What We've Learned Working With A Business Coach...!

We will be the first to admit that we were hesitant to begin working with a coach. Would they only tell us what we wanted to hear? Or would they direct us (and our business) based on their own experiences? Well, we’re happy to report neither of these has yet to ring true.

We met our lovely coach through a client and we hit it off right away. As an integral part of my client’s team, she invited me to join her for a few of her sessions while we worked through Admin/HR stuff. At first, it was intimidating, naturally, but the coach’s personality is so welcoming and warm that it was easy to open up to her and we knew then we wanted to work with her, too! We believe that no business is perfect and can always use some upgrades or refocusing, which is why we wanted to get her opinions and perspectives while Avustaa is still young. It’s definitely easier to implement or revise processes and policies at this point – instead of 10 years down the road.

If you’ve been thinking about hiring a business coach – for whatever reason – we thought we would share a few key takeaways that we’ve learned solely from her after working together for a month.

Make your messaging about your client. Instead of starting off about why it benefits YOU, start with why it benefits THEM. Example: instead of “We want to hear from you!” when looking for testimonials or reviews, shift it to “Your Opinion is Valuable!” or something similar. It’s a minor thing to do but conveys that you’re actively thinking about your client before your business.
Create a seamless and simple onboarding process. We’re going to be dedicating an entire post to Onboarding in a few weeks, but this is really important as it sets the tone of how you and your client will work together. If you’re continuously emailing them asking them for things, taking too long to send them their contract, or even just not responding quick enough, they might second guess why they hired you. Spend some time and think about everything you need from every client (ex. logos, branding guide, logins) and write out a process and create an email template that you can create minor adjustments to depending on the services they’re hiring you for.
“The best assistants lead the whole process.” Being confident in your skills and abilities can help you to redefine how you work with clients. Taking charge and being prepared are two of the many ways we can lead the process. Take initiative in meetings and come prepared; they’ll be impressed that you put the extra thought into their problem/tasks.
Build your business now as if you’ve already scaled it. Meaning, sort out your processes and create those SOPs now so that when you’re ready to onboard a team member, you won’t have to spend a lot of time training them.
Generate one lead per week, even if you are not ready to bring on another client just yet. You might sign 1 out of every 4 leads, but even if you aren’t ready, you can always create a waitlist. Then, you are able to choose who you want to work with (read: your ideal client) and aren’t stuck with any that aren’t serving you.

These 5 takeaways are after only a month of working with her and we’ve never been more excited about our business. It’s a lot of hard work and takes some major deep (focused!) thinking, but it’s totally worth it as it’s guiding us to create the business we’ve always wanted… but structured in a way that we hadn’t thought of. We have taken risks with new clients and tested processes on others, all of which have been a learning process and helped us develop our Onboarding + Offboarding processes, making how clients work with us more enjoyable and efficient.