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How Business Coaching Works

Working with a coach allows you to take back control of your business, strengthen your systems, and accelerate growth—often within the first 90 days. With the right structure and accountability, you’ll make faster, smarter progress toward a business that supports your goals instead of consuming your time.

The ActionCOACH Business Operating System (ABoS)

ABoS is a step-by-step framework designed to transform your company into a commercial, profitable enterprise that runs without depending on you. It gives owners a proven pathway to achieve real business freedom—time freedom, team freedom, financial freedom, and ultimately, ownership freedom.

After more than 30 years and hundreds of thousands of businesses coached worldwide, these six steps have become the most reliable formula for building a sustainable, scalable business.

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Step-1-Mastery

Step 1 – MASTERY

We describe this stage as moving from chaos to control—shifting from a business that dictates your days to one you confidently direct. Many owners find themselves constantly reacting, putting out fires, or stuck in “just keep the doors open” mode. Even at your best, it may feel like the only way something gets done correctly is if you do it yourself.

Mastery is built across four key areas, each supported by Strategy Cards and Playbooks you’ll work through with your coach as you install ABoS. This stage requires patience with the growth process, but absolute urgency when it comes to building consistent, daily profit.

ABoS Mastery is made up of four areas, each supported by Strategy Cards, Playbooks, and coaching guidance:

  • Destination Mastery – Clarity: Install goal-setting and planning systems so you have a clear long-term direction and better day-to-day control.
  • Time Mastery – Productivity: Implement personal and team productivity systems that create measurable gains in efficiency and profit.
  • Delivery Mastery – Consistency: Build reliable processes that ensure customers receive a consistent, high-quality experience every time.
  • Financial Mastery – Profit: Learn to understand both past performance and predictive numbers so you can make confident, informed decisions.

Together, these elements build a strong foundation you can trust as you move into growth.

Step-2-Marketing

Step 2 – MARKETING

Marketing in ABoS is defined simply: profitably buying lifetime customers. This means every dollar invested in marketing should bring back more than it costs—and keep producing returns over time.

With the ABoS marketing system, guesswork disappears. You’ll test, measure, and refine your marketing so it becomes an investment, not an expense.

With the ABoS Testing and Measuring Systems in place, your marketing shifts from being an expense to becoming a true investment—one where your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) becomes a consistently measurable and celebrated win.

Every Playbook and Strategy Card connects back to this proven formula, helping you install the systems that grow your bottom line. Each of the five key profit drivers includes dozens of Strategy Cards—70, 80, or more—giving you a step-by-step pathway to implement ABoS with confidence and precision.

The 5 Ways Formula

Leads focus on generating qualified prospects and new potential customers. We’ll guide you in installing measurement systems, setting achievable targets, and implementing strategies that bring in the right volume of leads—at a pace your team, operations, and cash flow can confidently support.

Conversion Rate centers on building a sales process that consistently nurtures prospects and turns them into high-value customers. By installing the ABoS sales systems—supported by 83 Strategy Cards and multiple Playbooks—you’ll develop a reliable, repeatable sales engine that produces stronger results week after week.

The Ladder of Loyalty

Number of Transactions focuses on increasing repeat business—one of the most profitable growth levers available. Since returning customers drive higher margins and long-term stability, this part of ABoS plays a crucial role in strengthening your bottom line.

Average Sale centers on increasing the value of each transaction. With more than 60 Strategy Cards dedicated to pricing, upselling, and value enhancement, ABoS gives you and your team practical tools to raise the average purchase amount with every customer.

Finally, Margins ensure that every sale contributes maximum gross profit. By installing the margin-improvement strategies from ABoS, you’ll optimize your pricing, cost structure, and overall profitability.

And of course, the stronger your brand becomes, the more value and profit you’ll generate from each of these areas.

Alongside the 5 Ways Multiplier Formula, ABoS includes the Ladder of Loyalty, a system we help you install that guides someone in your target market—from a casual prospect all the way to a true raving fan. A raving fan not only buys from you repeatedly, but also refers high-quality customers, shares your business on social media, and becomes an engine for continual growth.

With our coaching and your implementation of this ABoS playbook, your customer experience will strengthen significantly—and your bottom-line profits will reflect it. And as your systems begin working for you, you’ll finally start getting your time back.

Step-3-Systems

Step 3 – SYSTEMS

In ABoS, “Systems” stands for Save Yourself Time, Energy, and Money, and represents the “that works” component of building a commercial, profitable enterprise that can operate without your constant involvement.

9 Steps to Systemizing A Business

With the ABoS installation, you’ll learn to build the systems, the systems will run the business, and your team will run those systems. This creates structure, consistency, and far greater predictability as your company grows. Your role shifts from doing everything yourself to leading and managing the team as they follow the systems.

The first four of the nine ABoS steps focus on defining a clear direction for your business. Through guided Playbooks, you’ll develop your Vision, Mission, Values, and Company Goals—giving you the clarity needed to build an organization capable of achieving them.

This is where the Playbooks and Strategy Cards for steps five through seven come in. Together with your coach, you’ll map out the structure, roles, and team size needed to bring your Vision to life.

The final two steps guide you through installing the systems and building the Manuals and Checklists that turn your business into a fully systematized, predictable, and scalable operation. This is the point where you can finally step back from the daily grind.

Step-4-Team

Step 4 – TEAM

The ABoS approach to team development is built on the principle that Together Everyone Achieves More. As you invest in building capable, aligned team members, they in turn help build and grow the business. To create a company that can thrive without your constant involvement—and give you true freedom—you need a team that can consistently deliver results whether you’re there or not.

6 Keys To a Winning Team

The ABoS framework includes 6 Keys to a Winning Team, and as you install each one, your team becomes stronger, more capable, and more aligned. With the right Management Systems (competency and productivity) and Leadership Systems (passion and focus), your team's performance grows—and so does your confidence in their ability to operate independently.

It all begins with strong leadership. From understanding the Leadership Framework to developing your own leadership skills and style, you’ll shape the team in a way that reflects your vision. Next comes establishing a Common Goal—a clear, shared objective that everyone understands, believes in, and works toward together.

This process leads to a clearly defined Culture document and what we call your team’s Rules of the Game, ensuring that when you reach Key 4—your Action Plan—everyone knows exactly who is responsible for what and by when.

Keys 5 and 6 focus on supporting smart risk-taking and fostering 100% involvement and inclusion, both essential as your business grows and your team tackles new challenges.

When combined with the ABoS Communication Systems, these elements create a team and company that operate like a well-oiled machine—setting the stage for you to either step back or step into a higher-level leadership role.

Step-5-Scale

Step 5 – SCALE

In Step 5, you move from incremental growth to exponential growth. The 5 Core Disciplines of Scale focus on expanding the proven business model you've already built—whether that means new markets, additional locations, or a larger organizational footprint. Not every business owner chooses to scale to this level, but for those in CEO or Corporate Business Coaching, this is often where the journey begins.

These five disciplines work together to create the conditions for exponential growth. In ABoS, each discipline is broken down into four or five key functions, supported by 537 Strategy Cards and multiple Playbooks—ensuring your scaling process is structured, strategic, and fully planned out.

The 5 Core Disciplines of Scale

At scale, Strategy, Business Development, People, Execution, and Mission all become more complex and more critical. Whether you’re leading the expansion yourself or supported by a management team, growth must be well-funded, well-balanced, and built on the foundation of great people—and a great coach helping guide the process.

And that brings us to the sixth and final level.

Step-6-Freedom

Step 6 – FREEDOM

This step is all about building a commercial, profitable enterprise that can operate without you. From the start, the goal has been to create a business you can sell—or at least one you have the option to sell when the time is right. Every owner will eventually exit their business, but too many are forced to close their doors due to personal circumstances or a business that isn’t built to run independently. Step 6 ensures your exit is intentional, strategic, and built on a strong, self-sustaining company.

With ABoS, the goal is a planned and intentional exit—whether that means owning a business that runs without your daily involvement or selling it as a valuable asset to a strategic or financial buyer.

Your ultimate destination is freedom.

That’s why, while ABoS is being installed in your business, your coach also supports your personal and professional growth. Your coaching journey actually begins long before you realize it—starting with the fundamentals you learned as an employee and evolving as you step into higher levels of leadership.

The Entrepreneurial Ladder

As an employee, you were unknowingly preparing for the next step—becoming self-employed. Many owners struggle early on simply because they transitioned into business ownership with limited experience and only a few previous roles to draw from.

As you continue to grow emotionally and develop your skills, you move up the ladder—from self-employed, to manager with a team, and ultimately to true owner, where you can confidently step back and let your team run the business. This progression is supported not only through your coach and the ABoS system, but also through the principles of C.A.R.E.

Community – Business ownership can feel isolating, but with ActionCOACH you gain a network of like-minded business owners who learn together, support each other, and share real-world experiences. Community builds confidence—and community builds community.

Accountability – Through mastermind groups, peer-to-peer support, and your dedicated coach, you’ll always have someone keeping you aligned with your goals, focused on profit, and committed to steady growth.

Results – We highlight the numbers that truly matter. By tracking key performance indicators and strengthening the drivers of your bottom line, we help you build a more valuable, profitable company—and guide you every step of the way.

Education – Your business only grows as fast as you do. From online learning to books, events, and quarterly planning sessions, continuous education ensures you develop the skills and leadership needed to take your company to the next level.