Erika Jones, CFO, CCTAProfit First Professionals · Certified Fractional CFO and Profit First Professional

How to Offer What No Other Coach Can

12 Feb 2025 · 2 min

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1:38

In this concise monologue, the speaker argues that the hallmark of a great coach is the ability to pinpoint and resolve the most vital, immediate problem a business faces, rather than defaulting to their own specialty. Using a $9,900 proposal as a concrete example, the speaker illustrates how coaches often focus on secondary issues that, while important, are not the critical need at that moment. A vivid medical analogy—comparing a heart‑attack emergency to a podiatrist’s foot‑care focus—underscores the urgency of addressing the primary problem first. The speaker urges coaches to abandon a myopic, specialty‑centric mindset (e.g., “I’m a sales coach, so I only fix sales”) and instead adopt a diagnostic approach that asks, “What is the biggest, most urgent problem right now?” By doing so, coaches can deliver uniquely valuable outcomes that keep a business healthy and differentiate them from merely good coaches.

Chapters

I show you something. I got a proposal here. I'm folding it up so you can't see any of the information to disclose this from. But it's a invoice or it's a proposal for $9,900 and change. And it's to fix a problem inside my business. And I have no doubt they'll fix the problem. And it is a problem I have in my business. It's not the biggest problem, and that's the problem. That's what differentiates good coaches from great coaches. At any given time, there's a specific vital need a business has that has to get resolved. And there's other needs that aren't priority. Now imagine you get called into the doctor's office, like, oh, my God, he's having a heart attack. We gotta fix this. Or she's having a heart attack. Being equal here, and the doctor is a podiatrist, and. And she says, well, your feet, you know, they could use a little fixing, too. You're having a heart attack. Just because the podiatrist works on feet doesn't mean that's what you need now. And even though you have an issue, it doesn't need to be fixed now. It's not the vital need. What is the critical need in the business? That's what great coaches do. We don't go in with our myopic view. I'm a sales coach, therefore I fix sales problems. I'm a HR recruiting specialist, therefore you need better people. We go in and say, what is the biggest problem that your business has? We must identify that first and fix that, because everything else we fix may be a problem, but it's not going to keep your business healthy. Be a great coach. Find the vital need, the thing they need to fix next. That is what great coach does.