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By Elissa Kelly, PCC | January 2026
Every coaching business hits problems. Revenue that doesn’t land. Clients you lose. Strategies that don’t work. The coaches who build lasting practices aren’t the ones who avoid these challenges — they’re the ones who have a structured, repeatable way to work through them.
The Crow and the Pitcher
There’s an Aesop’s fable where a crow discovers a pitcher with a small amount of water at the bottom. The crow’s beak can’t reach. After assessing the situation, the crow begins dropping pebbles into the pitcher one by one, raising the water level until it can drink.
The crow didn’t complain about the pitcher. It didn’t abandon the water. It solved the problem with what it had.
That’s the posture I’m asking you to bring to your business challenges.
A Four-Step Problem-Solving Framework
Most coaches in the thick of a problem skip immediately to solutions. That’s understandable — when something’s wrong, the instinct is to fix it fast. But solutions applied to the wrong problem don’t hold. This framework slows you down at the right moments.
Step 1: Clarify the Problem
Define the real problem, not just the visible symptom. If client sign-ons have slowed, is the issue your outreach volume, your pricing, your offer clarity, your closing conversation — or something else? Each requires a different fix. Time spent defining the actual problem is what separates root-cause work from short-term patching.
After sitting with the problem honestly, you can define it with enough precision to work on it. That definition is the first input to your solution.
Step 2: Assess the Impact
What happens if this problem continues? To your revenue, your practice, your clients, your personal energy? Assessing impact creates urgency where warranted and perspective where it isn’t. Not every problem deserves the same attention — assessing impact helps you allocate it correctly.
Step 3: Identify the Best Decision
Generate options. Evaluate them against your strategic vision and your current resources. Pick the one that addresses the root cause with the least collateral disruption. Then build a lookback plan: a specific date and criteria you’ll use to assess whether the decision is working.
The lookback plan is the step most coaches skip — and it’s what prevents the same problems from repeating.
Step 4: Assess the Implemented Solution
On your lookback date, evaluate honestly. Is the solution working as intended? What’s changed, and what hasn’t? If it’s working, document what you learned. If it’s not, return to Step 2 with better data.
Problem-solving is a muscle. The more you use this framework, the faster it becomes your first response — not your last resort.
Problems as Challengers
Here’s a distinction that changes how you engage with business challenges: problems aren’t just things to contend with. They’re contenders. They test your thinking, force new levels of capability, and remind you that yesterday’s solution isn’t necessarily today’s answer.
In 1928, Alexander Fleming rushed out of his lab to catch a family vacation. He left the lab in disarray. Two weeks later, he returned to find mold growth overwhelming the bacteria in his Petri dishes. After trying several options to address it, he found one that could eliminate the mold’s spread. That substance was penicillin — and its power to destroy the mold revealed its capacity to save millions of lives.
The problem forced the discovery. Fleming didn’t set out to find penicillin. He was trying to clean his lab.
As I wrote in my Forbes article, Manifesting the Magic of Business Mistakes, the mistakes and challenges that feel like setbacks are often the exact conditions that produce the most useful innovations. Your coaching practice works the same way.
Anticipate the day when problem-solving is your second nature — when the first thing that happens when you hit a challenge is that your brain starts looking for pebbles.
Need support working through a specific challenge in your coaching business? Explore Corporate to Coach® or book a 1:1 session.
Frequently Asked Questions
Problem-Solving for Coaches
How do coaches solve problems in their businesses?
Four steps: clarify the real problem (not just the symptom), assess the full impact on your practice, identify the best decision and create a lookback plan, then review whether your implemented solution is actually working. The lookback plan is what most coaches skip — and it’s what prevents the same problems from repeating.
What’s the difference between reacting to a business problem and proactively solving it?
Reactive problem-solving addresses challenges after they become urgent. Proactive problem-solving builds the muscle to recognize challenges earlier — when there are more options and less pressure. The Fleming example illustrates this: he didn’t choose the problem he faced, but he had the instincts and skills to respond productively rather than abandon the work.
How do you find the root cause of a problem in your coaching business?
Ask what’s driving the symptom you can see. If clients aren’t signing, is the issue your offer, your pricing, your positioning, your outreach, or your closing conversation? Each requires a different fix. Time spent understanding the problem before jumping to solutions is what separates root-cause work from short-term patching.
How does problem-solving build innovation in a coaching practice?
Problems create focused pressure that comfortable circumstances don’t generate. Coaches who build their most distinctive services often do so in response to a client challenge they couldn’t solve with existing tools. The innovation lives inside the constraint.
