Lessons from the Journey for New Coaches
Marisa Guthrie does business differently.
As a Business Coach & Mentor, Marisa believes that solopreneurs and small businesses are the heart of our communities.
She works with business owners who want to put people and the planet at the core of what they do. Her coaching programmes are designed to empower them to build sustainable, values-driven businesses that allow them to make money while making an impact.
Key Insights
Build Infrastructure—Even If You’re a Team of One
Running a solo business means wearing many hats, but that doesn’t mean flying blind. Tools like a website you truly invest in, and platforms like Paperbell, can keep your systems clean, automated, and stress-free.Prioritise Your Mailing List Over Social Media
Followers don’t equal clients. Many coaches fall into the trap of chasing likes, but a well-nurtured mailing list is far more valuable and consistent than any algorithm. Create a simple but powerful lead magnet—something that solves a universal problem your clients face—and promote it like it’s your signature product.Treat Your Coaching Practice Like a Business From Day One
It’s tempting to focus only on coaching, but long-term success comes from having structure behind the scenes. Build clear systems, set boundaries, and clarify your offers early. Tools like Paperbell can help you simplify client onboarding and manage sessions without getting overwhelmed. You don’t need everything at once—but you do need clarity.Fall in Love with Marketing and Sales (or at least make peace with them)
Many new coaches shy away from sales and marketing, hoping their passion alone will attract clients. But visibility, messaging, and consistent outreach are essential. It’s not just about coaching—it’s about letting people know how you can help them.
The Interview
Let’s start from the beginning. What made you want to start your coaching business?
It actually started with my own experience of coaching. I was working in a high-pressure environment, feeling burnt out and disconnected from myself, and coaching helped me come back to who I am. It was transformative. I realised how powerful coaching can be, and I wanted to be able to offer that experience to others—especially people in roles or environments where it’s easy to lose sight of your values and needs. That’s what made me take the leap into coach training and eventually start my own practice.
Going from running a business where you are steering the ship, what has surprised you most about running your own coaching business?
I heard this expression that running a business is another growth opportunity. And for me that has certainly been true and I really weave this into the way that I work and people say this to me. I had a client say to me a few weeks ago, you know, is this supposed to feel like therapy? And I was like, frankly, yes.
So the biggest surprise for me has been the accidental therapy. I've also been endlessly surprised that the stuff that I butt heads with in my life shows up tenfold in my business. It's like parenting, you don't get to choose. These things happen.
I had a notion that, you know, we do have our businesses over here and then we have our personal lives over here and when especially as kind of values-driven entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, the sort of people that I work with and certainly who I am, we it's you cannot separate those things.
Can you share a specific moment in your the the running of your business that that might have challenged your expectations?
All of it. So many things challenge my expectations.
I think what I hear a lot is what business owners say and certainly I experience that when we start off we kind of think: if I build it they will come. You know if I put our my market stall and I start saying the things that I know people are struggling with, then clients are just going to come, right, and then I'm just going to work with them and it's going to be fantastic. And I think it's such a shock when that doesn't happen or it doesn't happen straight away. So obviously everyone I work with has different starting points.
It’s been a slow, steady climb for me, sometimes with a sudden jump up and then a lot of plateauing, like a lot of plateauing.
And that's what I would say to people that are starting out. Just be prepared for that. But also, it's as you go forward, there's so much nuance and subtlety to your marketing message and how it's going to land for people. I would say now 60-70% of the work that I do is working with people on that messaging and where it's going to go.
The people that want to find them will find them because we cannot anymore just think I'm just going to set up my market store and and you know people are just going to wander by because that it doesn't happen or it doesn't happen in that way if that makes sense
We have to wear all the hats as a solo founder–what are your thoughts on that?
And that goes back to what I was saying about it being the growth opportunity when I think of how I showed up to my marketing when I first started.
Marketing and sales are the things that we have to do all the time. We’re never going to reach a point where we say, "Okay, I've done enough marketing now. I've done enough selling.” And I really resented that. I've really because I just wanted to coach.
Now I love it so much that I look forward to doing. Not 100% all the time because that would be say that that would be disingenuous but I really enjoy that and my relationship with sales and marketing has changed a lot over the years.
You have to find a way to fall in love with your marketing and your selling because that to be honest apart from your delivery that's what you're going to be spending the majority of your time doing. And if you don't like it, make it hard.
And once you made that leap—what was the first year of business like?
The first year felt like such a blend of excitement and anxiety. There was a lot of learning on the go—figuring out not just how to coach well, but how to actually run a business.
There’s so much that people don’t talk about: pricing, client contracts, managing your time when you don’t have a boss, marketing without it feeling salesy. At the same time, it was really rewarding. Every client felt like a small win. And I grew a lot—I had to learn to trust myself, which I think is the real work of entrepreneurship.
What would you say were the biggest highs and lows?
One of the biggest highs is when a client has a breakthrough and you can feel that shift happen. It’s like, “Yes, this is why I do this.” Another high has been the freedom—structuring my days, working with people I admire, choosing the kind of work I want to do.
As for the lows—definitely the financial uncertainty at the beginning. There were months where I questioned if I could keep going. Also, the loneliness. When you’re starting out, it can feel like you’re doing everything on your own. That’s why community is so important—I had to seek out other coaches to talk to, learn from, and be real with.
What’s one thing you wish you knew before starting?
I wish I knew how important it is to treat your coaching practice like a business from day one. Not in a cold, corporate way—but in terms of having systems, boundaries, clarity around your offerings.
It’s easy to just want to coach, but you also need to understand the back-end of how everything works. And you need to be visible—tell people what you do, how you can help. It’s not bragging, it’s helping people find you.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Start small, but start with structure. You don’t need a fancy website or branding right away, but you do need clarity—who you help, how you help them, and what your offer is. Make it easy for people to understand and say yes.
Also, invest in support where you need it. That might mean a mentor, a virtual assistant, or someone to help with operations. You don’t have to do it all alone. And trust that you’ll get better as you go—the confidence comes from doing.
What's the easiest thing about running your business?
The easiest thing is for me is my marketing. I’m a content marketer. People come to work with me because they read something I wrote or they hear me speak. So it's all around my content. I do do some kind of incidental networking but really that's how people come to work with me. And for me that now flows very easily.
And all of that has come from having the courage and it is a daily practice of being able to talk about these things that actually I had been too scared to talk about in the past. And so I think we have to consciously step into visibility. I don't think we can just say I'm going to start talking about these things. It can be really scary to turn up and talk about these things. And so we have to acknowledge that. But nonetheless, I have found that when I had the courage to say the things I was really thinking that now lead has a very direct line to how many people I convert to work with me. I know the things that no longer work in my business, even if they worked, you know, precoid, they are now things that don't work anymore.
What else keeps the running of your business simple for you?
The only way for me build infrastructure is to have weekly meetings with yourself.
I am my marketing team, I'm my sales team. The delivery of course is you seeing your clients, but you have to have those regular sessions with yourself because if you don't, the stuff that's really important that keeps your business flowing and moving gets dropped and it gets put to the bottom of the pile.
One of the big challenges is to remember that if you've got if you're working a 30-hour week, you don't have 30 hours available to see clients. You have probably 10. S how do you make what do you do in the other 20 that generates the 10?
I think that that it building infrastructure if you're on your own, the only way you can do it is by having that those regular sessions with yourself and taking them really really seriously.
What are the top 3 mistakes that you see new coaches make when they start their business?
So the first one is not consolidating your signature offer and your one-to-one work first: if you build your one-to-one coaching program, you’ll really understand what your signature offer is, inside out. You can then get your revenue stable and then move into group coaching. Otherwise what happens is, you dilute what you're doing.
The second, is forgetting that you need a mailing list and doing everything on social media: we chase followers. We chase followers and we get really excited about the fact I'm working with a business right now who has they have a 100,000 followers across social media but they're not making enough money because they've forgotten that they needed a mailing list.
And then we wonder why our conversion rate on our new program or product is so low. Or the algorithm changes and we’re starting to swim against the tide again to try and find new clients.
And then third is not monitoring your marketing and sales: if we don’t monitor what is or isn’t working, then we don't have any data to tell us how to move forward.
If you could give your novice self one piece of advice what would be?
If I had taken that growth more seriously from the beginning my business would be in a different place.
So to answer the question, I would definitely have taken building my list much more seriously–it’s the one constant that you have.
I've always taken my website really, really seriously as well. And my advice to anyone reading this is to have a lead generator that absolutely speaks to the universal problem that your your people have and go all in on that and just sell it. Sell it like it's a product. Sell it like it's a product and really get behind it.
Diversify your product offering: if I have a business owner in front of me that is working at even a you know a 20-hour week and all of those sessions are devoted to clients then I would say we have a business model that is unsustainable here.
By all means, build out the one the one-to-one work first of all, but also I know we haven't got time for this. Price it so that you can turn up to say 7 to 10 hours work a week face to face billable time. But then have the capacity to build out other things as the time goes on.
In the past is I built out other things when I didn't have the capacity. And so they didn't work, I got burnt out etc. etc.
What is the thing in your business that really energises you and one thing that really drains you?
This is going to sound really weird, but the thing that energises me is also the thing that drains me sort of. And that is seeing my clients. Equally, what drains me is seeing clients. I'm an introvert. I love one-to-one sessions, but I what I'm happiest when I'm left alone with my thoughts.
And my business model is built around that. I might have 25 hours a week to coach, but I’m choosing to limit the one-to-one sessions so I can really show up energised. Because when I'm done, I'm done. The great learning here is to really know yourself, know your limitations or you know your boundaries and therefor your capacity.
So, how do you manage with all the operational and administrative tasks within your business–do you have help?
Absolutely! In the interest of full disclosure, Kait, you recommended using Paperbell, the platform for onboarding clients, which is extraordinary.
It's been fantastic. Something that used to be like all very bitty and all over the place now is just fantastically streamlined. I can use it for groups. I know that there's stuff that I could optimise.
I have a VA who does a very small amount of work for me which is more of the kind of things that I'm bad at like formatting documents.
Working with you doing my design work things that I have tried to do in my business and have nearly and sometimes actually brought me to tears because I feel such a failure in them and I just can't do them.
And so it's so much better for my business if I pay someone to do them that can do them in, you know, a tenth of the time. So that is how I kind of optimise.
If you had to start your business tomorrow, what would you do differently?
Use what is within reach: using what is already you know is really bootstrapping but doing it in a way that is sustainable. Be lean on everything that you have as a person in your sphere, whether that's networks of people, whether it's particular technologies, whether it's a particular skill set that you have, you absolutely lean into that first.
I was already in business for about two years before I even considered getting a website. I would now make a website my if you are going to invest in anything at all. Make your website–it doesn't have to be perfect. It does not have to be shiny and, you know, have all this functionality. It needs to be your shop front and it needs to be you saying the things about the work that you do.
And then finally, take your list building seriously because social media is just going to come and go.
