Master Coach Progressions: Mark Allen Article #4 of 5: Lessons from the Road

Mark Allen: 6 Time IRONMAN World Champion, IRONMAN Hall of Fame, USA Triathlon Hall of Fame, ITU Hall of Fame. Mark has a 30 year career as a successful coach and can be found at MarkAllenCoaching.com and on Instagram @markallengrip. Look for his favorite hashtag #gotcoach

How many miles / hours / days have you spent “on the road”? As a coach and an athlete, you know that number is pretty high. Now think about how much “the road” has taught you. We can talk you about the flat tires and brutal heat that teach us to endure and solve problems in pursuit of a goal. We can also talk about the sweeping vistas, thrilling downhills and cooling cloud bursts that bring us back for more. This week, Mark Allen share’s some of his Lessons from the Road. As an athlete and coach that has travelled many miles, his article is a refreshing look at the life we’ve chosen in sport with a few smart reminders of how to sustain and thrive here. Enjoy the read, Earl Walton Global Director, Coaching and Training IRONMAN

5 Lessons From the Road

I started my coaching business twenty-five years ago in 1994. It’s gone through several significant changes since then, with each iteration evolving how I coach and support my

clients. I’ve also seen the coaching landscape change just as dramatically. At first there were only a handful of people coaching. Now the numbers are significant. And unlike the early times of triathlon coaching where there was very little access to formal education, now there are in-

depth venues available to anyone willing to learn, with the IRONMAN University program being at the top of that list in my opinion! This case study has been about providing you with tools to build your business and

questions to ask to help you align your strengths and preferences with the style of coaching you provide. But regardless of the various

nuances that you build into coaching business there are some lessons I’ve learned that are pretty universal. Here are my five lessons from the road

learned over the past few decades in the business. I have worked hard at setting up my coaching business so that I can respond to all my

client’s questions and data that needs to be commented on by the end of each business day in most cases, and nearly 100% of the time within 24-

hours. This has come with a lot of unsolicited praise by my clients. Some are pleasantly surprised at that level of interaction and feedback that they can count on from a coach. Many are clients who came to me from other coaches who would take up to a week to respond to questions they had. So, if I get comments from new clients about how happy they are that they have a coach who

actually gets back to them, I know this is likely one of the very top elements that an athlete either expects to get or is pleasantly surprised to find they are getting it. It’s become a valuable piece what my clients share with their training partners about my coaching.

1) Timely Responses.

The single biggest client annoyance that I have seen coaches make is to be slow in their

response to questions asked by their paying clients. I know, we all get busy and have

great reasons why someone’s email or text has gone unanswered for a few days. But for the client who asked you the question, if you

let more than 24-hours go by between when you receive a question and the time you

answer it, the subtle signal that gets interpreted by that lag time is that they don’t

really matter to you. And that is not a good signal to send out to your clients. Of course, there will be times when you are engaged in

something that may delay your response, like travel or family obligations. The solution to that

is simple. Notify all of your clients that you will be either out of touch or slow to respond

during that period of time. Thank them for their patience and understanding and that you will get back to them when you return.

I’ve always tried to be patient with clients who start out as real thorns in my side. Granted,

sometimes there is just no match between me and a particular client. If the fit is just not right that becomes apparent fairly soon in the coach/client relationship. But a poor fit is different than a client who is continually questioning

everything about what I am having them do. I eventually saw that this is the client who really wants to believe and trust in what

I am having them do, but they have to lay down a huge foundation of information for this to happen.

These clients are the verbal ones. They are the ones that I have seen spread the word about me as a coach best of anyone. The clients

who were easy and it all flowed from day one were rarely the ones that will take out the megaphone in their triathlon community and

give the shout out to my coaching. It’s the ones that took time to bring around who became those great voices.

From my experience in the sport, I have a good basic understanding of a broad list of

components that need to be attended to for great race performances. Unfortunately, just

2) Low Client Tolerance. This may not apply to every coach, but it happens enough that it’s a topic I must bring up. As a coach you will have clients that challenge you on everything you are having

them do. They will ask you the same question a thousand different ways. They will tell you why they are different than every other athlete out there and why they should be doing things differently than what you are telling them to do. These clients will test your

patience. But just like doing an IRONMAN, stick with it. Chew off each and every question one at a time with as much detail and patience the 100th time they challenge you or ask the same thing as you did the first

time you tried to explain why you are having them follow a specific protocol. Losing your cool and trying to minimize a client’s question with your response, no matter how annoying it might be to you, is not

professional. And the worst is a coach who is condescending to someone who really just doesn’t understand and needs their help to really get it. In the end, once these clients come around, they will be your biggest fans and most vocal advocates.

3) Coaching Without Expert Support. With three sports being blended into one very challenging sport there is no way any coach can be an expert in every aspect of what will help an athlete get faster and

have a great experience along the way. Coaching is about more than just putting together training plans. There’s nutrition, strength work, swim technique, bike fit, sports psychology, biomechanical analysis and the list goes on. A coach who feels they know

it all is not a complete coach. The best coaches have a good grasp on what they know as well as an understanding of the areas that are best to farm out to experts with

much more knowledge on the topic. The best coaching businesses have a community of advisors to help coach their athletes.

knowing something is important certainly doesn’t make me an expert on what the details are of those important elements.

As an athlete I consulted with experts in just about every aspect of sports performance. From there I took the knowledge of experts in many different fields and then figured out

which key pieces were most potent for triathlon and how to integrate them. I carried that over into my coaching business. I still rely on people with very specific skills and knowledge to help

me provide effective coaching. I continue to refer my clients to professionals I trust in areas I don’t want to even touch. All great coaching businesses have developed

this type of network.

When I used to deliver all training

plans in a hand done format, I would put together about 6-weeks of training at a time. That was because most of my training is

based around phasing things in 6-week blocks. It was good for two reasons. It forced me to really think about where someone was at currently and where I wanted them

to be 6-weeks later. The second reason this was really great is that my clients could see what was coming and pace their training efforts based on knowing the bigger picture of a large phase of

training. Then as I got close to the end of each big phase, I would take into account the trend of how an

athlete was responding and set out the next 6-week phase. This was always delivered one week before the end of what they were working on. Again, this helped them to be able to plan their life and their training efforts from a

good solid future viewing timeline.

4) Last Minute Training Plan Delivery. This goes right up near the top of the list of things that bug clients and undermine a

coaching business. Every coach knows when a client’s next training week or block or schedule is going to be due. So does the athlete. The athlete is waiting in anticipation of that for a number of

reasons. One, they want to see what is coming up so they can get excited about the training. Second, and often more important, they have to plan their lives and fit their training into it. The most griped about pattern in coaching that

clients complain about is when they are waiting for their next training week or block that will start on Monday and it is late Sunday night. It’s just not acceptable as a coach to get your

clients their schedules at 11pm the night before the next block begins. How many days before one set of training ends will you get the next block to your clients so that they can allocate their

training efforts as well as juggle their schedule to accommodate everything? At the very least new schedules should be delivered a few days before the last big sessions on the previous one. What does that mean? In

most cases the longest or most demanding sessions are on weekends. So, try to get your clients their next schedule a few days before these tough workouts. That enables them to

not only allocate their efforts for what they still have but also for what will be following.

One of the biggest keys for me in preventing Coach Burnout had to

do with how I communicate with my athletes. For me with the software I have, creating training plans is easy. But to then actually coach my clients and be

accessible for questions and to provide guidance has been the toughest piece to evolve in my business so that I didn’t burn out from the time it took.

Initially everything was via email or phone. Both were taking more time and energy than I could sustain. So, I started cutting back on the detail I went into in my responses. That was

a disaster. My clients picked up on it. They felt shortchanged because they knew there was more I could share with them to help them, but I was burned out and wasn’t

providing them with the level of support they anticipated.

Today I have a great communication platform set up via Final Surge that allows me to very efficiently give the micro-communications on a daily basis that keep big disasters from happening with my

clients. We are connected. It’s time efficient. And I look forward to seeing what everyone is doing each day just as much as they enjoy the touch in and guidance from me. This in no way is an exhaustive look at what works and what doesn’t in coaching. Each coach will provide something unique and with that will have specific strengths they can

exploit as well as weaknesses they will need to overcome. But hopefully this has given you a good foundation of how to build your business as well as some of the most common pitfalls that can derail even the most promising of coaching careers.

See you at the race. Mark

5) Coach Burnout. Coaching is a demanding job to do

well. There is the demand of putting together training. There is the energy it takes to service the questions and needs of clients. If you do in person sessions with your clients there is the

time demand of being accessible. The most successful coaches figure out how to structure their business with all of this taken into account. Sometimes that means limiting the number of clients you take. It can be solved by streamlining

the time-intensive aspects of your business. And just like athletes needing to take an off season, it may become necessary to reduce your availability during certain times throughout the

year so that when you are on point, you are fresh enough to be there 100%. But if you are burning out and working at a 50% level, your clients will pick up on this!