Episode Summary

If you’ve ever had a bad experience with a business coach or if you’re considering hiring one for your business - this episode is for you! Tune in as Melissa Swink discusses the importance of hiring a business coach. A great coach will help you gain a fresh perspective, identify blind spots, learn with accountability, navigate new challenges, and fast-track your success. The right coach is a valuable investment that can provide a measurable ROI! In this episode, Melissa provides three practical tips to help you choose the best business coaching program for you. 

Key Highlights:

• Hiring a business coach can help you see things from a fresh perspective, identify blind spots, and provide guidance on areas that might be holding you back. 
• Your coach should have experience and a proven track record of success.
• It is important to find a coach whose values and priorities align with yours.
• Evaluating the coaching program's “container” - including coaching style, implementation support, and progress tracking - is crucial in selecting the right coaching program for you. 

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone. Welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, I'm going to share with you some reasons and some tips for hiring a business coach. When I was thinking about what are some of the things that really move the needle in terms of growing and scaling my company and having the structure that we have in

place and having that consistent and sustainable growth and health over time, investing in coaching relationships has been it. But there's a lot of different programs and coaches out there, and it can be really hard to determine what is the best next step for you and what's the best match for you. The idea of this episode came from a recent girls trip that I took to Chicago with a friend of mine.

and we were up late at night after exploring the city and having some wine and charcuterie and just chatting about all the things. We're both entrepreneurs. And the conversation one night drifted to how much our businesses and our personal networks have changed over the last decade. We've both been in business for many years now. And part of that discussion was reminiscing about different courses that we've done, different collaborations and partnerships.

different coaching programs we've invested in, different networking groups we've been a part of, and just all of these things. And it was just interesting to kind of compare what has worked well for us, what hasn't worked well for us, how many things that we've invested in over the years that really made an impact and we received that return on investment that we were looking for, and what are some of the things that just didn't work and they were disappointing, maybe felt like a waste of money. There's always a lesson.

in mistakes and quote unquote, waste of money. But it was just interesting to have a conversation and share some laughs or maybe even some sighs over some of the things that we've done and seen over the years. Because the reality is, is that there's just no shortage of things to invest in as a business owner, no matter where you're at. If you're just getting started, it can be really overwhelming to quote unquote, set up shop and get all of the things, whether that's a physical shop or if it's...

just getting your service -based business off the ground, getting those first customers. You've got the business plan and then you need maybe the business cards. If you're going out and meeting with people, you need the website. There's just so much to invest in and that does not change. It's a lot in the beginning and then that continues to just evolve as the business continues to grow as well. But I have to say that one of the best decisions that I've ever made for myself has been to hire a business coach.

And I think that's really, really important that as you are growing your business beyond you, that you find the right one to help you do that as well. And so a few reasons, first of all, before I start sharing my tips on how to select a business coach and what I have found to work well over the years, I wanted to just share a few reasons why I think that this is an important step for you to take if you are serious about growing and scaling your business beyond you.

The thing is, is that you and I are so close to our businesses, we are in it in the day to day, that it can be really hard for us to zoom out and see things from a new perspective. Another way to look at this might be it's hard to read the label from inside the bottle. Maybe it's hard to see the forest through the trees, you know, whatever phrase that you're familiar with, but it's just difficult when you're in the day to day to be able to see things from a fresh perspective. The other thing is, is that we all have blind spots.

There are things that I do and decisions that I make or maybe there's different patterns that I have, good, bad, or otherwise, that I am not aware of and it's helpful for somebody else to point those out to me. Like, hey, this is where this habit of yours or this strength of yours is really fitting and serving you and here's some ways where it's holding you back. It's hard for us to see that for ourselves. And aside from that, you don't know what you don't know.

As you grow and scale your business, every level brings a new set of opportunities, a new set of challenges, things that you've never dealt with before. I was even thinking earlier this week that I realized that in some of my contracts in my business, there's a couple of things that need to get tidied up and clarified because we had a situation come up where it was a bit of a gray area. And so there's always things that are coming up.

as we grow and it's helpful to have somebody to follow, help somebody be your guide and help you to get to that point because they have ultimately been there or coached other people to be there at that point that you're looking to get and they can help you kind of troubleshoot and avoid pitfalls along the way with all of that knowledge and experience. The other thing is when you take a look at hiring a business coach and why that would be important for you,

is it really gives you that opportunity to collapse time and achieve your results faster. So that can be in terms of strategy where we take a look at here's what's going well in the business. How do we do more of what's going well? What other opportunities are out there to build and expand upon that? Maybe it's that added accountability because there's somebody who is expecting you to get things done in terms of business growth and development.

I don't know about you, but if somebody's not asking me for something, it's probably more likely to go on the back burner because there's always something more pressing that's coming up, something more immediate, more urgent. So you've got that built in when you have a business coach who is making sure that you know what you need to be doing to grow your business and reach your goals, but then also expects you to be making steps in that direction. And they're also there to provide encouragement. I mean, how many times I've reached out to my own coaches like,

hey, this is really frustrating me, or I had this situation arise and I'm really concerned about it, or gosh, our sales have been really slow lately. What are some things that I might be doing wrong, or what are some things that I could change? It's really helpful to get their encouragement. You're planting the seeds, some seeds just take a little bit longer to sprout than others. Keep doing the right things, it will come. All of that encouragement, because I feel like,

I've seen these memes on social media where the mood or the life cycle of a business owner, I forget exactly what it was, but it's like this roller coaster of a graph. Things are going great or it's like, my gosh, I think I want to close things down and get a job or like, my gosh, we got this new project, amazing. no, this employee just quit. There's the ups and downs in the business.

inevitably over time. And so having that encouragement can be really, really helpful. And the other thing to think about is, yes, hiring a business coach is an investment. It is going to require money in order to solidify that relationship and to engage with that coach. But the other thing to think about too, and this goes hand in hand with systems and this goes hand in hand with building a team,

there is a return on that investment and who doesn't want to make more money? I mean, let's be honest, we could all use a little bit more. There's always so much good that can be done with having more money, whether that be blessing your family, blessing others in your community and things like that. It doesn't have to be all about you, certainly, but we can all, we want more money in the hands of good people. And so one of the ways to do that, of course, is to invest in things that will ultimately give you,

a return and increase the money that you have flowing into your life. So with all of those reasons being said, I want to dive into sharing from my own personal experience and observations from my clients and others in my business community, tips for selecting a business coach, the one that's right for you. And number one, I would say, is to evaluate their experience and their track record. Early on in my business,

I worked with some coaches that ultimately their advice was hypothetical. You may have encountered this in your own business journey as well, but they were students of maybe some very famous coaches who are out there. Maybe they did a lot of studying and personal development on their own. They're reading a lot of books, but they themselves

We're not in the trenches of running and growing and scaling a company every day. It was all theory that they have learned from other people, but they themselves have not walked through that fire. So that is something that I look for when I am hiring a coach is, yes, they need to have expertise. Do not get me wrong. They do need to be investing in themselves and, you know,

in along their own growth journey, but I look to hire people who are at a place that I want to be at. So like for taking this another example, maybe backing off of the business example, maybe you want to work with a health coach because you want to be your healthiest self. Maybe you need to lose some weight. Maybe you want to start a new exercise routine, whatever your health goals might be.

It's important for you to find a coach who was in the place that you were at and has done the work themselves to achieve ultimately what your goal is. So I think it's really important to work with somebody who's been there, who's done that, who's gone through it and now can take you by the hand and lead you through it as well. The second tip that I have for hiring a business coach is to decide where their values and priorities

Align with yours. I'm going to tell you a little bit of a funny story. A friend of mine and I were chatting, this was a couple of years ago now, about hiring coaches and she had a discovery call with a coach who was very, very popular at the time. She was feeling a little bit dismayed after the call and ultimately that coach told her, and I think that she really served her well, you and I are not a fit to work with one another.

And my friend agreed because one of the things that she had said is it's really important for me as a working mom that my family comes first. And so I want my business to fit within my family's lifestyle, not the other way around. And this coach only she did not have kids. And that's totally fine. I'm not I'm not suggesting that, you know, everybody needs to have children that, you know,

The only good coaches have children and they're juggling multiple priorities, responsibilities. That's not it at all. But when my friend was speaking up about her concerns about wanting to make sure that she was there for her kids, this business coach brought up the fact that, well, I have dogs and when I need to work, I...

I put my dogs at doggie daycare or I have somebody come and walk them. She was describing her routine with her dogs and it's apples and oranges. It's not the same thing. I love dogs too, by the way. I've had dogs over the years. I've had great dogs since childhood. I have cats now. We're a cat family. That's besides the point, but it was just, the conversation was just so off where this coach was trying to compare.

her routine with her dogs to my friend and her routine with her family and her kids who are involved in activities. So it was just kind of a humorous thing, but it's important to know that upfront and right away. The other thing, and having discovery calls with coaches that ultimately I didn't hire, again, this was my friend who did not hire a local coach for just that mismatched reason of some of those values and that commonality and that understanding of lifestyle.

But I remember that I declined working with a coach who basically told me when I said, you know, something to the same effect of when there's no school or daycare closes, then my daughter's here and, you know, I am trying to run my company. It can be really stressful. This was before I built the team, by the way. So listen to an earlier episode if you want to hear a little bit more about some of the challenges that I had personally when I was trying to do all the things in my business and wear all the hats.

But she had said, you know what, your daughter's two years old. She should be able to entertain herself. Just have her go in her room and tell her mom's working. Again, not something that really worked out for me. For those of you who have two -year -olds, you're probably chuckling right now like, yeah, that's wishful thinking. And before I had kids, I would have said the same thing. Again, the big picture here is not whether or not you should have children or not have children or you should only work with coaches who have children. That's not what this is about. But these are just some examples of

some mismatch values and priorities that I've encountered and that friends have encountered as well. The other thing that I have noticed in the coaching world is there are many out there, certainly not all, but many out there that I feel have put themselves on a pedestal where they have essentially become the center of their own universe. Like,

Just follow these steps to live your best life and be like me and all of that. And that is not something that I personally was drawn to. I would say that if anything, as my business has grown, it has become less about me and more about the people that I am creating opportunities for or people that we are serving.

It has become less about me. And again, this is not right or wrong, but these are some of the trends and the things that have been said, things that friends have talked about and things that have personally not resonated with me and other coaches that I was considering working with. At the time, I think it's really important that they understand you and what's important to you and your lifestyle and that it's aligned. I have found that the coaches that I work with,

We have very similar priorities in life and we have similar lifestyles and it just works because we understand each other. We have that commonality. So I think no matter what your situation is, no matter what your lifestyle is, no matter what your goals are, I think it's really important to find a coach who respects and values those things and maybe even shares them his or herself. So that's what I would say about.

values and priorities, very, very important. Okay, my last tip for hiring a business coach is to ask about the container in which you'll work together. And this is really important to make sure that essentially their teaching style and their implementation, their program all fits within your own. So some of the things to look at, is this individual coaching?

Is it group coaching? Is it a combination of both? That's really important to know how much one -on -one coaching you will receive versus kind of as a group. Are there live coaching calls where you can show up and ask questions or receive real -time training based on where you're at in your business or what's going on? Or are they mainly guided recorded calls where there's a set...

curriculum per se in the program and each week there's something else that you're going to be focusing on. Again, not right or wrong. Depending on the program that you're looking at doing, like if it's a marketing program and there's a system that you're learning, that is by far the most efficient. Certainly you want to be able to ask questions and ask for specific ways that you can implement those things into your business and have those opportunities. But these are some important things to know.

You want to know, how are you going to strategize together? Do you start with a goal setting session so you're really clear on what you need to be doing during this program? What are some of the tools that they're going to be teaching you? How are they going to be teaching you? Again, is it, maybe it's in a Facebook group, maybe it's in a daily email, maybe it's in a weekly voice message. There's just so many things, there's just so many ways that.

information can be relayed and we can communicate and you want to make sure that those are things that you naturally gravitate towards. You don't want to be having to communicate in a way that just doesn't work for you very well. You want it to be easy to work with your coaches. What does the implementation support look like is another one. Another thing is how do we track progress? How do I communicate with you? How do we make sure that...

I am doing the work that I'm showing up and I'm doing the work and that I'm getting the support that I need again in order to get the return on investment of working with the coach in this program. So find out about what that container looks like. And again, make sure that it's something that works for you. If you know that the particular program so much is run within a Facebook group and you don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, then maybe that's not quite the right program for you. That's not the right container.

No knock on Facebook groups. Again, just an example. You wanna make sure that the container makes sense for you, that it's clearly laid out, that you know how to use the program and you wanna get the most out of it. Okay, thank you so much for listening. I hope that these examples and these tips were helpful for you. I hope that it gave you something to think about if you don't currently have a coach, why it might be a good time for you to take a look at working with one.

And then most importantly, how to select them because there are so many great ones out there. And just because somebody wasn't a fit for you or your friend doesn't mean that they aren't for somebody else. So all of that being said, if you know an entrepreneur who is looking to hire a coach or maybe could benefit from working with one, would you please share this episode with them? It may help them find the right fit faster and also avoid.

making a costly mistake in terms of time or money or something else. So I appreciate you listening. Have a wonderful day. Looking forward to joining me again in the next Make Space for More episode where we will teach you more strategies for growing and scaling your business beyond you. Be sure to follow or subscribe so that you don't miss the next one. Thank you so much and have a great day, everyone.