WHAT COACHING ACTUALLY REQUIRES FROM YOU

Time, Discomfort, and What Makes It Worth It

I've had this conversation numerous times.

An owner across the table from me. Sometimes second-generation, sometimes a founder, sometimes mid-career, sometimes mid-transition. The details change. The pattern doesn't.

We talk. They're sharp, honest, clearly carrying more than they're letting on. Toward the end, I tell them what coaching would actually require — the time, the conversations they've been avoiding, the willingness to do things differently.

They give me their reasons it isn't the right time. The transition they’re in. The new hire. The busy season. The uncertainty about ROI.

I understand. We leave it that we'll stay in touch. We'll re-engage when "the time is right."

What Needs Said

To every owner who's been circling this decision for a year and finding new reasons each month to wait:

I can show you what the work looks like and why it produces results using the ActionCOACH system — a methodology with decades of results across thousands of businesses worldwide. In a discovery conversation, I'm happy to walk you through the system, the tools, the resources, and what's realistic for a business your size.

Here's what I've come to believe matters more than any number on a projection: the results of coaching depend as much on you as they do on me. The owners who follow through on the time commitment, do the work between sessions, and stay with it through the hard parts get a return that's hard to overstate. The ones who don't, don't. That's what we consistently see in the businesses that succeed with coaching.

So, the math isn't really what's holding most owners back. It's whether they're ready to be the kind of client coaching actually works for.

And that's worth being honest about. With me, or with yourself, or with no one at all. Because the answer to that question is what determines whether coaching is right for you — more than any ROI projection ever could.

So let's talk about what coaching actually requires from you. The time. The discomfort. And the things that make the hard parts worth it.

The Upside is Real but It’s Not the Whole Story

I've spent plenty of time marketing the upside of coaching. Bigger business. Stronger team. More freedom. More time. All of it true. All of it possible.

But here's what I've come to believe matters more…

The upside is real. But almost nobody talks about what it actually costs to get there. And I don't mean the invoice. The real cost is time you don't feel like you have. It's discomfort you've been avoiding for years. It's a willingness to look honestly at things that are easy to miss.

Every Leader has Blind Spots

Every owner I work with does, including the most successful ones. It's not a character flaw — it's a function of being in the seat. You're moving fast, making decisions, putting out fires. Reflection takes time you rarely feel you have.

And even when you do see the thing clearly — even when you recognize that something needs to change about how you're operating — change itself is hard. Knowing isn't doing. That's true for me. It's true for the owners I work with. It's true for most leaders I know.

So, before we talk about results, let's talk about what it actually takes.

What the Time Commitment Actually Looks Like

Let me get specific, because vague time commitments are part of why owners hesitate. You can't commit to something you can't picture.

Here's what coaching with me actually looks like on your calendar.

One hour, every two weeks. That's the coaching session itself. Sixty minutes of focused conversation, working through what's in front of you, what you committed to last time, and what comes next.

At least four to six hours a week working ON the business. This is the part we work through together and it's where most of the real growth happens. Coaching isn't the hour we spend in session. It's the work you do between sessions, with structure and support. Some weeks it's writing out a process you've been running in your head. Some weeks it's having a hard conversation with a team member you've been putting off. Some weeks it's pulling numbers, building a plan, or thinking carefully about something you usually only think about reactively. The activities change. The commitment doesn't. And you're not figuring it out alone, that's what the coaching relationship is for.

An onboarding and alignment process at the start. Before we get into the weekly rhythm, we spend real time understanding your vision, your goals, the challenges you're carrying, and where the opportunities are. This isn't a quick intake form, and it isn't something I'm making up as we go. It's a proven onboarding process refined by ActionCOACH over more than thirty years and thousands of business owners worldwide. It's the foundation everything else gets built on, and skipping it is one of the reasons coaching fails for some owners — they want to "just get started" without doing the work to know what they're actually building toward.

Annual and quarterly planning. We do bigger planning work. Once to set the year, and quarterly to recalibrate. This is where intentionality gets installed. Most owners I work with had never done quarterly planning with this level of structure before. After a year of it, most can't imagine running the business without it.

Add it up and you're looking at roughly twenty hours a month of focused, working-on-the-business time. Not in addition to your normal week but carved out of your normal week. Which means something else has to give.

That's the part owners struggle with most. Not the cost. Not the sessions. The fact that to grow the business, you have to stop doing some of the things you've been doing in the business.

If you can't picture finding those hours, that's worth being honest about up front. Not because it disqualifies you, but because pretending you'll find the time when you actually won't is how engagements fail.

The Discomfort Nobody Warns You About

Here's where some owners decide coaching isn't for them, which is okay. (Better to know now than six months in).

These are the things I see owners wrestle with.

"I need to delegate more."

This is almost always one of the first things owners say to me. They know it. They've known it for a long time. They've read the books. And yet the delegation never quite happens.

What I see happen most often: the owner hands something off, the team doesn't do it exactly the way they would have, and the owner takes it back. They tell themselves they're protecting quality. What's really missing is usually one of two things: 1) they didn't give the delegation enough time to work, or 2) they didn't have a good process in place.

A good delegation process makes room for missteps, feedback, and coaching the team member through it. Without that, every handoff feels like a gamble, and most owners default back to doing it themselves.

The discomfort of coaching is building that process and trusting it long enough for it to work.

Conversations you've been putting off for years.

Most owners I work with have at least one. Sometimes it's a price increase they've been afraid to make. Sometimes it's a decision they keep saying they'll make "next quarter." Or maybe it's a team member they know in their gut isn't the right fit anymore but are not willing to “rip the band aid off.”

Coaching doesn't let those conversations stay unfinished. We talk about them and we plan them.

That's uncomfortable. It's also where some of the biggest challenges get unlocked in your business. Owners are often surprised by how much energy they get back once a conversation they've been carrying for a long period of time is finally behind them.

The belief that working harder is the answer.

A lot of owners I work with built their business by outworking everyone around them. Hustle and grit got them to where they are. That's a real strength. (And part of the reason I love working with them!)

But here's the trap: what got you here usually won't get you where you want to go. At some point, working harder stops producing the results it used to. You feel busier than ever and the business isn't moving. You start to wonder if you've hit a ceiling.

What you've hit are the limits of the way you've been operating. And the work of coaching helps address how you spend your time, where your focus goes, and what you stop doing so the business can grow without requiring more of you.

That can feel like a loss. The thing that made you successful is the thing you're being asked to update. That's hard, but worth being honest about.

Being held to what you said you wanted.

Most owners have never had true accountability in their lives, and that's part of what makes it uncomfortable at first.

What it actually looks like: we set annual goals together. We build quarterly growth strategies. Then we check in regularly on whether you're doing what you said you'd do, and when you're not, we talk about it honestly.

This is a positive move for the good of your business and reaching your goals. In an “I'm not going to let you off the hook on the thing you told me mattered to you” kind of way.

That kind of accountability is rare, and most owners find that after a few months of it, they don't want to run the business without it. But the first time you don't hit a quarterly target and we sit down to talk about why? That's uncomfortable. And it's exactly the kind of discomfort that produces growth.

What Makes the Hard Parts Worth It

If you've read this far, you might be wondering why anyone signs up for this.

The discomfort I've described is real. But so is what comes with it. And that part doesn't get talked about enough either.

When owners enroll in a coaching program, they don't just get a coach, they get four things that, together, change how the hard parts feel.

One: A trusted, unreasonable friend.

That describes what I try to be for the owners I work with. Trusted, because you can be completely honest with me - about your team, your numbers, your doubts, your goals. Unreasonable, because I won't let you talk yourself out of what you said mattered to you. Friend, because I'm in it with you.

And I'm not doing it alone. I work from a system refined by ActionCOACH over more than thirty years with thousands of business owners worldwide. You get the benefit of both a coach who knows you, and a methodology proven across industries, business sizes, and stages of growth.

Two: A sounding board for the conversations you can't have anywhere else.

You can't fully vent to your spouse or significant other because they're carrying the business with you in their own way. You can't be completely honest with your team because they need leadership from you, not your doubts. You can't air everything with your peers because there's often pride and sometimes competition in the way.

A coach is the one person in your life you can be completely honest with. About the team member you're worried about. About the decision you don't know how to make. About the part of running this business that scares you. Most owners don't realize how much they've been carrying alone until they have someone to talk to about it openly.

Three: Accountability that's supportive, not punishing.

The kind of accountability I described in the last section isn't about catching you doing something wrong. It's about not letting you abandon what you said mattered to you.

When you hit a goal, we celebrate it. When you don't, we figure out what got in the way and what to adjust. The point is to learn and keep you moving toward the business you said you wanted to build.

Four: A community of owners going through the same thing.

Ownership is isolating. You're surrounded by people, but very few of them understand what it actually feels like to carry the responsibility of a business. The financial weight. The decisions that affect not just your own livelihood but other people's lives too. Whatever it is that’s keeping you up at night.

One of the things I'm proud to offer through ActionCOACH is access to a community of other business owners — locally and globally. Things like our GrowthCLUB workshops bring together a network of owners who get it, because they're in it too. After a while, most owners say this part is just as valuable as the one-on-one coaching itself.

Put it all together…

Coaching doesn't make the hard parts of running a business go away. It makes you not have to face them alone.

So, What Do You Do With All of This?

Honestly? Sit with it. If you read this and felt resistance, that's worth paying attention to. Resistance usually means one of two things.

Maybe coaching isn't for you right now.

And knowing that is genuinely valuable. There's no shame in deciding the timing isn't right. The owners I respect most are the ones who are honest with themselves about where they are.

Or maybe the resistance is the same thing holding your business back.

The same avoidance. The same waiting for "the right time." The same belief that working harder will eventually get you there.

Only you can tell the difference. Are you just “kicking the can down the road?” Or is now the time you take action?

Our ActionCOACH founder Brad Sugars says, “The biggest risk you can take is do nothing.”

Want to talk it through?

Not to be sold but just to talk. That's what a first conversation with me is for. No pitch. No pressure. Just a real conversation about where you are, what you're carrying, and whether our coaching system makes sense for this season of your business.

If that's worth an hour of your time, reach out. I'll respond personally.

Matt Bresee

mattbresee@actioncoach.com