Many coaches ask me whether or not there’s enough business out there.

Times are tough.  There seems to be a general air of pessimism.

But I think that there IS enough business for all of us.

Bear with me while I crunch some figures for you…

I’m going to make a few conservative assumptions and estimates now, especially in terms of the coaching fees that I use in this example (which is code for “Don’t freak out when you see the fees that I use in the examples. I’m NOT dictating that this is what you should charge”).

In March 2021 (sorry – the 2022 figures aren’t out yet), we had almost 24 million individual taxpayers.

The top 3% of individual taxpayers (720,000) pay the majority of the tax.

Let’s assume that only 5% (36,000) can afford to pay for coaching out of their own pockets, and I’m going to assign a value per coaching hour of R850 for life coaching.

(Remember: don’t freak out at the fee.  It’s just an example.)

That gives us 36,000 people being coached 1:1 and paying for it privately at a rate of R850 per hour.

Most coaching relationships last for about 12 sessions, so that gives us a grand total of potential 1:1 coaching revenue of R367,200,000.

If we look at companies, in 2021 there were 3,112,509 companies, of which only 880,553 have revenue high enough to qualify to pay VAT.

Of these +-880,000 (lets use rounded figures for convenience), the top 321 companies pay more than 50% of all company tax.

If each of these 321 top companies had 5 executives undergoing coaching at a rate of R3,500 per hour for the average 12 sessions, this amounts to a total executive coaching revenue of R67,410,000.

But, it’s reasonable to assume that another set of 5 executives will start their 12 coaching sessions in the second half of the year, which pushes this total up to R134,820,000.

In fact, I could probably easily double this figure again.

Let’s also assume that, in each of the 321 companies, we have a team of 12 people working with a business or management coach at a rate of R1,500 per hour per person for 12 sessions each.

That gives us R69,336,000 in coaching income.

Again, lets assume a second set of managers gets coaching later in the year.  This gives us R138,672,000.

This gives us a fairly conservative total of R640,692,000.

YES!  I’ve double-checked the figures!

Now, assuming there are 5,000 coaches in SA – life, business, management, executive…

That’s a possible R128,138 per coach, per annum.

Now, I know that many of you wouldn’t consider getting out of bed for that amount BUT this exercise DOES show that there is enough business to go around for all of us.

I also think that I’ve been extremely conservative in my estimates.

In addition, research into the coaching industry shows that only 40% of us are earning all of our income from coaching alone.

In fact, I can’t think of a SINGLE coach off the top of my head who doesn’t have an additional stream of income.

Certainly, every coach who goes through my 12 week Marketing & Sales Accelerator develops at least one additional stream of income.

So, I hope that you’ve stuck with the number crunching and have come out with some hope and feeling of possibility.

Your next job, of course, is to learn how to get to your ideal clients, and to develop additional streams of income (if you haven’t already).

You can learn more in my Facebook group, The Marketing & Sales Academy for Coaches where I do free weekly training.

PS: You might also find my annual trend predictions for the coaching industry interesting.