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When you partner with a mentor coach, you receive four investments in one.
Your mentor coach will facilitate your:
Personal development
Coaching mastery
Marketing and sales competency
Self-employment and entrepreneurial learning
Let’s look at each one individually.
Personal development
When you walk your talk by working with your own mentor coach to design your life and work based on your purpose, strengths and values, you take the pressure off of needing the perfect life before you can coach anyone. You simply need to be doing your own work with your mentor coach, similar to the work you’re coaching your clients through.
Also, like most start-up coaches, you may get caught off-guard by how much you must do your own personal work. Serving as a coach often brings up our own fears, doubts and insecurities. A mentor coach helps you work through them and models how to help your clients do the same.
When you experience coaching from the inside, as a client, you also come to know in your bones the tremendous value of having a coaching partner.
You realize firsthand the difference between “going it alone” and receiving totally-there-for-you coaching support. Not only does this enrich your coaching, but also makes you a wildly enthusiastic fan of coaching. Which then naturally increases your marketing and selling commitment and enthusiasm!
Coaching mastery
Whenever you feel uncertain about any aspect of coaching, you can ask your mentor coach for advice, support and resources. When a particular coaching situation stumps you or you feel you could have handled something with a client better, your mentor coach can walk you through alternatives for the future.
You can also ask your mentor coach to listen to segments of coaching sessions to help you strengthen your skills.
Marketing and sales competency
Your mentor coach has already learned what does and does not work with marketing and sales. S/he can give you scripts, techniques and tips that save you years of frustration. Also, s/he can support you in getting through the steep marketing and sales learning curve.
And, your mentor coach may have discovered that good marketing and sales is really good coaching. S/he can help you make that same connection, so that you actually come to love marketing and sales as much as you love coaching. Imagine that incredible investment!
Self-employment and entrepreneurial learning
Have you been successfully self-employed before? If so, you have a huge success in your favor! You already know how to deal with cash flow ups and downs, isolation, lack of motivation, internal and external overwhelm, spousal nervousness, technology overload and wearing too many hats . . .
And, you’ll be thrilled this time around to have a coaching partner to help you establish priorities, implement structures, create policies and procedures and learn lots of new stuff – all while still having a life!
If you haven’t been self-employed before, your investment in mentor coaching in the entrepreneurial area will return an even greater investment!
Think you can’t afford mentor coaching?
Then you’re still thinking about mentor coaching as an expense rather than the best investment you can make!
Look at it like this. One of the reasons you hire a mentor coach involves having your coach support you in getting your first clients, getting more clients and/or working with clients for longer.
Even if your mentor coach charges twice as much as you charge your clients, you need just two new clients to cover your mentor coaching “expense.” When you get a third additional new client, you have a whopping 50% return on investment. A fourth new client equals a 100% return on investment!
And that just involves new clients. If you’ve never been self-employed, your mentor coach will skillfully guide you through the entrepreneurial maze so that a year or two from now you are actually still in the coaching business!
Still think you can’t afford a mentor coach? Check for interference from fear and/or scarcity thinking.
Is fear or scarcity thinking making your decision?
Fear sounds like:
I should already have clients.
I can’t afford a coach.
I’d better not use any of my savings.
Scarcity thinking sounds like:
I already spent too much on coach training (money scarcity).
What if I don’t have what it takes (talent scarcity)?
What if it takes too much time (time scarcity)?
What if I don’t get any new clients even after I hire a mentor coach (belief in yourself and the coaching process scarcity)?
Turning around fear and/or scarcity thinking
How would you support an incoming client if she shared any of these fears or scarcity thoughts with you? Use whatever tools and processes you would give her for yourself.
Do whatever you need to do to move past the fear and make your decision from a place of believing in investing in yourself.
If you can’t get to that place on your own, then get some support.
Making the tough decision:
Is running a coaching business and self-employment really for you?
If you still can’t see your way clearly to investing in yourself and your coaching business consistently, then spare yourself a lot of heartache, stop kidding yourself now and find a job in which you can use your coaching skills.
You don’t need to be perfect to be an extraordinary coach. But, you do need to walk your talk. When a potential client asks you about your work with your coach, can you really stand behind answering, “I don’t have one right now. I’d love to, but I can’t afford it.”?
Every independent successful coach has a mentor coach. Often, more than one!
If you know you are here to coach and you want to run your own business . . .
Make the investment in yourself, the coaching process and your coaching business. And thrive!
Copyright 2008 Ann Strong, All rights reserved.
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