January is a magical month where our thoughts are focused on the big changes we want to make for the coming year. We start the year as we mean to go on, full of inspiration for the amazing things that are just around the corner. The only problem is that it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to pack a year’s worth of transformation in a single month. Then, by the time February rolls around, we’re burnt out and fall into our own ways. Marginal gains are the antidote.
What Are Marginal Gains
Marginal gains is a concept that has been around for a while but was made popular by Matthew Syed in his book Black Box Thinking. These are small changes that may not seem like much but add up over an extended period of time, especially when layered with other small changes.
This allows you to achieve big results with small, easy-to-maintain changes. A perfect example of a marginal gain is making swaps when trying to lose weight rather than completely overhauling your diet. Simply switching from normal soft drinks to diet soft drinks can lead to losing a couple of stone in a year.
In Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed looks at the story of Dave Brailsford and the British professional cycling teams. During 10 years of coaching, Brailsford put the UK on the map for cycling, a sport the country was notoriously mediocre at, all through the power of marginal gains. Some of the changes he made were switching to more aerodynamic cycling gear, finding the perfect mattress for each cyclist and transporting them to events, and finding the best-performing muscle cream.
The true power of marginal gains is that it puts you in the mindset of questioning the status quo and experimenting with possible solutions. This is, of course, a concept that coaches are familiar with, but it helps you to put it into practice in your coaching business. Once you start looking for marginal gains, you see the potential for optimisation everywhere you look.
How to Find Marginal Gains for Your Coaching Business
Dave Brailsford looked at every aspect of riding a bike and looked for 1% gains. Take a similar approach to your coaching business by looking at all of the different aspects of your business. This could be:
- The actual coaching
- Onboarding new coaching clients
- Social media content
- Thought leadership content
- Communication with coaching clients
- Behind-the-scenes operations (bookkeeping, hiring, legal, etc.)
- Product development
When you first start looking for marginal gains, start by looking for pain points or points of friction. These will be more obvious, so it is easy to identify areas with potential for change. Start a list of things you want to try and improve by 1%. This will help you pick the one you want to start with and give you the next options when you’re ready to implement another marginal gain.
Once you pick the issue you want to work on, break that task down into smaller parts and look at where the friction occurs. For example, you may be working on your onboarding process and realise that the most time-consuming part of the onboarding process is scheduling the initial coaching call. You go back and forth with people discussing possible times, and sometimes it takes weeks to get that initial call in the calendar. This is a great candidate for a small change. Even cutting this down from 5+ emails to 2-3 would make a huge difference when you look at it across the number of coaching clients you serve. You would cut down frustration on the client’s end too.
From there, brainstorm possible solutions. You could start the initial email by listing at least 3 available times. You could use Calendly or a similar scheduling tool to allow the coaching client to pick from your available times. You could pick up the phone to book the appointment to save on the back and forth. You could outsource scheduling to an assistant or VA (virtual assistant). Find the one that works best for you.
Once you implement a marginal gain and have become used to it, look for the next marginal gain you can make.
Examples of Marginal Gains
- Using scheduling tools for faster appointment booking
- Outsourcing bookkeeping and other technical business operations
- Hiring a copywriter to write your landing page
- Creating processes to standardise regular business tasks
- Writing template emails for emails that you send all the time
- Hiring a VA or assistant to handle the admin and free up your time for coaching
- Planning your content in advance to reduce the time it takes
- Switching to a slightly cheaper software that still covers all the functions you need
- Switching to a slightly more expensive software the handles more of your business functions
- Writing hand-written and personalised notes as part of your offboarding or onboarding process
- Increasing your prices by at least 1% each year
- Promoting your coaching program at least once more per month
These changes are so small and may even seem silly to worry about on their own, but they add up. Together, they may save you enough time to take on a new coaching client each round of your coaching program. They may add up to thousands extra in profit each year.
Most of these changes could be made with very minimal upfront effort or time.
Keep Layering Marginal Gains for Compounded Improvements
Using marginal gains in your coaching business is a great way to reach your big goals with very little effort. These small changes are easier to sustain long term which allows you to continue to layer them and compound the results.
Learn more about setting sustainable goals for your coaching business here.