Do You Need a Business Coach? with Pete Dupuis

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I’m speaking with Pete Dupuis and we are diving in to talk about, do you really need a business coach? And if you have one, how do you squeeze the most possible value out of working with that business coach or that business coaching group? So if you thought about working with a business coaching group or a business coach, or you’re in one right now, this is a great episode for you.

So keep on listening, my friend. Let’s get started.

Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.

Let’s begin.[00:01:00]

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. I’m back with my man, Pete. How are you today, my friend? I’m doing really well. How are you today, Michael? Yeah, good. We’re recording this just coming off of a Easter weekend. We both had some fun time with friends and families.

I’m feeling fresh and ready to jump into April. So let’s fucking do this. I’ll tell you what, Michael, we. I went to my first high school baseball game yesterday and it was beautiful. I wore a sweatshirt, some casual gym pants. I wasn’t feeling like winter was here. And now we are 48 hours away from a forecast that says We could have a whole bunch of rain or we could have 12 to 18 inches of snow.

And I quite frankly, I’m over it. And so, um, as much as I’m feeling good riding the spring wave, there’s a chance I need to pull the tarp off the old snowblower in the next two days. It’s that time of year living in the Northeast of this fine [00:02:00] country, uh, that. You’re just on a fucking roller coaster ride.

There’s just no way to know. Literally my tulips sprouted a few weeks ago and then got snowed on. Like just, just, it is what it is. But yeah, I’m not, I’m going to just keep trying to will spring into the air with my voice and my energy and just, Bring on the sunshine. I’m ready. Um, before we dive into today’s topic, I just want to give a quick shout out to our friends at Kilo.

So we know for all you gym owners out there, it’s really hard to find a great software out there that integrates with your website. And our friends at Kilo are really the best in the biz at helping design for you a fantastic website that is built to convert leads and integrate that website into some fantastic, Automations to help you follow up with those leads and convert them to help grow your gym.

So if you’ve not found a website and software company that really works for you yet, go to use kilo. com. Set yourself up for an appointment with them. Let them know that we sent you. And they, I think will be a great fit for many of you. A lot of our unicorns and the members use them. We use them [00:03:00] at business for unicorns.

We use them at Mark Fisher fitness, and I’m not just a talking head here. We actually are a user. And so that’s why I’m really comfortable promoting their service. They’re doing a great job. Go check them out. Use kilo. com. Which brings us to today’s topic. Today’s topic is really one that was generated by a conversation Pete, you were having with some Unicorn Society members recently.

And I think it’s a great topic for all of our listeners, which is how do you make the best use of a business coach or business coaching group like Unicorn Society? As a gym owner, how do you squeeze all the value you can from working with Unicorn Society? a mentor, a coach, an expert, a group like ours.

And I love this topic. So let’s dive in. Pete, talk to me a little bit about how this topic come up for you. So how to come up a mutual friend and client of ours named Harry asked me, basically he had a realization that he had graduated out of one stage in gym ownership and into the next. And I’d say more specifically, he went from needing [00:04:00] to figure out his system to fully systemizing his operation, experiencing a bunch of personal records, and then realizing that the questions that he used to ask of his business coaches were no longer relevant.

And he had, he, to his credit asked me, why am I still here? What should I be thinking differently about if I’m going to stick around here? And we had a really good conversation about how as business evolved, so should the questions we are asking It got you and I to talking about how the game of extracting value from consulting or mentorship group or anything, whatever industry you’re in is a two way game.

And a lot of users come in looking to be lectured at, but they do get to a point where they need to engage with the process a little bit more and be open to trying new things. I think you’re the one who said that try new things, explore new ways of extracting information from your peers. And that’s what got us here to this topic, this [00:05:00] concept.

Yeah, for sure. And I love it so much because I think groups like Unicorn Society have been around for a little while, but are also still new in the grand scheme of business models. And a lot of folks really see that there’s value in working with a coach, consultant, mentor. These are different functions, but for the purpose of today’s conversation, I’m just going to lump us all into one, one bucket of helping professionals.

People are going to help you grow your business in some way, shape or form. And honestly, when it comes to what we do, I’ve always thought of it in like really two streams. Or two buckets that we provide some structured kind of sequential learning, almost like a school or college or course, but we also provide what in coaching we often called just in time learning, which means we meet you where you’re at, no matter where you are in the journey and help you figure out what you need right now to get to the next rung on the ladder.

The next step on the stairs. And I think the conversation you’ve had with Harry and we’ve had with many Unicorn Study members is that for some of them who are really great students, they get through [00:06:00] that structured, sequential learning pretty quickly. It’s not rocket science to put systems in your gym that, uh, get you to functional, right?

There’s only so many of them, right? It’s like good marketing and sales systems, good management systems, client experience systems, right? I can list them here. There’s not infinite number of systems you need to learn about and build in your gym. And we have courses and playbooks that give people step by step instructions for doing that.

That’s, I think, incredibly valuable. In fact We had a unicorns that I remember recently who told us that he thinks that that is like by far one of the most important and valuable things. He said that thing itself is worth thousands and thousands of dollars just to have access to like our library of like courses and instructions, which.

I happen to agree with, and that’s one kind of value, right? Is that kind of like school based sequential learning where there’s anyway. And then the second thing, like I said, is we often call just in time learning. And once you’re over, once you’re done school, once you have. Good working drafts of all your systems.[00:07:00]

What you need next is real thought partnership. Someone who’s going to help you with your leadership skills, help you create a vision for your personal, your personal wealth, help you create a vision for a work life balance long term, create a vision for scaling your business beyond its current model.

And that’s something those topics, those kinds of things that I think coaching does best are hard to put into playbooks and courses. Yeah, but they do create plenty of podcast ideas. Yeah, they create so many podcast ideas because they’re squishy, right? Like there, there’s not always a right and wrong answer.

There’s not always a beaten path. And so I think, I think that where you headed in that conversation with Harry was exactly what I would have done if I was on that call to say, okay, let me, If you’re, if you want to get a different kind of value, if you had a new level in your business, we need to have different kinds of conversations.

So let’s talk about what’s next, where you see yourself going. Let’s talk about the new skills that you need to develop now, the new tools you might need now that you didn’t need a few years [00:08:00] ago. And so I just want to say bravo. I’m so glad you all had that conversation. We had this conversation. numbers, trying to figure out how to use us and take the most, the best advantage from working with us.

Yeah. That’s my hot take for how I think about it. How about you, Pete? What would you add to that? Ooh, I think we could be better at selling our strengths. There are certain off book strengths that we don’t promote as heavily as we could. Yeah. And I don’t think that there’s a mandate from a coaching perspective that every single one of these groups has this just in time coaching model.

I, I typically call it like triage coaching because what we do is we help, I’d say workshop problems in real time in these one on one coaching calls. But a lot will, a lot of what we do is just say, Hey, there’s already been a solve for that. I’m going to put a link onto your call notes for the SOP that’s already been written or the lecture that has already been recorded.

I know exactly how to get you there faster. So [00:09:00] in some ways we just facilitate quicker access to meaningful information in these real time coaching sessions. But when I say that I don’t know if we sell what we’re best at with someone like Harry who has matured in his operational skills, the value that he extracts from his relationship with us, I believe down the road is going to be more about the relationships that he builds inside of the community because one of my pieces, one of my most important next actions, my Mina for him coming out of this call was be it Michael or Ben or wheels, whoever he talks to next, he needs to ask them, who are the operators in the community that are playing at the level that I have just entered this new game where I’m fully systemized.

I don’t need you to tell me how to clean up my books. Or navigate our dashboard more thoroughly. I got that part down now. We need to start having more interesting conversations and thinking bigger. Who are the people who are doing that already? Because you don’t [00:10:00] realize that as the group expands, so do the variety of operators and the levels that they play at.

And he just doesn’t know who he should be talking to. And you guys have your finger on the pulse for that. So his action item was. Get a list of names of people that you should be reaching out to. You can reach out cold. I make email introductions to fellow members all the time. If there are interesting topics that they’re matching on.

But the point was you need to start extracting value that we aren’t advertising. And that is specifically this wealth of knowledge, this unbelievable bucket of experience that cumulatively more than a hundred gym owners have. And we need to figure out how to put you in front of the most interesting people because we’re done giving you worksheets.

Yeah. I think that’s a great point. P and I, this really highlights the difference between working one on one with a solo coach or consultant or mentor and working in a group or community format, right? Cause we, and Unicorn Society, for those of you listening that are not in the group, we do a lot of things solo one on one like coaching, but also do a lot of things as a [00:11:00] community.

And so in our group, you get a little bit of both. You get the solo one on one stuff when you want one on one attention, but you also get, as Pete mentioned here, access to a whole wealth of knowledge and expertise from all the other members. We’re part of this community. So I think you’re right. That’s a great moment for someone like Harry to say, okay, I’ve already squeezed a lot of juice out of this coaching team and a lot of their preset content, let me now go try and build some relationships with folks who are operating at my same level or higher and see what else I should be thinking, what else I should be learning.

And I love that so much. I want to. We try to fan those flames at our retreats. We try to fan those flames of community connection in our, we have these regular group calls and in our Facebook group, there’s not, there nothing beats like actually scheduling a call with a fellow unicorn society member or someone else that’s in your community of learning professionals, right?

I think just building those one on one relationships goes a long way to like helping people keep growing. [00:12:00] So I love that so much. Yeah, we need to, and by we, sometimes the users need to, or People like you and I need to stop assuming that it’s burdensome asking for help within the community because I ended up connecting Harry with another individual in the group on a different topic via email after the call.

And I said, Hey, could you provide some advice on X, Y, Z? And he opened his response two minutes later with I’d be honored. And there was no messaging there that this is inconvenient for him. Um, to pivot away from that. I have one closing thought that I think applies here. And that is that be it in, in a scenario where you’re looking for work, or you’re considering a new gym, or you were considering a new community that you’re going to join, like unicorn society.

I don’t care what it is. You need to request the opportunity to speak to users. And so it might be entry level coach that you might be joining a team alongside and say, Hey, I’d really like the opportunity to speak with them. One, it’s terribly concerning if the [00:13:00] answer is, uh, we’d rather not, if they’re trying to keep you at arm’s length and stop you from getting some sort of feedback, assuming you do make that connection once you’re there.

So maybe you’re Harry or someone else, you should ask them, what is the one thing that you get from this user experience? that you didn’t expect to get coming in. And that’s usually something that people like you, me, Fisher, Ben, we’re not doing a good enough job advertising or positioning as one of the perks of the experience.

And those answers often only exist on the team you’re joining in the group that you’re going to be learning alongside. And I’d be thrilled if a potential unicorn society society user came to me and said, Hey, can I speak to one or two of the members of your community? I really would like to know what they have to say.

That doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. And I’d love to just roll the wheel of fortune and see which unicorn society user it is that comes up and just see what direction it goes from there, because it’s a really important step of the [00:14:00] process that is rarely taken. Yeah, I agree so much, Pete. I think the thing I’ll end with, what I think is very much a similar sentiment, but maybe just a different tactic or maybe a different way of thinking about it is that when you’re hiring a coach, especially someone, a group like us, like unicorn society, you’re really engaging in like a partnership.

Right. We’re not like hiring a service provider, right? We’re not like hiring internet company or even like a external marketing agency. Like we are really trying to be an extension of your team. We’re really partners in helping you grow the business. We want to be thought partners for you as leaders. Uh, We want to, uh, be in the trenches with you, helping you make plans and your planning process, or even there to help you when you’re resolving conflict amongst your team and amongst your clients.

So we really think of ourselves as being like an extension of your team. And when you think about the kind of vetting and relationship you want to have with someone who is a business person. Partner with you. I think it’s a different kind of mindset than just like a hiring a graphic designer [00:15:00] with all due respect to the graphic designers of the world.

Right. But you’re hiring them for a very specific kind of service and it’s very transactional. But with us, I’m hoping that you can really open your doors to us, open your books to us, open your hearts and minds to us, that your team can also do the same and that we become this kind of extension of your capacity.

And so I think with that in mind, Your tip of talk to other people who are members and see how they use us. It becomes really important, but I think going to our, just our bigger theme of this conversation is how do you best use a kind of a coach, business coach or consultant is to hire someone who you really want to be partners with.

In growing your business, who you think really adds value, different ways of thinking, different ways of doing things, different experience. Not only should us as a team have businesses that are five or 10 steps ahead of yours in some cases, but we also have to have ways of working that are really exciting for you to learn about.

That’s what you really want in business partners is that business partner is different enough from me that we can [00:16:00] continue learning from each other for a long time. I think that’s a hallmark of both of our partnerships is that we’re very different from our business partners. And we hope that Unicorn Insider members are coming to us and finding us because they think that we can partner together.

To help grow their business long term. Let’s just wrap it up. I think it’s a great conversation. Dear listeners, if you’re a current member of Unicorn Society, hopefully you got some value out of how to squeeze more value out of working with us. And if you’re not a member yet, I hope you realize that we can add a lot of value to growing your business.

And if you someday are going to work with a coach, hopefully this gives you a roadmap for how to find the best possible fit. All right, Pete, I think this is a great place to wrap it up. I think this has been hopefully a useful podcast for those of you out there who are considering someday working with a business coach or consultant.

Certainly, if you’ve thought about working with us, hopefully this clarifies how we think about working together. And for those of you, Unicorn Signing members who are listeners, I know that many of you do. I hope this also helps you find value in continuing to work with us long term. [00:17:00] Anything you would add, Pete?

Well, if anyone wants help in assistance and facilitating those conversations with other people within our community. Yeah I love making those email introductions and it’s too bad if we had a retreat every single month I’d be I’d say just wait we’re gonna do this all the time. But this This setup we have is such that we can only cross paths with each other to sometimes three times a year.

So let me be the email introduction specialists in the group. I love that piece of the puzzle. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Please reach out to us. Dear listeners. That’s Michael at business unicorns. com. Peter business unicorns. com. Let us know if we, who we can introduce you to. We’re here to help. And don’t forget kilo at use kilo.

com. If you’re looking for a website and software that integrates well to help you grow your gym, that’s a great place to go start my friends. Thanks Pete. See you on the next one.