Robert Hargrove

Draft of New Business Concept--Please Comment

It was only a few years ago that Google was an emerging business. Today, Google has produced 2 billionaires and 1000 millionaires.

Robert Hargrove and Michel Renaud are pondering starting up a new business under the Masterful Coaching brand name for the CEOs and executive teams of $15 to $50 million companies. The structure of the program will include both Executive Coaching and Team Coaching, but the overall focus will be on “Business Coaching.”

For Business Leaders with a Passion for Growth. The program will be designed for company leaders who have a passion for growth and want to realize an Impossible Future, such as tripling the size of their business in 2 to 5 years, with profits of at least 10% to 15% each year. The market we are going after is Emerging Leaders, Emerging Business, Emerging Markets—for those leaders who want to take their company to the next level, but have hit a wall.

Hunger for Coaching? It’s our belief that Emerging Business leaders in this category may prove to be hungry for coaching, given many have never had a boss who coached them, have done little in terms of executive development, and have lots at stake in their business—including the possibility of enormous wealth. It was only a short while ago that Google was an emerging business and today has produced 2 billionaires and 1000 millionaires.

Who are the coaches? The typical coach we retain might be a retired CEO of a big business, a president of a regional Business Unit, a division General Manager, or a successful entrepreneur who is ready to start a second career and has a secret ambition to coach and teach. They will be paid a generous percentage, plus the lion’s share of a bonus, if the business reaches its profit and growth goals.

Cost of the coaching program. The cost of the program, which includes executive coaching, team coaching, and emphasizes business coaching, will be 100K for one year. To help people get beyond initial money considerations, we intend to talk to the CEOs about what’s really possible for their business and their commitment to realizing it, as well as the power of coaching.

Feasibility Study At the beginning of each business coaching engagement, Masterful Coaching’s MBA research staff will conduct a Feasibility Study for approx $10,000 to determine whether the best course of action is to 1) Grow, 2) Fix to Sell, or 3) Close the company.

Please comment on the following questions. We think this might be a good business concept, but we would like to test our assumptions about the whole idea and would very much appreciate your comments on the following questions:

1. Do you think this is a good, great business idea? Initial reactions?

2. What do you think the absolute best way to market to the CEOs of these companies—letters, telemarketing, Web, associations, networking, other?

3. Do you think CEOs of these companies will pay $100k for the coaching service?

4. Do you think the retired executives we intend to hire as coaches will respond to the offer, given compensation, time involvement?