Fun Business Fun Money Podcast
EP 077 – What to look for in a great business coach
Thinking about a business coach?
Who do you choose?
What do you look for?
How do you know they’re a GREAT business coach??
These are the things we need to know!
Instead of throwing your money at the latest trendy influencer with a slick marketing campaign, take a second to consider WHAT YOU ACTUALLY NEED RIGHT NOW.
In this coaching episode I’ve got some insights from my own experience, from observing whats going on in the coaching industry and online, and the questions you need to ask yourself so you know you’re investing your money in a GREAT business coach.
(Just a heads up, aspects of this topic gets me a little fired up 🔥 so theres some mildly spicy language within lol!)
KEY MENTIONS
Episode 3, Unlock the Power of Your Money Personality
Contact Deirdre via email, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn
TRANSCRIPT
Hey there, and welcome to the Fun Business Fun Money podcast!
Today is a coaching episode, where we dig a little deeper into a specific area of business or money. Sometimes life!
And this one is a DOOZY! I’m a little fired up after seeing WAY TOO MANY posts on social media about people being ripped off by business coaches. Or FEELING ripped off.
A quick rant about business coach behaviour…
Suffice to say it makes me SO MAD that people are paying serious money, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in some cases, for piss poor coaching and no results, no support, just a bad experience with some cookie cutter template of a program.
Ugh! Its not good enough! Yes the coaching industry is largely unregulated and I have no idea how you’d even attempt to regulate it to be honest. But thats no excuse for the experiences a lot of people are having out there.
The final straw that prompted me to talk about this was a post recently from someone who clearly bought into some BS marketing hype, only to be disappointed on an epic scale.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not down for paying $16K – sixteen THOUSAND – for 4 months coaching. Especially when it consists of a maximum 8 calls which are a maximum of 15 minutes each.
What the AF?!
I’m being mindful of people listening in the car with little people along for the ride here, but you know what I mean! What the AF?!
Lets do some basic math on this one, shall we?
💲 Its a 4 month package.
💲 8 calls of 15 minutes, thats 2 hours of total call time across 4 months.
💲 At a $16K price tag, thats 8 THOUSAND DOLLARS PER HOUR.
💲 Relatively speaking.
I don’t advocate for anyone to actually CHARGE by the hour, as I mentioned recently in episode 73 about maximising your growth in less time.
But working out your hourly rate is a very handy dandy thing, simply because it helps you figure out if the juice is worth the squeeze, so to speak.
Is the work you’re putting into a particular task worth the outcome?
I’m talking about having a great old time spending hours on a free lead magnet that only a few people access and it doesn’t generate any calls or sales. The juice is definitely not worth the squeeze on that one!
Ask me how I know? Been there, done that!
BUT… while I will happily say my coaching is awesome, it’s life-changing, it’s money-making stuff, I don’t think there’s a single thing in my life or business that I could say is worth $8K an hour.
Could be wrong, you never know! But I don’t think so. I would never charge that!
Of course that hourly rate doesn’t take into account any course materials, recorded content or other things, I’m purely working it out based on the contact time that you get to interact with the coach.
FUN FACT – that is what your audience will do too! And this is why opinions are pretty much a 50/50 split on whether you should or shouldn’t put your prices on your website or talk about them on social media.
Do you choose a business coach by price?
People will ALWAYS price shop, so you have to make sure you’re being crystal clear on the value they get for their investment. Don’t be fluffy or vague about it, or they’ll scroll on by and pay someone else who IS clear that they can solve their problem for this price.
I’m also an advocate for charging premium fees, high ticket, whatever you want to call it, all the same thing. Its a great business model when done right. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes as well.
But in order to charge premium fees you actually have to DELIVER QUALITY COACHING AND RESULTS. #justsaying!
Its not good enough to simply follow a script. If you’re not actually LISTENING to what the person in front of you is saying, what they need? Then you’re not doing your job.
Don’t be constantly watching the clock to make sure you’re hitting that time limit if you’re not going to deliver the valuable insights, the information and the support that person needs in that time frame.
OK rant over, let’s get down to business
Now, I don’t want to make this episode all about what other coaches are doing with their marketing OR their coaching.
Nobody is perfect and someone out there will love the results they get for their $16K investment and 2 hours of coaching time. Its not for everyone, but its for someone.
What I DO want to focus on is what YOU can and should be looking for in a business coach to make sure its a ‘swipe right match’ for both of you.
It always cracks me up when I use that term ‘swipe right’. I got married waayyyyyy back around the time email became accessible to the majority of people! Most people iddn’t have a computer at home, we certainly didn’t have smart phones! And it was long before dating apps were a thing!
So before I ever mentioned ‘swipe right’ in any of my content, I think the first time was a few years back, I had to Google which way you’re swiping if you’re into someone! lol
EVER FELT BURNT BY A BUSINESS COACH?
There’s a couple of other things I hear and see from people who have been ‘burnt’ by online coaches in almost any industry or market.
Feeling like they wasted their money
I think thats what this person feels like, that invested $16K. Thats a really hard one to reconcile because its one of those things we hear throughout childhood, don’t waste money.
Money doesn’t grow on trees, spend it before you lose it, make sure you keep it in a safe place, all those variations and countless other ones as well.
Theres a lot of shame around wasting or losing money, and nobody wants to feel like that.
If you feel like you invested your ‘hard earned’ money (theres another money belief, that it has to be hard earned) and you’ve got little to nothing to show for it, you can feel like you’ve lost something quite significant.
You’re less likely to trust someone if you’ve been burned in this way in the past, it can make you VERY wary of trying to do it again. Even if you KNOW thats the help you need.
If this is something you’ve experienced in the past, its not a sign or guarantee that its going to happen again. Especially if you’ve recognised it for what it is – you may have been caught up in FOMO, everyone else is doing it so you jumped in as well.
I could certainly say I’ve “wasted” a lot of money on courses, coaching and everything else over the years, but I choose to reframe it as part of the journey. It was an experience I had to have in order to get to the here and now. A lesson learned.
Its all about the energy you attach to it 😉
Not enough access to the business coach
Another thing people tell me is they didn’t feel like they got value for their money with a previous coach because they didn’t have the access they felt they needed or expected. I’m talking in terms of that first example of spending $16K for 2 hours coaching, spread over 4 months.
As a Connector money archetype I can tell you that is NOT enough for me to feel like it’s a good investment of time, energy or money, and I’m sure for many of the other money archetypes, they would say the same thing.
If access to a real person is important to you, make sure you’re asking about it!
I mean, if you just want the info and don’t care how you get it, then an online course with pre-recorded content is perfect for what you need.
But if you’re a Connector, Nurturer, definitely an Accumulator or even a Romantic money archetype, you’re probably going to want to know how much access you’re going to have.
You want the relationship
You want to feel like you’re seen and heard, like you belong
You’re getting value for money
or that having greater access makes it easier to get your questions heard, handled, answered.
Side note – if this is your first time hearing about money archetypes and you’re listening to the Fun Business Fun Money podcast for the first time, maybe because someone recommended this episode or the title piqued your interest – hello! Hi!
I try not to use much in the way of unfamiliar jargon without explaining it because that annoys the shit out of me when others do it. So if you’re not familiar with the money archetypes, in a nutshell, they’re your personality traits that show up in relation to money.
You can find out yours by taking my online quiz, head on over to deirdreamies.com/take-the-quiz .
And you’ll find a full overview of ALL 8 of the money archetypes way back in episode 3, called “Unlock the Power of Your Money Personality”, so make sure you go check that one out! You’ll find the link in the show notes or just scroll on back to the earliest episodes and you’ll find it right there! Episode 3.
Marketing hype and the ‘influencer’ business coach
A variation on the ‘not enough access’ thing is where you’ve have signed up for a program because a particular person is the face of the business. The magic of marketing and influencers!
But that person turns out to not actually be involved in the program. They’re not active in a Facebook group or other online community aspect of the program, its someone else answering questions.
The person features in recorded videos and created the program, but there’s little to no opportunity to engage with that person live, in the here and now.
They’re not the one running group calls, thats been handed off to a team member.
Which isn’t a bad thing AT ALL, but that needs to be very clear up front so people aren’t disappointed.
If the public face of the program is the reason you signed up, make sure you know how much interaction you’re going to have with them and what format it’ll take.
Ask the question if its not clearly stated in their content or sales page.
You might have access to the coach with group Q&A calls, but you might also be one of hundreds or even thousands of people in the program, so that makes your odds of actually getting your question or issue heard very low.
That’s just a couple of things to consider, in terms of return on your investment and feeling like you got what you expected with this coach and their program.
Now let’s get to the pointy issue, the burning question everyone wants to know…
What do I look for in a business coach?
And of course my answer is going to be… IT DEPENDS. There’s a few factors to consider, so let’s go through these.
What stage of business are you at?
If you’re just getting started you definitely need someone who can help you establish a solid foundation so you’re not faffing about, throwing spaghetti at the wall and wasting literally YEARS figuring it all out on your own.
If you’ve been in business a couple of years and realising thats exactly what you’ve done so far, you need someone who can help unravel the tangled up random stuff you’ve pieced together, and then build that solid foundation so you can grow from there.
If you’ve had a ton of success working your magic to date, whether you’re winging it or you’ve actually got a plan and a system?
Then you need a business coach who’s going to challenge you to see the tiny gaps for improvement that can have exponential positive impact on your overall revenue AND your profit margins. You need to get into the nitty gritty of that stuff.
One business coach CAN help all 3 of those stages, but if they’re marketing themselves as a one stop shop for all of them you might want to give some more thought to who you’re hiring.
Choose someone who clearly states they work with people just getting started, or been in business a few years.
Because they’re specialising on a particular niche, and thats a skill you can easily adopt for yourself by following their example.
Don’t be a generalist!
Is this business coach teaching a replicable system?
More often than not coaches are teaching you what worked for THEM.
They’re a couple of years ahead of you in business, maybe they’re now considered an influencer and making millions every year from their courses and programs.
But if you look a little deeper you’ll see they’re selling courses on how to create courses, or something similar. How to market. They’re selling systems to grow your social media that worked for them 5 or even 10 years ago.
Hate to break it to you but social media has changed A LOT since the days where you could throw a few bucks at Facebook ads and have thousands in sales from it.
People are a lot more discerning and BS savvy these days, your content has to be top quality to even get noticed.
They may have already had an email list of 3000 people when they launched their offers. If you’re starting out from scratch, thats not an even playing field.
That’s not a replicable system for, I’m going to say 97% of online business owners today. I’m just plucking that number out of the ether!
It depends on your personality, your expertise, your money mindset and a whole bunch of other factors that nobody talks about when they’re marketing those courses.
They simply market their system as the one to rule all the systems, and people buy it. They’re looking for a quick and easy win.
Look deeper and find out if what they teach is something you have the time, energy or expertise to implement.
It has to resonate with you, it has to feel doable and that you’ll have the support to implement along the way.
If it doesn’t, you may as well be forking over that $16K for eight 15 minute calls over 4 months and just be done with it.
Can they back up their claims with legit testimonials or client success stories?
If you go to Marie Forleo’s website you’ll see HUNDREDS if not thousands of screenshot testimonials about her B-School program.
There are podcasts I listen to that are business coaches talking to their actual clients about their success stories, I love them.
They talk about where they were before, what they did during their time together, and how things have changed since working with this coach.
Its a mutual PR thing, a public relations exercise for both parties. The client gets to talk about their business on a platform that has far greater reach than their own, and the coach gets the endorsement and proof of their methods direct from their client, in their own words.
That doesn’t mean that a business coach with only a few testimonials isn’t any good.
On the contrary, it can simply mean they’re not comfortable asking for testimonials or shouting about their own success and they’d rather just get on with doing the work!
This is where having a Celebrity archetype on your team would come in handy – they’ll make sure you’re in the spotlight in all the right ways!
KNOW LIKE & TRUST – does it really matter?
Yes. Yes it does! Know like and trust is a long held marketing concept that says you buy from people you know, you like and you trust.
If you’re going to invest your money with someone and trust them to guide you to the outcome you want, you need to ALSO trust your intuition. That little whisper that says “this is exactly what I need” or “this feels off, something isn’t legit here”.
Don’t ignore that whisper. I always refer to it as a whisper – I even whisper lol! – because marketing hype SHOUTS way louder, with the sole intention of drowning out that intuitive whisper.
Marketing hype is about convincing you of something.
Marketing intuition has a very different feel to it. Its a knowingness that you do indeed feel like you know, like and trust this person to help you, to tell you the truth, to share what you need to know.
Do your research
If you’ve had a business coach recommended to you, do your research!
Check out their content on every social media platform, search for them on YouTube and podcasts and listen to what they’re sharing. It’s a great way to get to know them before you ever reach out to them.
Find someone who resonates with YOU – you like their personality, they’re consistent in what they’re talking about, you feel like you actually know, like and trust this person.
I should also add that sometimes your intuition can give you all the green lights at the start, but you also have to trust that you’ll know the right time to call it quits with a business coach because we can outgrow them.
They should be very clear about what part of your journey they can help you with. No smoke and mirrors BS, show me a clear roadmap that highlights where I am now and where I’ll be after doing the work.
Once you’re there, having done the work, its time to reassess. Is this STILL the right person to help me move forward, or is it time for someone with a different area of expertise? Only you will know, listen to that intuition.
Online or in person coaching?
Another important thing to consider is how YOU like to interact with your business coach.
Do you want to be part of a group mastermind where you have online calls and maybe a couple of in person events per year? Choose someone who offers that.
If you’re creating a freedom based business for yourself, where you serve your clients online, never have to meet in person (unless you want to!) and you want to work from anywhere in the world, choose a business coach who supports that.
That’s how I operate – I’m an introvert, I’m dealing with peri-menopause symptoms, I have limited energy on a daily basis. It takes a LOT less energy to get on Zoom with someone for an hour than it does to spend an hour together in person.
I also like the freedom to go to the beach with my paddle board on a random Tuesday, or Wednesday, or ANY day that the weather is perfect!
I love working with clients all over the world and make the effort to have work hours that suit most time zones.
If I was offering in person events I’m limiting the number and type of people that can access that. Not that I think too many people would mind a visit to sunny Queensland in Australia, but you know what I mean!
Of course this is a perfect time to mention that if you’d like ME as your business coach, all you gotta do is send me a DM to initiate a conversation about what you’re looking for.
I’m @funbusinessfunmoney, all one word, on Facebook and Instagram.
Connect with me on LinkedIn and DM me there – I’m the only Deirdre Amies in the world to the best of my knowledge!
You can email hello@deirdreamies.com if you prefer to email.
Or if you’ve signed up to receive my weekly FUNday emails you can hit reply to any of those and its ME that will respond.
Not a VA, not a team member, it will always be me, now and forever. Because thats how I roll! You’ll find the links to all of those in the show notes.
We’ll have a quick chat about what you’re doing, what stage of business you’re at, and what you’re hoping to achieve.
IGNITE BUSINESS & MONEY COACHING
My signature program is IGNITE, a minimum 6 month business and money coaching program. Its you and me, one on one, simplifying and building a solid foundation for your business growth right now and in the future.
Why 6 months? Because implementation is everything. I don’t just teach you a bunch of stuff, if I was gonna do that I’d create a course, sell it, and I’d be right back at the beach!
I’m right there to support and guide you as you implement, and that takes time. Often my clients stay on for 12 months or more for that ongoing support.
None of the calls are outsourced to other coaches – although if you’re listening to this a few years time, in the future? That may have changed!
We’ll work out a personalised approach to ensure you get exactly what you need.
Its not a cookie cutter template program full of random stuff you don’t need! I help you create client roadmaps and offers that are perfect for you now AND I give you the know how to develop them on your own as well.
Sound good? Send me that DM already! @funbusinessfunmoney, all one word, on Facebook or Instagram. Hit me up on LinkedIn, send me an email, my inbox is open and waiting for you to slide on in there for a chat!
If you prefer doing your research BEFORE reaching out to me, head on over to deirdreamies.com/ignite for all the deets on the program. You’ll find the link to that in the show notes.
Let’s wind things up…
Honestly, there are so many variables to consider when choosing who to work with as your business coach. But that is one thing I would recommend every single online entrepreneur does – RESEARCH.
✅ Have at least SOME idea of what you want, what is your current problem? We’ll dive deeper into that.
✅ Ask for recommendations.
✅ Check out their social media content.
✅ Listen to every podcast they’re on so you can get a good sense of who they are.
✅ Check out their website.
✅ And most important of all – trust your intuition.
Don’t buy into marketing hype. Don’t let FOMO get the best of you. Understand who and what you’re investing your time, energy and money in. You’ll never feel like you’ve wasted your money if you’re making an informed decision.
There’s a political phrase thats come up in Australia recently around a referendum, “If you don’t know, vote no.”
I call BS on that, if you don’t know, FIND OUT!
Ignorance is never an excuse. It applies to anything and everything – if you don’t feel like you know enough about something, ask questions and keep asking questions until you’re satisfied.
There’s no such thing as a stupid question, especially when it comes to investing in YOUR business.
Thats what I’ve got for you today! A little longer than the average one, but this is a big topic made even bigger when I’m a little fired up about it!
Take care, have fun with whatever you’re doing today, tomorrow and every day, and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
Want to make a BIG SHIFT in your business?
IGNITE private coaching could be the answer you’re looking for! Click here to check out the details, or send me a message for a quick chat about which option is the best one for you right now.
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