clients

(excerpt from Chapter 4 of Becoming an Online Business Manager)

Coaching Approach Tactic #5: Recognize that a business is one of the world’s most effective vehicles for personal transformation there is.

As an Online Business Manager the trials and tribulations you go through as you invest in the vision of your clients will coach you, if you let them.

One of your clients is taking a sabbatical for three months and you will earn considerably less. Have you become a little complacent about your work as an OBM and what will this 3-month window allow you to do, or become, as a person and a professional?

The business is taking a new turn and you don’t have the specialized expertise required. Is this an opportunity for you to release your preference to be the one who knows every­thing? Can your identity as a success survive the fact that you won’t be the smart one in this scenario?

You’re in a low energy mood for a while and you realize it’s because you’re tired of using a coaching approach with your client! Instead, you turn it on yourself and ask yourself where are you not stretching?

The ways in which a coaching approach can be applied to your path as an OBM are limitless. In fact, I would encour­age you not to think of a coaching approach as something you turn on and off, or as a blanket you put on top of something. It’s the inner fuel that drives the work, not decoration.

As you read on in the chapters that follow, I know you’ll benefit beyond measure from what is provided as concrete direction for how to play a bigger role with your clients and yourself. Read and listen closely and you’ll see a coaching approach between the lines, and that this theme runs as a thread throughout the OBM conversation. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that quite possibly, without a coaching approach to business, the OBM role would not have emerged quite this way!

The very best OBMs are an embodiment of the coaching approach and speaking as a business owner, I’m incredibly grateful for this.

I hope you don’t mind if I say on behalf of the business owners whose lives and business you will touch, thank you, for your willingness to wade into these uncharted waters.

You’re about to enter into the guts of the “doing” part of the book, where the “what you do” steps are revealed. As you soak in the wisdom there, read with a coaching approach in mind. And when you’re ready to apply a coaching approach in real-life, here are some sample questions you can refer back to:

As we talk about X (where X is a new project, idea, prob­lem that needs solving), what happens in your physical body?

• Why do you think X is happening? (Where X is a recur­ring problem, results that aren’t as stellar as hoped, an emotional reaction on the part of the client)
• Would you prefer to earn more money and work a little more, or earn about the same amount of money and work a lot less?
• What is the end goal of your business – is it to work it until you retire at a certain time? Sell it to someone for a lump sum? Have it be run by a team while you pursue other interests?
• What other area of your life have you experienced suc­cess in? What can you transfer from that success and apply to your business? (A person trained in martial arts might recognize they aren’t being as strict or disciplined with themselves in their business as they can be, and can enjoy being.)