0:00:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve been trying and, you know, I’ve been tested.
0:00:06 B: Welcome to the Friends In Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemima, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 B: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends In Business podcast.
0:00:44 Ben Wright: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Friends in Business. We have the wonderful Jemimah Ashleigh and.
0:00:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: We also have Ben Wright.
0:00:51 Ben Wright: Yeah, me. I was just going to say me. Thank you for listening to me and not Jemimah. Yeah, take my side whenever you can. I’d be certainly grateful to. To those who haven’t been listening before this conversation, which is all of you, because we’ve just pressed record. Jemimah has once again spent the last period of time trying to wind me up, and I’m pleased to say that it didn’t work this time. Jemimah, what are we here to talk about today?
0:01:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: I want to talk about coaches. Coaches having coaches and why it’s important.
0:01:15 Ben Wright: Coaches having coaches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve spoken before. Sure. I’ve spoken before around, you know, elite athletes have coaches. Amateurs don’t. Right. And there’s a reason that these guys are elite athletes and need coaches. Not certainly they have talent, but there’s a piece around getting the absolute best out of themselves. Yeah, cool. Great topic.
0:01:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. When I talk about and want to talk about our experiences, have you ever had a coach before?
0:01:35 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:01:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: I know that you have.
0:01:37 Ben Wright: Yeah. You know, I’ve had lots of sporting coaches, but from a business point of view, I’ve had mentors.
0:01:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: How many sporting coaches have you had?
0:01:44 Ben Wright: I would have had dozens of sporting coaches. I would have had dozens of mentors. And we actually should differentiate between a mentor and a coach.
0:01:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:01:52 Ben Wright: In terms of business coaches formally, I’ve had. I have to close my eyes. One, two, three. I’ve had three formal business coaches across my career. One of them I had for quite a long time.
0:02:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, great. And do you feel like that was a good experience for you
0:02:11 Ben Wright: Across all that coaching period? Everything we speak about, professional mentors, sporting. I’ve had some good, some bad, but certainly out of my three business coaches, two of them have been really good. One I only lasted three, three sessions with. Because they weren’t adding enough value.
0:02:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And I would love to hear about these experiences. We obviously won’t name the people, but we don’t want to chat about it. So I have had probably six different business coaches over my career, and again, same as you, some of them lasted one or two sessions because sometimes they just weren’t a good fit. And I think the thing with coaching, and we’ll talk about this in a second, but coaching is an unprotected term, so anyone can be a coach, people can talk a very good game and that’s a really big thing that we see and not necessarily get the best results. And I think that’s something I’ve seen time and again and again. And us both being coaches really do understand that.
0:03:07 Ben Wright: Yeah. I think there are a lot of people out there that are promising value from a coaching point of view, that don’t have the experience to deliver it. I also think there are a lot of very, very knowledgeable people out there who go into coaching and aren’t able to necessarily communicate it. And, I mean, I love when I meet those coaches, I love it because, you know, if you can get their communication right, they’ll nail it. And I. Then on top of that, I think there are a large number of coaches out there that change people’s lives for the positive. There is a real mixed bag of everything, from the bad through the good. The hard part is, is that the pitch between the worst and the best coaches, for me, doesn’t actually portray the difference in the quality of service. Right. Some coaches who are not as good at what they do are amazing at the pitch. Right. Some who are brilliant at what they do aren’t so good. Right. So, yeah, great topic. Let’s go for it.
0:03:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: So, first, Ben, I’ve got a question for you. What is the difference between a coach and a mentor?
0:04:00 Ben Wright: Yeah, good question. So the way I look at mentors vs coaches is mentors are people who are there occasionally when you need them for support. Right. They are typically someone you don’t pay. Right. May come from your professional network or your friendship group. I’ve had some terrific mentors. Len, Russell. Right. Those guys that are out there listening parents. These guys have been terrific. And girls, I’ve had some female mentors as well who’ve been terrific for me. But you can’t rely on them to be there every time. Yeah, Right. However, they’re there out of the goodness of their heart. They like giving something back and they will often provide you advice. Right. So often the mentor mentee relationship is where the mentor is giving advice, whereas coaching is generally a professional engagement.
0:04:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:04:43 Ben Wright: Again, I’ve had some terrific coaches. Josie and Justine are probably the two most prominent for me. And you pay them to obviously be there at certain times to help you with structure. And I find that coaches will often balance between helping unlock your potential, which means they can be asking questions, they can be guiding you in the right direction and also giving you advice. You know, for me, coaches are just try to get all the answers from within yourself. They don’t. I don’t get the value out of them. I like ones that have also got the experience in my field.
0:05:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: I need you to know more than me. The reason I’m here is because I don’t have all the answers. I’m hoping you have more than I have. Yeah.
0:05:17 Ben Wright: Yeah. Certainly, know more than me in the field we’re talking about
0:05:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: For sure. Yeah. I think you’ve absolutely nailed it. So I did a bit of. Bit of reading about how. Because that was a really hard question for me to answer was I’m going to have to talk about differences. It seems to be mentoring is a little bit more in structured and it seems to be like, just need some advice. Can I pick your brain? Can I buy your coffee and have a chat about it? Sometimes it can be ongoing and quite consistent, but for the most part it’s extremely inconsistent and just unstructured coaching. Though. What we’re really digging in about today, and I’d love to do another percent of mentors, but what we’re really digging in today is that really paid. We’re having a discussion. We’re sitting down in that formalised agreement like this is how often we’ll meet. This is the training that’s available. This is the stuff.
0:05:58 Ben Wright: This is a broad structure we’re going to approach here. The key things I want to get out of this session and I have some confidence that the coach has got the requisite skills to be able to deliver that.
0:06:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. A couple of questions for you. How have you historically found coaches that you’ve worked with?
0:06:11 Ben Wright: That I’ve worked with. So through question without notice. Right. So I’ve found them through friends. I’ve been referred to coaches.
0:06:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: Amazing love.
0:06:20 Ben Wright: That hasn’t worked. Those ones are the ones that haven’t had. You’re right. Right. The great spot to start. But for whatever reason, that one just didn’t work.
0:06:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:06:27 Ben Wright: My current coach, I actually heard her speak. Right. In a related event. And my previous coach, I actually found her online.
0:06:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:06:36 Ben Wright: And she just resonated with me with the way she approached things and she was very specific in what she did. And at that point in time, these are Nights when I had my head in my hands at the beach, wondering what the hell I was going to do. She was really impactful for me. And actually I’ve had business partners that have been coaches as well. So I think you can go into business with someone and certainly learn a lot from them.
0:06:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, agreed. I’ve been really fortunate that the coaches when I. Especially when I was coming up very. Initially, the coaches that I had the chance to meet really served a purpose for a short amount of time. But often I would learn. I found, similar to you, that I’d have a lot of people that were. There wasn’t a lot of. There was maybe a bit more sales and a little bit less fluff in the background.
0:07:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’m a practical person. I want to give. I want the tools. Give me the tools. I want to walk away with it. I do not need to be. I do not need a cheerleader.
0:07:24 Ben Wright: Yeah. Which is what I think really happened. I was saying definitely that coaches are. For now, but not forever.
0:07:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:07:31 Ben Wright: That for now could be an extended period of time. You know, 1, 2, 3. I think the longest I worked with one for was probably five years. But, you know, I absolutely encourage people that I work with to recognize that don’t try and pick your perfect coach. That’s going to help you through every stage of your life. Pick what’s really relevant to you now. Right. And you may even come back to that coach down the track after you swap into others. But. And a good coach will recognize that they can’t necessarily be with you for that entire journey. : Right. But they can certainly help you on the steps towards what’s next.
0:08:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. I remember I had a coach for about three years. I was with this person for a long time. And they were clearly going through a development when I needed them. That was a really specific thing that I’d gone in with them for. And what actually got was a lot better. I got a community and I was in a group coaching program. We’re doing like every three months we’d get together. Every quarter we’d have a get together and then be staying in hotel. It was all wonderful. Right. It was 10 out of 10. Amazing. Here’s where we run into the problem. They started to repeat the same information, which I recognized. And I was happy to pay for the community. That’s all fine. Where we got into real trouble was when they started to pivot and started to make some changes about what they were coaching and. And as my coach was developing, I started to see this real difference in what we were talking about. And more importantly, they were talking about things like 75 hard, and they were talking about things that just weren’t resonating with me as female and as being someone was like pretty much 90% male. We were having really big discussions that didn’t really sort of land very well. And a lot of the women were feeling a bit isolated from that. So that was a really interesting change as my coach changed and I was starting to develop. And then I had to say, look, love you, but I’m out. And it was almost like having a breakup. He took it worse than any breakup I’ve ever had. I was like, are you okay? I was like, I just didn’t think this was going to happen. So it was this real moment of, oh, I’ve actually outgrown this relationship. And I thought how interesting it was that that happened.
All right. I want to talk about three big reasons why we should have a coach today. Because this is something that I’ve actually been thinking about in my own personal journey. This hasn’t been a sort of a lightly taken situation. It like, I think I probably time to hire a new business coach.
So the first reason I think people should have coaches is because you don’t know what you were blind to. You don’t know what you don’t know. And I know. And I know you and I have a really great relationship. We both give each other ideas and feedback and, you know, and that’s really an established thing that we have. What I’m thinking I need now, because of our discussions, I need someone to come and rip everything apart. What am I missing? I don’t know what I don’t know.
0:10:13 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:10:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: And how brilliant it is to have someone that’s on your side and by your side to do that process.
0:10:21 Ben Wright: Yeah. In your cheer squad. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:10:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: Cheer squad. But also, like, let’s rebuild it. Let’s do it from the ground up.
0:10:26 Ben Wright: Great reason. You don’t know what you don’t know. And they might not necessarily have the answer for you, but they might know how to help you find it.
0:10:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. Yeah. You have to be really careful of coaches as well, because they’re not going to be able to fix everything.
0:10:39 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:10:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: Like, they’re often going to be willing to. It might be you are tackling one thing. Thing. But we need to tackle a different issue as well.
0:10:45 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Good.
0:10:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: One second reason. Because we need support. This is a really difficult career that we’ve all chosen to go into, and sometimes we just need that additional. Those additional eyes, additional ears. And those additional tools that we don’t even know we need it.
0:11:05 Ben Wright: Okay, so how does that differ to we don’t know what we don’t know.
0:11:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Usually cause of business gaps. I tend to see this as more of a business gap of like, we don’t know the educational information. I don’t know that I should be fixing my CRM to do this. I don’t know the really specific. I just need that support to like the next step in that guidance.
0:11:24 Ben Wright: I think I can differentiate that. So the first one is we don’t know what we don’t know. Yes. So we actually don’t know the areas that we want to grow and we want to coach to help us explore that. And the second one is we actually have defined playing field that we don’t know. So we don’t know how to get the best out of our, in your example, CRM system?
0:11:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: Right.
0:11:40 Ben Wright: So there’s greenfield site. They help us learn and develop in ways that we may not have expected. And then there’s the planned mapped playing field piece where they help us develop in ways that we are very clear where we want to improve in, where.
0:11:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: We want to go there and go there.
0:11:54 Ben Wright: Absolutely.
0:11:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: And the next one that I absolutely love is the connections. One of the brilliant reasons, and again, we’re hitting a bit mentoring as well here. Another really great reason to have a coach or to bring a coach on board is they also are connected to other people and presumably they’ve done more than us in a good way. They’ve actually taken additional steps. Their business is growing. They are doing presumably better than we are in one specific arena and they are going to be able to introduce us to people that we don’t even know that we need to be introduced to.
0:12:30 Ben Wright: So for me, I think that one works at a micro level for a small business. But when you’re getting into your leadership coaching, your executive coaching, I think that gets a little bit harder to hold. Absolutely. Small businesses, it can open up networks for you.
0:12:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:12:43 Ben Wright: And then in an executive level, look, perhaps it can also do the same, but a smaller number of contacts. Mind you, for some businesses, one contact can be all you need.
0:12:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: A million dollar.
0:12:52 Ben Wright: My dream partnership contest. Absolutely.
0:12:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve been emailing.
0:12:57 Ben Wright: Keep going. Okay, great. And so anything else in terms of why coaching’s so beneficial for you?
0:13:02 Jemimah Ashleigh: Where to start? Ben, Come on. You know, you know my thoughts on this.
0:13:05 Ben Wright: Those are my three major things.
0:13:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: Those are my three big major things. I want to ask you a question, though, that I haven’t worded. You up on. Here’s my question. So you said they had three coaches and that one didn’t work out. What happened with the one that didn’t work out?
0:13:16 Ben Wright: So I might answer that by actually talking through what I think is the difference between a good coach.
0:13:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great.
0:13:21 Ben Wright: A good coach for me or for someone versus a coach that’s not potentially. Right. So for me, the coach that I had, that coach didn’t work is very much where I see coaches aren’t as strong and they didn’t have the required knowledge in my specific area.
0:13:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, right, right.
0:13:35 Ben Wright: They had lots and lots of experience in the workforce, but they weren’t able to communicate to me in a way in a structured format where I could say, okay, here I am now, here’s the goals I want to get to and here’s how I’m gonna do it. Boom, boom, boom. They didn’t have the skills in actually mapping out a formal program, and they were quite proud to say to me, hey, I don’t run a structured program. I will, you know, you call me when you need me again. Right. I’m here when you need me and I’ll help her. I can. And look, it’s very noble to say that it’s not very. Certainly not sales driven. The piece that I was hoping for was I was cool with not structured, but I wanted a little bit.
0:14:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:14:10 Ben Wright: And to be frank, I often will run a program that has less structure, but we’ll have some key topics and some key goals we want to chase. Right. We didn’t really have any of that with that engagement. So I think whilst they’re experienced in the workforce, they lacked experience in talking me through how to improve. And I also didn’t notice any real evidence of a coaching model or a coaching framework for them, which I don’t think you need to live by.
0:14:33 Ben Wright: But I think in my instance, for someone like me, I like to know that there’s some form of framework you’re going to follow.
0:14:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well. And one of the key things that I’m seeing there, and it’s. I think similarly where I lost one of my coaches was I’d lost all idea of what we were doing. It was just, I’m now I don’t understand what’s happening. And the floor was unstable, similar to you. I don’t really understand what we’re doing here. And eventually I think that’s going to. It’s really probably, if you’re a coach, make sure you’ve got a framework or a pillar or something that you’re working to One of the things that I really. I think it’s so simple to just put that framework down, but just to make sure that you’ve got a guided effort for your clients to go through.
0:15:11 Ben Wright: Yeah. And I think that’s, for me, where we look at it. A good coach, they’ve either got structure or framework that works for you. So the framework would be something like a grow coaching model. So John Whitmore developed a grow coaching model. Grow. What are your goals? What’s the reality of where you’re at now? What are your options moving forward? And then what are you going to do next? Right. Fantastic. Now that on its own is helpful and for me, I like it when I see coaches who have that. And it’s certainly a model that I use or a framework I use. It’s not necessarily spoken with my coaches, but it’s one I use. But structure is the bit that I see work really well in coaches that says, okay, let’s get really clear on what you want to do. And then we’ll set some goals around how we’re going to get there. And the goals could be that we’re meeting once a month and we’re going to talk through your problems around attaining this goal. Right. That is relatively unstructured, but you’re very clear where you’re heading because there’s a specific goal in mind versus here’s your goal. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to set up your sales process and your strategy and your behaviors, your metrics and your celebrations, your training and your coaching. Right. And everything that then flows on from there. Right. My five steps of having a team that really performs. So when I see people have that structure, I think that makes a good coach because A, it exhibits competency.
0:16:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:16:26 Ben Wright: Right. So you know that they’ve had some experience in this and B, it gives you some structure to follow. The other piece for me where the coach, in fact, all three of my coaches I actually wish were probably a bit stronger in this, but I’m also a very strong personality, so I can understand why they weren’t is that they hold me accountable. I think a good coach knows how to hold you accountable. They know that there are going to be times when you’re not able to get your jobs done. And they have a level of emotional intelligence to say, actually, you know what, you just need a, you know, a metaphorical cuddle here. Right. But at the same time, they also intelligent enough to know when to push you and when to hold you accountable for things you’re not doing right. I’ve got something to do with my coach that I have at the moment. In a couple of weeks time, I’m behind right now. If I knew that she was going to hold me really, really accountable, I’d probably be working a little bit harder on that. She’ll hold me half accountable. But at the end of the day you can wriggle around it. So I think great coaches are highly accountable.
0:17:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:17:21 Ben Wright: And I also think for me, great coaches are aspirational. So they’re either living the life that you want to get to.
0:17:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:17:28 Ben Wright: Have done jobs that you want to get to or have had businesses the size of where you want to get to. But there’s something within them you can see that you’re driving to get towards because then you know that those behaviors that you want to learn or the skills that you want to learn from that coach, they’re almost directly transferable.
0:17:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:17:45 Ben Wright: Because you say that they’ve been able to do that themselves. I’m not a huge fan of career coaches who haven’t been in business. It doesn’t mean please those listening. It doesn’t mean that you’re not good at what you do. But for me, what resonates better are coaches who have some deep evidenced subject matter expertise.
0:18:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think there’s something really powerful about you should only really be coaching on what you’ve done. So I remember someone saying to me, I want to, you know, I want a $10 million business. And I was like, oh, that’s awesome. I haven’t done that. I’ve not. We’ve not done it. 10 million in a year. I’m honest about that. I know what our metrics are. I know our numbers. We’re not there. I can get you X far. I can’t get you further than that.
0:18:28 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:18:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: So what I’ll do is give you my coach right after that. So I think you have to be very honest about especially if you’re. Someone’s trying to help you blueprint. If they haven’t done it, they’ve never seen the road. You have to almost make sure they’ve walked that road before. There are some real exceptions to that rule. And I understand someone out there now is like, no one’s ever done the thing I’m doing.
0:18:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: They’ve done something cool though.
0:18:47 Ben Wright: Yeah. Then look, there’s within reason. Right. Like I do a lot of work with corporates. I’ve worked in corporate businesses myself that are up to a billion dollars in size. But I’m now working with corporate Businesses that are larger than that.
0:18:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:18:58 Ben Wright: There’s a level of scale there. Whether you’re 1 billion or 10 billion doesn’t necessarily make a difference. Right. But if I was, the biggest business I’d ever worked in was a $20 million a year and here I am advising on a $5 billion. I think that’s a little bit different.
0:19:11 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s a bit harder.
0:19:12 Ben Wright: Yeah. And same goes from an entrepreneurial point of view. I think there’s bands you can work within. But certainly if I was having someone to me right now coming to say I want you to be my coach for an IP. Right. And exit, you know, to a stock listed business, I’d be able to say, hey, I can certainly help you exit to a large business. But in terms of going to float on the share market. Right. That’s not something that I’ve done previously.
0:19:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: No, I fear it’s not something with. You’ve had a heap of experience.
0:19:39 Ben Wright: So a good coach for me also knows their boundaries.
0:19:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes, agreed. They actually understand where their blind spots are as well.
0:19:46 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:19:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: And yes. And I think there are a lot of especially green, really green, brand new coaches who just want the clients who are like, Ben, I can help you with everything. I can. Oh, do you need glasses? I can help you get those too. And that becomes extremely problematic because it becomes a bit of a dependency. But also they’re going to miss the mark at some point quite dramatically and.
0:20:07 Ben Wright: That can have a tangible impact on your business.
0:20:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely, yeah.
0:20:11 Ben Wright: Excellent.
0:20:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. All right, just to wrap up, Ben, I’ve got a question for you. What is the one piece of advice you give to people out there who may be looking for a new coach right now?
0:20:20 Ben Wright: I would go and find someone who can evidence serious capability in what you want.
0:20:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, great.
0:20:26 Ben Wright: Yep. Someone who’s done it. I certainly would lean to that over someone that’s a big coach or a well known coach or you know, a high charging coach. I would look at someone that can really be really be clear that they’ve done this themselves and can guide you through that.
0:20:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I think that’s really important. I’d agree with that. I think my number one thing would be what I’ve learned now. Look at the other clients that they’re working with. Ask for some either written testimonials or an introduction to someone and I really want to know what their aspirational goals are. What are they trying to do next? What’s that look like?
0:20:58 Ben Wright: So what does their business look like for them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s nothing worse than a coach that you work with and then six months later they go into a group program. And if you’re not wanting a group program. Right. That’s where you can get a hold of.
0:21:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And I think coaches, as we’ve sort of discussed, is such an, it’s a term that is colloquially used so many places. And I think that also be mindful of what qualifications they have, what experience they’ve had.
0:21:23 Ben Wright: Excellent, good job team. Amazing, great coaches. Fill you with confidence for everyone listening, Right. If you’re out there, go and find that coach that’s going to help you because I’ve seen it make such a difference on my own personal level. Right. And obviously, I mean, I work with so many businesses that I can see it there, too. So have a fantastic week. We’ve been your friends in business. Bye for now.
0:21:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: See you guys.
