Do you want a hobby or a business?

Sometimes when I talk to coaches, they tell me they’re trying to grow their coaching business.

But then when we dig into what they’re doing on a weekly basis…

It becomes clear that what they’re really doing is creating an expensive hobby for themselves.

It usually looks something like this…

(based on my first few years in “business” 😉

It’s chaotic. It meanders all over the place, without any clear direction.

I didn’t know it at the time, but back then I didn’t have a business. I had a hobby.

The difference between a hobby and a real business is whether you have a plan and are following that plan to grow to the size you want.

With a hobby, you’re trying things here and there. You don’t have a clear plan or idea for how to get anywhere.

Trying something once. It doesn’t work immediately. So you scrap it.

Spending a whole lotta time on things that don’t get you clients. Or that don’t help your clients get results.

A business, on the other hand, moves in one direction.

It looks more like this…

It’s not a perfectly straight line. There are ups and downs.

But it’s moving in one direction. It’s steady imperfect progress towards a goal.

It’s trying something. Tweaking it if it didn’t work. And trying it again, improving little by little.

Now look, there’s nothing wrong with coaching as a hobby, if that’s what you want.