What would make you work with a growth strategy coach?
As an entrepreneur or startup founder, at what point would you consider working with a coach -- especially one focused on growth strategy?
- What problems would you want their help solving?
- How would you evaluate them as a potential coach?
- What would make you say "I need this kind of help"?
After working as a startup demand generation and growth strategy consultant and running a small demand generation agency for 3 years, I am shifting my business to more of a coaching model. I find the coaching/mentoring/advising relationship much more rewarding and ultimately I'd love to coach myself out of a job instead of feeling incentivized to keep doing the same thing for a client.
I'm just trying to learn from all of you to ensure my messaging and my approach is what would resonate with the kind of founders I want to serve.
I found growthmentor.com a great place to find a wide range of people who can help me grow. You should check it out to see if you can become a mentor there and find a lot of different problems to solve.
It's helping me discover what I need, not just who I need.
Andrew, that looks really interesting, thanks for sharing. Unlimited 1:1 calls for $60/mo seems almost too good to be true. Do you do calls with the free or paid mentors? And how many calls do you do per month?
Lots of mentors give free calls to get reviews, or to test it out if they want to continue doing it. They block off maybe 2 or 4 times a week (30 minute calls). Some pay it forward too, after they started out and got mentorship early on. Some use it to meet others doing similar work. I have done 7 calls in the past 3 weeks.
Thanks Andrew, I look forward to trying it out!
Good to hear some feedback - I've checked it out a few times.
What type of coaches have you booked meetings with? any particular type of activity or problem you feel the coaches are high quality?
I had issues with growth, user acquisition so I talked to a few people on that. You can book a call with Foti who can suggest others who can help you specifically. Also you can pitch your current problem and have mentors reach out to you.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing this!
This is a super interesting question that has been gnawing at my brain for a little while. There's a part of me that wants to learn how to grow the client base on my own and there's another part of me that just wants to hire someone stellar to take full ownership of this massive responsibility.
Would I benefit from a coach? No doubt, 100% yes. The more important question to me is "Do I want to be THE person who handles growth alone at my company?".
The real need I would like to have met is simple: Get more qualified leads.
Coaching is merely one path to getting there. I guess that's my barrier to hiring a coach: what guarantees are there that I'll reach my goal?
Coaches have a financial incentive for their clients to learn slowly, assuming the rates are hourly. On the flip side, employees/firms/agencies/lead-generation tools have a financial incentive to be effective. Critical difference there, in my mind.
If there's a misalignment of incentives in the business model between the client/expert, it's a red flag to me.
Food for thought, I didn't have a particular goal with this post, just putting thoughts to digital paper. :)
Any coach that is halfway decent is NOT going to try to slow play your learnings. Truly my goal is to coach myself out of a job. It makes everyone happier. There's nothing more miserable than doing work that doesn't feel valuable.
The reason why I prefer coaching to just doing it for people is that in my experience clients are much more satisfied and motivated learning how to do it themselves. I'm a big believer that as a founder you need to learn how to get an initiative from 0-1 so you know whom to hire to get it from 1-100. So I also have helped some clients find the person to execute once they have a better sense of what they want/need.
But honestly, if you ever feel like a coach wants to slow play your learning to keep making money off of you, they are a shitty coach and a rather shitty person. The VAST majority of the coaches I've talked too and whom I know don't do this. They want to help you solve a problem, move onto the next, move onto the next, until you feel like you're ready to be on your own.
I would be interesting in something like this. As a founder i would want to feel they have experience or have worked on a similar market or shown past experience with successful case studies.
I would also want actionable advise. Someone who takes the time to truly understand my business and my struggles. Would prefer a discovery call to start to see if there is a good fit, for both parties.
I think that's the trick -> finding someone who can give the kind of coaching that's going to be most relevant both where you are in business and who delivers it in a format that is most relevant for you.
Have you looked for this kind of coach in the past? If so, where?
Growth :) Most likely user acquisition, improved conversion or decreased churn
They would have to prove they know more than me. I am by no means a growth expert, but I've dabbled. Their pitch would need to to highlight things that are uncommon and not easily googled.
Ideally they would have content I could read somewhere. That would help to build their credibility as well as help me understand their personality - a big component of success in coaching I've found is personality match.
Feeling stuck. Having tried a number of different things and not having success.
This is super helpful. Thank you!
What kind of content would feel most valuable to you?
While I mentioned reading above, having given it more thought, I think for coaching audio and/or video is helpful.
Let me hear you. How you think, how you talk, the analogies you use, the way you explain things.
Are you a hard ass or a cheerleader? Do you use profanity? Are you funny or serious? These would help me get a better feel for you before committing.
This can be done in written format too (Medium posts etc.)
Hope this helps!
*edit: spelling
Oh that is super helpful. Plus, I love doing video so I really like your answer :)
I would have to believe that the coach will help the business generate more profit than the cost of the coach
Definitely. I feel like that's a BIG part of why I am doing everything I can to keep prices super affordable. I don't want it to feel like a question or a worry. I want it to feel like an obvious win.
I would think though that this is a difference between and agency and a coach. An agency does things for you so it's easier to tie cost to outcomes.
As a coach you're dependent on your client actually doing what you're coaching them to do. This introduces a lot more variables and things beyond the coaches control.
Yeah. I agree with you there. But I've also found that with an agency, you can do stellar work, pass it off and then the client completely drops the ball and doesn't use it in a way to get them value and then they 100% blame you.
So it's kind of tricky either way.
I do think that's why it's important in a coaching relationship to make sure the client is ready to actually do the work. And I try very hard to make sure that the bulk of what we do is super actionable.
One difference too...it's easier in a coaching relationship to get to the root of the problem. As an agency, the client sometimes plays things too close to the vest, so you don't get the WHOLE story of why there are issues. They bring you in to solve a symptom of the problem and not the root cause...sometimes.
I wouldn't, I'd rather learn on my own.
What makes you think working with a coach wouldn't be learning on your own?
That's why I prefer coaching to consulting - it empowers the coachee to learn + execute on their own rather than hiring someone to do it for them. I sort of feel like indiehackers is crowdsourced coaching of sorts...