Do You Fit The Profile Of A Successful Financial Coaching Client?
Are You Ready for Financial Coaching? Take This Test…
Key Ideas
- Discover if your goals necessitate financial coaching.
- Find out if you fit into one of the four coaching client profiles.
- Learn how to know when you're ready for coaching.
Financial coaching is not for everyone.
You might be surprised to learn a successful financial coaching relationship is usually determined before the first conversation ever occurs.
That’s because the positive results produced during coaching are more dependent upon the life situation and goals you bring to coaching than the coaching process itself. The key factor to success is how well your needs match the benefits provided by my coaching services.
In other words, selling financial coaching is a sorting process – not a sales process – based on the needs of the client.
“I want to express my gratitude for sharing your financial wisdom and knowledge with me on our trial run phone call and again when I spoke with you briefly this week. I truly appreciated your clarity, perceptiveness and way of expressing. Your words have given me plenty to consider… Thank you so very much!” – Jamie McGregor; Deming, WA
That is the purpose of the free coaching strategy session – to see if the fit is right before you ever pay a dime. Those clients that match the profile usually pursue a coaching relationship because the benefit is obvious, while others are directed to more appropriate resources.
Below are the three key criteria I look for during financial coaching test drives to make sure the benefits you experience will exceed the cost of my services. Let’s see how well your needs and life situation fit these three criteria…
How Big Is Your Financial Goal?
The first step in determining if you are the right client for financial coaching is what I call “gap analysis”.
- Define the gap between your current financial results and where you want to be as a result of coaching. This is your financial goal.
- Then decide what that goal is worth to you to determine if you’re willing to pay the price to get there.
In other words, it will cost you money (coaching fees) and it will also cost you time and energy to produce sufficient results to close the gap. Is the goal worth it?
For example, let’s say you have $200,000 in savings now, are 15 years from retirement, and realize you need another $2 million to meet your retirement goals. You’ve checked the calculators and know your current plan will not achieve the end-goal, but you don’t have another solution.
In this situation the gap is $2 million, you are highly motivated, and the price of coaching easily justifies the end goal. You would be a likely coaching candidate.
However, a prospective client who is $50K in debt and just wants to find a solution would not be a good coaching candidate. This person would be better off saving the coaching fees, using less expensive educational resources, and applying the money saved to paying down the debt. The goal is incongruent with the service costs.
This relationship of goal size to service costs explains why I don’t offer get-out-of-debt coaching programs. It is a huge, lucrative market, but it only makes business sense for the coaching company – not the client. Debt clients are appropriately served by lower priced products (see 7 Rules For Buying Buying Financial Education That Pays You More Than It Costs).
Instead, all my coaching services are designed for building wealth because the high stakes involved more than justify the expense when accelerated progress results. Coaching becomes a revenue producer instead of an expense.
Is your financial goal big enough to support coaching?
“When we started financial coaching Todd assessed our personal situation and helped us realize our goals were within reach now. We thought we needed to take five steps to get there, but instead we just focused and got it done. In less than six months we had our first major deal and we have a realistic plan to be financially free within two years or less. Todd's coaching was invaluable, and best of all it never really cost us anything because just one tip he gave us on our last deal saved more than enough money to pay for all the coaching thus far.” – Eric & Jeni Kurowski; Owners, CCR Storage; Willis, TX
What Is Your Personal Path To Wealth?
The next step in determining if you are a good fit for financial coaching is to examine your life situation for ways that coaching can add value.
For example, most people work as W-2 employees and follow passive investment strategies. If that defines your life situation then don’t buy personal financial coaching services. It is a bad value. (See group coaching here for an appropriate alternative.)
I know this is a bold statement because the vast majority of people earn exclusively W2 income, and a similar majority use passive investment strategy exclusively. The intersection of these two groups – passive investors and W2 employees – defines most people. Therefore, I have just told the majority of people not to buy my one-on-one financial coaching services.
As I said before, personal financial coaching doesn’t make business sense for everyone. The reason is because there is not enough opportunity in these life situations to add sufficient value to justify the cost. Anyone who tells you otherwise is more interested in your money than serving you.
(Don’t worry if you are part of this group. There are solutions that are perfect for your needs. They are low-cost and straightforward so don’t be duped into high priced coaching packages. See 7 Rules For Getting The Best Value For Your Money In Financial Education for all the details, read my free Top 50 Articles here, and check out 7 Steps To 7 Figures for appropriate alternatives.)
Personal financial coaching clients have different needs and typically fit one of the following four profiles…
Business Owner: You are launching a business, have an existing business (including professionals, attorneys, doctors, and consultants), or you’re looking at adding a sideline business as part of your wealth strategy. Entrepreneurs and business professionals love financial coaching for many reasons, but the most obvious justification from a cost/benefit standpoint is they have capital at risk with many potential leverage points for financial gain. It is a fairly simple process for coaching to help them avoid one mistake, improve one decision, or take the business to a higher level thus providing a return on investment that is several multiples of the cost. Entrepreneurs and business professionals frequently experience coaching as a revenue producing activity instead of an expense.
Active Investor: You invest a portfolio approaching six figures (or more) using real estate or active paper asset strategies (stocks, bonds, ETF’s, mutual funds). The key point here is your investment strategy is hands-on (rather than passive) and you have enough capital at risk that a single bad investment decision avoided or a few investment decisions improved can easily pay for years of coaching fees with all the other education and growth thrown in for free.
Time Is More Valuable Than Money: Successful entrepreneurs, high-earning professionals, and people receiving inheritances find themselves with more money than financial skills to manage it – and little time to develop those financial skills. You need specific education delivered with zero wasted time because every investment mistake will be prohibitively expensive, and you can afford to hire an expert to pave a royal road through all the confusion. Coaching makes sense because the school of hard-knocks is not an acceptable learning choice. It will waste too much time on dead-end paths that will cost too much money in mistakes. In this situation financial coaching makes business sense by saving time, providing accelerated learning, and avoiding costly mistakes.
More Education Than Results: If you’ve already attended seminars, taken home study courses, developed great ideas, but got stuck following through and implementing solutions then your problem is not information – but the integration and application of that information. No book, seminar, or course will get you over the hump to produce results. Only a highly skilled financial coach can help you integrate your knowledge into a personal wealth plan and overcome the obstacles that are holding you back from success (known as process coaching). Nothing else will produce the results needed as efficiently and effectively making all alternatives more costly in the long-run.
The common thread in each of the above situations is as follows…
- You are already in the wealth building game in one way or another. You’re a business owner, active investor, or actively pursuing financial education.
- The fact that you’re already in the game means you have capital at risk and leverage points where improved decisions can make large differences in results produced.
- This means one mistake avoided, one insight gained, or one improved decision can pay for years of coaching with all the other education and growth thrown in for free.
In short, financial coaching becomes a smart business decision for these client situations because the value exceeds the cost.
The only relevant question remaining is, “Do you fit any of these situations?” You don't have to fit all of them – just one or more.
Does Money Coaching Fit Your Personal Style?
The third criterion for a successful coaching relationship is you must be coach-able. This can best be summarized in the following statements…
- I’m committed to a better life for myself and my family.
- I’m willing to invest a certain amount of time, energy and money toward achieving financial freedom if I have a legitimate expert with valid guidance to follow.
- I’m not looking for get-rich-quick fantasies and accept that there are no quick fixes. I want a realistic plan and view financial coaching as a long-term growth process to create the changes I want in my life.
- I am ready to do the work necessary to produce the results I desire, and I will let the coach do the coaching.
- I accept responsibility for my actions at all times and will not expect the coach to “fix” me because I know I am the only one who can make change happen.
- I have adequate funds to pay for financial coaching and will not regret or suffer about the fee. I view financial coaching as a worthwhile investment in my future and will gladly pay for educational insight that produces results.
- I will call on-time for coaching appointments, speak truthfully, be accountable for the results I produce, and be open to new and different ideas in order to achieve greater success.
So the last question for you to consider in this three step process is, “Are you coach-able?”
“Thank you for helping me rediscover a confidence in my life that escaped my grasp in terms of planning for, building up and maintaining wealth. Your ideas on apartment building management added enough cash flow to my life in the first two months of coaching to make the process free for as long as I continue. Since that time you've helped me develop a realistic plan for both my businesses where succeeding with just one should make me financially free in 3 years. I'm excited to take action every week and turn these plans into reality. You have been much more than a financial mentor: you have been the voice of unbiased reason by always bringing me back to what counts. Thanks.” – Stephen Del Monte; Owner, DelMoSports; Wildwood, N.J.
Ideal Financial Coaching Client – Summarized
In summary, there are three factors to consider when deciding if you are the right candidate for financial coaching and should proceed to a strategy session…
- Is your goal big enough to justify the price you will pay to achieve it?
- Does your life situation fit one of the four examples described so that you can expect coaching to produce more value than it costs?
- Are you coach-able so that your personal style supports success through the coaching process.
If you meet these three criteria then here is the reality you face… if you aren’t working with a financial coach then you are leaving money on the table. You are literally throwing opportunity away because financial coaching has a high likelihood of being a revenue producer instead of an expense.
Financial coaching isn’t right for everyone, but for the correct candidate it is a no-brainer decision because the benefits exceed the costs making it smart business.
For everybody else, I offer mountains of free education here and low cost educational resources here designed to match your specific needs. You are not left without help – it just means one-on-one financial coaching is not the right fit for your needs.
But for the right candidates, I encourage you to click here for your free financial coaching strategy session so you can experience the benefits first-hand while taking the next step toward working with me as your personal financial coach.
There is never any cost or obligation to try a strategy session so you have nothing to lose by checking it out, and it might just be the breakthrough you're looking for.
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