Episode Transcription

18: I Can't Do Business Alone - The Benefits of Coaches and Memberships
 

Hello, lovely lady. Welcome to Classroom To Business, the podcast designed specifically for teachers working to become successful businesswomen and creating financial freedom and lifestyle flexibility. I'm Kirsty Gibbs. Business coach and mentor for educators and teachers just like you, who are ready to step away from the classroom and create something more.

The Classroom to Business Podcast is committed to helping you grow your business, break down those barriers to success, and replace your teaching salary without having to work more hours. It's time for you to find freedom and start being your own boss so you can once again enjoy what you do and wake up each morning loving life.

Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of Classroom to Business. I'm Kirsty Gibbs, your host. Today I am talking to you about having coaches in our businesses. I'm going to be talking to you about why I have and have often had a coach to help me improve and grow my business. When I left the classroom to start my full-time tutoring business, I had no idea what I was doing.

And if I'm being honest, I actually nearly bought a franchise because I thought, now I know how to teach. I know how to work with parents and students, but I have no idea about a business. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to, Do pays and collect invoice or create invoices and collect payments.

I really did not back myself at becoming a business owner without some support. And to an extent I was right. I have needed support and we all need support because, you know, let's be honest with ourselves, we cannot be perfect at everything. Okay? So in the early days, I thought that I needed this help to start a business.

I nearly invested a very large amount of money to buy into a franchise, and at the last minute decided not to, mainly for me personally, because I discovered what it was like to be a part of a franchise. Thank you to my solicitor who pointed all sorts of things out that I was not aware of at the time, being so naive.

And I decided that I wanted to have a crack and do things on my own and have full control. I didn't want to adhere to anybody else's rules or follow anybody else's curriculums or business plan or structure guidelines. I wanted to do things my way. Now I'm not saying what is right or wrong for you. This was just my journey.

I went into business with no business experience or knowledge. I had worked in my dad's electrical business, doing some wages, some payroll, doing some admin things. You know, a long time ago when I was at university, I had done a lot of work around customer service managing five star luxury chalets in the French Alps, which by the way, The best fun ever.

That's the story for another day. But I really didn't have any idea how to market, how to grow a business, how to do things the right way. I didn't know what insurances I needed. I didn't know, you know, the basics of how to get an APN or set up and register my business name. I did figure those things out.

I did do a lot of researching, spent a lot of time googling things and, and finding answers for myself. But it got to a point in my business where just Googling and getting free downloads and free advice was not enough. I actually had to invest. In some business coaching, and my first experience of that was on the Gold Coast with a business group.

And I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty horrific. I was a young female with a tutoring business, which I felt so inferior, in inferior about because there were all these other men in, you know, big powerful business suits and a lot of them are real estate agents. There's nothing against real estate agents, but they are so confident and bold and out there, and.

I didn't feel it was right for me. So I did the training that I had signed up for. I, I went through everything. I did learn some things. I'm not going to lie, but I didn't actually feel connected to anybody. I didn't make any friends, any business friends from that. No further relationships or no further communication.

WA was continued from any relationships there over the years. I have worked with different coaches and what I have learned is to really firstly, do my research on the person that I want to work with, but secondly, find the person who has done exactly what I want to do. So I worked with coaches when I was building systems in my business, so I worked with coaches who helped me to do that.

Now, at that point in time, I could not find any coaches who had experience in tutoring businesses. That didn't exist. There wasn't anybody like this. Okay. There wasn't anybody helping specifically tutoring businesses. It was very generic. It was Are you a service-based or a product-based business? And obviously I was service-based, so I was working with service-based coaches.

I did learn how to improve my business and grow my business with that support, so that was fantastic. I also got some really amazing coaches or found some really amazing coaches over the past, probably five to six years, who helped me grow and showed me a whole new world. They really shed a light on.

What business can look like as a woman in business, as a mom, in business, as somebody who is juggling a lot of things at once in business. It wasn't just your generic, you know, follow this, do this, follow this, do this, spit everybody out at the same thing. It was much more personalized and it took into account the fact that we were parents and we did have other things happening in our lives.

That's exactly what I hope that my members inside of the tutoring growth membership get out of it as well, is that we are a community, and I have been there before, but we are a community of like-minded women, so we get each other. We understand that we don't have. 80 hours a week to work on and in our businesses to, you know, grow them to million dollar businesses.

In fact, some of us don't even want million dollar businesses. What success looks like to us is actually, or can be the complete opposite to somebody else and what success looks like for me and my tutoring business. Was quite different to a lot of the coaches that I was working with and a lot of the other businesses that I was being surrounded by at that time.

And again, this is why I love working with the ladies inside of the tutoring growth membership because we are similar in the fact that we all have tutoring businesses or educational businesses. Most of us do have families, whether they are young or older. And we are looking more for a balance in our lives.

And again, you know that the word balance, when I say that, I don't mean even balance. It is a thing that's fluctuating up and down, but it's a balance that we are happy with. It's having systems in place so that we can step away from our business. It's having a team in place so that we don't need to be in our businesses every day.

It's having automations in our business so that we don't need to redo tasks over and over so that we set them up once and they are done every day or every week, or every month, however, we need them to be done. I also wanted to touch on some of the big things that I get out of coaching myself. So the first one is accountability.

I can be known to procrastinate. I know shock horror, right? But I'm sure you have been known to procrastinate at one point or another too. And often we procrastinate when things get hard. Or when we're overwhelmed or we don't know what we're supposed to be doing, and so we go and choose something to do that is not actually the task that we need to do.

So, you know, a business name or a logo is a prime example of procrastination. People start their business and they get all gung ho and then they get stuck. On building the el, creating their logo and coming up with a name for their business, and they spend, not weeks, but months, trying to figure it out. In that time, somebody who's jumped in, come up with a logo and a business name has built, has actually built her website, has got the things out there into the world and is starting to take clients and make money.

When you have somebody to hold you accountable and say, right, Kirsty, you said you were going to create your logo by the end of the month. What have you got? Okay, here are my options, but I don't know, pick one. Pick one by the end of the week. Because if you don't have one by the end of the week, you cannot create X, Y, and Z.

If you do not create X, Y, and Z, you cannot bring on your students. If you do not bring on your students, you do not make any more money. And we are in the exact same situation. At the end of next month. So that's just an example. But when I have somebody there saying, okay, what are you working on? Okay, how are you going with that?

You've got some questions. Okay, let's work through those things. Accountability is key to success, and that's one of the biggest things that I have got out of every single coach that I've worked with and membership or mastermind that I have been a part of is accountability, keeping me on track, keeping me focused, keeping me going in the direction that I need to go in, in order to create growth in my business, not just to create busyness in my business.

The next thing is support. There are so many different ways that you can get support from coaching memberships or packages or programs. But I love the support of a community. So some of the masterminds that I've been in have had Facebook communities and very similar to ours in the tutoring growth membership.

They're ladies in there who are like-minded, who are driven, who are passionate, but they're also busy. They're realistic. They know what happens in day-to-day lives as a mom or as a teacher, or just as a human being. Right? And they are there for us. They're there for each other. And so when you've got a question or a challenge, you can put it out there and be supported and support.

Like I said, it comes in different ways. It might be that somebody has done it before and they can say, here, try this, or it might be something hard that you're going through and you've got somebody to have a conversation with about it. But having support when things get tough because they will, or when you have questions because you will.

Here's key again in growing your business. Guidance is the next thing. Obviously this is, you know, quite obvious and I get out of working with the coach. Like I said, I've always tried to find somebody to work with who is solving the problem that I have, or is helping to take me to that next level. If I can work with somebody who has done it before, then that means I can learn from them.

Obviously not replicate their mistakes, but do what they've done correctly. And that means I'm able to save time and I'm able to do things more quickly and easily, which takes me to my next one is I get ease from coaching, and that sounds a bit odd, but basically I am learning from somebody who knows. I am not guessing.

I'm no longer Googling 1,000,001 things. I am learning what to do and what not to do, and that makes my life so much easier because I now know what to focus on and I now know what not to focus on. The other thing that I get from working with a coach is actually less fear and less risk. Because if I'm learning from somebody who's done it before, somebody who's helped other people do it before, I feel so much better knowing, okay, this is a less riskier path to take than me trying to figure it all out on myself and taking loads more time and potentially spending or wasting a lot more money and not getting the same results.

It also is less scary when you're working with somebody. Because like I said, you've got the guidance and you've got the support, and you've got the community and accountability. You are it, it's not a safety net, but it is a beautiful way of being surrounded by the right people or person to make you feel secure and confident to take those scary steps.

And the final one is, It saves time. I have touched on this already, but when I'm learning from someone what to do and what not to do, it means I'm focusing on the right things. I'm not just doing things to be busy. Success or business does not equal success. I'm focusing on the things that actually move the needle in my business that are going to enable me to make more impact, reach more students, and have more time with my family because they are the things that matter to me.

Okay? Being able to make a difference, having financial freedom, spending time with my family. You get to decide what it is that you want to spend your time on. But when you work with a coach or you are part of a coaching program, you learn ways to get some of your time back and you learn what to focus on and then what things to let go.

So I hope that if you. We're a little worried or scared about ever working with a coach. You can see the benefits and like I said, I still work with a coach and I always will, whether it's privately, you know, one-on-one part of a mastermind. I will always put myself in a situation where I am learning from somebody who's ahead of me, because that's how I'm going to grow.

I'll always put myself in an environment where there are other people around me who are there to support me and hold me accountable because if I continue. By myself in business, which you know most of us are. I know that it gets lonely. I know that it gets hard and I can end up in my own head self sabotaging going round and round in circles and then bless him.

But I go to my husband for help. Heck, I've even gone to my daughters for help before. I know that sounds really random, but if you knew the context, you wouldn't think it was so random. But my point is, is if I don't put myself. Into some program or, or a place where I can be supported and held accountable, then it all falls back on me, and that's a huge weight to carry.

If you are interested in putting yourself in that environment where you are surrounded by like-minded people, where you are growing, where you are held accountable, where you are supported, where you are guided. Where you have the opportunity to learn, save time, and do things the easy way, the less risky way, then I would absolutely love to invite you to join the tutoring growth membership.

If you are listening to this, And it is not yet 9:00 PM on Wednesday, the 31st of May. You are in luck because the doors to the tutoring growth membership are still open. If you are listening to this after that time, then I would love for you to send me a DM so that I can chat you a little bit more about your options.

But inside this membership, you get to work alongside me. I get to coach you. You get to work alongside women who will support you and guide you and help hold you accountable. And you get to learn what you can do in your life, in your business to create a business that is successful for you. And remember what I said before, success looks different to everyone.

So if it's replacing your teaching income, That's success for you, then that's what we're working towards. If it is replacing your teaching income and working four days a week or four afternoons a week, then that's what we work for. If it is building a business that you can eventually step back from and it continues to make money, which is exactly what I did, then that's what we work for.

Whatever success is for you. That's what your focus and your goals are, and that's exactly what we break down inside the tutoring growth membership, and help you to work towards. All right, ladies, I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I would love to hear from you. For those who have had coaching before, reach out.

Let me know what, what did you enjoy in coaching? What did you find challenging? Maybe what did you not enjoy? And if you're looking for a place to learn and grow, and if you're looking for a coach to support you, then please head on over. There's a link in the show notes, the tutoring growth membership, check it out.

And if the doors are closed, if you've missed out. Please do not stress. Send me a message or an email. We can chat some more and I can share with you what options we have. If you enjoyed this episode today, I would absolutely love for you to leave a review. It only takes a minute, and if you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you do to ensure that you never miss an episode.

Finally, if you want to know more about what we do, head over to the website, kirstygibbs.com or check out the link in the show notes below. Thanks for listening. It's so great to have you here.