The Best (And Worst) Ideas From The Prosperous Coach
I gave The Prosperous Coach five stars the first time I read it.
Then I spent over a decade running my coaching business.
Now I have mixed feelings.
Some of the ideas have made me a lot of money. Others…not so much.
So I sat down with fellow coach Toku McCree to revisit 32 of the book’s most memorable ideas.
We put each piece of advice into one of three categories:
🟢 Brilliant: Advice we’d confidently pass along to another coach.
🟡 Incomplete: There’s something valuable here, but it needs clarification.
🔴 Harmful: Following the advice as written will probably hurt your business.
🟢 Brilliant advice
1. “Leave the conversation in the context of possibility, not affordability.”
Sales conversations can become so focused on price that the prospect forgets why they considered coaching in the first place. Before ending the call, reconnect them to the result they want and why it matters. Identify the next step they need to take in order to move the decision forward. And give them simple homework before the next call.
2. “Find the goal behind the client’s goal.”
A client may say they want to double their revenue, lose weight, write a book, or leave their job. Good coaches explore what those goals would actually give them: security, recognition, freedom, etc. Sometimes there is a more direct way to reach the true goal.
3. “A coach without a coach is like a doctor who won’t see a doctor.”
This is both good advice and brilliant marketing for the authors. Because as soon as you read it you think, “I better get a coach.” It’s true that investing in a good coach can deepen your belief in the value of coaching. It’s hard to sell something you don’t invest in yourself. Of course, hiring an expensive coach is not a substitute for doing the work.
4. “Yes lives in the land of no.”
If you make enough clear proposals to potential clients, you’re going to hear no. That doesn’t mean you’re bad at sales. It’s partially just a numbers game. The more you hear No, the more you’ll hear Yes. For more on this, I recommend the book Go For No.
5. “Be constantly aware of role reversal. Never surrender your power and leadership as the coach.”
Leadership means holding the standards and structure of the engagement so your client can step up. This is especially important when a prospect starts negotiating your price or methodology.
6. “Coaching has a low bar for entry and a high bar for success.”
Almost anyone can call themselves a coach. But building a successful coaching business requires you to become excellent at coaching, client selection, sales, communication, and running a business. Most people will quit before they acquire these skills.
7. “Stop tracking and celebrating your billings. Instead, celebrate the amount of money you make in proposals.”
You should absolutely track revenue. But the underlying point is correct: focus your attention on the “leading” indicators you can control, such as conversations, invitations, and proposals - not just the money you make.
8. "You want a long description of the client's default future: What if you don't do anything and nothing changes?”
A prospect needs to understand what continuing along the same path will cost them. This clarifies the stakes without resorting to the more manipulative sales advice about “turning up the pain.”
9. "I began asking myself: which of these tasks will create income and which will not? I put a star next to the income-creating ones”
Prioritize activities connected to revenue. Avoid hiding in busywork. Note: There are some revenue generating activities that won’t create income in the short term but help you make money in the long term. Like building an email list. So don’t neglect those.
10. Do your homework before talking to a prospect.
Spend five or ten minutes reviewing someone’s website, LinkedIn profile, or application. It will reduce your anxiety and demonstrate commitment. The bar is surprisingly low because most people do no preparation at all.
11. The Lamp Post metaphor (Michael Neill)
The idea is that someone could benefit by talking through their goals with a lamp post every night. A good coach should provide more value than a lamp post, but it’s still reassuring to think about the value of focused reflection.
🟡 Incomplete advice
12. “Clients are created, not attracted.”
This would be true if “attraction” meant passively waiting for clients to materialize. But clients can absolutely discover you through content, search, advertising, or referrals. Here’s the simplest, most predictable sales funnel for coaches.
13. “No sale has ever occurred outside of a conversation.”
Most high-end coaching engagements will involve a conversation, but plenty of sales happen through emails, webinars, sales pages, texts, and direct messages. A better lesson: if you’re not making sales, check whether you’re having enough sales conversations.
14. “Never let the last words exchanged be about money.”
Sometimes the conversation ends with a discussion about money. That’s fine. The useful principle is not to let a prospect become so consumed by payment logistics that they lose sight of the value.
15. “Coaches who are failing have no system. It’s all about their mood.”
Agreed: you should work on your business even if you don’t initially feel motivated to. The problem is that this book doesn’t provide the detailed system it says you need. “Work your magic” is not a system.
16. “It diminishes your chances of landing a client if you have lunch with them first and establish a social relationship.”
Staying in the friend zone can make it difficult to establish a professional coaching relationship. But for natural Connectors, social relationships can produce clients and referrals. Discover your “Coaching Archetype” here.
17. “If you haven’t heard back, send a gift and a note. Don’t even refer to working together.”
Providing value can sometimes restart a conversation. But you also need to know how to close the loop. Don’t just send an endless series of books, articles, or floral arrangements to someone who has ghosted you. Follow up this way instead.
18. “I’ll never meet with a potential client for less than two hours.”
Longer conversations can help new coaches slow down, create value, and sell more substantial engagements. But two hours is an arbitrary rule. The appropriate sales process depends on the complexity, price, and duration of what you’re selling.
19. “Call a client the day after a coaching call for a five-minute catch-up. Send a book without telling them in advance.”
Thoughtful follow-up and unexpected generosity can strengthen a coaching relationship. But unexpected phone calls feel dated and random. Translate the principle into a format that fits your clients and the way they communicate.
20. “Sell the experience, not the concept.”
It can be help to give someone a powerful experience of your coaching. But not every coach produces their best insights in a single dramatic session. Coaching can be sold just as well through case studies, content, a clear process, and a compelling vision for the long-term engagement.
21. “Give them your full, undivided attention and your inner wisdom will tell you where to go next.”
Presence is an important coaching skill, but it isn’t the only skill. Preparation, diagnostic questions, useful frameworks, subject-matter expertise, and an understanding of how change happens can all help you go somewhere your inner wisdom would not have considered.
22. “You will increase your business tenfold if you respond to almost every prospect’s long email with the words, ‘Call me.’”
It’s easier to resolve sales concerns in conversation than over email. But moving concerns to a call will not magically 10X your business if you don’t have enough leads to begin with.
23. “One of the biggest problems coaches have is not bringing the same professional work ethic to their coaching practice that they would to a real job.”
Treating your business like a job is good advice. What’s missing is how difficult it can be to move from a structured job with external deadlines into entrepreneurship. In a business, you must create your own environment, priorities, accountability, and feedback. This book doesn’t share how to do that.
24. “When you put your energy into total service, the energy flows back to you in the form of clients and wealth.”
Generosity creates goodwill, and goodwill can eventually create business. But it still needs to be converted through marketing and sales. Plenty of kind, talented coaches give everything away and remain extremely generous right up until they go broke.
25. “What’s the secret to being an extraordinary coach? Extraordinary clients.”
Client selection matters enormously. Some people are more committed, coachable, and ready for change than others. But this can also discount the coach’s responsibility. It may encourage people to blame their clients whenever the coaching doesn’t produce a dramatic result.
🔴 Harmful advice
26. “You don’t need marketing. Just serve people.”
This tells coaches exactly what they want to hear: avoid marketing and spend all your time coaching. But relationship-building, referrals, networking, content, and thought leadership are all forms of marketing. This book is a great example - it’s a form of marketing that the authors continue to benefit from.
27. “My business plan has become one line: meet fun and interesting people.”
This may be a legitimate strategy for a charismatic Connector with an established reputation. It becomes harmful when other coaches try to copy it instead of building on their own strengths. Without invitations, offers, and sales, you aren’t running a business; you’re just becoming a socialite.
28. “Ask them all the things you wonder about them, including why they haven’t yet achieved what they say they want.”
Asking someone why they haven’t succeeded can make them defensive. A more useful question is what may be getting in the way of their goals, or what kind of support they need. Also, don’t ask them all the things you wonder about them.
29. “The only coaches who ask if coaching is just about money have no money.”
Coaches at any income level can reasonably question the accessibility, ethics, and purpose of coaching. Shaming people for asking those questions replaces a genuine inquiry with a simplistic binary: you either make money and “get it” or you’re broke. When you’re starting out, you need to focus on money because otherwise you won’t sustain yourself long enough to be generous.
30. “Raising your fees is not hard when you can see the incredible results your clients are creating.”
Results can generate referrals, case studies and confidence. But remember: money comes from other people (h/t George Kao). Results alone do not cause prospects to start paying more. Raising your rates requires having the right market, offer, positioning, and enrollment skills.
31. “You can have low self-esteem at the DMV and still be employee of the year. It won’t work in this business of fearless coaching.”
Entrepreneurship may require more courage and internal motivation than other jobs. But there’s no need to dunk on government employees or make coaches insecure about their own insecurity. Better advice would share, in detail, how to build the confidence required to succeed as a coach.
32. “Your fees are just a filter for the clients you’d love to coach.”
Yes, people who pay more are sometimes more committed. But your fees primarily filter for people who can and will pay those fees - not necessarily people you’d love to coach. Again - your messaging, marketing channels, positioning, and sales process are more likely to help you identify the right clients.
Would you recommend the Prosperous Coach?
Yes - but with more hesitation than when I first read it.
The book’s core message is beautifully simple: Connect. Invite. Create. Propose.
Build relationships. Invite people into complimentary conversations. Create a powerful experience. Propose working together.
That process can absolutely help a new coach sign clients and avoid getting lost in busywork. It did for me.
But there are two core problems (which the authors may partially address in the book’s second edition):
The book often delivers pithy statements where readers need nuance, structure, and practical instruction. Some coaches will be able to fill in the blanks. Others will finish the book fired up but unsure of what to do. For example, how to structure a sales call to enroll clients.
There may come a time when you want to move beyond the labor-intensive strategy suggested in this book. It can be tiring to invite people to conversations one by one, spend multiple hours with them, and then hope they become clients. I prefer more scaleable methods like content marketing.
Treat The Prosperous Coach like the movie Rocky. You don’t watch it expecting Rocky Balboa to teach you the exact training system required to become a champion. You watch it to get excited about boxing.
If you want personalized advice on how to get coaching clients, take this quiz.
