The Business and Practice of Coaching: Finding Your Niche, Making Money, & Attracting Ideal Clients Hardcover – September 17, 2005

This book isn't a how-to-coach book; it's a marketing book, a how-to-run-a-business book, directed at life, career & executive coaches. Many, many people call themselves "coaches" and thousands of newcomers enter the field each year. Only a small percentage of coaches make a six figure income, and the vast majority of coaches earn less than one third of that. What distinguishes the financially successful coaches from the others? Much of it is marketing strategy, the ability to define one's position in the market, focus on that defined niche, and operate the coaching business as a business. Anyone seriously considering a coaching -- or frankly, any type of consulting -- career would be well-advised to consider the business aspects of the coaching/consulting practice. Success requires not only coaching skills, but an enterpreneurial mindset and business savvy.In this book, the authors talk about positioning, differentiation in the market, and enterpreneurship. The authors also describe different types of coaching -- executive, small business, career, life, skills, relationships, creativity -- and outline marketing strategies tailored to each type. Finally, the authors provide plenty of helpful information for would-be coaches in several appendices.Overall, this is an eye-opening book for anyone thinking about embarking on a consulting or coaching practice. It is a great complement to the many other books out there that focus on the how-tos of coaching.

This is really an excellent book for those coaches who are serious about building their business. If you are a coach or new to coaching you soon find out that being a great coach is irrelevant if you don't have people to coach and you won't have people to coach if you don't know how to marketing your business and retain clients. This book is really a step by step guide to setting up a coaching business and it is presented logically. If you are looking for coaching theory or new ways to really help clients this book isn't for you. If you think coaching is an effortless way to make a living, this book is a reality check. If you are committed to taking the required actions to make you a financially successful coach, this is a must read.

I found some specific information in this book to be helpful such as the checklist for starting a successful business, top marketing strategies, the liability insurance chart and the wording of coaching agreements. I plan to implement and use these as I start my business. However, this authors background is in psychology and I found some of the language and thoughts to be very slanted to those ideas and training. Since I don't respect many theories in this field I found some of it to be esoteric and I would never use it. The author does try to be upfront about it and I suspect he had in mind readers with a similar background but that part I found sort of "touchy feely" and not very useful for a coaching practice.

This book does a wonderful job of helping a budding coach take strategic steps in building their coaching business. It is full of worksheets and questionnaires that help with each step of the process, from finding a niche to targeting the right audience to creating and implementing a business plan and marketing it.

This book not only gives a great layout for one interested in becoming a coach but also creates a great plan of action that can easily by followed. This book is one of the best I have ever read and I found it almost impossible to put down. Every aspect of coaching is considered including the business end and real life how to's. I highly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in building a coaching business as well as a diversified perspective of coaching constructs.Rodney MulhollemClinical TherapistLife Coach

Yes, this book helped me a lot, good information.

If you want to learn about the business of coaching, this is a good place to start. Inside these pages is a lot of excellent information to help you run your coaching business successfully. It can also help you make up your mind as to whether or not you really want your own practice as a personal coach.

This book is excellent and could be considered to be a classic in this field, save for the fact that it is over 15 years old at this point. So much of the coaching business is transacted online now, so that more recent materials would be necessary to read so to stay competitive. If the authors choose to update it, this book would again be the best available.