One concept that haunts many of the executive coaches I work with in supervision is what “success” means, as a coach.   Of course, while success can be represented by many possible aspects of our coaching work, one very concrete measure that coaches often use for themselves is … money.

During supervision, an executive coach I work with, “Liz”, was clearly feeling bad about herself in comparison to other “successful” executive coaches she knows.  When Liz and I started to explore what success meant to her, it turns out she was feeling bad about herself because she wasn’t making as much money as she thought they were making. 

For context, Liz had struck out on her own as an executive coach about two years ago, after working a number of years for a few third-party coaching providers. She cancelled her arrangements with them, wrote a book, revamped her website, and hired a couple of marketing experts to help her establish herself as an independent brand.  She did this primarily to 1) focus on her desired demographic target group for coaching, with whom she had deep personal resonance, and 2) to make more money than she had when she had to share a large percentage of the fee with a third-party coaching provider. 

Suddenly, in our conversation, I realized my own implicit hierarchy of 4 levels of income which I had been using for years, to evaluate at least one type of “success” for myself as a coach.  When I offered it to her, she really liked it, and it helped her see her own self-definitions in a new light.  My levels have been the following:

1. Covering expenses: This is the lowest level of income, and what I looked for when I began my independent career.  My initial goal was simply to get my new career as an independent consultant (not yet coach) off the ground.  I was satisfied just to cover my babysitting, transportation, and other expenses involved, so that I could work and start to build my name and career as an independent.  While I always had a long-term horizon, and hoped to earn more eventually, for my first few years I was grateful to be at this level - which was good, because I stayed at this level for quite a while when my children were little.  (My husband and my life goals included my being home-based for them when they were little, and that’s how we oriented our lives.)

2. Making a household contribution:  Once I started to work independently a bit more regularly, my goal became to make a meaningful household contribution.  My husband’s income was covering most, but not all, of our household expenses, and I was glad to make up the shortfall, and perhaps even allowing us to save a little bit.

3. Nice to have:  This was what I called the level of when I reached what I consider to be a respectable income level, compared to what I would have earned had I had an uninterrupted, full-throttle corporate career.  That level may not at first have been well into that range, but I was quite happy to be there!  I was certainly covering what else we needed for our increasing household needs as well as allowing us to have savings. That is success, to me.

4. Wow:  This is what I call the level that you never thought about nor certainly expected to reach.  You may not have even really thought about it, but then suddenly…you are there! You just keep doing what you (love to) do, you find yourself getting busier and busier, and then you look at your receipts at the end of the time-period, and surprise! You can’t believe you made that much money over that time, just doing what you love.

Please notice, there are no concrete numbers associated with any of these levels. The right number for you is whatever it might be for you in your own life, given your goals, experience, context, and other varying life circumstances.  Others may well define these 4 levels differently than you do.  For me, the fulcrum was being a married mother who wanted to be around for her children as they grew and could (somewhat!) manage that, while also building and nurturing an independent career for the present and future.

For Liz, the problem was that, realistically, she probably should have expected herself to be at level 1 or 2, since she was still early in her career journey.  However, she was already comparing herself to those at levels 3 and 4 - she expected  herself to be there already, and she’d just started!  Once we’d talked this through, she felt much better, and more empowered to think realistically about both where she was, and what the right numbers were for her.  She was also able to think through her desired financial goals for herself, rather than in comparison to any other coach.

I would say that identifying “success” is, by its nature, individual.  You might ask yourself:  How much of what I consider to be success as a coach to be financial?  What does money and/or success mean to you?  What is my true financial need, towards others and/or myself? 

Given this, what if any level of income do you think “success” is, for you?  Are you there yet?  Where did that number come from?  Who are you comparing yourself to, if anyone, and why?  What do you really want and expect your monetary success to look like?  When is enough, enough?

May these considerations help you better understand your own assumptions, perspectives, and realities around money and success!

Read other blog-articles by Lilian Abrams here, and connect with her via Linkedin.

Lilian Abrams (Ph.D., MBA, MCC) is an organizational psychologist with more than twenty years of Fortune 50 consulting experience, in all manner of organization and leadership development areas and applied research. She has been a senior consultant for Towers Perrin, Watson Wyatt, Nabisco, and Kaiser Permanente, and an accredited executive coach for many client organizations, including ADP, BASF, BMS, KPMG, Unilever, Warby-Parker, Sanofi, New York Presbyterian Hosipital, and the FAA. As former New Jersey Organization Development (NJOD) Learning Community's Education Team Chair, she facilitated learning to bridge the gap between academia and practice. She teaches, publishes, and serves, always seeking to learn and bring the right learning to the right people at the right time.