Monetizing Your Ideas in the New Economy

Many professionals have thought about starting their own business, but it can feel overwhelming to figure out where to begin. My friend Michael Bungay Stanier – a top thought leader on coaching and the founder of the coaching company Box of Crayons - shared insights with me for my book Entrepreneurial You. Michael discussed exactly how he built his company, and the progression of learning to scale an entrepreneurial venture.

Here are six points that Michael shared about how to launch your own business or side hustle effectively.

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Here are Michael’s tips:

1.   Research your industry. Michael didn’t simply start coaching right away: he researched the industry first. He began by working with a couple of coaches himself, so he understood the basics of how they, and the coaching process, worked. He then attended a certification program that provided him with the groundwork to make his coaching practices more deliberate and less instinctive, and to ensure he was better prepared to stand out as a leader in the industry.

2.   Understand what you love - and where you can make an impact. Once Michael got into the business of coaching and built up a list of clients, he made the surprising discovery that rather than 1-1 coaching, his passion was actually teaching others how to coach. It’s important, early on, to think about your work as a pilot test: see what you enjoy and what you don’t, and what resonates with clients.

3.   Be comfortable asking for what you’re worth - even if you’re not sure you believe it. It’s hard to know what we are worth in the marketplace - and, sometimes, even harder to truly believe it. A great piece of advice that Michael hands down is to charge “Fear plus ten percent.” Specifically: What would you feel comfortable quoting as your going rate? Whatever that number is, add ten percent to that number. Now go to a mirror and state that new number out loud twenty times. Quoting that large of a fee may feel ridiculous at first, but after a while, the phrase loses some of its power and you become far more comfortable saying it.

4.   Understand how to scale your business. If your goal is to run a large company based on your ideas, you need to know how to scale. Based on a model Michael learned from an organization called Strategic Coach, there are three phases for scalable growth. In phase one, you say “I’m a coach,” and learn the trade. In phase two, you say “I’m an entrepreneur who coaches.” After this step, you no longer identify as a practitioner, but as a business person who has that skillset. Phase three is “I create intellectual property around coaching.” This is where you build out your team by hiring facilitators to deliver your vision. Using these three phases as stepping stones, you can prepare for scalable growth.

5.   Create intellectual property. Without creating intellectual property (IP) - i.e., sharing your ideas publicly - you stay mired in “phase one” of scalable growth, in which you’re still performing 1-1 services. Michael likes to think of creating IP as serving old wine in new bottles. In other words, most good advice isn’t necessarily new (for instance, best practices in how to be a better listener or to delegate more effectively). The trick is figuring out how you can augment the old information with your own unique framework and fresh perspective.

6.   Recognize the importance of sales & marketing. In addition to knowing your trade, Michael firmly believes in learning how to market and sell, and with good reason: There are plenty of talented people out there that can’t close the deal, and as a result, their business never takes off. It’s not enough to simply be a great coach; you also need to be able to attract clients to you and get them to sign an agreement. Otherwise, your business won’t last and you won’t be able to share your full talents with the world.

It may seem challenging to launch a new business or side hustle, but by following the steps Michael lays out, it’s possible for anyone with patience and persistence.

To find out more about Michael Bungay Stanier, be sure to check out his new book, The Advice Trap.

For more help on starting a business, check out this article I wrote for Harvard Business Review called “Go Ahead and Start a Business - But Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”

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All the best,

Dorie