Video Overview

#18 episode of “Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers Grow – One Lesson at a Time”, with Ed Cooper.

Ed has done the corporate rat race for years as a performance coach and development specialist at a global level. However, he has an enormous passion for local business, and wanted to utilise his skillset whilst running his own business.

One of Ed’s life goals was to paraglide in the Alps. So he did just that.
He was petrified, but the experience was truly amazing, as he says.

“The pace of change has never been as fast as it is today. Yet it will never be this slow again.”, says Ed.

Check out ActionCOACH’s website here!

Ed’s email address: edcooper@actioncoach.co.uk 

P.s. He was previously the Global Learning & Development Manager for one of the most recognised brands in our country – Avon.

STAY TUNED for more incredible lessons, stories and growth tips, straight from the most successful entrepreneurs!

Speakers

Interview Transcript

[00:00:07.750] – Dancho – Okay, so hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of “Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers Grow – One Lesson at a Time. Man, I really have to figure out a shorter title because this is really long. But it is long because it adds a lot of value. And I actually work really hard to find the best B2B experts out there so they can really give you some golden nuggets to help you grow your businesses. And I did, actually I have a special guest today, it’s Ed Cooper. He’s a coach and CEO of ActionCOACH. Okay, I need to check that first. But Ed, welcome to the show.

[00:00:44.360] – Ed – Hey, thanks very much, Dancho. Yeah, I’m the owner of the of the ActionCOACH franchise based in the UK, little town called Hinckley, so that’s my territory.

[00:00:57.470] – Dancho – Nice. Well, the reason why I invited you is because I know that you are a coach, but not just a coach, but a great coach. And I really wanted to use today’s show to talk about coaching, to talk about the importance of coaching. And I mean, before we start, maybe I should give you the opportunity to quickly present yourself, and what you do and how you do. So when we got to the topic a bit deeper, people will have your background.

[00:01:24.350] – Ed – Yeah, sure. Why not? So my background has been in corporate for most of my life, coming out of University, going into corporate organization, having different roles within the organization. I left corporate three and a half years ago now, left as the global head of learning and development for Avon Cosmetics. I loved my job, I loved helping and developing and supporting people grow. We built hypertension programs, we built leadership programs. I got to coach some of the best people in the company for their own personal career development. But there was always something just a little bit missing for me. And I had this niggle in my head that actually what I really want to do is own my own business. And it’s been there for many years. And I’m sitting there thinking, if I want to help people be the best that they can be, I actually want to keep doing the same for myself.

[00:02:25.680] – Dancho – Exactly.

[00:02:26.750] – Ed – My dad was in business, it was a natural move for me to move into business. And I really wanted to help as many business owners as I possibly could, starting with my local community. So that’s why I purchased the territory here in Hinckley for ActionCOACH.

[00:02:43.760] – Dancho – Nice. And Ed, how scary is actually to move from corporate to stable work? I mean, Avon is in Macedonia, it’s a recognized company. And I mean high level job in the corporate world with a stable income. And then you think, you know what, I’m just going to go as an entrepreneur where there is unstable income and nobody knows what will happen. So how scary was actually that process?

[00:03:08.160] – Ed – Yeah, really scary. There’s some twitchy backside moments going on. And I suppose for any person who goes into business, that’s the same. There’s a huge amount of uncertainty. I talk to business owners about the curve of despair. You go out, you think this is going to be the best thing ever. You put energy and effort into it. You might even get a little bit of success to begin with. And then maybe things don’t go quite as well as you expect, and you kind of dip down into these doldrums. And it’s the support mechanism around you, the people, the environment around you that really can help pull you through. So my job as a coach to help my clients is to connect them to as many people as possible. But also for me, I connect as many people as possible. You know what Dancho? You surround yourself with wonderful people like yourself, and life just looks a little bit better and it can help pull you through that.

[00:04:05.510] – Dancho – Yeah. But also the networking effect is that, you know a guy, so when you need something, you look within your circle in order to find the support. And that actually sounds interesting. And I was curious about the ActionCOACH. So it is a big franchise that you actually have the part for your local community?

[00:04:27.230] – Ed – Yeah, absolutely. So ActionCOACH was started by a guy called Brad Sugars, who’s now based in Vegas. He started in Australia, and he started the business coaching business about 28 years ago now. Vision, which was world abundance through business reeducation. So you break that down, world abundance, we should all be abundant, not just in our money and our belongings, but also our mindset and what we give back to the world and business reeducation, came from the fact that actually most people who go into business, they know something about business. They might know about their art, they might know about what a PNL is or their account, how to pay taxes or a series of things. But we don’t get taught this stuff at school, right? So the reeducation came from almost like breaking some of the habits that the business owners have and then going and helping to reeducate. Now, ActionCOACH has grown over the years, we’re in 81 different countries, there’s over 1000 coaches globally, around about 200 or so in the UK alone. And it’s a really fast growing industry, it’s a very competitive industry. And we are seeing more and more that business owners need that support and that they make a distinction now that coaching is not just for sports like coaching is for personal development and business development and growth as well. But we’re really proud with ActionCOACH. We’re the number one business coaching company in the world, and we just have an awesome community. You mentioned that before, right. That community is just amazing. You have a problem in your business that I don’t know as a coach to help solve. I can just ask a thousand coaches. Someone knows, someone knows, they answer to this. So it’s a really great community for that.

[00:06:30.660] – Dancho – Yeah. It really aligns with what you said in the previous question that I’ve asked, that as an entrepreneur, you need to have a supporting mechanism. So you being part of that bigger picture with thousands of coaches. It gives you first belonging, but also you have support. If you don’t know something, you can ask, actually. So that’s actually quite interesting. And as a coach, is there a general business coach direction or there are specializations in different areas like …? I’m not talking about healthy eating coach or wellness coaches, but in the business angle. Is there any subcategories within the coaching or it’s more like I’m a business coach?

[00:07:14.030] – Ed – Yeah, okay. So I’m going to answer this question in two slightly different ways. If you’re thinking about business coaching, right, you definitely need to have a look around and the different business coaches that are out there. My number one thing that I say to people is go and talk to two or three business coaches, choose the right coach for you that you build rapport with, that you connect with because they will get the best out of you. So that’s number one. Number two is actually the system that the business coach follows or uses, and the qualification that they have to become and be a business coach is highly important as well, actually, because you’ve got a world class system. It’s been proven time and time again by the use of thousand coaches across the globe and continuously moving with the time. That’s the second thing I would say. Now, here’s the third thing, and this is the final thing. My background is leadership, right? Behavioral development, performance development, high performing teams, culture. They are the things that I have learned and develop myself over my time in corporate. Some other coaches that come into the organization, they’re accountants or they’re engineers or they’ve been business owners themselves. So they know business through that roof. Maybe they’ve been coached on that journey with an action coach as well. So every coach that comes to the table has their own level of experience. And then there’s the ActionCOACH system and there’s a gap. But every coach has a gap, it’s the coach’s job to fill that gap. So if you think about what are your needs as a business owner and you may not know, right? But ask that question, what am I need as a business owner? Do I need to know more about my numbers? Do I need to know and get better about being a leader in a team? Do I need to focus on my time management better? Do I need to get more leads and profit in my business? There’ll always be an underlying issue that the business owner has to solve. What I would say is that again, certainly from ActionCOACH perspective, this is just my view, right. That every action coach is just an amazing coach. They will always get the best out of their clients. And my job, if I don’t know something, as I said before, is go find it. I can reach out to so many coaches and just find a solution if I don’t know what it is.

[00:10:02.370] – Dancho – Nice. I’m thinking out loud, I’m putting myself as a business owner. And when you ask me, what do I need, that could be a really long list.

[00:10:13.110] – Ed – Yeah.

[00:10:16.110] – Dancho – Of course. Maybe there you had a good point, based on what I need, I actually talked to several coaches in order to see which one is actually the best fit for me. Maybe my problem is more financials, or maybe it’s more mindset. Maybe it’s more towards leadership, how to organize the company. And based on that, I should start looking for different coaches with different background but also with different systems that they carry on, right?

[00:10:40.760] – Ed – Right, absolutely, yeah.

[00:10:42.960] – Dancho – I’m curious, are a lot of business owners aware that they need a coach? Because Macedonia is a bit more skeptical, it’s like, what? I’m going to pay money for advice? I know everything, I’m a boss. How did you think that I built this company? From scratch! And I see that because I’m also a management consultant. And when we talk with potential clients, they really say that. Do you see this factory? I build it with my bare hands. What are you going to give me advices for?

[00:11:13.550] – Ed – Yeah, absolutely, perfect. So there’s two things here. One is mindset, right? So mindset of… Dancho, do you have kids?

[00:11:22.830] – Dancho – Yeah. One, male, four years.

[00:11:25.770] – Ed – How old? Four?

[00:11:27.630] – Dancho – Four, yeah.

[00:11:28.820] – Ed – Right, perfect. Four year old. They know everything. So, daddy, don’t tell me that, I know how to do that. But you want to pour the milk into the glass this way so it doesn’t spill. I know, daddy, I know… That mindset of I know, by the way, my daughter, who at four years old, said to me, daddy, I know everything, you don’t need to tell me. It’s interesting because I don’t know everything. And she looks at me dead straight in the eye and she said, well, you should be four years old, daddy, then you’ll know everything, right? So that’s her answer. That mindset of I know, it’s is incredibly damaging. It’s very expensive phrase, right?

[00:12:11.750] – Dancho – Yeah.

[00:12:13.030] – Ed – Why closing your mind to opening and learning new things? Now, I can’t make someone move their mindset from I know to I want to know I’m hungry or isn’t that interesting just to try and soak up information. But if you’re in that place as a business owner, let’s be really honest. You don’t know everything, right? Where you have got to right now in your business is amazing. You’ve done a fantastic job. If any of you have ever heard of the book by Marshall Goldsmith, What got you here, won’t get you there, or you’ve heard of it and you’ve read that book, but actually you want to carry on the level you’re going at, then that’s fine. But if you want to take a springboard, you’re going to need to do something different. And that’s something different a coach can get out of you. And remember, a coach is not there to give you advice. We’re not there to go and fix the problem. We’re there to help you understand so that you can fix the problem for yourself. We’re about giving you the space to explore solutions to the problem you hold and then hold you to account, to take action.

[00:13:19.510] – Dancho – I’m smiling a bit because it’s like psychiatrist, you lay on the bed and you’re complaining. How does that make you feel? And with consultant, it’s completely the other way around. A client comes in with a problem, look, here is the framework. Do step one, step two, step three, and you’re going to solve your problem. Well, with the coaching, it’s really different approach. It’s helping the person grow themselves rather than just give them the key to the root. And I find it really fascinating because I think it’s harder to work with the person in order for them to find the answer, rather than I have the expertise to do this and this.

[00:13:57.020] – Ed – Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, in business coaching in particular, I come from a pure coaching background. So if I had a business executive talking to me about their own personal performance, sure, I know some models and I know information that will help them. But actually, from a pure coaching background, you don’t want to necessarily muddy the water, you want to coach them. From a business coaching perspective, genuinely, some business owners just won’t know the answer. So you can coach them to the point of incompetence, as I say. And then you say, well, okay, well, read this, go and read this book, go and watch this video…

[00:14:42.300] – Dancho – Give directions.

[00:14:43.930] – Ed – And then come back and let’s have another conversation. And sometimes it is appropriate to say, okay, look, I need to tell you, you’ve got to do these three things. But in coaching point of view is the accountability. One of my clients, one of the things that we are contracted on as a coaching client is that client makes 25 phone calls to leads every single week. And when that client turns up and hasn’t done it, we’ve got an agreement on how that conversation goes. Not to my benefit, right?

[00:15:21.810] – Dancho – Yeah.

[00:15:23.330] – Ed – Because we know by doing the figures that when he does 25 calls, that on average, we know the number of…

[00:15:30.940] – Dancho – The kind of results that he’s going to achieve.

[00:15:32.980] – Ed – The results he gets, yeah. So if he comes back and says he’s done ten, how serious are you about growing your business?

[00:15:41.630] – Dancho – Nice. Actually, I haven’t thought it from that angle that with the coach, you actually got accountability, because when you’re paying for the advice, but it’s not just the advice. Someone will follow up on what you agreed that you’re going to do, because sometimes with the consultants, we follow up as well. But it’s more do this, this and this, and you’re going to get the results. And we follow up, but not on that level of a commitment and on an accountability. That’s actually quite interesting, Ed.

[00:16:11.690] – Ed – I’d also say an add to this, Dancho, to go back to your original questions, like how do people realize they need a coach? Generally speaking, there have been a few times where people reach out, go, I’m looking for a coach, right? Most people don’t, most people don’t want a coach, they don’t need a coach. They’ve never thought about having a coach. But what they have is a problem. They’re not growing fast enough or they don’t know how to get to the next level or their team’s not effective enough or their processes aren’t effective enough or they’re working 80 to 90 hours a week, right. That becomes the problem. Now we can help with all of that. Interestingly, that you said about accountability, most business owners have massive amounts of ownership because otherwise they wouldn’t have started their business, right?

[00:17:04.160] – Dancho – Yeah.

[00:17:04.950] – Ed – Huge amounts of energy. But actually, that point of who is going to hold you to account is a huge question. Who do you share the good times with? Probably your family and the people who work for you. But who do you share the bad times with? You don’t want to go to your team and say, hey, guess what? Cash flow is really bad. We don’t know whether we’re going to get payroll, right? You can’t share that with the team. You don’t want to share it with your partner. And even any some of the problems that you might have, even if you’ve got a very supportive partner, they don’t want to hear that all the time, right. The kids certainly don’t want to hear it, and you don’t want to lay it out to them either. So it’s a really good opportunity to have someone in your camp that you can be really…

[00:17:56.990] – Dancho – Honest. Just saying thing are really bad.

[00:17:59.270] – Ed – Be candid and honest, yeah, and get it out. Let’s move it forward.

[00:18:04.310] – Dancho – I see, okay. That was really profound, actually. And I’m looking at the watch in parallel. So I wanted to ask you one question, which I usually ask everybody in the show.

[00:18:15.990] – Ed – Sure.

[00:18:16.420] – Dancho – And that is like, what’s the one thing, the one golden nugget that you want to be remembered for? For example, your grandkids, when they talk about grandpa Ed, what do you want to be remembered for as a legacy?

[00:18:33.530] – Ed – When I set out to do and set this business up, my number one reason, my number one purpose was to help people be the best they can be and then some, to take them from where they are to where they go to now for that, it’s about changing people’s lives positively. They have more time with their family. They have more wealth in their life. They have a business that they can sell at the end of it and get that back. That truly changes people’s lives for the positive. And I really want my grandkids to turn around of testimonials or photographs of me with business owners that have really hit the success level that they want to succeed at and say my granddad did that. That would be so cool.

[00:19:21.290] – Dancho – Yeah, that’s actually very noble because it’s like your kids to be proud of the results that you’ve achieved, even as simple as he was a great business coach, because he had so many clients that got so many results.

[00:19:34.990] – Ed – Yes.

[00:19:40.050] – Dancho – Nice. With our show, we usually ask people where people can find you? If someone is interested in reaching out and ask for some specific questions or maybe they’re even interested in discussing coaching opportunities, how people can actually find you?

[00:19:56.330] – Ed – So I’m on ActionCOACH Hinckley on Facebook. My name is Ed Cooper and I’m on LinkedIn, also on Instagram as well as ActionCOACH Hinckley. My website address is hinkley.actioncoach.co.uk. Anyone can reach out to me there, even if they just want to have a quick business health check or something. Spend half an hour with me. I give every single person who wants it. They’ll get an hour with me if they want it.

[00:20:36.450] – Dancho – And in 1 hour you can actually do like a doctor, diagnostic breathing, breathe out, open your mouth. Let me see, watch my finger. Okay, I think I know what’s the problem.

[00:20:48.690] – Ed – Yeah, we’ll pop the hood and have a good look at the business and see what’s going on. Yeah, definitely.

[00:20:54.270] – Dancho – Nice. Well, for all the listeners, if you really want to actually see what you can do better, I wanted to say what’s wrong with you, but it sounds really bad. What can be better? Reach out to Ed and try to do that health check. And maybe you’ll be surprised to see something that you simply were not aware because as Ed said, it’s a mindset. You’re doing something every day and you cannot just take half an hour to take a step back and try to see the whole picture. And of course, when the fresh perspective is with a background in coaching, it could give you a completely fresh idea or fresh perspective. What I usually do is just at the end of the show is that I’m looking at my notes because I’m the student here. So I’m also taking notes as we discussed. So actually, instead of one, I actually have five or six golden nuggets that I was able to take away with me from this conversation. And I wanted to summarize so if someone joined it later or maybe they didn’t catch it, for me, this was actually the highlights of the episode. First, you’ve mentioned the curve of despair. I haven’t heard it. And it sounds really nice because it is a curve, as you go… excitement, but then you have really nothing is happening, I don’t have money, I don’t have clients or how I’m going to cover the cost. And what is important in that golden nugget is not whether people will enter the curve of despair, but how support mechanism will they have in order to get out of it. That was a really golden nugget that we really need to surround ourselves with people with similar problems. So when you have something, you can talk with them or when you have questions, you can ask. So just by joining networks or associations, you can start belonging somewhere that could help you in the curve of despair. So that was golden nugget one. Golden nugget two, was really hard to find a business coach because you put it like three steps, simple. First one is talk to three or four coaches because at the end of the day, you don’t know what you’re looking for and try to get a feeling because every coach has a different style, not just the background but different experience and background. The second check out their systems. I call those frameworks, but you put it as a check out what kind of systems they’re using, whether you like those type of systems or maybe that is not going to work for you. And the third golden nugget was really a simple question that I need to print it and ask myself, what do I need as a business owner? It’s a simple question, but when I started thinking it sounds profound a bit because, well, from the chaos, if you just take a step back and say what do I actually really need as a business owner? You could point it out to one, two or three specific things. So then you can start talking to the coaches and trying to see their systems, which is a really perfect process on how you can find a coach. The fourth golden nugget was the mindset of I know, for the kids. I mean, I face with that kind of mindset all the time where I know everything, I know everything. And we really need to be careful not to fall into that trap as well. The fifth golden nugget I have here is the accountability, because even just if you have a person that I’ve seen somewhere peer accountability, but with a coach, just someone that could keep you accountable once a week or bi-weekly, to say, tell me what you did in these two weeks in that particular topic that you really needed help. I know that many things will come up and I mean, it’s life, it’s business. Unpredictable events come in. But still within that time frame, what did you do in this particular pain point in order to make it better? So that’s really worth it. And the last point, the sixth golden nugget I wrote here was that, you had a good point, that when you’re talking with coach, well, when company goes great, you can brag about with everybody, with your wife, with your employees, with everything, we earned this amount, or we wre growing at this rate. But when things go south and they do, I mean, it’s a roller coaster. There’s not really a lot of people that you can talk with. Luckily, my business is with my wife, so she takes care of all the financials. she’s telling me when we’re going down. But at the end of the day, to be able to just sit with a coach and honestly think, you know what, I’m scared, I don’t know how I’m going to put the salaries on next week and something that you can talk about it rather than keeping it within. So six nuggets I got it from this conversation.

[00:25:23.130] – Ed – Well done, Dancho.

[00:25:24.510] – Dancho – Well, I was a student here, so I was taking notes as you were talking, and I really hope that all the other listeners were able to take at least few golden nuggets, and really consider, whether do they need a coach and if so, in which area of their business a coach can help. Because without that question, they cannot just go out there and start talking with three different coaches. That was a long talk.

[00:25:48.310] – Ed – And you know what? Just on that last point, even, like, as I said, sometimes people don’t ever think that they need a coach. Just have a conversation because you’ll be surprised. Okay, so let me tell you this story, just very short before…

[00:26:03.990] – Dancho – Sure.

[00:26:04.990] – Ed – Yesterday I was running a seminar, business growth seminar. I invite people who’ve never experienced coaching and my clients onto that as well. Someone who turned up to that on LinkedIn, Ed, thank you ever so much for the session. The business growth session, it has become apparent that I have more holes in my business than swiss cheese. But thankfully, due to the event, I know where those holes are and I now have a plan to fill them. Like you just don’t know what you don’t know sometimes.

[00:26:43.330] – Dancho – Yeah. I think it was Socrates, that said, I know that I don’t know. There was something like that.

[00:26:48.170] – Ed – Yeah.

[00:26:49.210] – Dancho – But Ed, I really wanted to thank you for joining us and sharing your golden nuggets with our community. And for everybody out there, reach out to Ed and try to see how Ed can help ou.

[00:27:02.110] – Ed – Perfect. Thank You, Dancho. I really appreciate the opportunity getting me involved, and hopefully some of these golden nuggets that you’ve taken away will help your audience, too.

[00:27:12.410] – Dancho – Yeah, and just under the video, I’ll actually leave the links that you’ve mentioned, so people can easily reach out. That’s all for today and we touch base on the next episode. Bye-bye.

[00:27:22.670] – Ed – Bye-bye.