This past Friday, we had a group of prospective franchise owners visit the Corporate Office of The Growth Coach in Cincinnati. I love spending time with these soon-to-be business owners in the fulfilling, financially rewarding, and fast-growing industry of business coaching. These were very impressive individuals wanting to put their passion, experiences and our business coaching process to good use in their communities to help small business owners achieve greater success and balance in their lives. Not only were there folks from the United States, but there were interested buyers from Ireland and Puerto Rico as well.
I was emphasizing that our business coaching model has been refined and improved over 16 years and that all my early mistakes have been baked out of the final recipe. One of my major mistakes early on was swapping time for money. In the first few years of my coaching business, I did all one-on-one and special project coaching. It was me rendering the service to one client at a time. While I was excited to be an entrepreneur, I simply exchanged my job as a CPA for a job as a business coach. While the work was much more satisfying and I had flexibility, I fell into the same trap most small business owners do -- deriving all or a majority of income from my own efforts. That's not a business, that's a job! While I made significantly more money than I did when I worked for a steady paycheck, the work was exhausting and I hit an "income ceiling".
After a few years of putting up with this, I had a huge revelation. I could either hire others to work for me as coaches (derive income off their labor) or re-invent my approach to coaching. I opted for reinvention. Since I had developed a coaching process for all my one-on-one coaching sessions, why not adapt it to serve several clients at the same time? While a simple and obvious idea now, in the early 90's, group coaching was unheard of and a bit revolutionary. Thank God I took action on this inspiration. Instant leverage! What is leverage you ask? To me, it is all about achieving the greatest results with the least amount of time, effort and money. I also refer to leverage as "intelligent and profitable laziness". Why work so hard when you can work smart?
Armed with my group coaching process, I could now coach a roomful of clients instead of one at a time. Talk about a million-dollar idea -- I totally transformed my business model. I could now coach multiple clients at the same time over multiple years and dramatically multiplied my earnings for the same amount of time and effort. Furthermore, I got to touch and improve the lives of vastly more clients. Not only did I benefit, but because of the group coaching format, it was now much more affordable to small business owners. Additionally, the clients loved going through the coaching process with other like-minded entrepreneurs on the same mission. They bonded, shared "best practices", encouraged each other, kept each other accountable, and enjoyed the business-owner development journey together. In time, because of powerful, proven and guaranteed group coaching process, I was able to launch The Growth Coach as a franchise system. Think about it, one change to my business model (the leverage of group coaching) set in motion tremendous benefits for myself, franchise owners, and small business clients throughout North America.
Realize that it’s nearly impossible to ever achieve substantial wealth from your own labor. For example, why would an owner of a house painting company ever do painting -- his/her real role should be to lead, market and run the business. Why would an owner of a janitorial business ever clean a bathroom. They shouldn't. As a business owner, face reality that there is only so much time and energy available to you in a given day. Don't be the person rendering the bulk of your day-to-day service. With limited capacity and limited customers, you hit an income ceiling.
You too could benefit by leveraging new approaches, marketing, people, technology, and business systems. You need to create a real business, not merely create a job for yourself. Want to create real wealth? Attract more and more clients with your marketing. Instead of dozens, attract hundreds. Instead of hundreds, attract thousands of clients. Then, let your employees follow your systems and serve the clients. Here are the lessons for all of us. Look for leverage opportunities in your business. Don't derive all or a large percentage of your income off your own sweat and labor -- you are to be a leader, not a doer; an owner, not a technician. Don't be afraid to question and reinvent your business model. Don't be afraid to hire others (or significantly more employees) and let them do the work. Or, if you CHOOSE to remain directly involved in rendering a satisfying and personal service like business coaching, financial planning, tutoring, or even consulting, be sure you take advantage of leverage (group formats, marketing, technology, systems, etc.) so you can serve dozens, hundreds or thousands of clients at the same time.
Don't derive income merely off your own efforts – if so, you have a job or a practice, but not a wealth-generating enterprise. As an owner, your job is to create jobs for others, not work a job. Build the business systems and let others do the day-to-day work. Again, stop working so hard. Think about adopting intelligent and profitable laziness --LEVERAGE. You, your family and your business will thank you.
Daniel Murphy
The Growth Coach
Business Coaching Franchise System