MBA1835 Q&A Wednesday: I’ve hired several coaches, but no improvements. What’s wrong with me?

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So Carrie writes in and asks, hey, I've hired three business coaches. They've all felt like a waste of time and money, and I haven't seen any improvements. What's going on? There's something wrong with me. Am I doing this wrong? What's happening? Well, I want to answer this question to make sure I also address everybody else who's listening that might have a similar question. Thinking about hiring a coach or have hired a coach, maybe didn't see the results they're looking for. I want to start by saying, I have gone through this several times. I've hired coaches, and I have a lot of experience, and not all my experiences with coaches have been the same. I first have to say a quick disclaimer. If you have a coach, if you hire a coach and they give you instructions, if they give you action items to do a plan and you don't implement, you won't actually do the work. It doesn't matter what kind of coach you have, you have to actually follow through. So I know this is kind of obvious, but a lot of people I've met along the way have hired coaches, and I asked them, how's it working out? Like, oh, not so great. I say, well, what is the coach advising you to do? Well, they're telling me to do xyz. And I say, well, have you done xyz? And they're like, not really. I'm not sure if I should. And that really is the biggest red flag for me when it comes to hiring a coach. Don't go down the road of hiring a coach if you don't 100% trust this coach and believe what they say you should do is worth doing. Because the whole point of hiring a coach is saying, hey, I'm allowing somebody else to advise me on how to move forward, and I'm willing to do what I need to do to make it happen. Very similar in sports. You know, one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time is Phil Jackson. He coached Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, but he also coached the late Kobe Bryant, Shaquille o'. Neal. A lot of great players, but these players would not be great, would not achieve their level of excellence if they didn't allow themselves to be coached, if they didn't allow themselves to follow through and do what the coach is asking them to do. I just want to say that at the start, I want to say that Carrie did say that she did do the work, so that doesn't apply to her. But I just want to say that for everybody else who's listening, the next thing I want to say, which is a hard truth that we all have to understand. I learned this the hard way, and I want to just pass this on to you so you don't have to. Hiring a coach to help you as an entrepreneur, as a business owner is not a silver bullet. If your business is not doing well, if you're struggling and you hire a coach you think is going to solve all your problems, it won't. I'm just telling you right now, the only person that's actually going to change things for you is you. Okay? I know that sounds very basic and very fundamental, but it's the truth. This is something I learned the hard way, that, hey, I can have the best coaches, I can have the best team, I can have the best hires. But at the end of the day, my decisions, the way I lead the team, the way I direct the future of the business, is really going to affect my outcomes. It's really going to affect my success or failure. So it's really about me, and I really need to make sure I do the right things. I implement. No coach is going to tell you make these decisions. They don't want to take on that responsibility. They're not the CEO, they're not the founder of the company. They will never say that. No credible coach will do that. What they'll do is say, hey, here are some areas that are common in successful companies or founders that they've worked on and improved. You should do the same thing, and you will find success. Theoretically, yes. But we live in the real world with circumstances and obligations, and sometimes those things are not actually practical for you, given your workload, given your schedule, given what's already on your plate, all that kind of stuff, your budget. So you can have a great coach that's giving you great advice, but you're just not able to maybe implement it in a timely fashion to see the results or fast enough for you to maybe get some traction. So my next piece of advice is that if you're going to hire a coach, make sure you have the time to implement what they're saying. Because if you don't, allot the time, you can't just have a coach and just be just as busy. You got to have the time allotted. When I hired a coach and got results, I actually had time scheduled out in my calendar every single week to do the activities, to do the things that I was told to do by my coach, to take the trainings, to take the calls. And the reason why I carved out the time is because my coach held me accountable. This is the other piece of the puzzle that a coach should do. They should hold you accountable. If you have a coach that's not holding you accountable, that's a problem. That's the whole point of a coach is to say, hey, you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Do it. If you don't have a coach that's not holding you accountable, they're just trying to make some money and they're just trying to make you happy and they're not really worried about if you actually pull off your goals. That's a red flag. Always find somebody who's gonna hold you accountable and say, hey, listen, I wanna work with a winner. So let's win. What have you done today? What have you done this week? Have you accomplished the goals? Have you hit your milestones? That's really important. So take the time out in your schedule to actually implement. Next. Sometimes you just have the wrong coach. Sometimes you have somebody that maybe has never been through what you're going through. They might be a good general coach but doesn't have the experience or hasn't navigated the waters you are going through in your particular business. You might be in E commerce and your coach is really good with SaaS businesses. You might be in a service based business, but your coach really focuses on, you know, maybe courses or informational based businesses. They only can teach you and guide you based on their own experiences. That's their guidance. Yes, they could read books and they can know from other clients they've had, but there's nothing like personal experience that's going to guide them as a coach. Next. Some people see a coach as sort of a privilege or some sort of vanity metric. Like, hey, I'm coached by so and so and therefore I'm special. Or I can use that in my profile or when people ask me at dinner parties. No, a coach works for you, okay? There's somebody who's hired to help you get results. If they're not getting you results, if you're not getting what you need out of them, you fire them. That simple, Right? If your investment is not getting you a return. You cut your losses. You have to see it that way because otherwise you're going to continue to spend money on coaches that are just not going to help you. They're not going to actually get you what you need. And that leads me to my next point. Sometimes we hire under qualified coaches, not that they're under qualified in general, like they can actually get results for other people, but for where you are in your business, you might need somebody a little bit more experienced, a little bit higher up the tier. For example, let's say your company is making a million dollars in revenue. You've accomplished something that many businesses have not accomplished before. Your coach or the coach that you might be considering might have never achieved that before. They might have never coached somebody that has achieved that before. Your next milestone is trying to get to 10 million or 100 million. So you need to find a coach that has done that has helped people do that gets from a million to 10 million. So don't find a coach that has helped people where you are. Find a coach that has helped people where you're going. And when you have the initial chat to see if you're a good fit, to see if, hey, do we want to work together? Ask them, hey, can you give me a list of three clients that I can talk to? Or you can give me examples of the results you've gotten for companies that you have gotten from 1 million to 10 million. This is where I want to go. I want to see what you've done for other people so I can be like, yep, that's exactly what I need. And you can just be full, hey, if that looks good, if that pans out, you're hired. That's all I need to know, really. I need to know if you can get results and if you could show me that you've actually gotten results. That's it. My last point is that sometimes it's not a good time for you to be coached. Sometimes you just need a break from coaching. You have learned, you're in the season of learning. You've learned a lot. You've implemented, you changed systems in your business. You've improved your habits. You've optimized what you can optimize. Now you really need to go into the season of implementation, of working hard, of growth, of personal growth and growing your company and being a coach to your team members. Sometimes you just need a season, a couple years where you start to just implement all the things you've learned and grow on your own. Sometimes you just don't need a coach in this season of your business until you get to a certain level and you're like, you know what? This is unfamiliar territory. I actually don't know how to do xyz. I might need a coach to help me through that, and that's okay. You don't always have to have a coach. I know that I've taken breaks. I have gotten to certain milestones and taken a couple years off of coach, getting, having a coach. And then I know I've taken breaks and reached certain milestones and, you know, took a break from having a coach and then got a coach to take on a new challenge, you know, accomplished a few things, took another break. It's okay. Sometimes you need to just look inwards and say, hey, I know everything I need to know to get to where I want to go to this next step. I have all the tools. I have all the knowledge. I just got to work hard. And sometimes we just got to give ourselves permission to do that.

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To wrap up today's Q and A, Wednesday's question from Keri. There's nothing wrong with you, Keri. Okay. This is very common when people try to hire coaches. Take on some of the advice or consider what I mentioned today when you hire your next coach or you decide not to hire your next coach. Taking a little bit of a hiatus. I can't remember who exactly said this quote, but I've heard this several times. The best teacher, the best coach is experienced, you know, and sometimes you need to go through some experiences to teach you the way forward. One of the best ways to coach yourself is to give yourself some time to reflect. You know, spend Saturday mornings to just think about the week, what you did right, what you didn't do so great, where you can improve, where's the business going? What are, you know, some of the things that you can improve upon. Just step back a little bit. Give yourself some perspective, give yourself some time to reflect. And that often can help you coach yourself to the next step. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Of course, don't forget, if you want your question answered right here on Q and A Wednesday, just email me over at Omar MBA Net. Before I go, I want to leave you with this a great coach will tell you, I've taught you everything I could teach you. You've been one of my best students. It's time for you to graduate. Graduate out of my coaching and you can refer me to your other friends, but I think my job is done here. That's a really good coach and I've experienced that. When somebody says that to you, you know this person being genuine and really has your best interests in mind. So when you're interviewing your next coach, ask them, have you ever done that? Have you ever gotten to the point and give me a real example of a real client and why that happened and how did that come about? Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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