The 5 Qualities Coaches and Speakers need to succeed in 2020

The field of coaching is so packed. Coaching has become a 10 billion dollar industry. Speaking is worth a few billion also and more and more people are trying their luck at that profession as well. It’s appealing of course. Tell people how to live their lives and get paid for it. Most people would happily do that for free. Given all of this new competition and higher expectations, what are the main qualities that you need to cultivate if you are to be successful as a coach or speaker in 2020?

Clarity 

The first key quality you need to have is clarity. Clarity is power and confusion is a huge weakness. So many coaches or speakers are too busy trying to demonstrate how good they are that they don’t offer a clear message. Furthermore, it’s hard to know what they do and what they are an expert in. You need to develop clarity of yourself and your message. When you do that, your audience will know who you stand for and will respect you for it.

Consistency 

Consistency is something you’ll hear me talk a lot about. The importance of engaging in the same practices over and over again is the process of forming habits and we are the result of our habits. It’s not enough to implement a strategy for success. You need to build consistent actions into your everyday life so that you can become the kind of person who does something as opposed to someone who randomly took an action for a specific goal. As a coach or speaker, you need to consistently appear on social media, consistently talk about your core messages and consistently position yourself in the same way. That is how your brand will be built.

Courage 

Courage means the strength to show up and give 100% to whatever you are doing. You need to believe in yourself and take on new projects that you’re not sure if you can succeed in. You need to have the guts to give it a shot even though it is very possible that it won’t work out. In the new normal, it is often a game we have never played before so all we can do is guess. We need to have the courage to make the best guess possible and give it every ounce of our energy so we can conquer the challenges we face as we face them. As a speaker or coach, you are seen as an expert and people will look to you to lead the way. You must shoulder this responsibility and have the courage to say ‘Yes’ when the call is made.

Creativity 

Since we are living in a ridiculous age full of all sorts of crazy events, we need to have the ability to create new solutions to the new problems our clients and attendees are facing. They don’t want to hear what worked in the 20th century. They want to know what works now. They want to be entertained and be taught in a way that they’ve never experienced before. On top of this, you need to constantly find ways to stand out and generate social media and web content that keeps bringing people in and wanting to consume more of your content. All of this requires you to be as creative as possible. The good news is that the more you practice creativity, the better you will be at it.

Care 

Care is the last of the qualities and is very often overlooked when talking about business success for speakers or coaches. We know caring is the right thing to do. We even know that coaches who care about their clients are more likely to get referrals. But when we talk about promotion or marketing it doesn’t come up very often. But it should. When you show that you really do care about your attendees or clients, they can feel it and it makes them want to see you more. Caring is both a nice quality and a brilliant marketing tactic. It has to be genuine of course as it is hard to fake properly. But if you can show you care about those you speak to, they will start to care about you. It’s that idea of the 1000 true fans and the power of having that group of people rooting for you. 

These 5 qualities are indispensable to coaches and speakers in the post Covid world. If you want to know what else is critical to helping you succeed as a speaker, coach or expert, I am teaching a FREE Masterclass on ‘The 8 Keys to a Highly Paid Expert Business’. In it I’ll be explaining how the expert industries work and what the most successful coaches and speakers focus their attention on. To register while there are still places, click here.