Consulting involves providing expertise, analysis and recommendations for how an organization can solve a specific problem. Consulting is usually short-term focused and tactically-oriented. In other words, a consultant will provide a recommended plan for the client based on his or her expert analysis.

Coaching focuses on helping an individual clarify and work towards achieving a goal. A coach usually works one-on-one with a client to facilitate personal or professional change. The coach listens, asks questions, and holds the client accountable for doing the work agreed upon. Coaching is a one-to-one process while Group Coaching is primarily a series of classroom training session with goal setting included at the end of each session.

We combine the best of both, it is like having a consultant, coach and facilitator all-in-one. After 19 years of working with business owners, we find that providing knowledge without accountability does not produce results even if clients are willing to invest; on the other hand, providing accountability without knowledge as it tends to happen with inexperienced coaches create frustrated clients; meanwhile, every consulting job is a one-off affair which might solve the problem in the short term but more often than not, the problem resurface after a period of time... only through a combination of approaches depending on what a client needs can true results be achieved.

Who you hire depends on what your goal is. If you have a specific business-related problem and don’t have the required skills to fix it, hiring a consultant is your best bet.

If you have high-level goals such as which direction to take your company, how to lead or facilitate change, or how to maintain work-life balance, you might consider hiring a coach.

If you want to achieve a combination of specific businesses related challenges and high-level businesses goals such as aligning family members or partners’ interests, setting direction & succession plans, maintaining and growing profits while maintaining harmony, you should consider hiring us, find out more through our free Professional Business Coaching session.

There is none. That is why we offer:

1. Immediate termination notice executable by either party at any time if you do not find value in our service or we do not find you to be a suitable client for our service. No long-term contracts to sign.

2. A complimentary Professional Business Coaching session (NOT a preview ), an actual 90-120 min client session for both parties to evaluate whether the services we offer are suitable for your situation. When you sign up for this session, you are experiencing what an actual coaching session is like. We do NOT hold back during this session, you will always get some insights plus a couple of strategies you can apply whether or not you work with us after the session.

Frankly, we find most contracts for coaching services benefit coaches more by tying down clients for a period of time (& fees). We practice immediate termination from the day we started and on average most of our clients stay with us for 24 - 48 months. 

The only agreement we make with our clients is continuity, ie, stay if you see value, go if you don't, but do not take advantage of our flexibility by trying to get as much information as possible for a month, ask for a month break to "digest & apply" then subsequently return for another month, etc... To put it bluntly, we are professionals, we expect to work with other professionals who share similar values with us.

3.1 But how come other coaches offer guarantees?

The typical guarantee offered by most coaches is something along the line of "guaranteed results or coaching is free", which means, if you are not getting results, coaching period is extended until you see results.

Now think about this for a moment... if you are not getting results, it usually means 1 of 2 things:

1. Despite you doing your very best & participating fully in the process for a couple of months, the coaching method or the coach or the strategies are not working for you... what are the chances of things working out with a free extension if you had truly put in your best & participated fully the entire time? Wouldn't it make more sense to move on to something else even if extension is free?

2. You didn't get the desired results because you didn't participate fully & didn't take the coaching process seriously... in this case, as an accountable, fair minded professional, you are not likely to claim the guarantee and "take" something for free from your coach.

In conclusion, what was the actual guarantee again? That's right. It's just a marketing gimmick.

No. Here is why...

Google "coach certification" today (7th Feb 2018) and you will get 39.9 million results. Yes. 39.9 million. In other words, it is a "free for all", unregulated situation. Most certification bodies claim to certify coaches to a level of competence based on the number of billed coaching hours, number of written testimonial from paying clients or a list of arbitrary "requirements"... and they charge recurring annual fees to maintain the "certified" credentials.

From 1999-2017, by taking the lowest estimate of 8 hours per week, our coach has completed at least 7488+ hours (52 wks X 8 hrs X 18 yrs) of billed coaching, far exceeding any "certification requirements", which usually ranges in the 100's of hours.

Until a day when the industry is regulated by authorities(we do agree the industry needs regulation, fast), your best chance of finding an effective coach is to treat all certification claims as marketing hype... instead, you should test them out, either in a complimentary session (if they offer one) or by signing up for a short duration, preferably with an immediate termination clause (see question 3).

We are in the coaching business, not seminar, training or public speaking business. That means we do one-to-one coaching with the business owner or owners(if they have partners or family members) and we provide in-house training for existing coaching clients' teams.

We do not count participants of public speaking sessions, free seminars,  free webinars, free facebook live sessions, youtube views, trainings, etc as part of the "number of business owners" we have worked with. 

While we do occasionally run lead generation and profile building activities mentioned above, we believe for our clients and for business owners who are considering our services, the experience that really matters to them(and to you) is the actual experience in what they will actually be engaging us for, which is one-to-one coaching.

So it doesn't make sense to engage in marketing gimmicks to "decorate" our numbers by including what are essentially lead generation and profile building activities.