EP 308 - How To Build Coaching Business Working Full Time (Even If You Only Have 6 Hours Per Week)
If you want to build a profitable coaching business while working full time, then you will want to watch this episode because I am breaking down exactly how to do it in just 6 hours per week.
You do not need 20 plus hours or endless content to grow your business.
You just need 6 strategic hours spent on the activities that actually bring clients to you.
I am Debbie Shadid, business coach and founder of the Business Building Boutique for Coaches, and I have helped thousands of women build profitable coaching businesses without quitting their jobs. This same framework can work for you too.
In this episode, I walk you through the exact 6 hour schedule that has helped my clients consistently sign clients.
I also share the mindset shifts that make all the difference, including embracing B minus work, prioritizing only what grows your business, and protecting your time like the precious resource it is.
You will hear how Eileen built her coaching business with 6:30 AM client calls before work, proving that with the right system and commitment, anything is possible.
Want to grow your coaching business? Join us in the Business Building Boutique. Schedule a call here: https://debbieshadid.com/schedule
Free Resources for coaches:
- Canva Workshop: https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/canva
- Free Masterclass to Grow Your Coaching Business: https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/masterclass
Tools I recommend for coaches:
- Flodesk (email marketing): https://flodesk.com/c/DEBBIESHADID
- Descript (video editor): https://get.descript.com/cj4n2vzke4vu
Connect with Debbie:
Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbieshadid/
If you find this video helpful, make sure to subscribe on YouTube for more videos to help you grow your coaching business: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz6RS8kQGMLJqJrK9uKdjtg
Disclaimer: Some of the links shared in this description are affiliate links. This means that if you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and trust to support your coaching business.
Let’s connect!
Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
Instagram @debbieshadid
#DebbieShadid #LifeCoachBusinessBuildingSchool
Let’s connect!
Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
Instagram @debbieshadid
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and forward this to a coach who is building and growing their coaching business. CLICK HERE TO LEAVE A REVIEW
Don’t forget to connect with me on social media: Instagram | Facebook
Transcript
You have a full-time job and you have lots of responsibilities, and I'll bet you're exhausted by the time Friday comes. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you have this nagging feeling that you need to get your coaching business built. You cannot figure out how to do it. Here's the good news, I wanna tell you, you do not need 20 hours a week or more to build your business. In fact, I wanna encourage you to not leave your full-time job. What you do need is six hours. In this episode, I'm gonna talk about how you take six hours and you use them in a disciplined way. That's the key word. Use them wisely. And I'll walk through what you need to do. I'm Debbie Shadid I've helped over 10,000 coaches not only build, but grow successful, profitable coaching businesses, and many of these women work full-time. So I work with women who have full-time jobs and full lives. Jobs that I don't want you to quit just yet. They have families who need them. Responsibilities that are not going anywhere. Many of you are taking care of kids, grandkids, and maybe even older family members. I have done it all, so I get it. Responsibilities that are not going away anywhere fast. And when you look at the coaches on social media, you somehow have in your mind that they have endless amounts of time to create content. You think I could never do that. You're right. You can't do it the way that they do it, but you can do it. We have coaches that do it and have done it, and I'll tell you, our coaching is actually in the evenings. To accommodate for people who work full-time. Now, we have daytime coaching as well, but I'm really passionate about helping you. If this is your side hustle, and for many of you, it's what you want to retire with this career as a coach, so you don't have to be posting constantly. That's not where you're gonna live, right? You're not gonna have time to be on social media all day long. You're not gonna have elaborate launches, but what you can do is have a beautiful business that only takes six hours a week to do. but here's what I want you to know. For certain six hours a week used strategically is enough time to build your business. The key word that I just used is strategically used those six hours used on the wrong things are gonna get you nowhere, and chances are you are using far more than six hours. Working on your business and still getting nowhere. Six hours focused on the right things could change your life and your business. First of all, let's address your mindset. This idea that you do not have enough time is not helping you. How you think about time is gonna be the thing that you need to shift. What if you have just the perfect amount of time? To actually build an incredible business. What I want you to think about in the first mindset shift is that done is better than perfect. I call this B minus work. This is a concept that I love that I was taught at the Life Coach school. If you only have six hours to do work, you know what you do, you just get it done. Think about this. When you have a deadline or somebody's coming to your house, or you know you have a project that needs to be done. You get it done in the amount of time that you have, this is what will happen to you. When we actually give you only six hours a week, that email that you wanna spend days on, you'll be like, okay, I've got 30 minutes. It's gonna be short and sweet, and I'm hitting send. That's social media post. You will not labor over. You'll either write it or you'll record it and you'll just hit publish. You will get it done in the amount of time you give yourself. You cannot be perfect. And I have to tell you what we find time and time again when our clients assess what they're doing is the social media posts and the things that they did. What we might call as imperfectly are actually the things that get better results. So moving forward, I want you to decide that the B minus work is the perfect way to do it. The second shift that you need to consider is nothing is urgent when time is scarce. You have to be ruthless about what you're gonna do with it. Every task that lands on your plate is not equally important or that lands on your to-do list that runs for a mile long. You guys, I could take your list and I could mark all kinds of things off of it. You need to do the same. So constantly ask yourself, does this thing actually get me a client? This is a key question, whether you have six hours or you have 40 hours, does the thing that I am doing right now or want to do, actually get me a client If the answer is no, whatever's on that list goes to the bottom of the list. You can even cross it off until later, like designing a logo, you could spend forever doing that. Or you can hop on Canva, find what's already designed, put your name in it and just call it good. Okay. Perfecting your website colors. Again, I love to do that stuff and I love to talk about building a brand for a lifetime, but you know what you can do? You can go on Canva and say, I like Blue and I like green, and it will show you brands that are already built for you. Yes, you can do that. You don't even have to have the perfect website. You can have a single page that is built in Canva for free where you build a website, and that's enough for you to have. Don't read another book about how to coach a client that's not gonna get you a client learning how to be a better coach. There's time for that later. Right now, use the coaching skills that you have. Do some marketing and get yourself working with clients. That's actually how you will improve your coaching faster than anything. So talking to people who could become clients, that is where you want to focus. The third shift is that you are building something that really matters. I like to call it a business for a lifetime. So on the days when you are tired, I wanna encourage you to tap into your why. Why are you doing this? Why are you taking this precious six hours and building a business? And I know it's one of two things. Either you are looking for some kind of freedom in your schedule or working your way out of your job, or. The second thing is you want to do something that you know changes the world. You want your life to matter. You want your experiences in your life to matter. So it's either one of two things, right? You have this passion project where you want to make a difference or you're looking for some freedom, either financial or time freedom. And for most of you right now, it's both of those things. So if you are looking to create that freedom, then just know that you're building something that is. gonna be around for a long time. When you think about it that way, you'll actually protect those six hours. You will do what it is you need to do week after week because you have this end goal in mind. When we think about the six hours, let's talk about how you're going to use those in a very strategic way and what you're gonna do with those hours. Okay? The first two hours of every week, you know what you're gonna do. Outreach and conversations. This will be the most important time spent in your six hours total. Nothing happens in your business until you talk to people. So those two hours do not spend scrolling around looking for people. Start with a strategic list and I say, start with the people you know first. Reach out to 'em, connect with them. Schedule time to have a coffee chat and don't waste your time small talking on those calls when I have a tight schedule and I have back to back consultation calls. There's no small talking. We get right to business. And you know what? Nobody minds. Everybody is busy. So get right down to what it is you want to talk about on that call. Make that a priority. Meeting people telling 'em what you do. This is what is gonna drive all of your business. It is not optional. You cannot skip that step two hours a week of consistent outreach. You multiply that times 52. You've got over a hundred hours a year of connecting with people. Do you know how much of a difference that will make in your business? It'll be massive. The next one hour is on content creation. Notice I did not say 10 hours. You don't need 10 hours of content. Pick one platform, just one. Create a piece of content once a week, or create three social media posts once a week. That is it.'cause that's all you've got Time for one short video. If you use something like Descript, one of the tools that we love, you can cut one video into multiple things. So Send one email and make it into several posts. Don't overthink this. Don't spend 45 minutes choosing the perfect image. Just pick something and get it done and move on. Check it off your list. The next hour of your week, that fourth hour would be client delivery. I'm gonna assume that you're working with clients for the women that I work with who work full time. The very first thing I recommend is you don't have time for private clients. What you do have time for is group coaching, and you can do group coaching in one hour a week. By the way, you can do it when it works with your schedule. That could be Saturday morning, Sunday evening, Monday night, whatever works with your schedule. That is the time that you're gonna find clients who are also available to work with you during that time. So one hour a week to coach clients. You also might need some time to prep, and let me give you another crazy thought here guys. You could do a coaching session in 30 minutes. You don't have to have one hour sessions, particularly if you have people that are busy. You could even do only email coaching. Our mindset coach, Thais Glenn, she's actually working with somebody right now who only email coaches her, and she loves that. So there are many ways to figure out. there's been coaches that I've come across who do text message coaching. There's people who do Voxer coaching or they do a Voxer day. I just saw an offer of a copywriter that you paid $2,500 for a day of Voxer coaching where you could send the things that you wanted reviewed. You could ask questions, and only one day of Voxer coaching. Think about that. If you work full time, it could be one day a month. So again, figure out what works with your schedule. But for now, we're gonna call it one hour. Now we're up to four hours. The fifth hour is going to be where you learn something, but please be strategic about this. If you are part of a coaching program, don't just sit around and watch replays of past calls. That is not useful. Find out what it is you have to learn and go watch that one video. Watch it on double speed or one and a half speed so you can get through it very quickly. our clients who work full-time. I tell 'em, come to me and ask me what you need to do next. Don't guess. I will tell you the one video to watch so that you can learn what you need to do. Or just come to coaching and ask me what you should do, and I'll tell you, I'm gonna save you that kind of time. So if you work full time. Take the hour and come work with me. Take the hour and come get coached on Monday evenings with me. Honestly, I'll tell you what to do. I will save you so much time. I'll cut through all the noise out there and make this easy for you. Okay? So reading an hour on a business book that's not helping you, watching a video on YouTube that is not helping you. It actually eats into the time that you could be taking action. Okay? One hour on admin or planning only one hour. You don't have to get up and be in the 6:00 AM club. You don't, Just pick a time where you're gonna review your calendar and you're gonna plan when you have a plan for what task you're going to do next. Then you do that next thing. When you know where you're gonna market next week, you just do that marketing for next week. You could even plan the videos that you do with me here. I'm pitching you guys. If you work full-time, I'm telling you I can really help you get to where you want to go. I know I'm pitching you on working with me. That wasn't my intention with this episode, but if you work full time, just plan even the training that you're gonna watch next week if you're part of a coaching program. All of that can be planned out and that will give you honestly complete direction will save you so much time, and your only job is to manage your mind because what you're gonna wanna do is change your mind. You're gonna wanna scroll on Instagram, you're gonna wanna waste time. The people who are the most successful, they notice when they're wasting time and they get right back to work. I'm gonna be honest with you, I have actually set limits on my phone. To where I cannot get on TikTok, but only a few minutes a day.'cause that's my place I like to play. I cannot be on Instagram scrolling, my social media shuts down at 8:00 PM because I don't wanna waste my evening. I can't get on Amazon. There's lots of places that I know are dangerous for me, where I waste time. You gotta put those constraints around your time. Time is precious. So that is what you would do for six hours. I'm gonna recap that quickly. The first two hours are gonna be where you connect with people, the most important. The next one is one hour of content creation, one hour of client delivery, one hour of learning, and One hour of admin and planning that is six hours. Now maybe you're saying, I don't even have six hours, Debbie. Okay, I'm gonna help you find those six hours too. What about waking up early? Does this really matter to you? Because you could do that. You could wake up one hour earlier, six days a week, or 90 minutes earlier, and you could find the time that you need to get this done. It's just a matter of how important this is to you, because you're only gonna do this, a lot of this for a short period of time. Not all of those things are gonna go on forever, right? You don't have to keep learning. You'll get to where you can repurpose content. Many things can be done later to even save you more time. You could do it over your lunch break. If you have a 30 minute lunch break, then do that and then spend a couple hours on Saturday. You could do it in the evenings. And here's the deal, I would block off like one or two evenings. When I have a project, I'm like, I'm starting on it and I am knocking it out until it is done. So maybe you could do all six hours in one evening. Maybe not. Maybe it's two evenings, whatever the case might be. Maybe you have your client appointment, let's say on Tuesday evening, and then you do the other five hours on sunday evening, something like that. Okay? You can do it before you go to bed or after dinner. There's always a window of time. It's just a matter of putting it on your calendar and then protecting that time. You tell everybody else, look, I cannot do whatever it is you want me to do and tell I am done with my work. Also, please do not multitask, No doing laundry while you are doing that. No watching TV while you're doing this, you just get your coaching business built and take care of what you need to do.'cause you're building a business that is likely your exit plan from your career. On the weekends, you could do it on Saturday or Sunday. Whatever works for you. What can you do to eliminate things? Stop scrolling. Stop watching so much tv. Stop wasting time watching negative news. Please don't do that. That is one thing I cut out a long time ago. I know I should know what's going on in the world, but I love to save that time and to keep what is going on in my head more positive. So that's what I challenge you to do too. Cut out the news. If you are able to do those things, I promise you, you can find six hours. I'm not talking about 20, just six. So building a business does take some sacrifice, but not forever. You're trading some short term sacrifices for long term freedom. So you're in this for the long game. You're not gonna be working full time forever, but you could build a business that will last you forever. Now, before I finish this up, I wanna talk about the mistakes that you need to avoid. The first thing is don't spend time on busy work that feels productive. Sometimes you don't even notice it until you're right in the middle of it, so you don't need to reorganize files. It doesn't matter if your computer is messy. Okay, my computer is still disorganized, does not matter. I can find what I need to find. Researching websites. To find out which platform you should use does not matter. Okay? Reading on marketing instead of actually marketing, it does not matter. Spreading yourself on more than one social media platform. Just pick one and stop waiting to get started. That for sure is wasting time that is so precious that you could actually be working with clients. Okay? Tell me in the comments what is coming up for you. subscribe to this channel, and while you're driving to work, listen to the episodes. I am a straight shooter and I will tell you what to do in your business. This is like hiring a coach, except you're gonna listen to me on your way to work, or while you're taking a walk or while you're exercising. Use that time wisely as well. So if you want to know how to build a profitable coaching business, I'm gonna share with you my four-part framework for building a profitable coaching business. It's called the Profitable Coach Framework. There is a new masterclass that I've recorded that you can watch that will walk you through all of the steps. It is less than one hour time, so consider that you're one of six hours that you work on your business this week. Come at the word masterclass or click the link right below in the show notes or in the comments. Let me know what your key takeaway. Six hours a week. My dear one, you've got it. It is enough time. Get started now. It's enough time to build a business. It is enough time to create income. I'm gonna close with a story about a client. Her name is Eileen. Eileen works full time. She came to work with us in our VIP program. She only came to one coaching call in six months time. She used our process. We have a step-by-step process. She used all of our shortcuts. She would post in the Facebook group and say, Hey, tell me what to do next. Do you know what time her coaching call availability was 6:30 AM in the morning. When she told me that she had two spots open for clients at 6:30 AM I have to be honest with you, I thought, oh Lord, that's not gonna work. But you know what she did?
She sold her first client at 6: 19:15
30 AM and then you know what she did? She increased her price and sold her second client, and months later I connected with her again. And you know what she'd done? Resigned.
The first client at 6: 19:27
30 AM. At a higher price. So there you go. Anything is possible. If Eileen can get clients at 6:30 AM you can too. There is time available for you. So there you go. Let me know what questions you have, drop any questions in the comments. Let me know your takeaway. I know you can do this now. Let's go make it happen. I will see you in the next video.
