when they are truly your own. And so the purpose of longer-term coaching isn't about creating um coaching where clients need us for longer, it's creating work that remains valuable for longer while being completely willing for the client to leave, right? So I think the depth of coaching that is needed for this kind of container is really what determines where the relationship can go. So, so this isn't to say that short-term coaching is in any way less valuable, not as deep, no, far from it. I love a little bit short-term intensive work. It's about matching the client's outcomes to the coaching container. And a huge part of this is your preferences too, right? If you love working with people short-term, then switch off now and save yourself 20 minutes, right? When you do want to work long term, I think it's either because the topic lends itself to that. So, for example, like I've worked with my strength coach Sarah for 18 months. We could easily carry on together for years because, frankly, there's no end to building a strong body, right? So it that topic really lends itself to long-term work. I think the other factor that comes into play here is about the depth that you want to reach with your clients. So in developmental coaching, we're interested in coaching at the level of identity. And this means we are interested in like the meaning making the client has, the assumptions that they have that are organizing their choices, the identity that might be disrupted by making changes, and the protective intelligence that's inside their resistance to making those changes, especially ones they're longing for. And it's also about the patterns that repeat across apparently unrelated situations, as well as like being with a client during periods of integration when their lives are quite peaceful, when they're in this place of stability. Like, who are you when you're not trying to fix something about yourself can be hugely revealing. Right, and then the next edge that becomes visible after some earlier changes integrated. Right. So the value of the coaching doesn't come from being kind of who is she, Mary Poppins, like having that endless bag of tricks and tools. It actually comes from being able to see what's beneath the presenting story, like beyond that, what is wanting to emerge and working responsively with it. So, in this kind of scenario, the length of the coaching container is partly determined by the coach's capacity to hold a person for that long. And I think a really useful model to think about this is Laurent Darlow's Darlow's support and challenge model. And this has like two axes. One is about support, how much support the client has, and the second is how much challenge is present in the relationship. So if you think about it, like low support and low challenge is kind of what are we even doing here? And high challenge without enough support can tip into that kind of sergeant majory type approach where there's lots of pushing and accountability and do you want it enough? But without the safety for the client to be honest about what's actually happening for them. And then we have high support with low challenge, and that's where we risk becoming a very expensive friend to our clients. So they will feel quite seen and encouraged and may thoroughly enjoy the coaching conversations, but nothing's really changing for them, right? I think there is this kind of sweet spot, and it's certainly a sweet spot in a developmental type model where there is high support and high challenge. And in this scenario, high challenge doesn't mean maximum challenge, right? It means meeting the client at the edge of how they currently make sense of themselves. So there needs to be enough trust and relational safety for the client to stay present, like when a familiar story or a sort of protective pattern or some aspect of their identity comes up to be looked at. And the challenge isn't about a tough goal or more accountability, it's actually about providing that gentle challenge around assumptions that the clients is speaking as if it's objective truth, right? Or helping them recognize some of the reasons behind the protective intelligence that is keeping them in resistance to the changes they want to make. So this kind of support allows them to encounter those developmental edges without feeling shamed or overwhelmed. They're actually able to interrupt some of these well, well-trodden patterns and beliefs. And this level of challenge really helps the client kind of mature emotionally and have more psychological flexibility so that they can reflect and make different choices and eventually, you know, change aspects of their identity at that level. And I think this kind of work asks something of us as coaches. Like our ability to offer high support and high challenge doesn't just come from having good questions or learning another framework, right? I think this kind of coaching needs that openness beyond the client's first immediate goal or the reason they come to coaching. Like we have that clear initial commitment, but we aren't in a rush to get the client somewhere fast. We have review points, of course, and regular conversations about what is changing, what is emerging. It also needs enough flexibility to hold the client's actual life and some clear contracting about support, about how you'll both recognize when the work is complete, all of that. In SBCA, we talk about meeting the client from our healthy adult self and creating the conditions for their healthy adult self to show up to. That is when the coaching is at the highest level. And healthy adult self is the part of us that is grounded and present, that can stay really connected to the client without needing anything from them in return. So, my shorthand for this is you're coaching from a loving detachment. You're both heavily invested and completely detached from the outcome. Because what happens when our stuff gets entangled with the client is that it starts to shape the coaching. Like high support tips into rescuing and reassuring and overgiving because we want the client to feel better, and high challenge can become impatience or pushing because their lack of movement makes us question our own competence, or we just avoid challenge altogether because we don't want to risk disturbing this lovely relationship we're building. All of this, by the way, totally inevitable, right? I think it's par for the course. But this is why, like, doing our own work matters, not because we have to be these like perfectly healed humans floating serenely above our client. I mean, God no, can you imagine working with a coach who never makes a mistake or never gets awkward or always has the answer? Like, wouldn't that just be just so weird, right? I don't think that is that has anything to do with good coaching, right? It's just about being able to notice when our own protective patterns are kind of getting in the way, intending to what belongs to us and returning our attention to the client. Like that steadiness allows us to offer both genuine care, meaningful challenge, without using the client to help us feel like a good coach. We get to model being a kind of messy, imperfect human, which by the way, all the research says the nature of the relationship is the thing, right? Regardless of any tools you use, the ability to build rapport with a client, be present with them and not make it about us, that's the thing that actually creates the most meaningful results and outcomes for our beloved clients. So this is why I don't believe our development as coaches is separate from the development of our businesses. And I know this because it's absolutely what unlocked my own coaching practice. So my clients now work with me for an average of around 18 months. Sometimes the work is much shorter, sometimes it continues for way longer. But that average gives me enormous breathing room in my business. I'm not constantly trying to replace clients or endlessly selling or worrying where the next person's coming from. And more importantly, I'm in deep trust now of my capacity to hold someone over time. And some of that has, of course, just come from experience, right? Putting in the reps, but it has also come from this developmental coach uh coaching approach that I bring to the work. I'm not ever reliant on an expanding collection of tools or hoping I can come up with some brilliant question. I I like to think of it as I've just got a deeper map, right? I can listen for how the client is making meaning, the identity they might be protecting, the deeply held rules about safety and belonging and possibility that shape what they can currently see and choose. And as those things start to shift, the new layers that become available to them. So if we bring this back to the container itself, a longer-term coaching relationship. What I really want you to come away from this podcast with is just knowing that it doesn't begin with changing the duration on your sales page, right? It begins with becoming curious about how you create a coaching relationship that has somewhere meaningful to go, right? A spacious enough relationship that can hold the client over several seasons of their life. So it's deep enough to move beyond the presenting problem and supportive enough for them to be able to reveal things about themselves truthfully. It's challenging enough for something new to become visible to be worked with and grounded enough that neither of you have to perform progress to make the relationship feel worthwhile. Right? That is what we're talking about with a longer-term relationship. And look, if this is the kind of coaching you want to do, this is absolutely the gap that SBCA is created to fill. We have a developmental foundation to all of the work that will help you coach more expansively with your clients and understand what you're listening for, trust the choices that you make in coaching sessions. And it's because you want to create the kind of substantial developmental work that clients keep choosing, right? They continue to choose it because it's so valuable. So, look, if you're curious about this way of coaching and maybe you want to experience a little bit before deciding perhaps if SBCA is for you, come and join me in this free interactive masterclass I'm running. It's called Beyond the Story, and we'll get up close to some real coaching conversations and explore what becomes visible when we're listening for stuff that comes up beneath what the client is just telling us, the wider context, the meaning they're making, the patterns we can easily miss, and the possibilities that this presents for where your coaching might go next. So the Beyond the Story Masterclass is on Tuesday, the 1st of September, from 10 until 11:30 in the morning UK time. You'll find the link to save your C and to join the SBCA wait list in the show note. I hope this episode has just opened up some possibilities for you about how you can create the revenue that you want without going totally overboard and overworking. I think there is such capacity when we open ourselves up to longer term work. And it's not as simple as it sounds, right? As we've discussed.