Julie Wagstaff bought the ActionCOACH franchise back in 2005; she struggled in the first six months and almost went out of business. Fortunately, when you join ActionCOACH, you join a team of people who believe in helping other people achieve more success than you could possibly achieve on your own…
…Julie picked up the phone to an already successful coach. Julie’s net income went from zero to over £12k per month in just four months. A year on and her desire to help other coaches succeed burnt bright enough to invest everything she had and could raise in partnering with Ian Christelow to buy the rights to recruit and support ActionCOACH business coaches in London and then the remaining UK territories. Here she reveals the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions from people interested in the franchise:
DO YOU NEED PREVIOUS BUSINESS EXPERIENCE TO OWN AN ACTIONCOACH FRANCHISE?
No you don’t. We awarded the franchise to Steve Gaskell, whose entire previous career had been in the Army. He ticked all of the attitudinal qualities to qualify and our training and support programme takes care of the necessary skills.
CAN I SPEAK TO EXISTING FRANCHISE PARTNERS ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE BEFORE I CONSIDER BUYING THE FRANCHISE?
Of course. As soon as we know that you’re serious about becoming an Action Business Coach, we email you all of the contact details of our Franchise Partners. We also give you a couple of struggling performers to talk to, along with a couple of average performers and a couple of stars to ensure that you can get a balanced view of the opportunity and what it requires to be successful.
HOW DO I FIND MY CLIENTS?
Our exclusive sales and marketing centre can provide you with about one third of your clients while you’re establishing yourself and building a profitable base of clients. We have a host of other proven marketing strategies, which you can either use yourself or you can bring on your own part-time marketer to do this for you. Business coaching isn’t for everyone, so you do need to invest time or money in communicating with enough business owners to find the ones who do want to grow their businesses and are open minded enough to engage with you and Action COACH to help them achieve their goals.
WHY SHOULDN’T I DO THIS BY MYSELF?
Many do and it’s an option. With Action, you get:
- The credibility of being part of The World’s Number 1 Business Coaching Team, i.e. when they hire you, they get access to the business brains of hundreds of Action Business Coaches around the world and over 3,500 proven strategies and tactics.
- To be part of a team of like-minded individuals. Put simply, we think it’s more fun learning together, celebrating our wins together and hanging out together.
- You’re associated with quality and success. “Great camaraderie, support and ideas are readily available,” to quote Claire Derry, one of our Franchise Partners.
- Earnings potential. Average earnings of an ActionCOACH are quadruple those of an average ICF accredited coach.
- You don’t need to invest your precious and non-billable time creating and trialling all of the tools that you need to be a successful business coach.
- Award winning support from your peers, from the UK support team and from the global support team. You need never have a bad day, it can just be the odd bad few minutes that gets sorted on a phone conversation.
- The peace of mind for your clients of a guaranteed Return on Investment for them inside six months of working with you on an ActionCOACH mentoring programme.
- Peace of mind through the guarantee that the business will deliver you a great monthly income as long as you put in the proven marketing investment and use the tried and tested UK sales process.
I could go on, but you probably get the picture. Put simply, if you meet our criteria to become an Action Business Coach, you can invest the minimum personal contribution of £10k that you need, you’re willing to invest a year or two building your ActionCOACH client base and learning the best ways to get results, then I haven’t seen a better option.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO SUCCEED?
An open mind, an appetite for learning, an investment mindset and the drive and focus to work hard and smart, but that’s true of most businesses, right? With ActionCOACH, you do need to be the kind of person who gets a genuine kick out of helping people succeed, being a team player is a must and a genuine interest in the business of business definitely helps.
HOW MANY HOURS WILL I HAVE TO WORK?
That depends how much you want to earn and whether you bring on someone to do marketing/ selling/admin for you. We’ve had someone do this in as little as two days a week and the Action vehicle delivered what they wanted from it personally.
WHAT HAVE THE RESULTS BEEN LIKE SO FAR?
Our franchise continues to deliver mind blowing results. Two of our Franchise Partners banked over one third of a million pounds in the last four months in personal client income. Equally, we have those that come in and struggle. From what I’ve seen, there’s only two reasons for that - either they’re too lazy to learn the best ways of getting results or they’re unwilling to invest enough time or money or both in marketing to grow their business. If that’s likely to be you, please start looking for a different opportunity.
In the middle of those extremes, we have Franchise Partners like Lucas Vigilante, who says: “I had a tough two years building this business and learning my new profession, but now I’m eclipsing my corporate earnings, on my own terms, in a two-and-a-half-day week, so I get all the time I want with my wife and kids. I admire the calibre of people I get to work with and learn from and I’ve got the satisfaction of knowing that my clients are the biggest winners - they’ve already scooped 42 business and professional awards.”
