And from what he's seen, success usually boils down to 1 thing...MINDSET.
In this episode, we cover 4 major distinctions between an entrepreneur and a coach and how you can implement them into your business.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey everyone. And welcome back. This is Spencer former burnt out coach and founder of coach now, and the connected coach academy today, we're gonna be talking about how you're not just a coach. You're actually an entrepreneur, so let's get to it.
I've analyzed thousands of businesses and coached hundreds of business owners. Since I started coach now over 10 years ago, I've really seen it all at this point, the successes, the failures and everything in between, and in all these conversations with all these coaches, there's one single mindset tweak that makes a huge difference in regards to framing the ups and the downs of the coaching experience.
You're an entrepreneur first and a coach second. Yes, of course. You're a coach. Yes, of course. You're a trainer. I. You love your sport. We all do. And your passion lies in helping others reach their goals. Sometimes even if it means sacrificing your own, but thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur first will radically change the context under which you make decisions for your athletes, for your business and your overall goals.
Because when you start making your decisions from an entrepreneur's mindset, rather than a coach's, you put your growth first and your ego. This is a huge topic. One episode will absolutely never do it justice, but this week I want to give you a big picture. Look at this idea of being an entrepreneur instead of a quote unquote coach, as it's usually defined.
And I honestly believe that this subtle mindset shift is crucial for your long term success to put it as plainly as possible. It's because coaches often make mistakes that entrepreneurs. and after thinking about this for a while now, I have come up with four of the biggest distinctions between a coach's mindset and an entrepreneurs.
I'll list them here. Then we'll go into each one with more detail throughout the rest of this episode. So number one, entrepreneurs always think about ROI. Number two entrepreneurs, don't sell their time for money. Number three, entrepreneurs collaborate with one another and number four. Entrepreneurs invest in and bet on themselves.
So let's hop into the first point, the importance of ROI, AKA return on investment. I'll kick off this topic with something I've noticed about new coaches. I have seen so many new coaches focus on acquiring technical certifications purely so they can point to them on their website or their socials, but the vast majority of the time, these certifications or classes.
and this is kind of tricky to say, only inflate your ego as a coach. And don't actually translate to a better business. To me, it feels like these coaches are trying to stay busy with something versus making moves that are gonna actually be productive for their business, because here's a hard truth. The more knowledge you have about your sport, it doesn't always translate to more money for your coaching business.
And that's a full stop, right? Honestly, athletes care a whole lot less about your qualifications and a whole lot more about whether you are a good fit for their unique needs. As an athlete. Now don't get me wrong. Certifications have their purposes. If they differentiate you from your competition, or if they're required to train in a specific style, of course.
But if they don't help you package and sell your expertise in a systematic way simply, well, usually a waste of time. I'll. And this line of thinking can be tweaked by simply thinking like an entrepreneur first that is thinking about the ROI of all your decisions. It might be helpful to ask yourself how will this impact my business roadmap?
What is the ROI on the certification? Whether that's time or money in the ROI. is this additional knowledge going to help me save more time, hire more people, expand my business, charge more. Potentially every decision should come back to your bottom line. That means if a certification or a course promises, vague improvements that may improve one element of your coaching practice.
I'd skip it. All right. So now on to the next distinction entrepreneurs, don't sell their time for. Every entrepreneur will tell you that exchanging time for money is a bad idea. The most successful businesses in the world have mastered the art of selling their product or service 24 7. So why should your coaching business be any different now as coaches, it's probably impossible to escape the time for money equation entirely, but I encourage you to set your business up so that you don't depend on it.
And when you do need to sell time for money, think about how you can leverage that session to bring a bigger return down the line in fancy marketing lingo. This is known as evergreen content. It's something you can automate to bring new attention and potential clients to your business. In my business.
I'm always thinking about how I can leverage my time to create new products that don't require my constant attention to bring revenue. You can see this, for example, in the recent virtualization of the connected coach blueprint, or even in a recent uptick of our blog, post and podcast episodes in a way I'm selling my time right now, speaking into a microphone, but keep in mind, this episode will exist into the ether forever.
So I take a little bit of my time out of my data record, and then years down the line, I might still be able to bring in new listeners or even new coach now, customers, if what I'm saying here resonates. so what point am I trying to make here? I encourage you to get into the habit of asking yourself how your teachings can benefit you after the live session is over.
Tons of you are selling lessons and don't use any component of them as an, as leverage for future revenue. And as I've said before, I think you're putting your business at risk by doing so I'm not gonna hammer on this point any longer, but it's always worth reiterating. Make your time work for. Don't chase the endless cycle of exchanging your time for money.
Next up entrepreneurs collaborate with others. Truly bums me out. How many coaches come to me asking me for my advice, but are resistant to sharing too much information about how their business actually operates. Often it's over some concern over IP or giving away too many secrets, but here's another harsh truth.
What you're doing is probably not that unique. I doubt your IP is something that really even needs protecting. In fact, the unwillingness to collaborate with others is probably holding you back more than it's actually helping you. Open collaboration is crucial in the early days and the lighter stage days of any business.
Honestly, you need people in your court looking over your work to make efficient use of your time and put bad ideas to rest early. The best coaches bring in other coaches to make the athlete better. This obviously could be done in many different. so let's say you are a technical baseball coach for batting.
You may bring in a mental trainer or a physical trainer or somebody else who can help you round out your athlete, whatever it might be. There are a ton of opportunities for a collaboration that can help improve the athlete and help you build a more successful business. Entrepreneurs also have mentors.
They look for advice constantly and exchange ideas to create better products. I promise that if you do the same, your business will. Thank you. For more on this topic, you can check out a recently released episode, titled the surprising power of collaboration. You should see it somewhere in the podcast, feed, wherever you're listening.
All right. Now on the fourth key distinction between coaches and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs invest in and bet on themselves. No, I don't mean investing in the latest hardware that costs you thousands of dollars, just so you can look like you're on the cutting. I mean investing your time and money into ideas, projects, and people that you believe in.
If you want your business to really truly scale, you need to be bold and be okay with a little failure along the way. Not to go too deep into my own past, but when I first founded coach now, back when it was called Edify, I literally quit my six figure coaching career. And one year later, I was on food stamps, but I kept going and I was ultimately able to make the business what it is today, because I was convinced of the vision.
Even when the days were dark, I could see the upside now I'm, I'm not promoting the idea of going on food stamps to see your idea through not at all. That's a lot of risk and then a lot of scary times. But what I am promoting is the idea of you stretching a little bit out of your comfort zone and being bold with your convictions.
because the biggest businesses of today are the ones that took risks and were ahead of the curve. Failure, often time leads to growth. And that's exactly what you're likely telling your athletes today. If you aren't experimenting with new ideas and strategies constantly, you'll never see your full potential.
I could go on and on and on for each of these points. And I likely will in future podcast episodes, but we gotta end it somewhere in short, be bold. It's okay to. Experiment iterate, adapt and enjoy the journey.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this many episode or what we're calling the blog pod since all of these are different takes on our growing database of articles. So if you like this format, please consider subscribing. So you get notifications when we drop new episodes. And remember, you can learn more about what we do at coach now@coachnow.io and subscribe to our weekly newsletter@coachnow.io slash blog.
Hope you have a great day. Talk.