5 Reasons Why One on One Coaching Will Help you Succeed

Today we are talking about why in person education is essential to your success. And if you don’t think it is, I guarantee you, you will by the end of this blog! So let’s jump into it, shall we? So why is in person education different from other education you ask? To start off I’m just going to give you a background on what I’ve done in order to accelerate my business. (And let me tell you: accelerate my business, IT DID!)

So when I very first started my business in the Madison, Wisconsin area, I reached out to the only photographer that I knew in the area who was extremely successful and talented. And before I even invested in a client management system, I reached out to her and I said, “Can I have a coffee date with you and pay you for an in person mentorship?” Just to ask a few questions and learn how to get started in my photography business. We met for about three hours. Just that meeting alone propelled my business and changed how I created my workflow from the very beginning before I was even really truly offering wedding services to couples.

After I did that, about a year later I invested with another photographer who serves the Midwest regions and did a one day in-person mentorship with her. She was amazing too. This time I came with more specific questions that were catered to my editing and how to pose couples. But not only that, how to scale my business and start thinking about my work in a way of not just photography, but other things that I could possibly offer. Things like; how to start up an email list and how to grow my Instagram engagement and all of that good stuff. So it wasn’t just setting up the foundations but thinking ahead towards bigger goals. The next year, I did an in-person conference with a ton of different speakers, which was absolutely phenomenal, amazing, my brain hurt by the end of it. Learning from so many different people was such a unique way to experience education. It was so great. The benefits of that was I got SO much information in two or three days. And the con of that was that I then had to take all of that home and figure out how to do it by myself. And a lot of it was generalized to photographers in general or the wedding industry in general instead of being catered to my very specific individual needs and issues that I was struggling with.

Which leads me to this year, when I invested in a year long coaching program with someone that I actually met at that conference. Coaching has been a VERY different way to educate myself within my business, because I am accountable to show up every single week making sure that I am getting what I need to get done. But not only that, I’m set up with game plans on how to propel my business further. Part of the program involves group coaching, so a lot of times it can still be a little bit generalized. And I have to make sure that I contact her for very specific individual questions. That is my favorite. Anytime that I have a personal one on one time with someone is what really, I feel like has propelled my business tremendously.

Ok now that you have a bit of my history, let’s get into why you should be investing in in person education and why it’s important and essential to your success!

Number one: In person educational coaching or mentorships helps you clarify your vision.

When you are so into your own business, and you’re so one sided and opinionated on what you have going on, it’s really hard to see from an outsider’s perspective! A coach is going to help you clarify your business and they’re going to also help you revisit your “why”. And if you don’t have a why, they’re going to help you define and clarify it. By asking the hard questions like why your business is even running in the first place and what your mission is, you’re going to be guided into identifying your goals for you and your business.

This can include not only your goals for coaching, but your goals for your one year, three year or even five year plan. That way you know what steps you need to be taking now in order to get from here to there. So if you don’t want to be shooting weddings in five years, you need to figure out a game plan and how you’re going to get there every year. And what you need to do today in order to help yourself five years down the road. You’re also going to hone in on your life’s purpose when you clarify your vision. Because when you know what your purpose is as a human being, you can hone in on what that is for yourself. It’s much easier to create your “why” within your business but also offer services within your business because it’s all centered around your life’s mission and why you were put on this earth.

Number two: A coach is going to help you gain confidence.

This is probably one of the biggest things that has helped me within my career. Every time that I leave a coaching session or a mentorship I feel confident. And I feel like I know exactly what I need to do in order to take the next step within my business. When you are gaining confidence, you feel empowered within your vision, and you feel empowered to offer the services that you do. It’s like you have all these amazing ideas, and you’re not really sure if they’re gonna work and your coach can look at it and be like, if you market it in this way, and you come at it with this business mindset, this is a goldmine, and this is going to be successful. And then they’ll help you create a plan to make that vision successful.

Your business coach is also going to help you gain confidence in raising your prices. From showing you why you should be pricing yourself at the prices that you do, and how to know when it’s time to raise your prices. So you’ll leave there feeling like you know exactly what you’re worth, why you’re valued the way you are. And you can explain to anybody why you are why you are valued at the price that you have set for yourself. Finally, with gaining confidence, you’re also going to gain confidence by staying in your path and following your vision. This is so important because when you have an idea for your business, but you’re constantly comparing yourself to every other person on the internet. When you do this, it can waste time trying to fit one of their molds, when you really just need to follow your own path and stay in your own vision. So you’re going to gain the confidence in order to be like; “This is what I want my business to be. It’s unique, it’s different. It’s what I envisioned for myself and for my clients, and so that’s what I’m going to push out into the world.”

Number three: All of your ideas are going to be organized in a way that makes sense for you.

When you get started you might have all these spitfire ideas on things you want to do with your business; what to shoot, how to have a kick ass client experience, what to do as far as workflow goes. But when you have all these ideas floating around, it can be very difficult to harness those in and make a step by step plan on how to achieve them and do them well. Your business coach is going to help you organize all those ideas so that way you know how to take the next step and what step is going to come after that. And then pretty soon, you’re gonna have a finished project at your hands, and you’re gonna feel really good about your accomplishments.

This is also going to help you lessen the overwhelm that can come when it comes to all of your ideas just floating around in that universe. Have you ever just felt so overwhelmed by all of your ideas that you just shut down, close the laptop, and you don’t want to deal with that anymore?? That’s what a business coach is for, they are going to be able to help you identify what steps to take next. So you’re not feeling so overwhelmed. And then, it’s going to help you gain a lot of perspective around your business. Because when you’re so close and inside of your business, it’s hard to see an outsider’s perspective on what they might be seeing you offering within your services. So a business coach can come in, see what you’re offering and tell you what your outside client is seeing and if it’s effective. So that way you can make little adjustments to meet to run a better and more successful business that clearly speaks to your ideal client.

Number four: You get to brainstorm with an expert in the field.

Ideally your coach will be someone who has a lot more experience and knowledge than you, and their ideas and background is going to help you be able to create a road-map towards success. Which is much easier than if you were to just do it on yourself. So you’re going to be refining your ideas with somebody who has done those ideas or has had a lot of experience with those ideas, or just has business experience in general and can apply a lot of what they’ve learned to your ideas. You’re also gonna be able to expand your creative thinking with more of a business and marketing mindset. A lot of times when people are starting out, they have this really amazing idea but they don’t know how to market it or how to create it. And that’s what a business coach is going to help you do. They will use their expertise and all of the knowledge within them in order to help you turn your idea into a business and marketing goldmine.

For example, with a brainstorm session, you also get to clarify the purpose of every project that you’re doing. So instead of just saying I want to create a posing guide, you get to understand the purpose of the posing guide, and how you’re going to sell that to your clientele. and clarify your message on why it’s important that people need this posing guide.

Number five: Accelerated success

When you hire an in person educational coach or mentorship, your success is going to be reached MUCH faster than if you were trying to research and figure it all out on your own. Having someone to help clarify your goals, create roadmaps, and hold you accountable will set you on the path to achieving a thriving business. I know that we’ve all done this, like when we started a business, you’re just googling and googling and YouTubing and trying to figure out the next steps. The problem with that is a lot of that information is outdated and unreliable. You have no idea the source of where all this information is coming from if any of those people are even successful. You can find a plethora of information but unless you know how to apply that to your specific issues and business practices, it’s not going to help you.

A business coach will be able to help you organize all of the information that they have from their own experience and knowledge and learnings, and be able to apply it specifically to your business and to your individual specific needs. As opposed to wasting hours and hours scouring the internet. They’re also going to take all of that knowledge that they have and apply it directly to your goals. Because they are someone who has been through it, they have thought all the things that you’re probably thinking and have been through very parallel or similar situations that you are now going through. They’ll be able to tell you specifically what they did in order to get out of those situations, or in order to uplevel their business in those situations. The value that you get by talking to someone who’s been there and who has been through it – talking to someone who is specifically catered to your vision is unparalleled to anything else that you can possibly invest in. When you are talking to someone who is much more ahead of the game than you, they are able to bring you up to their level and be able to give you the step ladder to get to where they are much quicker.

And that concludes my 5 reasons why you need to invest in an in person mentorship or educational business coaching! I hope it was helpful, and that you are inspired to find a mentor or coach. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, or want to book a mentorship with me or I can offer some recommendations if I’m booked out! Wishing you lots of success and love!