PhotoShopped cakes with a text layer for the candles 4eva.
The number 13 has a bit of a reputation. But from a longevity standpoint of this enterprise, I’m feeling pretty lucky. In these last 365 we here at CA got a whiff that, yes, even coaching platforms die. Meanwhile, CoachAccountable keeps merrily humming along. » Continue reading “Happy 13th Birthday, CoachAccountable!”
Hi everybody!
I got a kick out of telling you all about bringing Noah on to the team, and now I’d like you to hear from the man himself.
– John
Make no mistake: he is every bit as friendly as he looks in this photo.
Hello CA Family! I’m Noah, and it is a huge blessing to be here! My story of arriving at CA is one that I would have never imagined. It all started with a book.
During the winter break of my Sophomore year of college, I went to a local book store and walked down the non-fiction aisle. That day I discovered the self-help genre, and I was instantly obsessed with the idea of learning from others’ wisdom and life lessons. I clearly saw how these authors were living life very differently than anyone I had encountered, and that made me want to share what I was learning with the world.
By the middle of my junior year of college, I was promoting myself as a coach. I had no idea what I was doing, but I believed that helping others apply what I was learning would also help me integrate it more deeply. At the same time, I was also interning as an engineer.
Truthfully, I wanted to change my major to psychology. I decided that I was too close to graduation to make a change, so I completed my engineering degree. Two weeks after graduation, I started working as an engineer. Months later, I bought a house and got married. At this point, the idea of coaching was completely out of my mind.
As an engineer, I was in charge of rolling out a Workforce Management software system to 130+ locations during the middle of Covid. I was overwhelmed with my job, and shaken to my core by the loss of several family members. To help me through this season, I asked my new friend from church, David Limiero, to be my mentor. David’s current position was leading a software support team, and he was also coaching. The company he was coaching for used CoachAccountable. That is how I was introduced to this amazing platform.
I later decided to receive some coach training myself. I knew that my intentions in college were pure, but at the end of the day, I wanted to help people with real tools and strategies. Right after I finished coach training, David gave me the opportunity to blend my experience of rolling out software platforms and my coach training to help several CA users get up and running with their own accounts.
When John posted the role for my position, I was nervous to apply. I have always worked as an engineer, and my last company had 300,000+ employees. As I considered the potential impact on my wife and two daughters, it was not easy to leave a very stable but life-draining career for a new opportunity in the field of my “hobby.” Thankfully, as I learned more about how John has built the CA culture and business model, I had a sense of peace and excitement about joining the team.
Now, I couldn’t be more grateful to be here! The vast majority of this work is in my Desire Zone1, and the work couldn’t be more meaningful to me. Helping coaches help their clients live better lives; it doesn’t get more value-driven than that for me.
I look forward to helping each of you however I can, and if you are ever traveling through East Tennessee, send me an email. I would love to connect with you over a cup of coffee.
I did something a little different when hiring this time.
Instead of putting a job notice out to a general purpose remote jobs board, this time I got smart and actually put it out to the CoachAccountable community itself. I started with the CA User’s Group, figuring I’d give those folks a head start and then soon put the notice out to the whole of CA customers.
And my, what a difference! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some nice wins posting CA openings to the wider internet. But out there, the median applicant doesn’t give a lick about coaching, let alone CoachAccountable. So there would be a LOT of sifting and winnowing to be done.
Here? Signal-to-noise ratio was WAY higher. Refreshingly higher. Delightfully higher! The applications I got for the roles were overwhelmingly high-caliber and promising.
And this was even before I put the notice out to all CA customers.
Turns out I didn’t bother.
Because I didn’t need to.
Because Noah.
You can feel the engineer/caring coach vibes. 🤩
Noah immediately impressed. Yes, his credentials were rock-solid for the support job. He’d been in charge of rolling out a workforce management software system to a 130+ locations. He’s completed a coach training certification. He’d already been helping a team of coaches set up their own CoachAccountable accounts. He even did a thorough job answering the sample support questions as part of the application.
And I won’t deny, I felt a definite “game recognizes game” energy when he could relate to a tale of my studying for a Differential Equations exam. For he, too, has taken Differential Equations.
But what really sold me on Noah was his drive and (credible!) vision to rise up and really make a difference playing the CoachAccountable game. When he was my presumptive candidate for the support role, I was sharing with him the overall landscape for the several roles I had in mind to hire for. About that he said to me the following, roughly verbatim: “Well John, how about this. You’re able to handle support in a few hours a day, so I bet I can get there, too. So what if you hired just me for now, let me get up to speed with support, then grow into the outreach and the sales roles. That way you and I could really figure it out, and get our way of doing it well established before we bring more people into the mix.”
That’s some serious moxie, and I love it. I let him know that yes, customer support does tend to bleed into customer success (consultative teaching and hands-on guidance), and that tends to bleed into sales. And I let him know that I love the idea of being able to hammer out what we’ve been calling “the CoachAccountable way” of doing things with him, he having already proven himself as a delightful co-creator of culture and vision. Heck, I couldn’t even deny the allure of growing the team just one at a time, rather than hire several at once and hope that we all actually gel (which is tough enough in general, and doubly so as an all-remote team).
Though I often espouse in these parts “We’re playing for mastery”, Noah’s counter to that is “Let’s see what we’re capable of.” YES. Let’s.
After an unhurried period of winding down his role at his previous employer while learning the CA staffer ropes in the margins, Noah started full-time early last month. Not even two months in, he’s able to field most of what comes his way and is already doing outreach and getting on customer calls solo to show folks around. AND he and Jaclyn got along swimmingly when I was off for two weeks. Gelling for the win, and I am delighted.
All told, Noah is a fine addition to the troupe CoachAccountablers who Know How to CoachAccountable™.
Please help me in welcoming Noah!
As of April 30th, Nudge Coach ceased all operations. These last few weeks, we’ve had several soon-to-be refugees of another platform approach us, looking for an option to move to on the quick (this is apparently not yet public knowledge, so we’ll keep it classy and not name which one).
Wow.
So, coaching platforms can go out of business, just tell everyone “Sorry folks, show’s over. We’re not gonna charge you anymore. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
Yeah, y’all remember the late 90’s, right?
To me this is super odd, downright foreign. From our posture here at CoachAccountable, it is an utterly bizarre decision to close things down and tell all of your paying customers to go away, figure out something else. To me, such a business has already done the hardest work of (1) getting the platform built, (2) finding the customer, and (3) having them still want to stick around.
Haven’t they already won?
This is of course, a naive take. In the broader world, of course there are businesses whose operating state is some combination of the following:
Realizing as much makes me proud of a simple but seldom-guessed fact:
CoachAccountable is a 7-figure business that can be run single-handedly.
To do it at the level of being awesome with our customers that I’m committed to, that person has to be pretty well trained. But it doesn’t have to be me, the founder.
I share all of this not to brag (though admittedly it is a bit of a flex), but out of sympathy for enterprise buyers, whom we’ve seen a rash of, lately. (And indeed parties of all sizes, who are looking to find a platform that they can depend on for running their coaching business.) Because even though I’m tempted to look at someone sideways when they ask questions probing the long-term viability of CoachAccountable (or even roll my eyes: to be fair, they don’t know what I know about the waters we swim in here), they’re trying to make a big decision that will shape so much of the trajectory of their business for the years to come.
So I get and honor the thoughtful care that those questions come from. And I wish everyone success (and luck!) in choosing the right platform, because it can’t be fun to get the notice that operations will be shutting down and you’ve got X months (or days) to pack it all up and find something else.
For our sake, CoachAccountable has cockroach-like staying power. It’ll keep on running for so long as anyone is depending on it.
I remember cooking up the functionality for coaches to schedule a regular series of Appointments long ago. It was in CA’s first year of the (commercially viable) 2.0 release. I was in Bali at the time.
Lotta flexibility here for scheduling a regular series. Reads like a nice sentence, marching orders to be carried out for you!
I thought for a beat about adding this to the client side of things, but I thought “Nah”. There are a whole lot more constraints that clients are subject to when picking from specific date and time options and lookout windows, and back in those days I had LOTS of things to focus on to evolve the relatively nascent platform. It was well enough to keep that scheduling one at a time!
And of course these days the rules for client scheduling come with more constraints, thanks to the allocations and duration rules provided by CA Engagements. Great power for coaches to control and regulate how and when they can be scheduled with, but again, all the more at odds with letting a client willy-nilly choose to take the next 8 Tuesdays at 10:00am: there could be a dental appointment somewhere in there to break the streak!
So I figured the UI of having someone choose yet potentially often have some reason why the whole series is not be on offer made that feature perhaps more gnarly and unwieldy to use than it was worth.
Then we got this email to support yesterday from Kirsten Chong of Building Champions, emphasis added:
Hello,
I wanted to reach out and ask if you thought the ability for clients to schedule recurring sessions would ever be an option in CA?
The reason I’m asking is because we are getting this question more and more often from our clients and so I thought I would check.
I know internally we can do this and override blocked time, from the client’s side it would be great if they are told of the conflicts, and book everything BUT those dates.
Just an idea
Thanks!
Huh.
That’s elegant.
Yes.
It could give a little alert as needed, letting ’em know if there are some that are a no go, and in so many words just ask “You want the other ones?”
Why didn’t I think of that?
So today I spent about 3 hours and cooked up that functionality, deployed all tested and ready to go with 25 minutes to spare before my 11:00am.
I even made a nice little pop up that pops up if and whenever needed, letting the client choose what to do:
Can’t get the whole series? Then you get the full story of what’s so, and the power to choose.
I wrote back:
Ah, that’s a fine idea! I originally decided against adding the ability for clients to schedule series because of the possible conflicts and the difficulty it might be with the back and forth for a user who can’t override, e.g. if you want a series of 8 but only 6 are available, it gets tricky.
But you’re right, giving them the option to book what IS available in case there are any conflicts is an elegant way to manage this, balancing both the power and ability to manage when that power falls short.
This is now in place! Clients will now see the option to schedule series just like coaches do.
Enjoy!
John
I can’t deny, I relished in the reply I got 19 minutes later:
This is AMAZING!!! You rock John. Seriously. Thank you!!!!!
Thank you, Kirsten! That little bit of insight that made things come in to clear focus, and here’s to a slightly better CA for all!
Some folks (looking at you, enterprise buyers) get a little nervous about our size as a tiny team, but this to me is the delight of running things a bit unorthodox. I would be having way less fun (and CA wouldn’t be nearly as good) if I had to coordinate across several teams with disparate priorities to make this sort of thing happen as a Tier-3 Priority™ for next quarter’s Roadmap Release Initiatives®, or whatever.
I’ll take my means and manner of delightful collaboration with customers any day. :)
Carla Reeves of the differently podcast has been a long time fan of CoachAccountable and has really used the heck out of it to give her clients great coaching. So when she invited me to riff with her as a guest on the show, I was delighted by the chance to talk shop in a real “game recognizes game” sort of way.
And what a treat it was!
Consistent with the very name of her show, throughout the conversation I found it instructive (and hopefully you will too) how much CoachAccountable takes a different perspective on how coaching gets done, one that is NOT enmeshed at all in the towering edifices of capital-C Coaching with their entrenched views on “how it is to be done”. That offers something to coaches looking for an angle to distinguish themselves and give stand out good service.
Some of my favorite parts:
Fun fact: I listened to the first 20 minutes of it last night during snuggle time with my kids, 8 and 10, who got a kick out of seeing that their daddy could be found somewhere on Spotify. To the fellow parents out there, I confess it was a bit of a giddy thrill to have my little ones hanging on every word of their daddy talking with another grown up about why he does what he does. :)
Find the official episode page with show notes and transcript here:
Coaching Differently with John Larson
Enjoy!
