If you’ve ever owned a business coaching franchise, then this has probably happened to you…
After owning my franchise for a couple years and running it very successfully, franchisors started thinking of me as the “go-to guy” to whom they sent prospects and candidates in the middle of the due diligence process. After all, the franchisors figured that if their candidates talked to me, they’d be as good as sold. My social proof as a successful franchisee was that strong!
I’ll never forget one of those calls. This particular guy was taking a strong, research-focused approach to his due diligence process.
He was doing research to find out what kind of money business coaches were really making and what he thought he could make. The results shocked him.
While the majority had banked less than $100,000 after two full years in the business, there was ONE abnormal data point in his research…that abnormal outlier was ME!
I had banked over $600,000 USD in my first 24 months (and hit the million dollar mark not long after). A few years later, I sold my coaching business for a cool million.
So what made the difference? Why was I $500,000 ahead of my colleagues after just 24 months as a business coach?
Three Keys to My Success as a Business Coaching Franchisee
That’s a big question that could fill a whole book (and, okay, it has–my ebook, Secrets of a Business Coaching Rock Star), but in the end, it boils down to three key things:
- I had a war chest. I’d set aside enough money to be able to market myself consistently during the first few months before I started adding clients.
- I developed a system. Even though I thought that’s what I was buying, my business coaching franchise didn’t really deliver an effective business coaching system. But I knew from the beginning that I’d need to systematize in order to be effective, so I took copious notes and tested and tracked everything to quickly discover what worked and what didn’t.
- I didn’t give up. Boy, there were times I wanted to. But I disciplined myself, and every week I deployed marketing campaigns, picked up the phone, had as many appointments as I could drum up, and developed tools that led to increased sales conversions. I also included digital marketing to my mix of consistent weekly activities (though when you’re just starting out, I don’t think I can overstate the power of real live conversations with real live business owners to help you get off the ground).
If you’re conducting due diligence on a business coaching franchise, I hope you’ll keep these three key factors in mind. You may discover that you don’t actually need a franchise to deliver what it takes to be successful.
For example, too many franchisees spend their war chests on franchise fees and start-up costs, as opposed to putting it directly toward marketing. And some business coaching franchises don’t have particularly effective systems for finding, closing, and coaching new clients.
Finally, tenacity, consistency, and resiliency aren’t something a coaching franchise can teach–they’re something you bring with you.
Deciding whether or not a business coaching franchise is right for you? Don’t miss our ebook, The Business Coaching Franchise Buyers Guide, to help you make an informed decision about investing in a business coaching franchise and clearly understand your options.
