I was talking to a client recently who came to see me as she was having a few problems in her business. It was going fine until she hired a business coach. The advice she got from the coach, was about growth and empire building. I guess if you’re a business coach, you assume you’re being hired to make a business grow. Sometimes, you hire a coach as a way of checking to see if you’re doing the right things. A coach can project their values onto a client without listening to the client’s values.
It made me reflect upon my own business. I have had the same thing happen. When I have advice I often hear about building funnels, creating high price point packages, growing a massive social media audience.
Firstly, I object to being sent down a funnel. My hips are too big and I can smell the ‘poke your pain’ until you pay for the solution a mile off.
So if I don’t like that form of marketing, it would go against my values to do that to someone else.
When you understand your values, you understand your life map. I’m a chatterbox, so I need an outlet for that. If all I did was see one to one clients, I would lose aspects of myself, that makes me like who I am. Being alone working from home is great, if it’s some of my time. When I believed to have a successful business I should ONLY be earning money from my business I wasn’t happy. You have to peddle that marketing bike hard. When you have another part-time job, it supports your business, less hustle, more ease.
A business coach is great, if they don’t think one formula size fits all, and if they listen to what lights you up and makes YOU tick.
In the case of my client, it was reassuring to be told that her way of thinking about her business what the right way because it’s HER business. Our values are WHY we go into business in the first place. If we lose sight of those we lose the alignment with our team and our customers. Fear can make us do that, fear can make you seek terrible advice.
You don’t need likes on Facebook, you need clients who will tell other people how happy they are with the work you did for them. Being affordable doesn’t make you cheap, hustling to get paid a high price point makes you cheap.
