For the past 6 months or so we’ve enlisted the help of Sir Clive Woodward at OSA, he’s been leading a bespoke, live and interactive course for our Scale Up Mastermind Members.

After the final call on Wednesday I looked back at an article by Sir Clive, where he was talking about the value of a coach in business and in sports. To quote Sir Clive “Whatever the setting, the true job of a coach is to help you get better at getting better.” That’s a definition worth paying attention to coming from the man who coached the England rugby team from inconsistent mediocrity to World Cup winners in 2004. Who do you have in your corner helping you get better at getting better?

If you’re serious about growing your practice – which you need to be, seen as how you signed on the dotted line with your landlord, you probably also signed your life away with the bank and personal guarantees for business loans, and you have all those pesky staff and suppliers who expect a cheque from you every month – you have to realise that YOU must grow in order for your business to grow. The game of improving your business really boils down to improving yourself.

Here’s the key. The rate at which you learn lessons, figure stuff out, and improve is the rate at which your business will grow. That’s why there is so much value in having a coach who is able to speed up the rate at which you get better. I have 37 very smart and successful Mastermind members that I am coaching every month on our group Zoom calls. They can leverage my experience and the results I’ve created with my practice to speed up the rate at which they get better and grow.

I am the same. I have several coaches I work with myself. I’ve always had at least one at all times from my first year as a practice owner. My main coach and mentor is a man who runs an organisation like Optical Success Academy in the music school industry of all industries. And he runs 3 successful music schools with about $3 million in revenue. I pay him handsomely for his coaching for the exact same reason. Through his experience and know-how, I am able to get better at getting better. OSA is the fastest growing and to my knowledge largest coaching organisation for independent opticians in the UK because of that. It’s no co-incidence that our events get contantly have fresh faces attending, and members’ results and success stories get bigger and better with each year. Coaching works. Clive Woodward says so. I say so. Every top performer in sports says so.

I have a book recommendation for you. Put this on your reading list – The One Thing by Gary Keller. Gary has a powerful quote I’d like to bring to your attention: “Doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.” Please read that carefully. Type it out. Put it somewhere you will see it.

Gary correctly observes that “the most successful people are the most productive people.” I am far more productive on my work with OSA because I have a coach who is endlessly pointing my nose directly at the most important thing. It’s like having blinkers on. A good coach will stop you getting distracted by endless diversions and detours and will keep you resolutely focused on the most important thing at any one time. That is how you hit your goals.