Do you scratch your head wondering how other coaching businesses scale beyond just one coach, and whether CoachAccountable can help you get there? Anissa Fulbright of Icenhower Coaching and Consulting graciously offered an inside peek into their rapid development. We’ve edited Anissa’s words below for length and clarity.

Brian Icenhower

The Origins of Icenhower Coaching

Brian’s been coaching for 20+ years. We have this belief that people learn in their own way[s]: touch workbooks, watch videos, print the materials, listen to a podcast or an audiobook. They’re busy, [but they need] access to these materials in different ways.

[For example], we have audiobooks; [clients say] “I’ll do it while I’m on the treadmill.” We accept [those various learning styles and used them] to make training that was versatile and up-to-date.

Icenhower Resources

We have “therealestatetrainer.com, Powered by Icenhower Coaching,” which is a free resource for [real estate] agents. When subscribers come to us, they’re so tired, and they’re like, “I’ve been looking for this.” We also have the ICCOnlineLearningCenter.com for our online video courses.

By the end of the year [2018], [we’ll have] 11 books, all turned into a training series with video modules, workbooks, and online courses.

And that’s what we’ve set out to do. We didn’t mean to be a publishing company!

Life Before CoachAccountable

[At the very beginning, Brian] was spending much more like three hours a week with [each] client then. Now it’s closer to 30 minutes, and we’re able to get more clients [and] spend less time while giving them more value. 

With CoachAccountable in place, our number of clients has gone up over five times the number we had just last year, and we have been able to add more coaches to the team, too. We have had incredible growth that we wouldn’t have been able to do without CoachAccountable, especially onboarding [clients] and getting them into a system where they can feel the value. They don’t feel like they’re getting just a 30-minute phone call; they feel like they’re getting a lot more.

Anissa Fulbright, Icenhower Coaching

Icenhower Coaching + CoachAccountable

We’re branching out, but the bread and butter of our business is [still] one-on-one coaching. It’s the most effective way for people to grow; we’re seeing a 39 percent increase in our agents’ GCI (gross commission income) after one year of coaching.

These people are busy and they’ve been in the business for a while. They just need structure and a coach that can help them hire someone effective – not their sister who needs part time work.

We take them out of the “traditional age”; they don’t have business training, so we’re taking them to that level.

Communication

Poignant reminders – e-mails, texts –  [are] important because they are texters.

They don’t want more e-mails, so I can customize [the customer experience] with texts. We [as coaches] don’t work out of email anymore, because stuff is going to get lost.

A Client’s Full Picture

My favorite part about CoachAccountable is that it’s a centralized place for us to work with clients. On a daily basis, I can check progress and history. It’s a customized experience.

[Session] Notes have been really helpful. We actually started recording our calls. We just drop the [recorded] file right into the Stream when we’re done, so [both coaches and clients] can always reference [it]. It’s helpful for the coach to be able to make those Notes quickly right on the call. The function to add Notes that are either private or [visible] is really helpful.

[Using] the Stream, the files, and the Session Notes, you can see the trajectory of where the [client is] headed. [In the Stream,] you can also look back to see what they’ve been working on and the notes from each call.

The pre-check-in [Worksheet] is helpful for Brian and [the other] coaches, because it gets people in the right mind-state. They write down anything they were working on or struggling with this week, and they know exactly what they’re going to address on the call.  So, [during a coaching call], they’ll do “old business”, then jump right into the “new business”.

Scaling a Coaching Business

CoachAccountable has allowed us to kind of duplicate [Brian]; we are able to scale because we can send actions and reminders and tasks to do between calls week to week instead of him having to spend more time on the phone [creating these systems].

Now that we’ve built out the Library, we can get 10 more coaches and they can all have at least 10 clients, then slowly work Brian out of the process. He’ll [instead] go into creating training materials. It’s really exciting to have that big-picture outlook. He’s going to be much more like, “I just get to write and build [programs].”

Coaching Client Feedback

We haven’t done a ton of marketing, but through CoachAccountable we’re able to impress the agents [who are our potential clients].

The feedback we get from our clients is that it’s a centralized place. They love working out of [CoachAccountable instead of] e-mail, because their email’s flooded. It’s really easy to use the [CoachAccountable] app. They often want to pull something up at a meeting, and they have that PDF right there.

When we unload the Library to them [in CoachAccountable], they’re stunned by the amount of [answers] they’ve been searching for. We have job descriptions and everything they need to hire, train, and grow a team. [We have the resources to] get their business plan on track and start turning their business into a machine.

Some of our agents are the top agents across the country. They’re selling 400 to 1000 homes a year and [because of our coaching], they’re spending their marketing dollars in ways that previously real estate agents weren’t doing.

Thank you to Brian Icenhower and to Anissa for sharing with us! If you’re like Icenhower Coaching and looking to scale your coaching business, try out CoachAccountable free for 30 days. If you’re building or managing a team of coaches, a Team Edition account can give you the freedom to be a real leader and help you to only do the boring work once.