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10 Questions to Finding the Right Coach to Grow Your Consulting Business

• Laura Khalil

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Ever felt like you're on the brink of a business breakthrough but just can't seem to push through? That's where the magic of the right coach or advisor comes in.

In our latest episode, Laura Khalil, share's 10 questions to ask yourself when evaluating who you want to work with. 

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Speaker 1:

Hey friends, it's your business Bestie, laura Kalil, and on today's episode, I want to help you figure out how to hire a coach to help you grow your business and some of the questions that I think are really smart to be asking when you are actually evaluating different coaches or evaluating who you want to work with to help you grow your business. Okay, I'm going to walk you through 10 questions today to help you make that decision. The first question I want you to ask yourself is do I want a coach or do I want an advisor? So let me explain that, because that can sound a little bit nuanced, but this is really important. A coach is typically somebody who is going to ask you questions to help you figure out the answer for yourself. Coaches are typically not in the business of giving you the answer, okay. On the other hand, an advisor is someone who is here to actually guide you and show you the path forward.

Speaker 1:

I consider myself, in my own business, more of an advisor. I sometimes will coach my clients through things that they're working on, but most of the time, I am advising them on what to do next. The next question I want you to ask yourself is do I want someone who's done what I want to do, or do I want someone who can help me ask the right questions to get there? So these are, again, just different approaches. If you want someone who has done what you want to do, you want to look for an advisor In my business. When I work with my clients, I have gained multi-six figure consulting contracts and I have now worked with hundreds of people. So not only have I done it, but I have helped a lot of people to do it. The next question you want to ask yourself is how much direct support do I want from this individual? Is it really important for me that I work directly with them? Is it really important to me that I, you know, talk to them a lot like how does that work? Sometimes, when you're working with people, they will say you know, yeah, you get direct support from me, but we only meet twice a month Sometimes and maybe you're more or less on your own in the interim or maybe you have like some sort of like email access or Vox or access. That kind of depends. The way that I like to do things, because I'm very results oriented the way I like to work with my clients is within my mastermind, they actually get unlimited one-on-one laser coaching with me. So I offer direct support as they need it, because I want people to know that help is always there for them as they need it.

Speaker 1:

The next question you want to ask is well, how much group support do I want, or do I want any? If you're someone who and I've had clients who say, listen, I don't play well in groups, I don't want to be in a group, then that is someone who is not going to. You're not going to benefit from being, you know, in a brain trust with other people, or being with people who are going through what you're going through. I have found that a combination of group and one-on-one support has produced really stellar results for my clients, and there's a reason for that. You know I can tell a client what I think is the best path forward for them and I can advise them on the steps to do it. But they can still have a lot of doubt about like, well, okay, laura's telling me this, but like, how do I know it's going to work for me? And so what I love about the group aspect and we do this in my mastermind is they actually get to hear from people who have already done it, and so it's not just like the coach or advisor sharing information with you that would help you. It's actually you have a whole community backing it up. I find that really helps my clients to move them forward and to sort of break down some of the walls to their own self-doubt.

Speaker 1:

You also may want to know if they have any online training. Maybe you don't need that. It just kind of again depends on what you're looking for. So one of the things we do within my mastermind is we actually give you a whole training library that is entirely AI keyword searchable. It's very, very cool, so you can find the perfectly time training for what you're looking for at the very moment. Like if you were looking for how to have sales conversations, how to write proposals, what do you do when you're ghosted by a prospect. You can actually type those things in and it'll pull out the exactly perfect training for that.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes that's helpful for people, because some people, like if you're on a call with them, they can maybe feel like, oh my gosh, it's a lot of information I'm receiving. I need to digest it, or there's things here that I'd like to dive into more on my own and process a little bit more slowly or in my own time. So you want to know do they offer online training, and is that something that you're interested in? The next question is how much access will I get to the coach or advisor? There are some people who are. If you're extremely busy, you may say I don't have time to meet with someone once a week, or I don't have time to meet with someone every other week. I just need a monthly check-in. Others are completely different. Other people want a lot of support and a lot of help, and it just depends where you are in your journey and the things that you're grappling with. So that is something as well for you to consider. Like, how much support are they actually offering? One of the things I really like about how we do things is you have the support as you need it.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's move on to I think this is question six or seven Do they have proof of their results? Are they showing you proof of what they have done? It is really important that you have access to some kind of social proof that what they do has helped other people. You want to be able to see that. You should not feel afraid to ask for that or acquire about it and, related to this, will they let you speak to any of their clients? I actually think this is really important. If someone refuses you the ability to talk to somebody, that to me is like an auto red flag. I don't get asked that a lot. Typically, my results speak for themselves. But if I have a prospect who is very, very interested in working with me and they just need to talk to a client to get them over that hump, I will absolutely see if a client can be available for sure.

Speaker 1:

Next, do I gel with them as a person? Do you get along? Do you like? You know their attitude, their behavior? Do you feel like you could be simpatico? For me, that's really important. Whenever I'm looking for someone to work with and I'm hiring a coach or advisor for my own business, I want to make sure that I like this person, because if I don't like them or I don't like their style or their approach, it's probably not going to work. There are some people like a lot of people will come to me when they are craving advisory from someone who is like direct and no nonsense and is going to hold them accountable. That's just my natural style, and so you want to just sort of think about what suits your personality, what suits your personal style, and look for people that gel with that, and you're going to know what's right for you. And finally, the last question is can they tell you about the types of clients who have succeeded or failed with them? I get asked this question actually quite a bit with my most successful clients, no matter what industry they're in because I work across industries no matter what their level of experience working with bigger companies and gaining bigger contracts.

Speaker 1:

There is one common denominator between all of these individuals and that is that they are willing to take imperfect action consistently. Taking imperfect action consistently is a complete game changer, and if you listen to this podcast and that is the only thing you get out of it, take that to the bank, because people who do not get trapped in their heads and do not ruminate endlessly on ideas and who actually just try things using, in our case, the Elevate Method framework we lay out for them and, yeah, maybe they're going to like fall on their face a couple times. Maybe it's going to be like really awkward the first few times they're doing outreach or the first few times they're talking about themselves, or even on the front page, or even on the first few sales calls. It may feel really weird and scary, but they lean into it and they get better and eventually they really begin to have mastery over those skills versus folks, and I've had people come to me and say I'm still thinking about what I want to do with my life. That is a perfectly valid place to be, but it is also a place where not a lot of action can happen.

Speaker 1:

What I have found is that action brings clarity to those questions rather than thinking and often overthinking, which I find brings very little clarity to those questions. But because the mind is a very busy place, it loves to think, but action is really where the where the change and the transformation can occur. So those are the questions that I would really encourage you to think about when you were evaluating coaches or advisors. At the end of the day, we all just really want you to be incredibly successful. I want to thank you for listening to this episode. If there is something in here that was an aha moment for you, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know on Instagram or LinkedIn. Go find me, let's hang out, let's chat. Until then, giddy up.