Five rituals that supported me in creating a fully-booked coaching and consulting business

Hi! I'm Bec Sands, and I help professional women pivot to a career or business they love.

Today, I’m talking about five rituals that supported me in creating a fully-booked coaching and consulting business. Now, fully booked is going to mean different things to different people, depending on how many hours per week you want to work in your business.

I personally have the capacity right now to work full time, because I don’t have kids, so when I say I’m fully booked I mean it in the full-time sense rather than part time. However, I do split my time right now between freelance PR consulting – primarily in technology, sustainability property – and coaching professional women to pivot their careers.

This means that at any one time I generally work with around five to seven high-end 1:1 coaching clients to support them find clarity and pivot their careers, either working for themselves, working for someone else or a hybrid of the two. In addition I have three to four PR consulting clients at any one time.

In addition, I’m building an online course which I am creating every spare hour I get and am already working with a group of wonderful professional women who are beta testers and taking their services to start online, freedom-based businesses.

Although I still work full-time hours, it’s completely flexible and I work from home. I work hard but I also like to build into my weeks things like a morning at the beach and finishing early on a Friday afternoon. However when I need to, I’ll catch up on weekends because that works for me. When you have your own business, it’s all about working during your most productive hours rather than hours at the desk. I love the freedom that comes from having these choices.

My schedule isn’t always predictable but I find that the following rituals have set me up for success and helped me to create a full-booked business.

ONE. Planning my schedule every week

Every Friday, or Sunday if I decide to take Friday afternoon off, I plan my schedule for the week and block in colour-coded time into my Google calendar which syncs across my devices. This makes it easy to see which meetings I have and when, as well as when I can block out focus time across the week as this requires bigger chunks to complete projects.

Mornings I generally block out time for creative work. The first two hours of each morning is core creative time for things like writing course, podcast, video, social media and newsletter content for my coaching audience. I also block out creative time for things like drafting by-line articles, coming up with strategies and writing news releases for my freelance PR clients.

Meetings are usually late morning, lunch time or early afternoon. Mondays to Wednesdays are my usual PR consulting days, although I mix and match depending what I have on. Thursdays and Fridays I usually spend working with my coaching clients, as well as scheduling for the week ahead.

Late afternoons I catch up on emails, admin, financials and other tasks that don’t require full creative focus.

I schedule everything into my calendar – from exercise, to work, to social engagements. If it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t happen. Also, I find if I don’t schedule my weeks, my priorities become all out of whack and I start doing whatever comes at me, that rushy-busy work, rather than the in-depth focused work that I truly need to do to move my business forward.

TWO. Setting monthly goals and intentions

For the past year, I’ve been loving following the monthly moon cycles and setting new intentions and goals at each new moon. This may sound really ‘out there’ if you haven’t been exposed to this type of thing, but at its core is that the cycles of the moon are abundant as they refresh every month. There is always another opportunity to manifest and create what you want in life, career or business!

In addition I love that there are ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ phases of the moon and they interchange across the month. This means that in the yang phases we push ahead and in the yin we aim to rest. It doesn’t always work out exactly that way but I’ve found myself aiming to put more activity into yang phases and less in yin. As women our bodies are incredibly cyclical but we often don’t honour this. Following the moon cycles is one way to do so – it’s an act of self care. I love following Dr Ezzie Spencer on this topic – you can find her at www.ezziespencer.com and she has a book called An Abundant Life.

In addition to these monthly goals and intentions, I also do daily mindset work and journaling but this is a whole other topic which I can go into another time!

THREE. Delivering client work with excellence and finding ways to add value to my clients so they refer me to others and provide incredible testimonials.

At the heart of everything I do is client service, because without my clients I wouldn’t have a business!

Also, the more I can be of service to others through the work that I do, the more personal and professional fulfilment I feel.

I choose the clients I work with – both from a PR consulting and career pivot coaching perspective – and always aim to ensure that we’re a good fit to work together and that I can provide them with the services and value that they most need.

If I feel like I’m not the right person to serve them, it’s never going to be mutually beneficial so I always refer them on to other consultants and coaches in my network. My philosophy is that there are always enough clients for everyone.

FOUR. Showing up consistently on social media - primarily LinkedIn and Instagram - with content that provides my audience with value.

When it comes to having a service-based lifestyle business, one of the biggest challenges is showing up online in an authentic and consistent way that provides value and builds a loyal online community.

It’s completely different to marketing a big brand, because you’re putting yourself out there personally. However, if you’re the face of your brand, being visible online is an essential ingredient and it’s the way that I’ve been able to secure my amazing clients.

The way that I move forward with this is to batch content as much as possible, provide value to my core audience in all that I do, and share stories to connect with those in my network.

I also picture my ideal client when I’m creating content, and imagine I’m talking directly to them.

FIVE. Ongoing training and working with a coach.

I’ve always invested in courses and coaches who have done the thing that I want to do. They’re steps ahead of me, and can teach me what I most need to learn about the business I want to build and the services I want to provide.

This year I’ve invested in multiple online courses for business, social media, money and mindset. I’ve also continued working with my business coach, Naomi Arnold, who I’ve been working with for years and who is an amazing coach who helped me launch my coaching business for the first time in 2015!

Not only does coaching speed up results, but it also helps overcome the blocks that keep us stuck and not taking the action to move forward.

Plus, it helps us see what’s possible!

Thank you so much for watching. Click here to sign up for my weekly emails on your next career pivot.