Eight months ago a prospective client family member contacted me.

She told me her coaching business was going great and she was making six figures and had great clients with good business coaching results. Her clients were happy, they were referring folks, and her business was making a great profit.

I asked her why she might be interested in my help since things sounded like they were going well.

She told me that she wanted to work fewer hours. Had two children who were five and seven, and they wanted more of her time. She wanted to take time to go to the beach or the park to play with them. She wanted to see them in their school plays and take them to friend’s homes and daily activities. 

Business or Company

I asked why she was not doing these things since she owned her own coaching business. This was when I discovered she made the same mistake most business coaches make. She had built a business and not a company.  What is the difference?  A business is when you do all the coaching and marketing and selling. Business to me is simply another job. You trade time for money, and you don’t have a sellable asset or an asset you can pass on to your children. You have no exit plan, and if you are ill and can’t work, no money rolls in. If you want to sit and chill on a beach in Tahiti for a month, no income flows to you. 

A company is where you have started with the end in mind and have created systems and processes and where you are the visionary and leader of your company (think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs) and where others are doing the tasks that generate the income and serve your clients.  You can work with some clients, yet there is no need to do this.   

Personally, having created eight multi-million dollar companies in eight very different industries, I learned my lesson.  I could not have generated and consistently maintained those incomes while creating a lifestyle that allows me to travel, spend time with family and friends and community and charities and focus on living a juicy and delicious life filled with freedom if I was the worker-bee in my businesses.  This is why I created companies built on my vision and with my expertise and brilliance and then trained others to do what I do and delegated tasks and client family member work to my team. 

Change your thinking

I accepted her as a business coaching client and told her she had to shift her thinking from what most coaches believe. Coaches tend to believe that their business can not operate without them being involved every single day either doing the coaching or overseeing all operations. They tend to believe things will fall apart without them and that no one but them could coach their clients.

Before I share what happened with this client family member, I suggest you take a moment and see how much you relate to her. Do you feel like your business would self-destruct without your constant guidance and if you were not the one doing all the coaching?

Do you believe you would have to be working in your business doing the coaching and/or making sure that others on your team are getting done what you need done or doing the coaching as you would?

Be honest

That is how my client family member in this case study felt.  I don’t find her unusual. Having worked with over 5,000 coaches during the twenty years, I have been in this industry training and mentoring coaches; a common reason coaches don’t have successful and sustainable companies is that they can’t even imagine their coaching company running without them doing the coaching and being involved in all aspects of their business each day.

Client family

I began with this client family member by having her imagine the freedom she would feel if she was willing to let go of what she thought she know and forgot about being in control and created a company and not a business. I realized she came to me wanting freedom along with increased income. And I told her, and am telling you, as the owner of a coaching company it is essential that everything in the business works without your constant attention and without you doing all or any of the coaching.  You got into the business because you want to coach. Great!  Me, too.  I do a few hours of that each week, I earn high seven figures consistently and my client family members who show up and do the work and follow what I share, make great money doing what they love and loving what they do while they create companies with leverageable assets.

Now I started with my client family member setting up the right structures so that she would no longer be stuck doing all the coaching and all the other work all the time. I helped her hire and train a team and to build trust with that team so she would not have any stress if she did decide not to work for a day, a week, a month or even a full year.

We created a company by systematizing the operations of her coaching business so she would not always have to be there.  From my experience building my own coaching company and helping so many client family members do the same, creating the right structures are critical. When you build with the right structures, you will have more control over your time and be able to design the life and business you desire and deserve.

I helped this client family member design the day-to-day tasks that must be completed and to hire and train the right people to get the tasks done and then set up her company, so she did not have to be there each day making sure things got done. 

Fear

At first, she had a common fear. She feared that her team would not do things the way she wanted or they would not do things “right.”  I told her she had to learn to trust the team she hired and trained.  I asked her if Microsoft would be the giant it is today or if Facebook would be the monster it is today IF the CEO’s did not have a team and did all the work and had to oversee every team member.

Because we had brought on the right team members and trained them, they could deliver on the roles they took on and had full capability and desire to get their jobs done. I showed her how in my own coaching company I no longer personally did corporate on-site work and how my team did all that work without my help and maybe even did it better than I could have. We built in regular training and team meetings to help her manage and grow her company.  Every day she had a virtual team meeting over skype to communicate with her team for five minutes and answer any questions and make sure they were on track.  Over the course of a few short months, she began to trust her team and told me they could get their work done without her.

She was delegating more and more while making sure her team documented their tasks so that systems and processes were created.  If anyone left the team, she could turn over his or her day to day operations, and someone else could quickly step in.  If she decided to sell her company down the road, the systems and process were there which would help her make a much more profitable sale.

She soon noticed her team was accountable whether she was there or not and began spending more time with her children.  Her Facebook feed was filled with photos of her doing things she enjoyed with her children.

Next step

Next, she was ready for automation and this company can help transform your digital processes. Technology used right will allow a team to work faster and more efficiently and will greatly enhance a company.  I shared some of the programs I use in my coaching company that are super easy to use and set up and that give me peace of mind. Each tool we use for automation in my company helps me and my team do things quicker and easier and has transformed the entire productivity and profitability of my coaching company.  She was amazed at how quickly her team caught on to scheduling tasks and how easy it was for her to monitor their work and make sure her coaching company was operating at its best.

Her joy came from realizing she did not have to do all the coaching. She did not have to be at her desk or in her office at all.  Within a few short months, she had built a coaching company and had peace of mind knowing she could be with her kids and living her life and not having to be the one doing the sales, marketing and coaching each day.

With the right structure, systems, and team, clients can get amazing results while you, the business owner make a lot more money and have a lot more freedom.  In only eight months this client family member shifted from owning a coaching business to creating a coaching company. She works five hours a week. Four hours are with client family members in a group setting. Each client has invested $25,000 for her high-ticket signature program where she guarantees them business growth. Her clients are getting stellar results. The other hour she oversees her team and trains her team.

Her children are thrilled, and she is over the moon about actually growing a company while devoting time to her family. She recently told me she is making four times as much money with this model. Before creating a coaching company, she worked 34 hours a week doing coaching, marketing, selling and operating her business. She had many one-to-one clients and did not have a high-ticket signature program or automated leads to being the right prospects right to her door, and she spent a lot of time and money marketing and selling and convincing people to sign on with her.

If you are ready to shift like my client family member did, I put together special free training for you to accelerate your income and run your business on autopilot.