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choice Magazine
choice Magazine
Episode 105: The Emotional and Practical Keys to Coaching Success with guest, Laura Berman-Fortgang
Ready to unlock the secrets to building a sustainable coaching business? Laura Berman-Fortgang, an award-winning coach and founding member of the International Coaching Federation, joins us on Beyond the Page to share her invaluable insights. Discover the entrepreneurial mindset every coach needs, as Laura delves into her groundbreaking article, "Coach as Entrepreneur: The Keys to Building a Sustainable Coaching Business." Learn about her journey, from early contributions to the coaching field to her diverse roles as an interfaith minister and corporate spokesperson.
Why do 82% of coaching businesses fail within two years? Laura reveals the crucial strategies to avoid common pitfalls and ensure long-term success. From mastering the business aspects of coaching to leveraging both modern digital tools and traditional networking methods, Laura's advice is practical and actionable. We explore the integration of AI in coaching and how it can enhance productivity without replacing the human touch that is essential in this profession. Laura's discussion on the four M's—Messaging, Methodology, Marketing, and Management—provides a comprehensive blueprint for building a successful coaching business.
But it’s not just about business mechanics; Laura also delves into the emotional aspects of coaching and the importance of self-care. Understand the significance of clear contracts, policies, and the structured approach needed to thrive. We also touch on the future of the coaching profession, with exciting possibilities for younger generations. Tune in to learn about various programs designed to support coaches at different career stages and how you can access a free issue of Choice magazine. Subscribe to Beyond the Page and embark on your journey to mastery with expert insights and inspiring stories.
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Learn more about Laura Berman-Fortgang here.
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Six Steps to Go From Solo-Practitioner to Sensational Brand
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Welcome to the hoice Magazine podcast, known as Beyond the Page. hoice, the magazine of professional coaching is your go-to source for expert insights and in-depth features from the world of professional coaching. I'm your host, gary Schleifer, and I'm thrilled to have you here today. In each episode, we go go figure beyond the pages of Choice Magazine. The article is published and we dive deeper into some of the most recent and relevant topics impacting the world of professional coaching. We explore the content, interview the talented minds behind the articles and uncovering the stories that make an impact. hoice is more than a magazine. For over 22 years, we've built a community of like-minded people who create, use and share coaching tools, tips and techniques to add value to their businesses and, of course, to impact their clients.
Garry Schleifer:In today's episode, I'm speaking with my friend, award-winning coach Laura Berman-Fortgang, MCC. Who's the author of an article in our latest issue "A Livelihood from Coaching Feasible or Fanciful. Her article is entitled Coach s Entrepreneur the Keys to Building a Sustainable Coaching Business." Laura is an award-winning coach known internationally as a pioneer in the personal coaching field. She's also a best-selling author, sought-after speaker, tv personality, corporate spokesperson, interfaith minister, you might not have known that one, and definitely performer, and I have seen her perform. Her TEDx talk currently boasts over 1.9 million views. That's excellent, congratulations.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:We finally made 2 million.
Garry Schleifer:Oh yay, update 2 million. Laura's five books are published in 13 languages. She's addressed audiences around the world on topics such as reinvention, career satisfaction in small business, as well as bringing coaching to diverse clients ranging from homemakers to celebrities and Fortune 100 companies. Okay, got to stop and say, first of all, welcome. What makes you award winning? What awards do you have?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Oh well, I won a Career Coach of the Year award and, like me and Senator Cory Booker were featured as like when we were youngsters of award of you know, 40 under 40.
Garry Schleifer:Wow yeah.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:He wasn't a senator then. H he was, I think, a Newark councilman. So the career coach award was last year, so that's recent. Now, before that I never said I was award-winning. My books have won awards, The Silver Nautilus award.
Garry Schleifer:So there you go and you're the author. Thank you, and your history with the International Coaching Federation.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Well, I am one of the founding members. I am an early board member. Madeline Holman Blanchard and I started the Corporate Coaching Division of ICF. I was on the Ethics and Standards Committee. I mean, I was an early, early, early, put my hand on that one.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, Laura, when I think of the profession of coaching and who's the biggest cheerleader you always come to mind for me.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Oh, thank you.
Garry Schleifer:No, sir, everything you do is in service of us, just as coaches, as humans, not just us coaches, your clients, and just rah, rah for the profession that is so amazing, and something that I've started talking about too is that, and I wouldn't mind your take on this too, not everyone can be a coach. There's a sense of it being a calling. It's like you're an interfaith minister. I'm gathering there was a calling for you in that.
Garry Schleifer:It's not one of those things that you wake up and say, well, some people might, but wake up and say I'm going to be an interfaith minister.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:I mean, it is a calling.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:I if I if I give you the minister example . Even back when you know, not long after you know, every Muslim was a bad person ? Why just felt like, wow, we're so misinformed practically, and so I wanted to be informed about major religions in the world and it helped me bridge conversations, it helped me bridge cultures, it helped me bring people together and coaching changed my life and I just was, you know it, just it had it felt like a calling in the sense that, wow, look at this thing and it look at what it did for me and I wanted to do that for other people.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:So I this is one instance where I appreciate being a cheerleader that you know even when I wrote my first book like I you know why me, why me of all the our colleagues, why was I the first book out there, practically even before Thomas Leonard, who was the founder of the ICF, and the only way I could write that book was saying this is for all of us. Like this is to help all of us bring coaching to the world, because it just seemed like an impossible task if I tried to do it just for me. So I appreciate you bringing that up and I hope that I continue to be able to be a cheerleader for a long time.
Garry Schleifer:Oh you will. You can't stop once you've started. I feel the same way. The name of your first book?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Take Yourself to the Top. And it just happens to be sitting here, it still exists.
Garry Schleifer:Good for you, and the latest one is?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Uh you know, I don't even remember anymore which one was really the last one, but I think The Prosperity Plan. There we go, yeah and there's three in between.
Garry Schleifer:Good for you! So what made you decide to write an article for this issue?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:This was a statistic from the ICF. 82% of coaches close up shop within two years. They don't make it, they can't succeed at having their own business or they don't succeed at having their own business. And that is a statistic that I came across almost three years ago and it's just like made smoke come out of my ears. You know that there's really talented, good coaches who don't have the business acumen or the ability to withstand the bumps and bruises that you take when you're in business for yourself. When I saw you were doing that issue, I was like I have to be a part of this issue.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:This is just a burning passion for me that coaches make it, especially good coaches.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, no, thank you very much. I knew the answer, but I want our audience to know and to see and to hear your drive and your support again, cheerleader from the side of let's make this a successful business. So what did you figure out? What's the biggest reason most coaches don't succeed?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:The biggest reason is it don't treat it like a business. You know we treat it like an art, which it is. You know it's an art and a science and we love it and we're heart centered. I heard something today of like you have to be a .com even though you have a .org heart. You know you have to be.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Oh well said. I think I have to credit BetterU p with that. I think I read that on their website like you have to be a .com when your heart is a . org and that's what I think is in the way of most coaches succeeding is their big hearts. They have trouble sometimes asking for money or holding people to commitments or, you know, even just getting out of practitioner mode and realizing like you're more than your craft, like you have to also master the craft of having a business.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah well, I'm going to quote you from your article. The key is to embody entrepreneurship. The early days as the multitasking wear all hats business owner will eventually evolve to having team members. But it all starts with scrappy determination and a willingness to take a risk.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Amen. Who said that?
Garry Schleifer:Laura Berman-F ortgang MCC.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Yeah, I mean, when I'm teaching coaches this I tell them, I want to teach you how to be the entrepreneur you have to be to have the business you want to have. Like you have to be that entrepreneur, you have to wear all the hats, you have to think strategically. You can't just be taking action for the sake of action, throwing it out there like spaghetti and see what sticks to the wall, and there's just so many gurus and so many people to listen to. You know I think it's really hard to sift through the noise, but, as you know, you and I have been in this long enough that there wasn't internet when we started.
Garry Schleifer:I know right, we did calls on the phone.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:On the telephone and in person.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Yeah, oh yeah. And also, I mean you can't use the word Rolodex. People are like what, what's a Rolodex? But you know that little thing that held pieces of paper and business cards. And there's something to be said still for the old fashioned ways, is that, for those people that are afraid of, I don't wanna say afraid of the internet, but avoidant of social media and other ways to be out there electronically, the old ways still work. Good old networking is really, really valuable. Picking up the phone and calling people is still really, really valuable. So when people get all tied up that they have to be some kind of guru in the tech world, you do not, you do not.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, no, not at all. And you even referred to AI, and to be afraid of AI? Well, to be afraid of anything is to be lacking knowledge and understanding, because you can't be afraid of something when you don't know what it is you're exactly afraid of.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:So, yeah, and it just strikes fear in people that you know AI is going to take over. You're not going to need coaches anymore, and the best way to stay relevant is to know what AI is up to and what it's capable of.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, we did an issue last year on AI and there are two sides to AI, augmented and generative. And augmented is the one that we use already that supports us, like calendar supporting systems and automated emails and CRMs. Technically those are AI, but they just kind of put them on you know steroids now to make it easier for us to take away the multitasking and admin things that keep us from being networking and doing the coaching. So it's kind of a good thing. And the one that we're afraid of is that matrix version, the generative AI that some Borg is going to take us over. There's just nothing that's going to take away that human energetic connection.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Well, it's like someone said it's like insight. I mean the AI is getting sophisticated. It is. It can summarize, it can infer, but it ultimately, there's still this part of our humanity that can't be replaced and we just have to be really good at what we do.
Garry Schleifer:And that's what I've been hearing too, and in that, even throughout that AI issue, was just be a great coach. Keep striving to be a great coach. A machine can never take over a coach that has no methodology or system. If you're coaching like really coaching and you're in the moment, they can't take that away. But anyway, we're off topic on AI. What I want to ask more about is that is, let's get back to being successful as a business coach.
Garry Schleifer:Tell us more about those, the four M's you wrote about in the article?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Yeah, so what I've, what I've come to realize, i t boils down to the four M's: Messaging, Methodology, Marketing and Management. So messaging meaning, you know, too many coaches speak in jargon or they speak from their .org heart and people aren't going to buy that. People are going to buy results. What are you going to do for me that is worth me spending money on? So getting people to fix that messaging is really important. Thinking and speaking in results. Methodology you mentioned methodology. When you have your own methodology as a coach, this gives you the ability to become a brand, right? So I mean, while I'm pulling my books off the shelf, I'll pull one more. So the Now What, by the way, is a methodology for career exploration, to figure out career clarity and direction. How do I think, what questions do I ask? And that one book, that one methodology, became a book, a talk, the TEDx talk, a way to coach and train other coaches. I come up with an electronic version. So you can create a cottage industry out of a methodology and really be asked for by name because you create a particular result, and that's something I want to see coaches move towards, as we have to all differentiate ourselves in this crowded marketplace to keep making an impact and making an income.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Now, marketing, like we could spend hours on marketing but basically, how do you let people know about this methodology that you have in your messaging and then management, like managing your business, treating it like a business, knowing what you charge, having contracts, knowing what your refund policy is. But it's also not just managing your business, it's managing yourself, because how many ups and downs and valleys do we go through emotionally as clients come and go? Or maybe someone wasn't happy with us, or we thought someone was going to sign on and they didn't, or you're going through a dry spell like how do we manage ourselves? So I find those to be the four M' s, the four things that hold us together as a viable business.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, oh, that's great. Thank you so much and ring so many bells too, especially that last part. I'm coaching for a company right now and we have clients that they only get three 45 minute sessions in a course of three months. They have to have it all done. It can't be sooner than two weeks, it has to be less than three months. All three sessions and that's it. You just get to know and love them and then they have to leave. Wow. So that's been tough but I'm managing, and the more that come and go, the more I manage it better. And you know, take care of myself and other ones, I'm lucky, I have them in there for longer. They're six months and things like that.
Garry Schleifer:I have a saying too with regards to your business. I always think that the .org to the .com. I always say that every business is 90% sales, admin, marketing, methodology, messaging, management, accounting, all those things that businesses have that a lot of people came from and it really is only about 10% that's actually the stuff that you do. So you always have to have that machine behind you, but now I think it doesn't take 90% of the time to get that machine up and running to allow you to do more than 10% of your time. It's not a time equivalent, it just happens to be a content equivalent.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:That's really good and well said, and I think that's why people get disillusioned or stop pursuing a coaching business is that they thought they'd be doing more coaching. And you kind of have to like the whole thing. It's not just the coaching, it's what you have to do to have the opportunity to be coaching.
Garry Schleifer:Exactly, and and I've been doing that, like for myself, it's been 23 years and four months.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:But who's counting?
Garry Schleifer:But who's counting? January 2001. I still remember Denver, Colorado, my first course in January, but luckily it was after a week in Puerto Vallarta, so you know that's all right, you survived. I survived, and it's been a roller coaster of niches, not niches, who do I coach best with. Things like that. But the bottom line is I'm fortunate I started out as an entrepreneur before I got into coaching, so I'm kind of on that side that you talk about being an entrepreneur first.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:It makes a big difference. There are people who make the transition from a corporate job to entrepreneurship just fine. But for others it's just, you didn't realize how much infrastructure you had before and how hard it is to recreate that for yourself. But it can be done.
Garry Schleifer:It can be done. You know you talk about the gang of us that came into coaching as a kind of a third or fourth career. Totally off track maybe, but what do you think of the students that are going into university and college and taking coaching as a profession? Can they take it as a major now and stuff like that?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:You know, I think it's still only available as a certificate course, you know. So it's not a major yet, if I'm not mistaken. But I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you took and majored in Organizational Development, if you didn't have a concentration in coaching. You know, I think, look, they're great skills to have. They're great insights to gain as a human being. I think you get better at it as you have more life experience, but it certainly can't hurt for the youngest people to start gaining those skills.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, well, and what a great way to say that. Thank you, because I was thinking well, they don't have entrepreneurship. Are they studying that at school? Are they going to connect the dots with coaching as a profession? Are they looking at it, like to your point, working with organizational development or HR, knowing about coaching and have the experience of coaching, not necessarily as a career? Anyway, I think it's one of those things we'll stay tuned and find out.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Yes, stay tuned.
Garry Schleifer:Our next issue youngins in the coaching field, and if you have some young people that are listening in, let us know what it's like. Next question are you ready?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Okay.
Garry Schleifer:So we know how they can be successful. But what are the common mistakes that coaches make? Business people make growing their business.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:You know, one mistake that, I don't mean to be so smiley about it, but people will spend a lot of time getting that website right instead of having conversations with people.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:You know, like it can take six months to get that website exactly as you want, which means you've talked to nobody because you're waiting for that website. So one of the big mistakes is cutting out the coaching conversation because you think you need paraphernalia, like you think you need a brochure, you think you need your online brochure in the form of a website. So talking to people, don't make the mistake of hiding behind a website. That's one of them. I think another is trying to be everything to too many people. You know, I know in the beginning you kind of have to coach everybody and see where your sweet spot is. But you know there's people like, well, yeah, I'm a this coach and I'm a that coach and I can do everything. What do you need, you know? And there just comes a point where you've got to decide who it is that you help and who you help best, and um and stick to it makes a difference. Can you think of any other ones? Let me think.
Garry Schleifer:Oh my goodness, there was one, but I was so engaged in what you were saying about the oh, I think let's hone in on the niche one, so, and let's go back to the conversation about life experience and coaching experience. So some people, they have corporate experience and let's say in organizational development, so they could use that background as an organizational development person to coach those people. So they've got a kind of a ready niche because they sort of know. The danger is they may know too much and make too many assumptions. So they have to be very careful about their biases, right, but I think that's another one. But I think, like it's not not a mistake, but an observation, is to watch where you oh, here's the exercise.
Garry Schleifer:I was on the board, the President of the local chapter of International Coaching Federation and my Vice President and I were working together a lot. We managed the conference for a couple of years, the local conference, and we were talking about coaching business. And she was already, like 20 years ago, in the half a million dollars a year range. Like, did everything that you said, phone call. She used a fax machine. I still have one, oh my gosh, and you've loaned it to the Smithsonian.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:It's just built into the printer.
Garry Schleifer:Oh, I never thought of that. But she said to me well, take a look at all the clients that you've coached so far, because, remember, I'd only been six years who did you like coaching and why? And who did you not like coaching? And what was the opposite that you would have wanted? And I created a niche of coaching women who had businesses that had more than five people working for them. So I like working with women.
Garry Schleifer:It just seemed to happen and we gelled and, they had more than five people working for them basically said they had enough money to pay salaries, so they had enough money to pay me. So a little selfishness built into that. And I did that for a while and then I started working on choice and then I came back and now I'm coaching for organizations, platforms, whatever you might call them. So I have two and a third one I'm interviewing this coming week, and it keeps my bucket full and allows me the freedoms to do other stuff. But it all comes from who do I want to coach and who I love coaching.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:So yeah, and it's evolved. I think that's important for people to know is like that can evolve and the process that you use is exactly how you do it. Like, who do you love coaching, who do you have the best time with, who do you have the best results with? And that's how you figure out your niche. So I think you can niche too early. You know, if you don't have experience, you need to just coach. It was Thomas Leonard again founder of CoachU and founder of the ICF who said to me you have to coach a hundred people to know what you're doing. So I still kind of use that as as a guide of like you know, after you've coached a hundred people, probably 50, you can figure out who you really love to coach and make that your niche.
Garry Schleifer:I think I should do that exercise again as I redevelop my outside, my private practice.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Not a bad idea. But what I love about. I mean, when we started out, there were no companies who hired coaches. So now that there are platforms that use coaches, you know, for those people who don't necessarily love marketing or don't have the time to market, those are great options and I think it's great that you, you know, really does free you up to not have to be doing that other 90%. You can be working your 90% on choice and then have your coaching time.
Garry Schleifer:Well, unfortunately, my team at choice does not allow me. So those Nancy, if you're listening, they don't let me spend 90% of my time.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Well, that's fabulous. You've built that up too.
Garry Schleifer:Let's talk about having a team. It took me years to build up to a team. At the beginning, yes, I too did everything. Yes, I hid behind some of the things you said in the article. I hid behind the admin. My brochure website was never quite been there. Done all of it? Do I still do that? To a certain extent? Yes, I'm in the throes of rebuilding an image right now and I'm stopping myself with silly things. So it happens to all of us. I think you said it. It's peaks and valleys.
Garry Schleifer:Peaks and valleys. Yeah, thank you. Emotional and work-wise as well. So I want to. Before we go, I want to quote something that you said. Coaching is one of the few professions where you are guaranteed to grow alongside your clients. Embrace it fully in these four domains, and you will see yourself among the percentage that make it. Thank you for those wise words.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:So true, it's been a thrill.
Garry Schleifer:It's been a thrill. I absolutely adore you, as you know. Oh, by the way, uh also want to let our audience know that Laura also contributed as a member of the editorial board of choice Magazine for like about 20 years yes, many years many, many years. Laura, is there anything else you want our audience to remember or do as a result of the article in this conversation?
Laura Berman-Fortgang:I want to just say a little, add a quotable here. We're into personal development, that's why we do this work. There's no greater personal development than being an entrepreneur. You will always be up against something that you have to grow through, so I'll leave you with that. You can find me at LauraBer manFortgang. com. Just remember my name. There's no one else except for the sex doctor. But she's Laura Berman, and I will see you, Garry, at the Midwest Conference.
Garry Schleifer:You will, as a speaker, you will and I'll be one of the sponsors and a sponsor one of my volunteer. So thank you very much for that and thank you again for everything that you do for the coaching profession especially. You know this article and your programs. You have a program as well to help coaches be successful.
Laura Berman-Fortgang:Yes, the A-list coach. Another .com yeah. So I have two programs. One is a beginner and one is an elite program for coaches to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and prosper. So come check it out.
Garry Schleifer:Awesome. There's a woman that is committed to us being successful. Thank you for that. That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app, probably the one that got you here in the first place. If you're not a subscriber, you can sign up for free by scanning. I'll get this right one day. Scan this QR code and get a free issue of choice, or go to our website, choice- online. com and click the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery. Thanks again, Laura.