This post is different from my norm, but there is so much overlap between my friends, my clients, and my readers that going ‘on the record’ about my decision-making process is simply … more efficient. :)

Since I stopped actively promoting my coaching, several people have spoken to me privately about it, concerned that I was having some sort of crisis.

It’s nothing like that, I promise you.

In a nutshell, my reasoning process is this: I know who my right people are, but I don’t know how to market to them.

All you need to do is read my What I Do page to know whether or not we’d be a fit, and whether I could help you. But you’d never find me unless someone told you about me, or you happened to have read something I wrote, because I’m not really great at marketing myself.

The single best place to find clients is through referrals. It’s slow, but utterly reliable. And having thought long and hard about it, I’ve decided I’m fine with allowing my coaching growth to be organic. To be perfectly frank, without a clear and succinct marketing message, the ROI on my time is very, very, low, which means it’s far below the standards of efficiency I set for myself.

To be even more frank, spending my time doing ‘marketing’ things to scare up clients is a) ineffective, b)time-consuming c) has a contrary motivation to my actual philosophy, which is that change unfolds at its own pace and time, and change that is motivated by a limited time offer is simply unhealthy.

About all I can do is remind you that I’m here, I’m available, whenever you’d like my help. And the very best way to do that is just to write a few posts whenever I’m feeling inspired. I’ve gotten three times as many comments and kudos since I punted my editorial calendar, but once in a while, like this week, I’m too busy with other interests to have something on-topic to say here. Other things, which, by the way, are not only intensely interesting, but have great ROIs.

What I’m Doing Instead

I often give the advice “play to your strengths,” because, if you start from your weaknesses, with a lot of hard work and effort, you can get yourself up to mediocre. But if you play to your strengths, your weaknesses don’t matter. You’ll be valuable enough that your weak areas can be delegated or outsourced.

But I will admit that my strengths are particularly good ones, and my weaknesses are not really that egregious. (I’m not bragging, really. I think it’s true of most people, but they’ve been conditioned to denigrate themselves.)

I was asked to speak on SuccessProfilesRadio, (Monday, 6pm EST) which of course is a real pleasure (you know how I love to talk about myself.) But of course this raises the question of “successful.” Define your terms, sir!

I personally feel quite successful by the standard of measure that is very important to me: Control. I get to do what I want, when I want, and I’m unconstrained by a boss or a job. I am stunningly unsuccessful at niching myself. I will likely never attain success in this area.

Those of you reading closely will recall that I started selling used books when I move to Virginia. While enjoyable and reasonably profitable, it’s definitely only a part-time occupation, taking perhaps 10 hours a week for me and as many as twenty for my partner. (He could trim that a bit, but he’s not as obsessed with efficiency as I am). However, the business does not scale reliably, and so I’ve been researching my next challenge, which I’ll no doubt talk about when I’ve got it a bit more nailed down.

There are the added intangibles like fact that the house I’m sharing has a large yard for me to garden in, a shady screened porch for me to work in fine weather, and the fact that there are absolutely no obstacles to me stopping “work” at any point to write a post, read a chapter of a book, or research something I’m interested in.

And yet I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur, although I might introduce myself as one for brevity’s sake. I don’t “start businesses.” I do what I like, and I like to be rewarded for my mastery of it, which usually manifests as making money. But the reward for writing isn’t money (if it were it would fail the ROI test.) It’s the satisfaction of conveying my ideas in a clear and persuasive manner, especially if those writings spawn conversation. It’s really only a pleasant coincidence that writing well has so many other advantages.

So while it seems like I’m giving up on my coaching business, it’s only that I’m not on the hamster wheel to make it profitable (money-wise), or a full-time venture. In the sense that it’s a business, it’s more accurate to say that I’m waiting for my investment to mature, because word of mouth moves slowly. If I suddenly had an epiphany about how to market it efficiently, I wouldn’t ignore it; the right marketing would be fun to do, as well as rewarding. But I’m not going to chase it, either.

The Facts of Life

I don’t live on air. I like a good bottle of wine, and I like to do the sort of travel that involves hotels, not hostels.

I truly believe there is an art and a science to making money, and I do enjoy my apprencticeship so far. It begins with doing things you enjoy. I really enjoy selling books (I enjoy the profit margin more.) I would willingly do more of that, but it doesn’t scale.

I love coaching. But word-of-mouth scales slowly, and other forms of marketing… I do not enjoy them as much. Even those I do enjoy lose their lustre when I do them from a motivation to make Change Catalyst ‘pay my way’

Your motivation counts.

Maybe some people can do their art as a business, but I can’t. Not, at least, without getting my motivations clean and clear. Intrinsic motivation is a very tricky thing, and relying on money as a metric is an all-too-easy way to kill it dead. No love. No art. And No Money (if you’re lucky).

Besides all that, I never wanted to have more than a handful of clients a week. I can’t handle any more than that, physically and emotionally, and getting too busy means I don’t write as much, and I can’t have that either. So, forcing Change Catalyst to scale in such a manner that it would ‘pay’ would destroy my quality of life — even though (and this is counter-intuitive) — it’s my passion. My life’s work. My raison d’etre.

I am truly blessed, however, to have created a lifestyle (with multiply income streams! Buzzword alert!) where everything dovetails beautifully. Books don’t take too much time, but they allow me to squeak buy while I figure out something else I’d like to do. I write a lot, and in so doing nurture my own self-actualization. And best of all, I allow Change Catalyst to flower and unfold at its own pace.

So much of this process is counter-intuitive or against conventional wisdom that I decided I should probably share it so that you could learn from it. Maybe it doesn’t apply to your situation, but at least it’s good to be aware that conventional wisdom could potentially be wrong here.

Thanks for reading,

Shanna

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