The writing that grows your practice

Coaches, consultants, trainers are running practitioner-led businesses where the goal is quality over quantity of clients. Clients who pay well, stay longer, refer often.

Growth might look like more of these clients, or it might look like a different, more scalable structure of serving them.

Before we get into growth, something worth calling out is that the expert practitioners that I meet amongst this group love their craft.

They truly love delivering for clients. The Doing.

Coaches love the poignant questions. Consultants love finding the answers. Trainers love the penny-drop moments.

I’ve also discovered that these practitioners love thinking about the doing.

Considering deeply “How could I do this doing better?” The getting inspired from books or videos. Learning from a mentor. Mapping out a process. Planning sessions or types of transformations.

And investing time away from the Doing, to do the Thinking, soon makes the Doing better. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Steven Covey called this sharpening the saw; to step back from the work to strengthen the thing doing the work.

But there’s a third dimension that often gets overlooked. This third layer strengthens everything. That is, as you guessed it: Writing.

Writing becomes the home of the Thinking. Without writing, the Thinking remains untethered, floating, easily forgotten. And, Writing enhances the Thinking at the same time as merely capturing it. Because writing is thinking clearly.

With that Writing captured, it serves the Doing, too.

Because your clients can access your Writing in a way they can’t your Thinking.

You can share your Writing with clients before, during, or even after their experiences of working with you and experiencing your support so your Writing becomes their very own anchor for the work you’re doing with them.

It helps your clients understand their own journey better. Stay engaged between sessions. Adds another layer to the service they're receiving. Gets them more emotionally invested in the transformation they're in the middle of.

And so, as you can see, Writing sits at the intersection of the Thinking and the Doing. It strengthens both.

I noticed clients getting better results in their coaching once I added a weekly newsletter to my schedule. The weekly writing process ensured I was always thinking deeply about a problem I saw in sessions, or anticipated. Essays shared with clients then provided a value add to the service, alongside their sessions.

I’ve seen this echoed across others I’ve worked with, or been a client of. Writing truly makes your Doing better, in multiple different ways.

Donatella went through this writing and editorial process with me. She said it “brought me back into conversation and into the world. You brought me back into own curiosity. I'm getting podcasts. I'm getting talks. I'm getting all the right places where I can express myself”. Esther Perel even read her work.

But can Writing also get you more clients?

My short answer, unsurprisingly is yes. Writing regularly, undeniably grows your practice.

If you commit to writing longer form pieces regularly then you will get more clients.

Writing showcases that you’ve done your Thinking. It helps create demand for the Doing. It provides your clients a way to easily share, and refer your work to others. It creates opportunities to be presented as an expert, on other people’s platforms, or your own, and gets you in front of the right people.

However this only works, when you can say ‘yes’ to all of the following:

• Your writing references your Doing, not just about whatever’s on your mind

• Your writing is high quality and the right balance of narrative and sales-led.

• Your writing has sufficient intrigue, or teases, to get people to read it in the first place

• Your writing keeps people’s attention, as a client kindly shared with me this week “your newsletter is one of very few that I tend to read, not just skim through but read-read”.

• Your writing names the challenges and opportunities your clients truly care about

• Your writing gets discovered by the right people, aka prospective clients

It can be challenging it can be to do everything on this list well. It requires uplevelling your skill set, creating time away from clients to do deep work, and being truly confident in promoting the offer that your writing leads to.

I find many practitioners get 80-90% there with these and often stop themselves short. The overthinking, perfectionism, or indecision gets in the way. This list also asks a lot of you from a skills, capacity, and consistency perspective.

Which is why inside The Practice, members will get support with all of these things and more.

There’s support with creating or refining your offers, so you feel entirely confident that you are selling what you want to sell, and your clients want to pay for. So that you can build a business that scales without losing the depth that you love along the way.

There’s direction on what, and how to write and the accountability and protected time to do it.

There’s also editorial feedback on your Body of Work. As a member said to me this week “your feedback was tremendously helpful in convincing me that I could do better than the draft I’d submitted”.

There’s also support in getting the right people to read it, once you’re proud of it.

My guidance and the environment around you will up-level your practice. I’m designing The Practice after five different programmes that have taught me a lot about what does, and doesn’t move the needle.

But many of you will still be questioning, will this actually work for me?

I want to make you a promise.

If what you deliver to clients is genuinely good, and you commit to growing your Body of Work consistently, you will fill your practice with aligned clients. In time. But you will.

Notice I’m saying that you do actually have to be good at what you deliver to clients. But if you are, and you want to keep signing aligned clients who come to you pre-sold about working with you, then Writing is one of the best vehicles to call those clients in.

If you prefer podcasting, or video you’re welcome too. I’m long-form agnostic as the same principles apply but the reason I focus a lot on writing is that it’s free. Fast. Doesn’t require much set up. And for practitioners who do thoughtful, nuanced, complex, values-led work… it actually captures the depth of what you do in a way that many other, especially short form, mediums cannot.

If you want more aligned clients who feel called in thanks to the depth of your thinking, apply to The Practice. Your application will help us both to see how ready you are for the environment inside, and if you’re too early, I’ll share alternative options available.

If you’ve already got a lot of clients, and are at capacity, the work we’ll focus on for you inside is restructuring your offer to ensure you can keep saying yes, without burning out. We’ll double down on Codifying what you do, to leverage your frameworks and IP to design ways of working with you that require less of your time in the room, but still help your clients get a great result.

Either way - your writing will drive demand for more of you and your unique way of solving problems.

If you apply and are accepted, here's what you'll find inside:

• A quarterly 1:1 with me to set your goals and focus for the three months ahead clearing resistance, drawing the line between act now and save for later, and building a custom plan with real metrics.
  "Ellen brings both business knowledge and market thinking, but also sees the person behind the business, their skills and talents. She's good at noticing patterns and distilling complexity." — Pavlina

• A weekly drop-in coaching call to unblock whatever you're facing from mindset, creative to technical. Bring a live offer, a framework you're developing, a client challenge. Stay until your question's answered, or listen to how others are approaching their own Body of Work.
  "It's because of Ellen that I chose to niche so early, built an ongoing body of work, and realised that what felt impossible was achievable with the right support." — Emma

• The Authority Method so you never have to guess what to work on next. A curriculum built around the three Cs, with a live training dropped each month going deeper into concepts like IP development, essays that lead to clients, and scaling your systems.

• Depth Days which is protected time on the calendar to actually build your Body of Work. Four-hour sessions with your peers, muted mics, everyone working on the thing that deserves their attention.

• Body of Work Lab where you’ll submit your actual work: an essay, a framework, a sales page, a positioning statement. Get detailed editorial and strategic feedback within two working days.
  "What stands out most is Ellen's editorial feedback. You can tell she cares, brings both rigour and warmth. If you've been carrying ideas in your head and haven't been able to get them into long-form writing, Ellen will help you do it." 
  — Sadia

And founding members get an additional 1:1 in their first quarter and have their £990 quarterly rate locked in permanently against future price increases.

There's one week left to apply and we start the week of 13th July.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.