Over the last few years, I’ve had the incredible privilege to travel all over the world speaking to amazing organizations and people. Whether I’m speaking to a group of BNI networkers or a 1,000+ audience at a national convention, wherever I go there always seems to be other coaches in attendance. The most common seem to be a life coach, health coach, or business executive coach. Regardless of what “type” of coach they are, there are some very similar patterns that you see in the ones who are unbelievably successful and clearly defined patterns in the ones you see that are struggling immensely. Struggling not only to stay congruent with the message they teach and tools they share with their clients, but also struggling financially and in their business.

Most coaches have huge hearts and really want to make a valuable difference in their clients lives, yet can only seem to get a few clients at a time. They spend their days reading and learning as much information as they possibly can. They attend tons of events, webinars and seminars focused on learning great information to share with their clients. If this sounds all too familiar, my goal is to help you become the best coach you can be, so please take note of these 5 reasons why most life and business coaches fail:

1. Jack of All Trades, Not a Master of One

This one is a real doozy. The coach who is pretty good a lot of different things and is so excited to share their knowledge with their clients, yet fails miserably to differentiate themselves because they are, frankly, a dime a dozen. The best thing you could do as a coach, for your coaching business your clients, is to pick a maximum of 3, very specific topics to coach on.

If you’re a life coach, what specific part of life will you focus on? The more targeted and focused you are, the more focused your clients will be, and the better results you’ll and your clients will see.

2. One Approach

We’ve all heard the phrase “it’s like beating a dead horse“. If you’re not getting through to your coaching clients, it’s not them, it’s YOU. When you have only one approach your level of influence will suffer tremendously and neither you, nor your clients, will see results. Having only one approach is like driving down a dead-end road, it’s unlikely you’ll ever reach your destination.

Just because one approach or strategy worked for you before, it does not mean it’ll work every time. To learn about strategic intervention and the ability to create lasting change check out the Robbins-Madanes Training For Strategic Intervention.

3. You Put Your Motives First

This one actually saddens me to hear. As a business or life coach, it is imperative that you focus on what your coaching clients want and need, NOT what you want. Your motives should ONLY be their motives. The second you prioritize what you think is important versus what your coaching client thinks is important, you have failed tremendously. Their needs always come before your needs (This goes for any relationship you want to last).

4. It’s Not About Motivation

Just because you are able to get people fired up, doesn’t mean you’re a great coach. In fact the mere definition of motivate is to give someone a motive to do something. That does not mean they’ll actually do it. Most any coach can give great strategies. The difference in going from good to great in coaching is getting your clients to actually take action. It’s not about being a great motivator. it’s about being a powerful influencer. Once you’ve mastered the art of influence, you’ll be able to do more than give strategies, you’ll actually have an effect on your clients which makes them want to take action.

A personal favorite, and valuable resource on this topic is the book Influence by PhD Robert B. Cialdini.

5. You don’t LIVE IT

Time and time again, I hear “I love that you’re actually LIVING what you teach.” I mean, why on Earth would you coach someone on something you don’t, or wouldn’t do, yourself. People can smell bull dung from a mile away. If you want to be the best business or life coach in the industry, you need to do more than just learn and give your knowledge. You need to start living it! I recently gave a TEDx talk on my philosophy of “Learn It. LIVE it. Give it“, a simple formula to help inspire the world. It’s gives insight into why so many people truly haven’t reached their potential in life and business and inspires them to take action. I hope it does the same for you and your coaching business.

Checkout JairekRobbins.com

This article originally appeared here.