How to Start a Coaching Business Q&A with Terry Rice | 10/21/21

Okay, let's go ahead and get started with Q and A. This is your chance to ask any questions you have about the course or running your business in general. So let's go ahead and get started here.

Sounds great. It's actually pretty funny when we first talk because you're almost answering all my questions, but not quite so it's like, I'm not sure if you can hear me or not. It's pretty impressive that you're able to do it without actually hearing me pre recorded. But like. Right on. Right on topic.

Yeah, this is pre recorded, actually.

Oh, my God, don't do that because I'm gonna believe you.

How's it going today?

Good, thank you. And how's the family?

Good, good, good. Yeah. We just had another baby on Sunday, so. Just suggesting. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, it's been a fun experience. It's different because, I mean, I have like, just like four now, so it's like you. You get used to all the surprises and there's new ones, but it's. It's a fun time.

Oh, that's great. That's great. Congratulations. And are you getting some sleep enough? Enough?

Yeah. One thing I. I was saying to one of my buddies earlier is there's four pillars of recovery. There's eating well and drinking well. There's thinking well and there's moving well, and the last is sleeping well. But if you hit just two of those per day, you're in a good spot. So.

Okay.

Well, not really, but I got like my water over here. I have, you know, doing some meditation, so I'm in a good spot.

That's good. Yeah. Okay, well, that's good. Two. Two out of four there. Yeah. The. The power of thought for sure.

How about yourself?

I'm good. I'm good. Slowly moving forward. But I am like, I am pretty part time on this at this point, so I'm trying to not be too difficult on myself. But really the biggest part for me is the niche audience, the niche target audience. So, like, my niche and my. I think my audience right now is way too broad. So as I was moving through the course, it just like, it didn't feel good. Like, it didn't feel like I was gaining confidence. It felt like I was gaining more like blurriness. And I think it's because I'm like, oh, I could do this and I could do that and maybe this. So I'm still in that phase. I feel like I haven't committed to an audience yet. And so I was wondering if maybe we can take Some time to. If you can help me think through it.

Basically, yeah, you make a really good point. Because in the beginning of the course we're going after clarity, right? What do you do? What do you do it for? And you might have a loose idea, but as you go deeper into creating content and offers for that audience, so like, well, shoot, I wasn't really that clear. And that's when it can become frustrating because, you know, that's when it's really obvious that you need to hone in a bit more.

That's exactly right. I was like, I think this is good enough. Like, I don't want to stall, like, let's keep going. And then. That's exactly right. When I went to start creating content, I'm like, I'm diluting it because then I create a bit of content for this audience, a bit of content for that audience, but this audience might not really jive with that content. So it's like it might end up being counterproductive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do me a favor, just refresh me. Just refresh my memory and anyone else who might be tuning in. What do you do? Who do you do it for? And then we'll get clearer on even what that means.

Sounds good. So basically right now my initial offering is I help managers and analysts communicate the insights behind their data so they can take the best decision for their business, make the best decision for their business. And it's pretty broad.

Well, I mean, it's specific what you do, but what audience do you want to do it for.

Yeah, so, yeah, exactly. That's, that's pretty much where I'm stuck. And as I've been going through and reading things and kind of working through it, I think my focus is really managers of the group that's stuck in the middle, like trying to get buy in from their team and trying to get approval from their senior folks. Right. So as opposed to like I am kind of coming in as the analytical team, so my audience would be more the managers. And I think that's the audience I have the most empathy for because they're, you know, they're juggling a lot of things at the same time and they're getting, they're trying to convince an audience, but they're not able to. Like, they're the ones that really need to convince an audience. They're the ones that need to convince their seniors to release budget or to say, okay, go ahead, bid at that price, or you know, whichever it is. But so I'm honing it in on managers and then the industry, My background is in the renewable energy industry, but I do want to dive into, diversify from that. So I'm like, okay, maybe I start there, but now I'm not super excited about starting there. So I'm like, okay, maybe that's not a good idea then. So, but I, and I'm thinking, trying to, like, I'm like, this is amazing. I get to choose what I want to do, right? So I'm trying to be like, okay, what would I want to do? And I'm like, generally small enterprises really interest me because to them there's more at stake. So my ideal customer values the ability to communicate the insight behind their data. They're not just doing it because they're supposed to do it or because they've invested in the data. It's because the decision is going to impact their business. They want to de risk that decision. They want to look at their data. So then they can say, well, you know, my gut says this, the data says this, like, let's go for it, as opposed to, oh, we looked at the data, it says this. But maybe we'll go with this initiative, maybe we won't. Right? So, so, so then I start, I'm like, okay, maybe I'll hone into the size of the enterprise as opposed to the industry. But then that still doesn't really get me to who. Who am I stalking online?

Basically?

Like, who's like, I use LinkedIn a lot, so am I looking for industry? Am I looking for titles? Am I looking for basically, it didn't really, like, I still haven't come to the place where I'm like, okay, like, I know who I'm looking for. Who do I want us work with? Like, I get to choose.

Yeah, yeah. What I'm doing like over here secretly is I'm looking at tableau and I'm wondering what kind of community tableau has. I'm looking even at what, like, industries and verticals they're talking about. Because tableau, being a data vis platform, is where I would start. So I'm literally looking for the tableau community right now because that's where I would go. If there's a Reddit channel for tableau, I would go in there, I would even go on Quora and just type in the word tableau and see what conversations are being had around that. Because when you're in a niche industry, there's a benefit there. And right now we're talking about data viz. You can just go there and see who's asking these Questions. I think your intuition is absolutely correct where they're saying, you're saying it's going to be people who have trouble convincing decision makers to move forward because they're like, hey, don't give me all these numbers and stuff, just show me a cool chart. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I see that Tableau has a conference, a free conference, November 9th through 12th. I would definitely sign up for that.

Okay.

As well. And yeah, it literally says like unrivaled community. So there, there's a lot of information about like the Tableau community here. I would, I would tap into that and from there get clarity. Now, in regards to industries, I think we're already leaning towards tech. Right. You said renewable energy, I believe. I think it is, it can be tech companies in general. I know on my end when I used a tool like this, it was at a digital marketing company. So I think even that's a good fit. And Right. Like, if one thing we did was we mashed up one data source versus another. So like amex data versus, like, it could be like first party data or another resource to like, just make, make a better profile of our target audience. And I'll just give you a backstory.

Yeah.

I was doing this, I was doing this for a company that sold prepaid cell phones. And my assumption was people that buy prepaid cell phones didn't have good credit, didn't have a lot of money, and that's why they're buying prepaid cell phones. It was like five years ago. Looking at the data from amex as well as datalogic and a few other sources, we saw they actually had really good traffic credit. They traveled internationally, they traveled business class, they had high income. And what we determined later was these people, they weren't buying like burner phones because they were buying these phones online, by the way, not like at a grocery store. They were buying secondary phones maybe for themselves or for their children. So that completely changed the way this company would market to this audience. And we use Tableau to compare the audience that bought versus all these other data sources and saw where they indexed higher or lower. So this is at a digital marketing company. Right. Because they're selling online audiences. So I think anyone who understands tech and the need for, for data to help drive decisions is a good fit. Anyone you have to convince that they need to use data is. And forget it. Like, I'm not going to fight that battle with you.

Yeah.

But that's where I would go. And, and again, just kind of looking at you know Tableau's website and their upcoming speakers for their conference, you can kind of get an idea of, you know, what's. Once you get their, the actual topics they're speaking at, you can kind of get an idea of what's a hot button topic for their audience as well.

Yeah.

I think you're, I think you're very close because, like, when I'm thinking about content, it could be like, hey, you know what it's like when you're trying to like describe a complex outcome to an audience who will barely give you a minute to explain it. It's super frustrating. And that's when data comes in handy. Big is good, small is bad. There you go. Right? So like tell a story or like, have you ever had a boss tell you to explain it to them like they're a fifth grader, but you still couldn't make sense of it? What you need is to be able to visualize this data.

Yeah.

So on and so forth. Another post is like, have you ever, you know, been tempted to write your reports in crayon just so they'd be understood better? That's pretty much what we're doing here with dataviz so and so forth. Another one is like, you could have the best ideas trapped inside of your head, but if you can't convince stakeholders to understand that and take action, you'll never reach your full potential at your company. That's why I help people express their, their thoughts, opinions and expertise through data visualization. Make it more digestible to those who are not experts at understanding what you're talking about. Like, I'm kind of making this up as I go along, obviously.

Yeah, this is great. Yeah, yeah. Like, I get it and like, I see what you're, you're saying and like, yeah, just like literally, I've seen one of my bosses before running after his boss. As the boss was like going to the elevator to leave for the day. Running after him with my chart being like, okay. And you know, his boss stopped and was like. And listen. Listened for that minute or two. But it's something that had been talking about forever. But like, just having the data vis actually allows you to kind of get on a common platform with, with the decision makers. Right.

So yeah, yeah.

Running after the elevator, I think itself is a pretty strong.

Yeah.

Relatable viz.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. And, and I've seen this before. I can't remember if you said it or someone else, but it's like companies are drowning in data, but they're thirsty.

For insights that's right, yeah.

And I think that can be like one of your core messages. Like you have all this data, but it's like you can't even get any information out of it because of the way it's so dispersed and just not organized. And that's what I do. I mean, I turn data into insights and insights into action. That's another term you could use as well when you're more or less, you know, selling that story. But yeah, that's it. It's just committing to that audience, that manager, that whatever, whatever individual has challenges expressing information to stakeholders, whether it be business partners, internal, could be even investors, to be honest.

Yeah, because, absolutely.

Because, yeah, if I'm like pitching someone to invest in my company and they're like, wait, what's the size of the market versus that versus that? You can say, look, we matched up this and that. That's why this is good. Like, this part is our opportunity. We hit that, we're good. So I think even like startups that we might be pitching could be a potential audience as well.

Yeah, that's one of my questions in the surveys. And the survey I'm putting together now is, you know, who do you have trouble convincing that? Your boss, your team, your investors, your customers? Sometimes you can help convince your customer that way. Right.

Like, and yeah, what I, what I, you can consider is this. There are some people that specialize in making pitch decks for startups. Like so just like literally Google, like pitch deck, startup creator or whatever the term would be. And you could reach out to them and just say like, you know, are you seeing challenges of people expressing, you know, their market size versus what they can do? Would it be valuable for you to bring on a database partner? Can I just, you know, can we talk for a little bit about this? Because maybe you can insert yourself in this pitch deck creator person into their company or whatever they're doing and therefore just work as a contractor through them.

Yeah, totally. That's really neat, actually. I like that idea very much.

Yeah, yeah, because you could charge a lot for those. I mean, because if you're pitching and you might win, like get like a $500,000 or a million dollar, two million dollar investment. You'll pay 50,000 bucks for a deck, you know.

Yeah, that's right. There is money in that pool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay, well, thank you very much. This is very helpful. Yeah, it is very, very helpful.

Yeah, I mean, you're definitely onto something. So it's going to take time. But once you like Hit it. You're going to be like, okay, cool, now I have a few clients and now they're spreading the word to their colleagues and their network as well. And you'll grow that way. But, and just I keep on talking about Tableau. Do you use Tableau in your work?

I do, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I really, really enjoy Tableau. It's super powerful. Like, I, I find Excel is really a lot easier for like analyzing and doing some quick tests on hypotheses. But when you actually want to kind of, you know what you're going for and want to show it and you, you know, how you want to divide it, Tableau is extremely powerful. Like things that are, you can do in Excel as a workaround is kind of very user friendly. In Tableau basically is kind of how I, how I see it.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm looking at what, I'm looking at Tableau's LinkedIn profile right now.

Yeah.

And they have like 6,000 employees. What I would do is look for some employees from Tableau that post quite often and have a following and then from there start interacting with their content and their followers too. So anyone who's following a database platform, in this case Tableau, and people that from their company, they're talking about it quite often, maybe they're head of product or whatever, keep on engaging with their content as well as the people that engage with their content, because that's your target audience and you'll build a relationship with that person posting and, or the person commenting on them. And then from there you keep on growing your brand, your network, and eventually your revenue. So I would do that as well.

Okay.

Lots of homework.

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I need to kind of go out in public that I'm starting something myself, which also means I have to quit my current job. So that's, that's also like, I'm doing as much lonely work as you call it and background lurking as I can. And the more I do it, the more it emphasizes that that's what I want to do. And there are days where I'm like, ah, let me just look on Indeed.com LinkedIn.com see what other dataviz opportunities there are. And I'm like, yeah, but no, I want to go and do it myself. Right. So just, I need to kind of bite that bullet and take that leap.

Yeah, let's do it safely. You have a family to support.

That's exactly right. And I'm on that leave right now, which is great. The Quebec government helps out quite a bit. So it's really a good time to do this so I want to make the most of it. Yeah.

Cool. Well get to work on that and if you have more questions, you know where to find me. But pass along an update too. Love to hear how things are progressed.

Absolutely. Yeah, sounds good. I did send you a LinkedIn message updating and I, my partner and I read the big like listen to the Big Leap. Oh yeah, one of your recommendations. It's such an amazing book so thank you for that recommendation. Yeah, it's very applicable. Like you can, you know, on the day to day check in and make sure you're living to your fullest potential on everything you do basically.

Awesome. Glad you appreciate that. Cool. All right, well let you get back to it but it was great chatting with you.

Awesome. Same here, Terry. Yeah, thank you. Bye.