What’s the true value of coaching and consulting?

For some, this is a complicated question.  Do you put a value on coaching based on what you are paying each month, the market price for the services, or even what you can afford?  I say none of those.  For me, I practice what I preach and have a coach.  So when I look at the value I look at the following areas first.

What are the strategies worth?

This is a big deal.  Maybe one of the most important factors.  The reason I say this is because even if you are a great strategist you may not be able to come up with the strategies that your coach can.  The other factor here is being able to optimize strategies you are already thinking of.  A coach can help you do this to get 10 times the impact from your strategies.  What’s that worth?  Simply put, A LOT!

The other scenario here is when you have tried everything and nothing is really working like you want.  Your coach will have half a dozen proven strategies you can try right away.  A great coach will be able to help you monetize those and see which ones will give you the greatest impact right away.  And a Master coach will not only monetize these with you, but also pick strategies for you that cost nothing to implement.  This is the masters distinction and allows you to profit right away from the strategies and the coaching relationship.

Case Study 1 – No cost Strategies

An example of this is a recent client in the manufacturing business that sells 500 units per month at $90 per unit.  We went through the numbers and a few questions about the market and determined that he could easily raise the price right away to $95 per unit.  That’s an increase of $2,500 per month or $30,000 per year and we haven’t even gotten started yet.  They expect they can raise the price another $10 to $20 by offering the clients a better service with an additional guarantee and a few other benefits.  But this strategy didn’t cost him a dime to implement.  That’s the beauty of it.  This client unfortunately never thought of this simple strategy because he is so consumed by hunting for new clients that he never considered optimizing his current clients.

What is it worth in the time and money you save?

To know this you have to understand what you time and money are even worth.  For example, I have many clients with MBA’s and other various degrees.  On average they have paid somewhere in the range of $100,000+ for these degrees and spent 4 to 8 years getting them.  All the while earning pennies at their job or a fraction of what they could in a small business.  So while they were taking years to educate themselves, they weren’t earning their full potential income.  This income is lost forever.  A great coach will actually give you a Doctorate level on the job education in business in just 6 to 12 months AND you will be earning more money while you learn.  In fact, in our business we focus on self funding any of our programs so that by month 3 or faster, we have paid for our self for the whole year and beyond.  Wouldn’t it be great is universities took that approach?  One last thing to note is that Master Coaches have anywhere from 10 to 20 years of high level experience running and growing businesses.  So this means they have seen almost every scenario.  If you are like most people, you don’t have 3 or 4 years much less 10 or 20 to master the art of strategically growing a business.

Case Study 2 – Time

A couple of years ago a client came to us and said this:  “I’m 50 years old and just starting my own B2B Services Business.  I don’t have a degree and have never done this before.  To add to this, I don’t have 5 years to learn how to do this because I can’t stand the idea of wasting 5 or more years of my life just learning what to do and then beginning the business at 55 years old.  I want to retire while I’m young enough to enjoy myself.”

This is a common feeling among people of any age, but I certainly understood his perspective.  To make a long story short here, we took an active role determining the vision and strategic direction for this company.  In just 90 days he had 3 major clients and within the first year 20 accounts that all together more than doubled what he was earning in his previous job.  His profits quadrupled in year 2 and he is on his way to doubling again in year 3.  We have also reset his mindset that business is only about working all the time and not enjoying life now.  This is a major distinction and has given him the freedom to take 6 weeks of vacation a year while making more money than he could imagine.

What’s it worth to YOU to accelerate your dreams?

What is the accountability and guidance worth?

For many people, this area is the reason they come to us.  Most people left to themselves do not ever see their full potential.  Just think about the last time you had a great idea at work or home and kept it to yourself…  It may have taken weeks, months, or even years to take action on this idea and get something done.  That’s of course if you bothered to do anything about it.  Because many don’t.  Now think about a time where you shared an idea with a co-worker or supervisor or even a spouse and worked on a timeline, a to-do list, etc.  What were the results?  If you are completely honest about it, you know that because you had someone watching over you, you got it done.  Even if you procrastinated a bit, you pulled through on your deadlines and made it happen.

Unfortunately in most companies, the owner doesn’t have anyone holding them accountable or have anyone to answer to.  So they turn to people like me to get in their business and in their face each week to make sure things get done.  A factor here at play as well is that lost opportunity is lost forever.  You can’t recapture lost revenues from sales you didn’t make.  If we could go back in time and implement winning strategies earlier in our life, we would all be rich, but until you get a time machine, this just isn’t an option.

How about the guidance?  So next time you are thinking of implementing a strategy but don’t know where to start, how are you going to move forward?  What about not knowing if you should even pursue an idea or which one to pursue first?  This is a big deal for most people.  No knowing for sure what to do or HOW to do something is paralyzing.  And business is hard enough without being paralyzed.

So what’s this kind of service worth?

Think about this for a minute…  If every time you give me $1 I can turn it into $5 or even $10 for you, how often would you do that?  If you are honest, probably all day long.

Lets take it to another level.

What if you gave me $1 and I turned it into a money tree that generated $5 a month for the rest of the time you owned that business?  Now that’s exciting!  That $1 investment could be a bringing you $60 per year for the life of the business.  That’s HUGE!

Lets take it to an even greater level…

Suppose you see the writing on the wall and realize that while a $1 investment is great you want even more.  But that means a little more time with me and a bigger investment.  But again, you KNOW the return.  So you invest $10 with me expecting to get 5 for every 1 you invest.  Your return is now $50 per month or $600 per year.  It’s a massive increase and the beauty is that it was self funded by the strategies we implemented.  The real beauty is that is never stops there.  You see your investment will compound itself by using multiple strategies to get an even better business.  This means that at some point you are not getting $5 for every $1 you put in.  You may be getting 6, 8, 10, or even more!

So what’s the Value of coaching?

I put it simply as this.  What’s the GAP between where you are and where you want to be?  That’s the value of coaching and consulting.

Here’s a quick example.  Let’s say you have a $400,000 company but want to take it to $4,000,000 over the next 3 years.  The GAP here is $3.6 Million.  So as long as I can get you these results in the time frame you are looking for, the coaching and consulting is WORTH $3.6 Million to you.  How much are you willing to pay to get that?  Oh, and by the way, that will continue for the life of the business.  It will even grow at a substantial rate.

Components of an Effective Business Plan

I just received an email from a friend asking me about the components of a business plan.  There’s a long story behind this email, but I’ll simplify the story by saying I was a bit irritated with the question since I outlined the steps for him the other day at lunch (by the way, he paid… My business time is not free).

Being irritated actually helped me simplify my response to him.

All I wrote back was this.

———————

Three components

1.  Goals
2.  Actions you have to take to achieve your goals
3.  How you are going to be held accountable

———————-

Of course I paused before I sent this and thought, you know…. It really is that simple.  That’s what I’ve taught my clients for years and I’ve gotten HUGE results from following including those 3 things in every plan.

As business owners, we tend to make things really complex when it just doesn’t have to be.  There’s a ton of value in keeping it simple and focusing on what’s important.  Those 3 components are most important in a plan.  Is there more depth to each component?  You bet…  You will want goals in multiple categories of your life and business and the list of actions may be huge.  But make the PROCESS easy on yourself and you will get it done.

3 Outlook Features that Keep Me Organized

Quick question for you…  Are you using Microsoft Outlook to it’s fullest potential in your business?  The answer is probably not!  Well here are a couple of simple things you can implement right away to get more organized using a program that’s right on your desktop already.  That is unless you are a complete rebel and went with a Mac.

Top 3 Features in Microsoft Outlook that I USE!

1.       Folders

I love the folders in Outlook for organizing by topics.  I have one for my coaches, one for clients, personal stuff, travel, etc.  Here’s why I like this, in the old days you needed a folder for everything and that got pretty cumbersome.  Today the level of organization inside a folder just flat out rocks.  For example, in my clients folder I can click on that folder and organize the view I am looking at by client name (From), by subject, date received, etc.  My trick is that I collapse all the sub categories so I can scroll through them quickly to find the person I’m looking for.  It’s like having folders inside folders without all the mess.

2.       Tasks

This is by FAR the hidden GEM inside Outlook.  If you don’t use anything else, USE THIS!  I even have it setup in my view when I open outlook so I can see what tasks need to get done today and what I have coming up tomorrow.  I use this for everything that isn’t an appointment.  That includes projects, follow ups, blog posts, etc.  You can set it up to remind you or just appear in your view.  One thing that I also love about this feature is the ability to add a category to each task.  Categories are those 4 little colored squared in your task pane that most people have no clue about.  Simply click on the 4 little colored squared to customize your categories.  One of the ways I use this feature is to mark my blog tasks.  That way at a glance, I can see how much writing I have scheduled.  You see, I don’t write every time I get an idea.  I create a Task, give it a headline about the idea, jot down my thoughts and SCHEDULE IT!

One more cool thing about tasks is that you can click on the main view of this section and filter it by topics… So my most used topics are, Completed tasks, overdue tasks, and active tasks.  It’s a great way to remind yourself of all the things you have accomplished.

3.       Quick Parts

Quick Parts are super cool for several reasons and occasions.  For me, I like to use this feature to keep an easy record of my canned email responses or email campaign content.  This one is easier to understand once you see it. 

So click on “New Email”

In the new email message, click on the “Insert” tab at the top of the email.

Toward the right of the window you will see a “Quick Parts” drop down menu.  Click it.

That will show you what you have in the Quick Parts section already.

To use this feature…..

Type up an email that you want to save.

Highlight the text that you want to save and then click on the Quick Parts drop down menu.

Click on “Save selection to Quick Part Gallery”.

That’s it.  You are done.

Next time you want to use that quick part, just open an email and click “Insert”, and Find the quick part you want to use.

I hope these quick tips help you get more organized in your business…

One last note…  If you don’t know how to setup your Outlook, find a 12 year old and ask for help.  A 6 pack of red bull, mountain dew, or copy of halo is all it will cost you…