How To Find The Right Business Coach

About this video

Liam Martin interviews his coach Dan Martell about why entrepreneurs need a coach and how to spot a good one. Dan says he has always had a coach, hiring an E-Myth coach at 23 for 16 months after his first two software companies failed, and credits that work on vision, mission, financials and marketing for his later success. He compares coaching to elite sport: a top performer showing up without a coach would be odd. A good coach, he argues, talks about clients’ results more than their own, offers real, contactable testimonials and case studies rather than vague claims, and gives away everything they know for free instead of holding back a secret. He warns that published results can be a short-lived blip, so prospects should talk to clients about long-term outcomes and whether a coach has a full quiver or one trick. His ideal SaaS dream team is three founders - technical, marketing/sales and operational - targeting an unsexy mid-market with freemium or a free trial. Teams that fail tend to over-promise, suffer high churn, outsource engineering, or sell a vitamin rather than a painkiller without real domain experience. He also wants transparency about where a coach’s revenue actually comes from.

Key takeaways

• Judge a coach by real, verifiable client results and testimonials you can check, not by the coach’s own self-promotion.
• Prefer coaches who give away their strategies freely; pay for a personalised experience, not for a withheld secret.
• Talk to past clients to confirm results were sustainable long-term, not a one-off blip from a single tactic.
• Dan’s ideal SaaS founding team pairs technical, marketing/sales and operational leads, often in an unsexy market with time to innovate.
• Avoid building a product you cannot deliver on: high churn, outsourced engineering and vitamin-not-painkiller offers stall SaaS growth.

Episode details: published March 23, 2020 · 24:09 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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