5 Steps You Must Take Before You Hire a Business Coach

There comes that critical, exciting moment in every person's life when they decide that after years of waiting, they're ready to hire a business coach. Hiring a coach is one of those game changing decisions you make with your business when you're truly ready to take things to the the next level. But just like any other type of relationship, it's only game changing if you do it the right way. I've heard way too many horror stories from very savvy business ladies who waited until they were drowning and overwhelmed to hire a business coach or consultant only to rush into the wrong relationship. I myself have made the same mistake. Hiring a coach who actually forgot about a major aspect of my business while we were working together. Needless to say, that didn't make me feel so good. So, because I actually want you to go out there and find a coach who's actually going to help you make more money with a whole lot less stress and anxiety about the decision you made, I've made a list of five things that you must do before you hire a business coach. Are you ready? Number one one. Be the boss. Step into your CEO role. I know it's confusing. Even though you're hiring someone to tell you what to do or coach you and guide you along, you can't forget that you're the boss. You're the big cheese baby. The client, the person handing over the money, spending all the big bucks. Yeah, that's you. As such, I want you to take every precaution when hiring a coach that you would when hiring an employee or a new team member or a contractor. In fact, it totally helps you get into the big cheese mindset if you put together a job description. Just like you would if you were hiring in the conventional sense or just a role description. Close your eyes for a minute. Close them, close them and picture yourself working with your ideal coach. Let me ask you, while your eyes are closed, what qualifications and experience does this person have? What expectations do you have of them? Do you need someone who's more supportive of you? Who reaches out and follows up? Or who's there? Just on your weekly calls, how do you see yourself working with your coach? Is it just calls? Is it email? Write all these details down. Number two, Define your goals. Alright hotshot, before you get too comfortable in your tailor made power suit, big boss, let's make sure that you've got a game plan. Coaching is a very widespread field. It's rapidly growing and is the second fastest growing industry in the world. That's bananas. So you're going to have a lot of options. And before you decide who you want to hire, let's go over some of the basics. Grab a pen and paper if you haven't already, and write down the following what specific area of business do you need help with? The best coaches all have specialties. Many consultants also have specialties as well. If you want the more consultant oriented row, for example, if you're struggling with money blocks, you'll want someone like Denise Duffield Thomas or Kimberly Riggins. If you need help with sales and sealing the deal with clients, you'll want someone like Kendrick Scholl. And if you're an entrepreneur, small business owner who's ready to upgrade their system and business operations to make business run more smoothly and make more money profit, that is. There's this Amber mcheechick who I hear is amazing. Why are you motivated to hire a coach? What has changed in your business that makes you feel like you're really ready to take this crucial step and make this big investment? What specific result do you want to achieve from hiring a coach? Is it a financial gain? Is it clarity? Is it a marketing plan that you can actually then step away from and implement? Is it just accountability? Number three, Build your budget. If the thought of hiring a coach has your shoulders all squished up to your ears with anxiety, don't worry. I'm a big believer in the fact that there's a perfect coach out there for you who fits comfortably within your price range. The last thing that hiring help should do is stress you out even more. That will have the exact opposite effect. Oftentimes people decide to hire coaches after they've bought pricey online programs and already tried to do everything the DIY route. So if that's you and you've already made a big investment, you're probably not a stranger to investing in yourself, right? So do you remember the last step where you define the exact goal that you want to reach and that you want to achieve from working with your coach? It's time to take that a step further. Ask yourself, how much money am I willing to pay to get this outcome? Take out a sticky note or write that number down on the piece of paper that you're building your requirements from and consider that and keep that in the back of your mind. Number four Go with your gut. When making big decisions about your future, I think it's always good to do a gut check. But wait just a second. This advice comes with a warning. Before you make a big decision based on your gut, you need to understand what a Gut feeling is. Your gut feeling is a result of your brain's subconscious information retrieval system. And I'm not making this stuff up either. But gut feeling is actually a field of research so studied by a German social scientist whose findings were popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his best selling book Blake. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it already. And here's what this gut feeling thing is in plain English. Your gut feeling is basically a compilation of past experiences with similar qualities. It's a feeling based on what has already happened to you in your life. Here's the catch. If you're trying to do something you've never done before, your gut feeling might be less accurate. And that's why I recommend using your gut feeling as just one of several factors when choosing a coach. Specifically, the gut feeling is going to help you tremendously when you meet your potential coach for the first time. Because your gut feeling has lots of experience with meeting new people that it can't go wrong. You'll know instantly whether or not you can jive with this person if your gut says no, don't do it. Something's not working here. Trust it. Number five. Know exactly what you're getting into. Coaching packages can be a bit, well, vague sometimes, but it's not without good reason. Coaches have a difficult job of balancing the two biggest needs of their clients, customizing their advice and guidance to suit their clients specific needs, and prescribing a specific system theory formula program for every client they can use in the future too. After all, it's totally smart business for a coach or consultant to have a methodology that they follow and can apply again and again. You just have to make sure it works for you. The funny thing is, you don't necessarily want to hire someone who says that they customize their coaching to every client. They also don't have a system, a theory or formula that's proven right. And then again, you do want customization because you want it to be personalized. So it's a bit of a balancing act here. The problem with say, just getting two months of one on one coaching without a program to follow is that you don't know what to do once those two months are over. So ask those sorts of questions. Also, it can feel like the coach may be flying by the seat of their pants when they talk with you. They say they customize it and personalize it. I'd hate for you to invest all of that money just to find him feeling frustrated and overwhelmed and constantly trying to decipher what the relationship is when you're looking at coaches, make sure that they have an established system. I know I'm a big fan of systems. Then you need to interview them to know if your business fits on their system conveyor belt, so to speak. You'll feel confident knowing that the coach has experience working with and getting results for your particular type of business if you can balance well their system with the needs and customization for your business model and the way that you work all right, let's recap these five just one more time. Before you hire a coach, make sure that you Number one, write up a description of exactly what you're looking for. Your dream coach or mentor. Write down your goals for working with a coach. What do you want to get out of this relationship? Decide how much money you're willing to invest and work that into your budget. Listen to your gut and know exactly what you're actually getting for your money. Alright, I want to know in the comments what you think of all this and how you can apply some of this in your business or where things might not exactly work for you. And then of course, if you're watching this somewhere else on the interwebs and you're not@niceops.com yet, get your tush on over to nice eops.com and let's start building your empire together. I can't wait to see you there. And I can't wait to see you in the comments. Thanks for watching.