Ellen just wants to help people. She’s all about serving the greater good, paying it forward and tapping into her prosperity consciousness. She also needs to make a living, so she’s been working another job while she’s building her business. That’s how it’s been for the past 5 years — and she’s no closer to leaving now than she was at the very beginning.

You’d think with her background, her success would be guaranteed — she certainly did! Cathleen is a very well-educated, very well-trained coach in a major US city. She has a solid background and she’s well-known, well-connected and well-respected. She’s also not very busy.

Rachel has always felt that the key to success was effective marketing — and she’s spent a small fortune seeking out the guidance of marketing gurus, website developers, social media experts and internet marketing consultants. She’s got a beautiful website and a mailing list that most would envy — and it’s all doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing … bringing her qualified prospects each and every week. Unfortunately, she just can’t seem to convert very many of them into the clients she needs to pay all of those marketing bills.

Sheri is the kind of coach everyone just adores. She’s easy to talk to, intuitive and exceptional in the quality of work she does. Everyone she coaches lavishes her with acknowledgement and appreciation — and they’ve referred many of their friends and colleagues to her as well. She believes that demonstrating her coaching skills is the best way for her to show her prospects the value of her services — and they invariably tell her how much she has helped them. So why do the majority of them choose against hiring her as their coach?

With a Ph.D. from a prestigious university, an officer’s position in her target industry’s largest association and several publications under her belt, Diane should have all the business she can handle. But she doesn’t. In fact, the majority of her clients have been assigned to her by a couple of consulting firms that use her on a contract basis for a fraction of the fee they charge their clients. She knows what she’s worth – she just doesn’t believe she can close the deals herself.

Stephanie got her consulting practice off to a decent start. Tapping into her existing relationships, she found herself getting hired for a few long-term projects rather quickly. Once those projects were done though, she was done as well — “unemployed” with few possibilities on the horizon. She knows she did a great job for her clients and felt the quality of her work spoke for itself — but they haven’t given her another project or pointed her in the direction of a new opportunity.

It’s a whole new world for Julia. After more than 20 years in her career as a senior manager in a large corporation, she decided she’d had enough and wanted to try something she’d always thought she’d be good at — consulting. While she knew that the clients she wanted to work with were other senior managers in her industry, she thought she should wait until she had a “proven track record of success” as a consultant to go after those prospects. So she’s been “paying her dues” with small business owners for the past few years who are thrilled to have someone with her background. Julia’s not so thrilled.