Is your coaching business a journey? Yes and no.

Recently (here and here), I've written about leveraging the power of metaphors to understand your entrepreneurial coaching business and how to run it. This post continues this conversation.

Of Clancy's business metaphors (from The Invisible Powers: The Language of Business), the ones that seem to fit an entrepreneurial coaching business are:

• Business is a journey of renewal and wholeness
• Business is a game (with some slight but significant changes)
• Business is a biological organism

Today we're going to explore the metaphor 'business is a journey.' Stay tuned for discussion of the other two.

There are two themes that are part of this metaphor: 1) an impulse toward renewal and rejuvination and 2) an impulse toward unity and wholeness (as a way of making sense of the world).

Using the five criteria let's evaluate the power of this metaphor for building an entrepreneurial coaching business.

Mood: Renewal, rejuvenation, unity, wholeness, adventure, ambition. This metaphor passes the mood test. Check!

Values: Renewal, rejuvenation, unity, and wholeness are great values. If we use these as values as a compass it is hard to imagine the journey not being a good one. Check!

Goal: A journey has a goal. Broadly speaking, as an entrepreneurial coach, my goal is to serve the clients I'm passionate about serving and to make a great living doing so. Pass!

Path: The path a journey takes is often unpredictable. This is surely true for building a coaching business. A journey is fraught with risks and emotional ups and downs. Also true for us. But this metaphor doesn't say anything about how to navigate. The complexities of running the business are left out. At best, the notion that our business is a journey describes the riskiness of the endeavor and the ups and downs but doesn't help us build the business. This is not a generative metaphor for us. Fail!

Relationships: Successfully fulfilling a journey always takes support and collaboration with partners. But the metaphor doesn't really highlight the kind of relationships we need. Every journey needs a leader, a captain, particularly a risky one. But that's you and me! What about everybody else? This metaphor isn't generative for us as entrepreneurial coaches. Fail!

This would be a good metaphor to combine with one that was more generative in the path and relationship areas. It has some great strengths in mood, values, and goal areas.

Take care,

-Steve