MBA1415 Q&A Wednesday: How do I find a great business coach?

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Because your business relies on you to get better every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes we answ Question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar00mba.net and I'll answer it right here on the show. Today's question is from Charles and Charles asks how do I find a great business coach on the point in my business where I need some guidance to get it? I'm at the point in my career and in my business where I need some guidance. I need somebody to help me take my business to the next level. I think I can make good use of a great coach, but there's a lot of charlatans out there and fake gurus and experts. How do I find a great business coach for me? Great question Charles. Amazing. And I commend you for recognizing the fact that, hey, you need a bit of help to get to the next step in your journey as an entrepreneur. And yes, there are a lot of people that are not qualified to take you where you need to go. How do you weed out those charlatans or those fakers and make sure you find a coach that's right for where you want to go, for what you want to accomplish. That's what we'll cover in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Charles is looking for a great business coach. How do we help him out? Where does he find him or her? And how does he avoid getting caught up with somebody who really isn't good for him and is just going to waste his time and money? My best advice for you, Charles, and for everybody who's listening that is in the same position as Charles is you need to find some people that are where you want to be in the next few years. A coach can really help you get to the next level in the next few years. I would say two to three to four years, maybe even five years. Beyond that, you'll probably have to find another coach to take you to that next level. It's very rare you're going to find somebody that's going to be able to help you throughout your whole journey. So the first step is to find people, other entrepreneurs that are where you want to be in the next three to five years. This means you need to make an effort to network, to get to know people, to go to conferences so you can meet these entrepreneurs that are at that stage now. Why is it important to meet these entrepreneurs? Because they can give you great advice. They can recommend you to people that have helped them. You want to find somebody that was in the same position as you are right now a few years ago and basically find how they got there with a good coach. This is exactly how I found my current business coach, Dan Martell. I was having lunch with a friend and fellow entrepreneur, Rob Rossen, who is one of the co founders of Time Doctor and staff.com and I love the business he built and I love where he was at. And he was speaking to me about his coach. And yep, you guessed it, it was Dan Martell. Now, I knew about Dan Martell beforehand. He's been a guest teacher on this show. I met him at conferences, had dinner with him once. So I know of him. And so when he told me his name, I was like, yeah, Dan is a good guy. But what resonated with me most is that Dan helped Rob my friend who I was having lunch with, get to where he is today. So I asked him what are some of the things that have helped you through the coaching? And Rob shared with me, you know, some of the things. But mainly what Rob found very helpful is that Dan's been through what Rob has been through a few times already. He's built and sold three companies, SaaS companies. So he knows where the pitfalls are. He knows what to avoid, he knows the opportunities for growth and what to focus on. And when Rob was saying this to me, it was really music to my ears because this is exactly what I was looking for and the rest is history. Dan's been our business coach for the last year now. It's been fantastic, incredibly helpful. But when it comes to you and choosing your business coach, I think this is the best method is to find somebody who has the coach you're looking for that has helped them already and is where you want to be now. When you do have this conversation with the coach or the team that's behind the coach, you want to be as transparent as possible. This is the person that's trying to help you improve. So don't be too bashful about your numbers, your growth, your revenue, but also how much you can afford. You could just flat out say, hey, this is what I can afford. This is what I could do. I could spend $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month, $500 a month. Whatever your budget is where you can comfortably afford coaching, you need to state that because you may not be a good match, you may be a good match and they might have a suite of different plans for you. Group coaching, one on one coaching, self study coaching. And it could really help them serve you if they know what budget they're working with. Also I mentioned being transparent about your numbers and where you are in your business because some coaches will serve certain people at certain stages. The best coaches have a qualification system, meaning that they don't just coach anybody, they coach people at a certain stage. People that are making X amount of money to X amount of money a year. This is where they're really good. This is where they can really take you to the next level. Beyond that. No, before that. No. So sharing these numbers helps them know if they're a good fit for you, if they can deliver great results. And when you're having this conversation with the potential coach, please, please, please ask for some success stories. Ask for some examples, as many as possible and as many that are related to your type of business. If you're an E commerce store, then you want to see success stories from other E commerce store entrepreneurs. If you're in the content game and you sell online courses. Same story. You want to hear success stories that are similar to what you want. The results you want out of this situation, if they can't provide that for you, maybe this coach doesn't have what it takes to take you where you want to go. Maybe they don't have the experience yet, maybe later down the line they will, but right now, no. Also ask how is the coaching delivered? You know yourself, you know your learning style. Maybe you need to be in person, maybe you need to have a video call. Maybe you need flexibility because you travel a lot and you need some self study stuff. Maybe you are a kind of person that needs a community and accountability. So does it have that kind of aspect? A Facebook group or forum, something where you can share and you can learn from others. Find out how this coaching is delivered so you can deliver the best results for your coach. Lastly, you have to have some element in this program of accountability. They have to put your feet to the fire. They have to make sure that you're hitting your goals or you're at least being tracked. So if you don't hit your goals, you course correct. If there is no form of accountability where you can track your goals, if you can track, if you're hitting your milestones throughout the year, then you're just not going to improve. That's just the truth of it. The truth of it is that you need to hold yourself accountable. You need to have somebody that show you a system to hold yourself accountable and they can remind you of your goals and remind you what you should be focusing on so you do feel there is success and there is improvement. But more importantly, if there isn't improvement, you can course correct what's going wrong, why isn't this moving up? What do we have to change? What do we have to do? And be on top of it. It's your responsibility as well as the coach's responsibility. It's not just the coach's responsibility. You have to be on top of it and make sure you're tracking how well you are achieving the goals that you've set out with your coach. Another thing I want to add is that this takes time. So make sure you allocate time in your schedule, in your month, in your year for these sess, for this coaching, for this improvement. The coach is going to help you, but you're going to do all the work, which takes time. So make sure you're allotting time for this in your calendar. If you have zero time left over in your calendar. What are you going to take off the calendar to be ready and to make room for this coaching? You don't want to spend money and not actually do the work that is assigned to you. There's so many people that hire coaches and they say, I got a coach, but I have no time to do any of the stuff that they've told me to do. I'm so busy. That's a big waste of money. Big, big waste of opportunity. And really it's a disservice to your coach because they're doing everything they can, but you're not fulfilling your end of the bargain and therefore they're not getting the results they need as a coach. They need these results again, remember case stories and the stories they're going to share with other clients. So make sure you put in your calendar the hours that you're going to work on this program and with your coach, okay? Does this happen to anybody else? You sit down with a juicy QPC, some McNuggets and those golden fries from McDonald's.

Then you take a long sip of.

Your Sprite because you can still hear your mama saying, don't fill up on that drink before you eat your food. But you're grown now, so you do what you want.

Share and share alike with the 20 piece McNuggets from McDonald's for just $6 limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu.

To wrap up today's Q and A, Wednesday's question from Charles Finding a great coach is all about finding the result. Finding somebody that got the result you're looking for. Asking them how they got there, did they have a coach? Who was that coach? Even if they say, hey, I didn't have a coach or I didn't hire a coach, but I had a couple mentors. Find out if those people are willing to coach you or maybe they have a coaching program. And then when you do have that meeting with a coach, make sure you ask all those critical questions to make sure they're right for you and that you can afford them and that they're good money and value and a good investment for your future. Thank you so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. If you have a question you want to ask and want me to answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday, just email me over at omar@100mba.net and I'll answer right here on the show. Also, don't forget to hit subscribe right now. Do that right now on the podcast app you're using. We're on all podcast apps. Spotify, Stitch Radio, Apple Podcast, Overcast, Himalaya, all of them. Hit subscribe right now. That way you don't miss a beat and when the next episode comes out, it's ready for you. Also, please share this podcast on social media. It's the biggest compliment you can give us is to share this show. Whatever platforms you prefer, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is. Feel free to screenshot this episode right now, share it on social and hashtag us100mba so we can see the love out there on the interwebs. Before we go, I want to leave you with this. Sometimes coaching programs can get expensive. Let's say, for example, your coaching program is $3,000 a month. You might say, wow, that's $36,000 a year. And that's expensive. Don't get me wrong, that is expensive. But can you make that money back and then some with the guidance and the instruction of that coach? And don't forget all the things you learn from your coach, you get to have and keep and use for the rest of your entrepreneurial career, not just for the next year. But it's nice to know if you're going to get a return on investment so you can rationally make that investment. If the answer is yes, then go for it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.