Two heads are often better than one when it comes to succeeding in business, but it’s best to cover all the eventualities
By Thomas Chalmers and Russell Borland
One way to potentially accelerate your success as a coach is to work with a business partner; someone who shares your values but perhaps has a complementary skillset.
Sounds easy in theory but it can be difficult to find the right person. It’s only when you work with someone closely that you really get to know them. You might test the water by collaborating on one or two projects but
longer term it makes sense to have a Partnership Agreement in place should the relationship falter.
Russell and I had each met several other coaches and coach organisations before we were eventually introduced to one another by a mutual contact. He thought we would be a good fit – and we are – because there are fundamental similarities, not least of which is that we are both at the same age and stage in life, each married for three decades with grown-up children who now coach us!
From the beginning, we also had a shared focus on coaching clients in the finance and professional services sectors. Moreover we both wanted to grow the business, albeit not to the detriment of our health; and we were both prepared to travel to meet our clients, which has often involved red-eye flights to London or long-haul flights to the US where we recently launched a leadership programme for one of our clients.
But there are more good reasons for having a business partner. You can celebrate the good times together and support one another through the more challenging times. On occasion you are likely to have opposing views but being able to work through these differences offers the chance to have meaningful conversations that will stretch and ultimately strengthen the partnership. These insights can also be invaluable if you coach teams, as we do.
Working as a team with your partner provides ongoing, practical experience that you can draw on when coaching other teams. We also co-facilitate team coaching sessions so that people have a choice of coach should the team sessions lead to individual coaching.
Having a partner can also be very useful when meeting prospects and pitching for business. In the early days we went to prospect meetings together but that turned out to be a mistake because we inhibited the opportunity for either of us to build a one-to-one relationship with the prospect.
One of us will now meet with a prospect until they express an interest in our services, which is when we most often introduce the other partner.
A partner can bring strength and depth in numbers, both physically and financially. Two heads are better than one, and we have found this especially useful when proposing fees. We are in effect accountable to each other for the fees that we charge, and this creates a powerful dynamic when setting our rates.
We don’t bashfully quote a figure in the same way that we might have done when working solo. The partnership requires a more considered approach, which might take longer but often lands positively with the prospect.
Finally, running our own events has proven to be a very effective strategy in converting prospects to clients. But Russell and I both acknowledge that neither of us would have been inclined to run these events were we still sole practitioners.
- Thomas Chalmers is a co-founder with Russell Borland of Leading Figures. Thomas is a chartered banker whose previous careers span 10 years in commercial banking followed by 14 years as owner/partner of a seafood business. Russell was previously at Hymans Robertson where he held a number of senior leadership positions including firm-wide managing partner.
- www.leadingfigures.com