Business Coaching – How much work do I have to do? How much time is required?

(reading time 5 mins)

The most common question I am asked by business owners who are considering hiring a coach is, “How much work does coaching involve?” The second most common question asked of me is, “How much time will coaching take?”

Likewise, the most common objections and concerns I hear from business owners about coaching is that they don’t have the time (right now) for coaching. As if their time is magically going to free up at some point in the future – ha!

Trying to put myself into the owner’s shoes, I can fully understand why they are concerned about the amount of work and time required on their part: it looks like a lot of work! Of course it does. That’s because in most cases, the gap between where the business is now, and where the owner wants it to be at some undecided point in the future, is massive. When the goal seems so far removed from our current position, it’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed, even before we get started.

And of course every business is in a different position, and every business owner has different goals and visions for their business and their life. So once again, there is no “one size fits all” answer to this question. But let’s address the question head on…

Firstly, we need to ask a slightly different question: “How much work is involved in growing my business/achieving my goals/working on my business (as opposed to in it)?” You see, the coaching itself shouldn’t take that much of your time. Coaching itself doesn’t get you results (although the educational component of coaching is very important, and should get the time it deserves). Results come from the time you, as the business owner, spend on working on achieving your goals and getting the results you desire. It’s the work you do BETWEEN your coaching sessions. The more time you spend doing high-value activity that is going to improve and grow the business, the better and faster you will see results.

When interviewing prospective coaches, one thing you want to be asking about is how much time the actual coaching process takes. My entry level 1-on-1 coaching program involves two 1-hour coaching sessions per month. One day per quarter is invested in writing your 90-day action plan for the following quarter. My clients are required to complete and submit a “focus sheet” every two weeks, which takes around 15 minutes.

That is all my coaching program requires from my clients directly, to ensure they are staying focused and accountable, and have absolute clarity on what they are doing each week and why. Over and above that, I recommend to all my clients that they allocate five hours per week working ‘on’ their business – in other words, working on the tasks that are specifically going to move them towards their growth goals. My clients are also required to incorporate learning into their schedule: time allocated each week to reading, watching educational videos, listening to podcasts or audio books, and so on. How much time they allocate to that is up to them, but at a minimum it should be another 2 to 5 hours per week. “The more you learn, the more you earn.”

Through testing and measuring different coaching programs over the years, I have found that the programs with a higher intensity – for example, having to attend group coaching sessions and workshops that last several hours, several times a month – are less popular, and clients don’t last that long. The reason being that when you are in a coaching session or workshop, you’re not actually working on the business, and therefore not moving towards your goals. The main purpose of a coaching session should be to give you clarity of your week ahead, a good understanding of the actions you are going to take to move you towards your highest priority goals, and how and when you are going to complete those actions. Essentially, the shorter the coaching session, the more time you have to work on the business. The longer the coaching sessions, the less time you have.

When I start coaching a new client, the first thing I ask is “When are you going to work on the business? How much time can you allocate each week to this?” If your answer is less than 5 hours per week, then that’s the first thing we work on. Time management itself will be the subject of a different article in this space, but suffice it to say, your results are nothing more than an outcome of how you spend your time. Spend less time working ‘in’ the business, and more time working ‘on’ the business, and you will see greater results. I often find quick wins with a client by getting them to delegate (or delete) lower value tasks that somebody else can, and should, be doing in the business.

Practically speaking, this is easy to achieve. Realistically, however, business owners tend to have an emotional connection to these tasks based on the feeling that it’s just easier for them do it themselves rather than delegate. We call that “business owner addiction.” When we break the addiction to those lower value tasks, business owners will suddenly find that they’ve got plenty of time to work on the business and move them towards their big goals. By learning to delegate more, and by blocking off and protecting sufficient time each week to work on the business, we realise that there is more than enough time to do the important things.

Find out more about what ActionCOACH can do for your business. Or if you simply have a question about something you’ve read here, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Email me at andrewgoldberg@actioncoach.com.