And I totally understand why. It happened to me. Since creating CoachNow I’ve made it my mission to stop it from happening to you.
Earlier this year, I wrote an article titled “3 Reasons Why You’ll Quit Your Coaching Job”. Since its publication, it has been wildly popular, and it’s been so refreshing to see coaches identify with it and share their experiences proactively mitigating burnout.
Please give it a read before diving into this post.
This week, I want to write a quick followup to that article.
Because, while I think those 3 mistakes are still way too common, they certainly aren’t the only ones I wish I’d known while I was coaching full time.
Here are 3 MORE reasons you’ll quit your coaching job 👊
1. You’re Struggling With Retention
At CoachNow, we focus on the importance of making sure your athletes retain the information from your live sessions.
Because if they retain that information, they’re gonna practice more effectively, and get better faster. As a result, you’re much more likely to retain them as clients.
In other words, Retention = Retention.
Believe it or not, the average person forgets 40% of what they learn immediately upon leaving the learning environment.
After a week, you lose closer to 90%.
The takeaway? If they don’t retain information, time is wasted reviewing and repeating, rather than progressing.
And, even worse, they’re likely to develop bad habits while you’re apart, giving them the frustrating experience of walking two steps forward and one step back.
So what can you do to avoid this mistake?
Centralize your communication and document the “cliff notes” of your sessions.
Make sure that everything they’ll need is in one spot and offer micro touch points as they practice to ensure they are on the right track.
And at the end of every live session, always record a 1-2 minute post-session recap.
Ask the athlete what they learned that day, what they want to improve, and WHY the practice plan you’ve prescribed will help them reach that goal. Capture and post that “recap” video directly within their CoachNow Space.
Done!
2. You and Your Athletes are DISTRACTED.
There are literally trillions of dollars spent every year aimed at distracting you and your athletes.
Aside from the myriad of ads, apps, and platforms, as a coach and business owner you likely use email, text, WhatsApp, and a whole slew of other communication channels.
You might not realize it, but fragmented attention is a huge problem.
A distracted mind hurts focus, practice and performance.
Do everything you can to avoid unnecessary information or content that might be confusing or set your athletes on the wrong path.
That's why at CoachNow, we created a private, distraction-free platform. There is nothing "extra" thrown into the mix, everything is focused exclusively on connecting you to your athletes and helping them reach their goals.
No ads, no algorithms, nothing at all competing for attention.
And unlike our competitors, athletes can’t search for coaching profiles in the app. This is by design - I feel very strongly that coaching “marketplaces” are bad news for any coach looking to grow a sustainable business in the long term.
The last thing we want is for you to bring your athletes into our platform only for them to be distracted/enticed by other coaching opportunities.
So, how do you combat all the distraction?
Get really good at saying “NO”.
Go all-in with one channel and train your athletes to only expect communication, feedback, and coaching there.
Then, never give your feedback anywhere else. In fact, I’ve found it’s helpful to prepare a response in advance for when your athlete inevitably texts, emails and/or messages you in the wrong channel.
For me that involved creating a canned response to direct them to the proper platform. E.g. "Great question! Please post this in CoachNow and I will respond there".
Avoid disparate channels and distracting platforms at all costs.
Centralize your efforts and be ready to set boundaries around how you coach. You’ll thank me later!
3. You Haven’t Adopted an Entrepreneur First Mindset
You’ve heard me say it before: You’re Not Just a Coach, You’re an Entrepreneur.
Time and time again I see coaches making decisions from the perspective of coaching and not from the perspective of owning and scaling a BUSINESS. And it shows.
Specifically, I’ve noticed that coaches struggle to think about their decisions purely in the context of simple ROI. i.e. Money in, money out.
So many coaches focus on acquiring technical certifications, purely so they can point to them on their website. It’s almost always an expensive decision that doesn’t actually lead to more revenue.
When deciding where to spend your time and money, think like a scrappy entrepreneur. Ask questions like:
How will this impact my business goals? What is the ROI on this certification (whether that’s time or money)? Is this additional knowledge going to help me save more time? Hire people? Expand my business?
In short, every decision should come back to your bottom line.
Because when you start making your decisions from an entrepreneur’s mindset, rather than a coach’s, you put your needs and growth first and your ego second.
Ultimately, this mindset is of the highest service to your athletes too.
For more on this topic, check out our popular blog: You’re Not Just a Coach, You’re an Entrepreneur.
Action Items
Before I close out today’s post, I want to encourage you to take action.
Because no matter what information you're learning, whether it be from us or anywhere else, it means nothing unless you take action.
This week, make just ONE tweak to one of the areas I spoke about in this post.
Want to increase retention? Try filming recaps with your athletes and posting it in CoachNow (or whatever platform you’re using).
Want to reduce distraction? Set clear boundaries and consolidate your communication.
Want to shift your mindset? Try your best to remove your ego from your business. And ask yourself - what’s working? What’s not? Where is the low hanging fruit that you can leverage to make yourself more money, save yourself time and avoid burnout at all costs?
It doesn’t need to be much. Just pick one of these things and make a small upgrade. And, as always, you can always reach out to me to let me know how it goes.
Here’s to avoiding burnout and growing your coaching BUSINESS!