The Growth Coach Franchise information

Executive Q&A with Chris Seman, President at The Growth Coach

One of the top-ranked group growth coaching brand’s leaders talks about how the pandemic has contributed to the company’s own growth and what that means for its future franchisees.

The Growth Coach has finessed this pandemic-era period of change and upheaval by proving why small-business coaching could not be more popular, more timely and more necessary. The 65-unit brand began offering intensive one-on-one and group coaching in 2003 but propelled what had been in-person products and systems into the virtual realm when COVID-19 necessitated the pivot.

Chris Seman, The Growth Coach’s president, sat down with 1851 Franchise to discuss how the brand continues to evolve to best meet the growing and changing demands of small- and medium-sized businesses.

1851 Franchise: What are you doing well right now? What are your brand’s differentiators?

Chris Seman: One of the things we’re really excited about is our new Strategic Star program that assists franchisors in getting their business partners up and running faster so that they can focus on the day-to-day activities of running their brands. We want business owners to be able to take a step back and build a better work-life balance, which is what The Growth Coach is famous for.

We’ve also been leveraging tech in an accelerated way; COVID got us out of the path and into what will be the future, and if you look at what the average workplace is undergoing right now as far as things like the Great Resignation and employee satisfaction, we’ve added some great products over the past year and a half that are specifically working to drive that employee engagement level.

In addition, we have implemented a delegated group of coaches who are performing at a specific and very high level, to the point where we have designated them as being part of a “council of coaches” who will be the eyes and ears to help us gain insights into where we need new modules to add to The Growth Coach toolbox. We’re also testing out a Diversity and Inclusion Program. Our goal is always to add a few new programs every year that address businesses’ needs. We try to stay on top of what in the business world people are searching for, what are the hot topics on message boards, and we ask our coaches, what are your clients saying that they need?

As far as differentiators go, I’d say the big one is group coaching, which is the foundation of our fundamental approach. It does a few things: It gets us great peer-to-peer interactions; it creates accountability partners for every business. If you’re a one-on-one coaching program, you have to coach everybody individually. There’s only so much time in the day, and only so many people that you can coach at one time, and so it becomes a limiting factor for the growth of your organization. With group coaching, we can scale it to as many people in an organization who need it.

1851: What are your growth goals for 2022? What is your vision that you want your brand to fulfill, realistically or in an ideal state?

Seman: What we’re looking for this year is we want to hit about 25 new franchisees. Would we go up to as many as 30? Yes, but we probably want to limit that. We’ve broken down the educational model and looked at our onboarding process to see how we successfully launch franchisees, and we put together what we think is a very unique price point in the marketplace, and that setup allows us to really launch successfully about 25 franchisees in a way that allows them the opportunity to fulfill their objectives and their goals.

Meanwhile, the thing about The Growth Coach is that we’ve transitioned so much over the last couple of years and got re-energized internally, not only on how we can best help franchisees, but how we ultimately help the small business owner. The difference between us and some of our other concepts is that we’re a worldwide brand, and we want to be helping small businesses with 300 coaches in an additional five years and in an additional 25 countries, as well as every major market in the U.S., and we want to put together the strongest portfolio of coaches with the longest term success metrics in the industry, because we have such a strong foundation with our current system. We did a re-evaluation for the coaching industry, exploring the investment levels and the return on your investment, and we’ve put together a program that can accomplish that.

1851: What were some learning opportunities pre- and during the pandemic the brand has leveraged to get to where it is now?

Seman: We had always been much more about our process than our product. The product that we’re putting together is not revolutionary; it’s the specific process that our co-founder Dan Murphy has created – that strategic mindset of facing reality, of self-knowledge and relationship management, of strategic focus and envisioning goals – that is utilized in every single coaching session that our coaches provide. That’s what has always been revolutionary for our brand. So, when the pandemic started, we really just needed to adapt that process to a virtual platform, and the process made that transition very smoothly.

1851: Why did you choose to join The Growth Coach?

Seman: I had previously been in a variety of senior executive positions with other companies, including Vice President with Mr. Handyman International, President of Caring Transitions, President of Pet Wants, etc. Because I believe very much in franchising and the franchise model based on my own personal experience, I know firsthand how important it is to have world-class training, marketing and operational support programs in place for franchisees at all levels. The support and guidance that The Growth Coach offers made sense to me, and I wanted to be part of sharing that with businesses out there who need it.

1851: What does your ideal franchisee look like in terms of how they run their business – for instance, what personal traits do they have, what prior business experience they can claim, and what kind of investor model do they align with?

Seman: Successful franchisees with The Growth Coach are sometimes diametrically opposed in terms of personality, but they share a few things in common. They step out of their comfort zones. They get excited about overcoming obstacles. They strive for work-life balance themselves, which helps them help their clients do the same. And most important, they bring a lot of passion to the table. They want to build relationships.

1851: What are some ways The Growth Coach supports franchisees that people may not be aware of?

Seman: We have adapted our process to where we’re now able to customize it to meet a business’ specific needs. Because the Quarterly Workshops are now modular, the business can focus on the topics that they have the most immediate need for. We also added personality assessments to help coaches better understand behavioral types and communication styles, and showing them how they can use that with their clients, as well. That way, our franchisees have the ability to also customize their offerings to meet the specific needs of the business they’re working with.