First Class Business recently asked 291 experienced business coaches to identify the most significant challenges they are currently facing in the business coaching arena. The answers these professionals provided were both startling and frustrating, especially in a training industry built on knowledge, expertise, and experience.
First, these seasoned professional coaches expressed their frustration and annoyance with inexperienced coaches who attain widespread notoriety despite being underqualified, unproven, and lacking the credentials that validate training, experience, and success in the business world. A chief criticism directed at the more popular coaches has to do with their inability to scale their clients’ businesses at the same rate they have grown their own businesses. In contrast, the UVP or unique value proposition for the successful business coach is the demonstrated ability to breed the principles of success in others while teaching them, to teach others, how to build their own successful businesses.
Second, these novice coaches receive broad exposure across multiple media platforms. The attention garners contracts with business owners who hope to achieve a similar level of success. The “rising star” fails to provide meaningful value that the client can measure in concrete terms such as lead generation, conversions, and revenue growth. These metrics are a window into the soul and health of any business. Too often, business owners and their loyal employees are left in precarious and frightening financial straits. In the post-COVID economy marked by high inflation and declining consumer confidence, there is little margin for error.
Third, these very likable and charismatic but incompetent and unproven business coaches bounce from client to client, leaving in their wake many failures and occasional outliers of success. These unmitigated and repetitive failures further cripple the economy while putting businesses at risk of failure, loss of ROI, and bankruptcy. While the small business client often has growth limitations due to their geographical constraint, that’s far from the case for a wreckless online coach with the entire world at their fingertips. The irony is that the amateur business coach has little accountability and millions of potential clients from which to choose, so there’s little consequence for poor performance.
Fourth, the business owner also has to take responsibility for not implementing proper vetting practices in their hiring processes. The hired coach, is merely an employee, and if proper diligence had been performed, by calling references, looking deeper into case studies, asking for outside opinion, and learning more about what to look for in a great business coach, these imbalanced relationships wouldn’t commence as often as they do. Too many business owners are untrained on HR processes and have no idea how to expand their business and this vicious cycle runs rampant in the market. This is one of the many reasons that 96% of businesses fail within the first 10 years of business.
How First Class Business Addresses the Challenges
First Class Business empowers service-oriented coaches with the training, the tools, and the branding they need for scale. Ensuring a coach is well qualified is required for growth, so resources are provided to help coaches consistently deliver concrete solutions and define measurable outcomes appropriately. Combine the right coach with a powerful marketing system that showcases the value of their brand and services and we’ve got a recipe to turn business ownership around in America.
The problem is not because a rookie coach shows up looking amazing for the “first date”. The problem is that they look far more attractive than they actually are, while the qualified coaches they compete against slump back with a casual or outdated online presence. You might as well show up to the first date in board shorts and a t-shirt from Walmart. Let’s speak clearly here: if the website looks terrible, and your offer isn’t unique, and no one feels inspired to contact you, no one will.
Coaches must make the right adjustments to their brand and improve their acquisition strategy and First Class Business takes care of this by empowering the experienced coach with the tools needed to rise above the noise creating a flow of pre-qualified prospects who are ready to work with a coach that produces meaningful, rewarding results that make a lasting impact on both the bottom line and the lives of the clients.
Successful business coaches must be serious competitors who power up their brand and go toe-to-toe with the competition before and after the initial transaction. The only real option for the experienced, battle-tested business coach is constant learning, diligent self-improvement, and ever-expanding skill development to outperform the “shooting star”. They may be here today and gone tomorrow but there are millions following. By wishing this reality goes away, or settling for less, the proven business coach abdicates his or her hard-earned status as a coach, mentor, and guide to others pulling the curtain closed on a wonderful legacy prematurely. Bitterness and self-pity aren’t options for great coaches. Leaders don’t complain, they take action and overcome the challenge at hand.
Jackson Calame, owner and founder of First Class Business and a business consultant with serial successes, sums up his thoughts on the matter and offers the following advice to entrepreneurs who are seeking to expand their business coaching services: “What can an experienced coach do? Power up your brand and compete toe to toe. Your only real option as a seasoned coach is to learn to outshine them, settle for less, or remain bitter. As my mom always said, ‘The squeaky wheel gets the oil.’ And in the world of dating, ‘The lovely gets the attention.’ In a coaching world full of online competition, learn to stand out in ways that matter and provide value that you never had to before.”
The key to success is to embrace what it takes to stand out among a growing crowd of competitors, fully implement positive changes and improvements, and deliver substantial value that is well-defined, quantifiable, and desirable to your audience.
Positive Voices Can Raise the Power of Your Brand
In a digital world full of competing voices, social proof through the vehicle of a positive review carries significant weight with readers. Solid, positive reviews can showcase meaningful transformation. Prospects see these testimonials as evidence that a coach’s real-life successes are applicable for their own needs and desires.
Brandon Barnum of HOA.com writes, “I highly recommend Jackson and his Power Launch model! If you’re looking to optimize your marketing performance and profitability, Jackson’s system will save you time and stress while giving you clarity and confidence around your marketing activities and results. We’ve contracted his services, and are now in deep discussions about whether we should add him as an equity partner, or to our advisory board at HOA.com. You can imagine the impact he’s had on our leadership team.”
The Power of Heart-Centered Leadership
In a recent interview, Calame, who embraces a heart-centered leadership style, encouraged business coaching professionals to keep their hearts and mind in alignment. “Be resolute! Don’t let the naysayers beat you down. Look for those who are going to build you up. Stay focused on that ideal audience. You are always going to have people who want things to be better or who want things to be tweaked or transformed in a way that’s not in your ideal client’s best interest. It is important that you do not start catering what you offer to those who are out of alignment with what you do. Stay focused. Attract the best clients. Put your victories out there. Tell their stories, and the rest will start following and coming in, saying, ‘Wow! That’s what I want in my life!’ If you stay centered with your heart and mind, you are likely to have a lot of success.”
The mission of First Class Business is embodied in the following statement: “We want you to have a successful power launch and get your brand in high demand so you can serve as many people as possible.”
First Class Business strives to empower business coaches to achieve sustainable revenue growth by providing business consulting and digital marketing at a higher level than would typically be available from other niche consultants. The team functions like a business partner, creating a high-level strategic plan while also analyzing business operations at the granular level of execution, measurement, and adjustment as needed to see the vision take shape and become a reality.
The business executive training specialists at First Class Business can be reached by email at hello@firstclassbusiness.io or by phone at (866) 895-1853.
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