When you are a business coach, your job is to help your client accomplish a clear result, which is almost always directly related to making MORE MONEY.
After working with more than 600 women entrepreneurs in my business coaching programs, I can tell you this:
No matter how left leaning, granola-consuming, patchouli wearing, Indigo Girls’ listening, Brene Brown reading a person is (and no shade as I love all these things)…
Making more money MATTERS DEEPLY to women entrepreneurs.
In this way, business coaching is a lot more like coaching sports then like traditional executive coaching.
In both sports coaching and business coaching, you are coaching to WIN.
Coaching in sports and in business is the art of helping someone win. Your job is to help them achieve a specific, measurable result without having the ability to “do it” for them. It is really hard.
As an entrepreneur, you have YOUR unique definition of what winning means to you. Examples include: “Build and manage my team better!” “Scale without burning out!” “Have more time!”
No matter what your stated goal, nine times out of ten, it is going to be linked to the specific result of making more money.
This is where business coaching and sports coaching diverge.
Because when you’re coaching athletes and sports, there is a lot of transparency. You watch them at practice. You watch them at games. You coach them in real time. You are on the floor with your athletes.
But as a business coach, I do not get the chance to observe you in “real time”. I don’t hear you making sales calls. I don’t observe you holding your team accountable. I’m not there when you build and deploy your marketing campaign.
Thus, there is nowhere near the level of transparency in business coaching than there is in sports coaching.
But this doesn’t change the fact that my job is to help you win.
Traditionally in coaching, the “transparency gap” I speak of – the reality that I can’t “be on the floor with you” can lead to a lack of accountability in the coaching relationship, which often manifests as the coach saying, “It’s on you to do the work, boo!”
This is fair. It IS on you to do the work.
And yet…as a business coach, I have accountability too. And my accountability is to do everything that is in MY lane to solve the transparency gap so that I can help you WIN.
To be an excellent thought partner, to ask you tough questions, challenge you to think bigger, shift your perspective or co-create a powerful growth strategy…
I NEED GOOD DATA.
But traditional coaching doesn’t work this way. We are not trained to be scientific in our approach. We are trained to be relational and ask good questions.
These things are super important!
But when it comes to helping a business woman accomplish a specific goal…our position is that it’s not enough.
Which is what brings me to what I personally consider to be the most important attribute of an excellent BUSINESS COACH…
Detached Obsession
It’s not as creepy as it sounds, lol.
Think about it.
If my job is to help you achieve a specific RESULT…
But I can’t do it for you…
Nor can I observe you doing the thing I’m supposed to be coaching you on…
Then I must practice detached obsession.
Let’s say you became my client. Here’s how you’d experience the “detached obsession” of me and the Safi team:
Evidence-Backed Coaching
We collect THOUSANDS of data points each year on women entrepreneurs. We study how they set and accomplish goals, how they overcome obstacles, how they scale, what barriers are hardest to overcome, etc.
The reason we gather this data is because a) you DESERVE an evidence-based approach and b) because we can’t observe you in action, these data points give us a broader perspective beyond our “lived experience” to support you.
Acute Observation
Last month, I devoted 3 entire days to reading through detailed growth plans of my clients.
Our coaching team had already done a complete run through. And you might not think this is the right type of work for a CEO to be doing.
But if you are a CEO who is also a coach to women in business who are busting their butts to build their dream business…THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT TO BE DOING.
I cross-referenced my clients’ growth plans to their 3-month work plans to ensure they lined up.
I made TONS of comments in the margins of their growth plans along the lines of: “This is super unclear to me, and will therefore be extremely unclear to your team members. Please be more specific.” OR “You said this was your annual revenue goal. But when we run the numbers for this project, the math doesn’t work. Please explain.”
Piles of research have shown that one of the things that holds women back in business is that we don’t get the same tough feedback our male peers do.
Your growth plan DESERVES THE RESPECT OF SCRUTINY. Your revenue goals are worthy of someone who knows her stuff running the numbers to make sure “the math works.” Your operational plans are WORTHY of a second set of eyes to ensure they are clear, cogent and doable.
Detached Obsession
I am ALL ABOUT vision, feminine energy and working to accomplish goals at an energetic level. But as a business coach whose job it is to help you win, sometimes me working “at an energetic level” looks like this, lol forever.
Coaching women founders to win in business requires softness AND fierceness. It requires quietly holding space for someone to process an experience. It requires a willingness to lean into the details of your business and ask the tough questions.
And sometimes it requires an ability to hold a container of passion and commitment for you and your business when it’s been a crappy week, your launch didn’t work out the way you wanted and you just need someone else to hold the flame for a minute.
Yes, being an excellent business coach requires detached obsession.
This is the part of our work that is gloriously unscalable. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Eleanor “Detached, Obsessed” Beaton
Next Steps
I hope this article was helpful! If you’re still reading this, reach out and let me know the one or two core values or narratives that drive YOU. And if there’s any part of this article that was unclear, please let me know that too! You can send me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram.
In the meantime, here are some tools, resources and support to help you sell more of your scalable offers so you can create a lucrative Jewel Business you love.
- Are you ready to learn how to cultivate a powerful, revenue-generating, non-time intensive daily practice that will grow your business using the power of relationships and true connection? Register for the FREE Daily 5 POC Challenge here
- There is NO “one size fits all” approach to selling. The key to being a great salesperson – and EVERY BUSINESS OWNER needs to be a good sales person – is to understand your unique Sales DNA. We offer a free course on that which you can access here.
- Last week’s episode of the Anchored Intelligence podcast is an eye-opener for any ambitious, successful, high-earning Queen. Eleanor is in conversation with one of the worlds foremost experts on the gender pay gap Dr Claudia Goldin. Check it out here.