There are a few things that set me apart from many other business coaches you may talk with.

1. I have deep business experience. There are a lot of “business” coaches out there who are really more skilled at being life coaches for entrepreneurs than they are actual business coaches. They may be strong in facilitation, but they don’t have the business chops to add value in strategy and tactics. I spent over a decade building venture-backed startups and have been deeply involved in every aspect of growing businesses. You can read my professional background here.

2. I do not expect or ask for any type of commitment. Flexibility is one of my core values. If a coach immediately starts selling you multi-session packages or tries to lock you in for an extended engagement, it’s my belief that they’re looking out more for their own bottom line than they are looking out for their clients. Having come from industry, I recognize that your budget, time availability, and focus will change over time. Coaching should evolve with that. I’m here when you need me and will never try to force a cadence on you.

3. I do sessions that last up to 90 minutes as opposed to most business coaches who do hour-long sessions. Within a few months of launching my business, it became quickly clear to me that 60-minute sessions weren’t long enough, so I bumped up to 90 minutes. Here’s why. The first 15 minutes of every session are pleasantries, catching up on accountabilities from last time, and figuring out where we’re going to dive deep in the session. The last 15 minutes should really be about making sure you’re clear on the action items you’re planning on accomplishing before we meet again. If you use 30 minutes between those two, very important pieces of conversation, an hour-long session only leaves 30 minutes to work, and that’s not enough.

There are really two unique skillsets involved in business coaching: facilitation and consulting. Life coaches normally rely on their facilitation skills: they ask probing questions to help you uncover a truth that isn’t apparent to you. Consultants rely on their business skills: they jump directly into your business challenges and help you move them forward. I think the best business coaching is a hybrid of these skill sets.

While I am happy to adjust this blend depending on what it is you’re looking for, on average, my business coaching engagements are about 80/20, with consultative work making up the bulk of our time together. We’ll dive into your goals, business challenges, department by department, and figure out the right strategies and tactics to advance things. 

In the course of that work, if a mindset issue arises where you’re holding yourself back, I’ll call it out and we can work on that together then. But I wait for the course of business to let these things arise, rather than looking for them out of the gate. 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not poo-pooing mindset work. When it makes sense, working through a mindset issue can be the single most valuable thing you can do in your business. However, unless you’re an extremely skilled business person who doesn’t need the strategic or tactical help, I don’t think you should be spending the majority of your time here.

The ROI from business coaching comes from two places: clarity coming into the session and clarity leaving the session. Clarity coming into the session is up to the client. We’ll have 90 minutes together. Knowing that, the more focused you are on what you specifically want to accomplish in those 90 minutes, the easier it will be for us to hit your target. If you want to discuss in advance, just shoot me an email.

Clarity leaving the session is up to both of us, and the reason I carve out the last 15 minutes of each session to ensure you have clear action items. The goal is to move the business forward, and to do that, you need to be clear on what must be done. I will capture notes during the session, and at the end, based on our work together, you’ll have a list of projects and tasks that you’re clear on.

You’re free to talk about anything you want. Some topics are very specific, tactical business issues like how to refine an investor pitch or how to draw actionable information from a complex data set. Others are more strategic issues like sales strategy, or how to approach a challenging conversation with a boss, peer, or direct report.

There are roughly five core departments in every company, with some exceptions. They are finance, operations, sales, marketing, and product/service management. If you are a software or product company, engineering may be its own department. I encourage people to run their business as if they were a CEO, with a team of executives running these departments. Sure, some companies have this level of scale. But even if you’re your own CEO, VP Ops, VP Finance, VP Sales, etc., it makes sense to think about goals and projects departmentally so things are all moving forward together and aligned to your high-level goals for the company.

Normally via Zoom, which enables me to serve people regardless of locale. If you’re in the Los Angeles area and we can find a private place to meet I’m happy to do sessions in person.

Absolutely! Business coaching is a deductible expense which is generally paid out of a G&A education budget. That being said, if you’re an entrepreneur or solopreneur and it’s your business, you’ll pretty much be investing in yourself.

If you work in a larger organization, leadership coaching can be either a personal investment in yourself or a business expense paid out of a departmental education budget. Depending on your company’s approach to team education, you may be able to get corporate sponsorship to partially/totally cover the cost of coaching. If your boss is receptive, I’ll be happy to hop on a call with both of you to discuss how it can work and how you’ll both benefit. Alternatively, I can send you a more formal written proposal for you to share.