The Truth About Business Coaching

You don’t think coaching is essential?

You don’t think the world wants to buy what you’re selling?

You are a Coach. And the world still needs you.

Now more than ever people and businesses need clear direction, options and confidence.

They need to remember how to get from Point A to Point B. In fact, what businesses and individuals need most right now is to know that there still is a Point B and they can get there.

In the last of this republished coaching series, I lay out my best strategies for getting from Point A to Point B. I also show you how to create a roadmap you can duplicate again and again. Along with strategies for closing the Learning-Doing Gap so you can get there faster.

Brush up on your skills, get inspired to keep going and remember: You, as a business coach, are essential to the health of our recovery…

“I got this.”

“I can do this by myself.”

“I don’t need anyone’s help.”

What you are ultimately saying is,

“I can’t afford a coach right now. I’ll wait till I’m making money and then maybe I’ll hire someone.”

It’s either that or you’re an egomaniac. And then you really need coaching. Anyhoo…

If you’re not hiring a coach because you think it’s too expensive let me ask you this, how much money are you losing by not hiring a coach?

The money you are losing on a daily, monthly and yearly basis is your COI, your Cost of Inaction.

For instance, say your business is facing some challenges. You’re making about $5000 a month. You predicted, hoped and worked towards $10,000 a month but you’re not there yet. You’ve got some obstacles. You’ve got some blind spots. So how do you get rid of those?

You’ve got a choice. You can continue down the path you’re on making $5000, fielding those challenges, and staying unaware of your blind spots.

Or you can hire a coach to help you overcome your challenges and become aware of and obliterate your blind spots.

If you choose to continue business as usual your cost of inaction is $5000 a month, $12,000 a year. You’re losing that extra $5000 a month by not handling your challenges.

You can work on your challenges by yourself or with your equally blind team and maybe in a year or three you get to $10,000 a month. But in the process of “you got this” you’ve lost upwards of $36,000 annually.

Are you really willing to willfully lose money to test your ignorance and blindness?

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3 Reasons Why

There are 3 business-saving reasons why coaching is so important to a successful entrepreneur:

1. To get you from where you are to where you want to be
2. To create a blueprint of those actions so you can duplicate that success
3. To close the Learning-Doing gap so you can get where you want to go faster

1. From Point A to Point B

If you’re making $5000 a month but you want to make $10,000 you need to figure out why you’re not there.

If you’re having repetitive problems with your team and you don’t know how to fix the problems you need some objectivity.

If you’re not letting yourself or your organization grow you need to find out what’s holding you back. What aspect of growth are you afraid of?

All these scenarios are real. They are all products of blind spots either in you as the head of your business or in your organization. Either way they need to get handled.

A blind spot is one of 3 areas of concern:

• What you know that you don’t know
• What you don’t know that you know
• What you don’t know that you don’t know

These sound like riddles but trust me they are the foundation of denial and ignorance and they need to get handled if you’re a business owner.

Handling these will get you from point A to point B.

2. Duplicatable Success

A good coach will get you from point A to point B. That’s huge. You’ve gotten to your goal! You’re making $10,000 a month!!!! Huge!

Now what?

A successful organization needs to repeat its initial success over and over and over. If you can’t duplicate your results you will dwindle and die. You won’t grow as a company. Most importantly, you won’t be able to scale your business.

You have to duplicate, grow and scale to be successful.

If you’ve got a good coach she’ll get you from point A to point B. A great coach will create a road map of your journey so you can go back, follow the road map and do it all over again and again and again.

A great coach gives you the road map.

I can never decide between road map or blueprint so I use both metaphors. Get over it. 😉

3. Mind the Gap

The gap is real my friends.

The Learning-Doing gap costs billions of dollars yearly in pretty much every industry.

For instance, in the medical industry scientists learn something new and it takes sometimes a generation to implement the new information. That’s crazy and also commonplace.

We see it in education. We see it in federal legislation. We see it in social policy making, etc. etc.

There is a gap between learning new information and then implementing that information to make our lives and businesses better, healthier, fairer.

When my physician prescribed me Lorazepam, I didn’t want to take it because of the risk for dependence, but he explained that it happens only if the drug is misused or taken for more than a month. His explanations persuaded me to take the treatment with Ativan. I do feel better now.

Don’t fall into the gap.

A great coach will help you learn new strategies and tools and then she’ll work with you over and over until you’ve mastered them. That way, when you’re under duress you won’t fall back on the familiar and worthless. You’ll leap forward with your new tools and strategies because they’ve become habit.

Your coach just helped you leap over the gap.

Ok, great. But how do you find a great coach? How do you know what to look for, and the questions to ask?

3 Red Flags of Inadequate Coaching

I’ve been a coach and consultant for 25+ years so I’ve seen it all. And I mean I’ve seen it all. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know bullshit and I know quality.

I know all that because I’ve made all the mistakes.

And through trial and lots of error my profession has taught me humility, reflection and patience, especially with myself.

My profession has made me a better person, a better father, a better friend and a better quality coach. Have you heard that old nugget, “you spot it, you got it”?

Well, what originally attracted me to coaching and consulting: teaching other people what to do, has shown me that I truly don’t know everything and there was a lot I needed to learn to become the teacher I wanted to be.

So these red flags I’m about to describe are things I had to overcome in myself and qualities I’ve helped other coaches overcome as well. These are blind spots in coaches.

These blind spots will hold a coach back from a bigger game, a growing business and the premium clients we all look for. But I’m telling you about them so you can use this as a template for finding a coach who doesn’t make these mistakes.

Red Flag #1

What is a blind spot to a coach is a red flag for you. And the biggest blind spot is being “result-focused” not “action-focused.”

It is so easy to go into a dysfunctional organization and “catch” the enthusiasm of finally getting to point B. I’ve done this and I know other coaches who’ve done this.

An entrepreneur hires a coach because she wants to start making $10,000 a month. So when the coach walks in the pressure is on!

When’s it going to happen? How’s it going to happen?

A young or inexperienced coach will get caught up in that excitement and want to meet those very high expectations. But that’s not her job.

Your job is to get excited! That energy will be the fuel that drives the engine of success toward point B.

The coach’s job is to stay level-headed and focused on the day-to-day action, to observe that action, root out the dysfunction, bring it to the awareness of the entrepreneur, and then lead from behind and course-correct.

The only thing worse than going in the wrong direction is going in the wrong direction enthusiastically.

                                                                        —Alex Mandossian

A coach needs to be focused on the small, day-to-day actions of the entrepreneur to see where the blind spots and challenges are and raise awareness.

It is only through daily attention to actions that you get the results you want. Focusing on the results is, of course, putting the cart before the horse.

But daily attention to small details and actions is what creates the blueprint for duplicatable success. No blueprint, no repeat.

So when you’re interviewing a coach either for your personal growth or professional expansion look at where he or she puts her focus. Is it on the details, the daily activity of what got you stuck in the first place?

Here’s how you tell. Is the coach asking a lot of process-oriented questions that make your eyes water with boredom? Or is that coach feeding your excitement with big numbers and bigger results?

If it’s the latter, walk away.

A coach is a leader from behind, not a cheerleader leading the charge.

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Red Flag #2

Another blind spot inexperienced or bad coaches have is telling their clients how to proceed rather than probing their clients for the next right action.

Telling not asking is another characteristic of a coach getting caught up in the experience of the client rather than staying in the coaching ‘lane’.

Staying in your lane as a coach is a lot of work. It means methodically thinking through the right actions to proceed. But then consistently questioning her client over and over to find the darkened path.

What do I mean?

Typically, clients have blocks, challenges, blind spots that keep them from the success they say they want to achieve. It’s the coach’s job to uncover those challenges and blind spots.

The way you do that is to ask rather than tell.

What sounds better to you?

A. You’re afraid of success. I can see it in the way you run your entire business. Let’s handle that fear right now.

B. There are several actions you can take right now in your business for greater success. Do you know what they are? What are they? Why do you think you haven’t taken that first step yet? Can you tell me what might be holding you back? Let’s clear that up.

It’s very attractive to hear good news about your bad habits. You might be lulled into believing that you can continue to do what you’ve always done but this time it’ll all work out.

Example A sounds like someone coming in and cleaning house and doing the heavy lifting for you. But example A does not create a blueprint of success to follow after you’ve stopped working with the coach.

Through a series of questions a skilled coach takes you on a journey that ends with your greater understanding of your obstacles and challenges. This will ensure that your future ignorance is obliterated. Your blind spot comes into focus.

Example A ensures that you will always need a coach to repeat the same results.

Example B teaches you how to fish. (to add to this collection of metaphors 😉 )

So how do you spot that talent in a coach in the first meeting or discovery session?

Look at the quality and repetition of questions he or she asks you. Are they peppering you with detail-oriented questions or telling you how they’re going to obliterate your obstacles for you?

Red Flag #3

Are you seeing a pattern here? A great coach is a great questioner. A great coach asks questions, and leads you to results through small, duplicatable actions.

And a great coach questions issues rather than solves them.

A great coach doesn’t solve anything for you.

A great coach leads you to uncover the issues and challenges so you can solve your own problems.

Say you’ve been working with a coach for a few weeks or months and a problem arises. A coach worth her salt will ask you how you got to that result. You’ll both spend time analyzing the steps taken or not to end up with the undesired result.

This will do two things: it will show you how not to repeat that result and it will uncover the blind spot that created the result in the first place.

How do you spot this red flag in a coach? Is the coach speaking in future tense? Is she talking about the time after you’ve overcome your challenges? Does he say things like “the way I solve this kind of issue is…”

Or is she focused on discovering your challenges together? Asking, probing, exploring the terrain of blind spots. It’s a slower, more impactful process.

But it has greater, long-term results and a higher return on investment because you’re getting a roadmap to keep duplicating your success.

The Wrap Up

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating.

A good coach is a great cheerleader.

A great coach leads from behind and uncovers with you the steps you need to take to duplicate your success again and again and again.

A great coach has three qualities you can spot in the discovery session if you’re looking, and in the second meeting if you’ve just read this post.

A great coach:

• is action-focused, not result-focused
• asks you how you got here, doesn’t tell you where to go
• questions your results, doesn’t solve your problems

You can look for and spot these qualities easily now that you know what you’re looking for. Spotting these qualities in your next coach will not only ensure a return on your investment it will eliminate your cost of inaction. Why?

Because it will give you the confidence to take that leap of faith and start the process of getting from point A to point B!

Stop waiting. Start obliterating those blind spots. Address those challenges with the support you need to go for the big fish in your industry.

Are you getting the results you want in your business?

Have you obliterated your blind spots?

Are you confidently going after the premium clients that will put your business into high-growth mode in your industry?

What do you think are your blind spots to your success?

When I work with clients on obliterating their blind spots I ask three questions.

Click here if you would like to know what those three questions are that bring clarity to your blind spots and obliterate your fear of success.

Are you working with a coach right now?

Are you getting the results you want?

If not, why not?

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