The Beautiful Business: Recent Episodes
Mark Butler
The Beautiful Business shines a light on one of the most elegant, underrated business models in the world: one-on-one coaching. Mark Butler hosts the show, and he's been a coach and advisor to every kind of online business you can think of, having helped businesses earning everything from $0 to $25,000,000+. Although Mark believes every online business model has merit, he worries one-on-one coaching is viewed as a stepping-stone business for people who aren't ready or able to scale. But it's not true, and The Beautiful Business sets out to show people--through clear teaching and rich, current stories of successful coaches who love their business--that one-on-one coaching is one of the most gratifying and lowest "hassle-per-dollar" businesses in the world.
My practice is "full" for the first time in the nearly 15 years since I started coaching. This is true in spite of the fact that there've been periods in the past where I had many more clients than I'm currently serving. See, "full" is only possible when you establish an inventory that can become "sold out". And now that I'm "sold out", I'm in a position to share insights such as: the new level of confidence I feel (not surprising, but worth discussing), the impact on my 2023 business plans (including the fact that I'm planning at all, which I never do), and how I'm dealing with the inevitable pull toward "scaling".
There are a few ideas I've heard in conversations about pricing one on one coaching:
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The price your clients pay determines a) how your clients will engage with your coaching, and b) how much your clients will benefit from your coaching.
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The price your clients pay proves how much you value the coaching you give your clients (and, sneakily, how much you value yourself).
Yes, pricing can reflect our clients' commitment and our confidence. But I think the judgmental view (is the client serious? am I worth it?) sets us up for frustration.
This episode introduces two new ideas:
- Price as a strategic lever in a coaching business.
- Using both price and coaching "inventory" to build momentum in the business.
It's good. Give it a listen.
One on one coaches are overvaluing facts and undervaluing resonant stories in the content they publish. In this episode I talk about why I think this happens, how to fix it, and and how to avoid a dread-spiral in your content creation that can negatively impact your view of your whole business.
In a one-on-one business, content's most important job is to give people a soft landing into your world. Your podcast, newsletters, and social media posts help people like you and trust you. Your published work helps them increase their desire to escalate a relationship with you. This episode explains how and why content is a powerful but misunderstood tool in a one-on-one coaching business.
Self-helpers and internet marketers refer to use gold mining as their favorite metaphor for the pursuit of success. I think it's the wrong paradigm for a person who's pursuing a relationship-driven one-on-one coaching business. I think gardening is a much more useful framework for our business, and this episode explains why.
I see coaches doing two main types of work: coaching/mentoring and teaching/training. Although these aren't absolute concepts, it's helpful to know in which direction our work is biased. This episode paints a picture of how coaching/mentoring differs from teaching/training, and how your understanding of the difference will help you build confidence and momentum.
I've seen every online business there is, and run many of them myself. In this introductory episode, I want to set a vision for why a one-on-one coaching business should be viewed as one of the best, simplest, and most rewarding ways to make a living. I recorded this episode as the first in a series of six live webinars .