My #1 piece of advice in life and business is to hire coaches whenever possible.
Whether it’s your marriage, health, career, or any area where you have goals/challenges, coaching is like a fast forward button through pain and mistakes.
For example, in the last year we’ve hired:
- A Sales Coach who increased our close rates 5x over 12 months
- A Project Management Coach who gave us new processes that increased our ship rate and decreased stress
- A CEO Coach who gave me a process to make better decisions and hire great fit team members
- A Webinar Coach who saved us months of iteration and raised sales 37%
- A Marriage Counselor who gave my wife and me 4 new communication tools that led to the biggest happiness jump we’ve had in 11 years
There are coaches out there this very minute who can get you the same kinds of results with virtually any problem you have.
But whenever I bring it up, people tend to have the same excuses:
- “I can’t afford it.”
- “I don’t know where to find one.”
- “The last coach I hired was a disaster.”
Today, I’m going to show you how to crush those excuses.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- My 5-step process for finding coaches
- How to filter coaches through “BS radar” to make sure they don’t suck
- What to do if you don’t have $ for coaching
Let’s go!
Step #1: Identify your need
Notice anything all those coaches I mentioned have in common?
They all generated specific, measurable results.
Most people look at that and think it’s just because we hired good coaches.
But an equally important reason is that I knew what we needed help with.
Most people say, “I’m struggling with sales. I need a coach.”
Good luck finding the right match among the 1000s of sales coaches out there.
When we had a dip in sales, we traced it to a specific objection we were hearing over and over. That was the clear need—how do we overcome this objection?
With that in mind, finding the right person to help us became way easier. All I had to do was find someone who had experience overcoming that objection.
You can do this in ANY area of your life/business. For example, look at this doc I whipped up a few years back to make finding the right fitness coach easier:
Use that as a template. Open a blank doc and write in those exact prompts:
- My #1 goal for [Time Period]:
- My current situation:
- What I’m looking for:
You’ll end up with a roadmap to the perfect coach for your situation.
Step #2: Ask friends
Keep it simple to start.
Reach out to friends and tell them you’re looking for
A few ways to ask:
- “I’m looking for a ______ coach. Know anyone?”
- “Who have you hired?”
- “Really need to [Insert Your Identified Need]. Know anyone who helps with that?”
- “Know anyone who fits what I’m looking for here? [Insert Link to Google Doc Template]”
Step #3: Ask Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Etc.
After you’ve gone through your immediate circle, it’s time to crowdsource, baby.
Example:
Pro Tip: If you’re looking for a type of coaching that TONS of people offer (like diet/exercise), I recommend being more specific in your ask:
Specificity is a great filter.
Step #4: Run candidates through your BS radar
This has a degree of “you know it when you see it” involved, but you can also use a few questions to guide it:
- “Are they legit? Is there proof of past results?”Past results should be obvious and easily observable.Case studies. Testimonials. Recommendations.
Look for a mix of quantitative results (“Sales went up 100%!”) and qualitative results (“Communication was incredible!”) from past or current clients.
- “Does this seem like someone I would like?”Not everyone agrees with this, but I think you should like your coach as a person. You don’t have to be best friends, but you should enjoy interacting with them.You’ll be 10x more likely to listen and follow their advice.
- “Do I believe what they are saying?”You MUST have buy-in.If you think it sounds too good to be true—even after talking to them—it’s best to walk away.
- “Can they paint a picture of the path they’ll walk me down?”The best coaches have plans, processes, roadmaps, etc. They can walk you through the relationship step by step.
Step #5: Contact them
Reach out. Ask questions. Go through their process. Make your decision. Remember that it’s OK to walk away!
If you’ve done steps 1-4, this part is easy.
“But what if I can’t afford a coach right now?”
Honestly?
My #1 recommendation is to go through all of these steps anyway.
First of all, you might be wrong. How many legit options have you actually priced out?
Second of all, even if you truly can’t afford to pay a single dollar for coaching right now, this process can still have massive benefits for you.
- Benefit #1: Identifying your need (Step 1) will force you to get clear on your problems/goals.
- Benefit #2: If you identify some awesome potential coaches, you’ll know exactly who to go to when you CAN afford coaching.
- Benefit #3: You’ll often find alternative solutions along the way. Maybe you can’t afford someone’s coaching, but you can afford their $10 ebook full of helpful ideas.
- Benefit #4: By looking for great coaches, you’ll also learn what THEY look for in great clients. Adjust your habits accordingly.
Feel like gains are to be had?
HIRE A COACH!!
– Bryan
P.S. I believe in coaching so much that we literally re-oriented our entire business around it.
We retired multiple successful online courses because our success rate with coaching clients blew course success rates out of the water.
If you want to scale your business to 5 figures per month and beyond, just click the button below.
Schedule a time to talk over the details