What Makes Ama La Vida Coaching Different from the rest?
Entrepreneurship
Any way you look at it, there’s a lot of advice out there. There’s an abundance of voices out there offering you guidance and wisdom in your career journey. And that’s a great thing! People are unique, and so are their needs, so there’s no “one size fits all” approach that could ever work. But that definitely doesn’t mean that there isn’t a difference in quality. It doesn’t mean that any approach would work for you just as well as any other.
Given all that, it can be difficult to evaluate all these sources and pick the guide that’s right for you. One of Ama La Vida’s missions is to add some much-needed quality control to the world of coaching. And we always knew that quality control had to begin with our coaches. As Richard Branson said: “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
We wanted to make sure that Ama La Vida is different. That we’re not only bringing the best possible coaching talent into our organization, but also make sure they had the best possible support system to ensure that they could do more with us than they ever could on their own.
What Makes Ama La Vida Coaching Different?
How does Ama La Vida support our coaches? How do we make sure they have all the resources to deliver the best results for our clients? Since this is a big part of my job at Ama La Vida, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about exactly this, and I’ve broken down our efforts into five broad categories. Here’s what we deliver to our coaches:
“Coach Roundtables”
Twice monthly all the coaches get together to discuss coaching best practices, specific difficult issues, techniques for communication that have worked for us, and success stories. Being a great coach is a mixture of learned skills and lived experiences. So being able to share both with a dozen or more other top-notch professionals (as opposed to being solo) means we’re getting the best of 12+ worlds every time we have these meetings. There will never be such a thing as the “best coach in the world” because that would indicate that there was a single best way to coach. People are diverse, and a diverse range of approaches is necessary. Or you’ll risk only being able to communicate with one kind of person. Sharing those approaches with each other keeps us all stronger.
Continual Training
In addition to the roundtable discussions, we have monthly formalized training to cover the best practices we have to offer. There are great career coaches out there, but oftentimes, once they’ve launched their own business, they don’t get any more training. We make sure that our coaches’ skills never stagnate. This means we’re constantly staying up to date on the latest coaching research and methodologies. That level of research can be daunting to an individual that is also focusing on their clients and all the other needs of their practice. So it’s a great benefit to have someone help filter the best signals from the noise.
Back-end Support
One of the coaches’ favorite perks, of course, is that they can focus 100% on coaching. They don’t have to do their own website maintenance! They are also free from troubleshooting, billing, advertising, and public relations. Along without handling any of the other myriad tasks required of a business owner. We have a fantastic support team that clients can reach out to for any questions or issues that arise. This allows our coaches to give all their attention to their clients in a low-stress environment. Getting a coach that’s able to stay completely focused on you because they don’t have to dedicate half of their efforts to spinning all the plates required to keep a business running is a huge benefit to everyone!
Access to Our Entire Team
In addition to the scheduled meetings, all coaches communicate with each other every day on our dedicated Slack channel. It may seem like a small thing, but any professional services provider knows that having instantaneous access to another dozen experts in your field is an outstanding benefit. If one of our coaches find themselves encountering a challenging question or scenario, then they have a diverse group to consult with. One of the reasons I know this is a huge benefit to our team is the fact that coaches outside our organization have reached out to me to ask advice on coaching questions!
Niches and Feedback
While we love the diverse range of coaching styles and knowledge that our coaches bring to the table, we also know that consistency is one of the keys to quality. For that reason, we’ve created distinct pathways towards career, leadership, life, or health goals. Our coaches guide clients through with their individual niches.
If you were an independent coach, you’d have to constantly be taking feedback and results under consideration. Then you would have to take time revising your method accordingly. This would take a lot of time and effort that you could be spending on clients. Instead, we’re doing that internally – aggregating feedback and results from all of our clients, giving us a great data set to take a scientific approach to updating our methods, and letting us give the finished product back to our coaches.
The End Result
Like any business, we spend a decent amount of time and effort talking to our potential clients about what we offer. This way clients can make the best choice about which service is right for them. One of the reasons we may be best for you is because we have happy coaches. Along with a fantastic support team, and the resources to continue learning and bettering.
Also like any business, our motivation to improve is our desire to provide you with the best possible experience – both for our clients and our coaches. Hopefully, this post has given you a little insight into how and why we strive to do that. As always, we’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts to share!
