With a clear surge of interest over the last 12 – 18 months or so by corporate executive ‘types’ to become their own boss and utilising their skills and experience, we asked one of the leading ‘white-collar’ franchisors in the market about this in the context of their own offer to the market.

Paul Henshall, CEO Aust /NZ of ActionCOACH explains,“The first thing I ask people is ‘Why do you want to be a business coach?’. Many people I speak to have first considered being a business coach after helping their family and friends in some way in their business.”

“We are definitely interested in people who value money and success, but just as important is people who have a passion to work with people and help other businesses – this is the way for all to be successful.”

The ActionCOACH model

Paul puts out that, “The ActionCOACH model is very much about an education in business. 

We are not unique in this as many other institutions do it (education), but we provide it one to one, and often on-site – which is best practice and bespoke for each client. In our model, it is all about the owner and their business, where with many educational institutions you are learning about ‘business’ broadly.”

Knowing what a business should do is one thing, but knowing what a certain business should do specifically for it is the key behind the ActionCOACH education according to Paul.

Accountability

“Then the other part of what we do is accountability for the business owner. Having somebody who holds you accountable for doing what you said and need to do in your business plays a big part of what we do. Working for yourself is a double edged sword – it means you can do what you like, but the negative of that is that you do what you like! We get away with poor health habits, and get away with it until we have a health incident for example, and this is the same in business.” This stands true where as an employee you are accountable - you do your job you get paid, and you are accountable. 

As a business owner who are you accountable too? This is the question that has in large part driven the growth of business and any coaching across the board. Paul elaborates, “A lot of people probably think business coaching is all about strategy in a particular aspect of the business, and that is true. But it is actually all about influencing behaviours that are required to implement the strategy, and that is behavioural more so than other things. The business coach is really coaching behaviours to achieve implementation.”We coach to overcome avoidance behaviours. Our job is to push comfort zones as much as anything, to create the change needed in business owners and businesses.”

“At ActionCOACH, our people come from all sorts of backgrounds. You use our systems and methodologies built up over decades, and you build a business with these and add your own unique attributes. This is at the heart of the franchising business model – it lowers your risk of setting up an entire business on your own. We want you to leverage off all that we have created.”