Is there a maximum number of leaders you can coach at one time?

The short answer – no. The real question, however, should be ‘How many can YOU take at any one time?’ Every person in the world has exactly 24 hours in their day, 168 hours in their month, and approximately 8,760 hours in their year. The same is true whether you are Marshall Goldsmith, Warren Buffet, or ‘ole Louie who used to offer university students a discounted price on hot dogs during finals weeks. How you utilize those hours is almost entirely up to you.

On average coaches during full-time Stakeholder Centered Coaching® work with 4-6 clients at a time. Some coaches augment their coaching hours – sometimes up to 20 clients – by offloading their administrative hours to an Executive Assistant.

In a rough analysis of our coaches’ reported workloads, engagements require roughly 1-2 non-coaching work hour for every coaching hour. Further, we’ve seen yearlong engagements consume roughly 30 coaching hours, suggesting the total time required for an single yearlong engagement is 60-90 hours (30 annual coaching hours * 30 to 60 administrative hours). By this logic, if you are working a 40-hour work week for 45 weeks per year (1,800 work hours), you can conceivably do 20 yearlong engagements per year. In other words, 20 clients simultaneously.

Admittedly the maths are wrong as they don’t account for critical business-driving variables such as sales & marketing, ongoing training, and many more. However, this should paint a vivid picture that your limitations are a combined factor of hours-in-a-day and your ability to efficiently acquire clients with minimal input.