“You don’t have to re-invent the wheel to run a successful business. Our vision is: World abundance through business re-education.”

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Greg Kopchuk is the Master Licensee of ActionCOACH Canada. Since becoming a Master Licensee of the Canadian Franchise company in 2004, he has managed to take it from bankruptcy and turn it into a multi-million successful national company. Greg has been awarded the Master Licensee award two years in a row from Brad J Sugars and Action International. He prides himself on being a hard-working, successful business coach who encourages all small business owners and entrepreneurs to stop at nothing to achieve their goals. A successful speaker, and family man, Greg is married with three daughters.

ActionCOACH Canada is a team of business leaders who are about making a difference in the lives of business owners in our community.

MO: When you initially took over ActionCOACH Canada, it had just come out of bankruptcy protection. What inspired you to take on a failing company and how were you able to turn it around into a multi-million business venture?

Greg: By this point I had been coached by an ActionCOACH and I had been on the streets selling coaching for ActionCOACH for almost 3 years. I saw that there was a huge need for business coaching since I had been coached and knew it was something every business owner needed even though they didn’t know it existed. I knew that in Canada we had a high failure rate of businesses and if business owners had something like business coaching we would see more successful businesses and therefore strong local economies which would create better lifestyles for everyone in those communities.

MO: What were the biggest obstacles you faced when first rebuilding ActionCoach? How did you take a familiar brand and reinvent it?

Greg: At the time I took over our average coach was banking $5000/m and retaining clients for 4 months. So the first job was to get all the franchisees working together as a team. Since they had been basically on their own for 18 months they were functioning as independent business owners. So we had to get together to form a common goal first. We had to go back to square one and rebuild the foundation (in Action we call this mastery). First we had to tighten up our selection process and get the best of the best as business coaches. Then we had to get everyone back on track to using our systems and getting great results for our clients. Then promote the results we were getting for our clients which increased our client retention. Now our average coach banks $16,000/m and retains clients for 11 months! So we are well on our way. Plus in 2010 and 2011 we received awards from the Canadian Franchise Association for franchisee satisfaction. The only business coaching/consulting franchise in Canada and 1 of the 30 out of 500 franchise systems in the country to receive these awards. So we are on the right track

MO: What does a business coach do? What kind of results can a client expect?

Greg: What we do is assist a business owner in achieving their goals, dreams, visions, aspirations through creating more profits, freeing up the owners time, creating a competitive edge in the market place and hiring and keeping great staff and making them more productive.

The results an owner can expect: for every dollar they invest in an ActionCOACH they will make at least $6 back in profits. Our average client sees an increase in profits of 120% in 18 months and 250% in 36 months. Plus StatsCan says that 80% of all businesses in Canada shut their doors every 10 yrs. Over a 10 year period with ActionCOACH only 3% of our clients shut their doors. So an 80% failure rate without an ActionCOACH and a 97% success rate with an ActionCOACH, which would you rather have?

MO: What are the most common issues you see businesses struggling with? How do you provide the tools and resources to help them overcome these obstacles?

Greg: The most common issues for business owner is learning how to understand the numbers (financials in their business), how to increase profits without working more hours, business owners working 60 hrs plus a week usually 6 or 7 days a week. How an owner can hire and keep great staff and make them more productive. They don’t know how to create a competitive edge in the market place. Plus many owners working these long hours and just getting by or barely breaking even have lost the vision and passion for why they originally opened the business.

The tools and resources we have available are what we have developed over the past 18 years working in over 30 countries and with 100,000 business owners. We have spent the 18 years learning all of this so the owners can learn it from us in less than 18 years. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel to run a successful business. Our vision is: World abundance through business re-education.

MO: How are you defining the new frontier of business growth?

Greg: The new frontier of business coaching is seeing a 95% success rate with businesses instead of the acceptable 50% or higher failure rate that Industry Canada expects. One reason more people don’t start a business is because of the high failure rate. With a 50% to 80% failure rate of businesses in this country why would anyone start a business when the odds are against them? The new frontier of business growth as defined by ActionCOACH is to have a 95% success rate which means creating a stronger Canadian economy one business at a time. What better way to give back to your country? Canada at the end of WWII was the 4th largest economic powerhouse in the world. We should have stayed there, for some reason we didn’t. ActionCOACH Canada wants to change the perception of business in this country.

MO: What’s been your greatest success story so far?

Greg: When I first wrote my mission statement in Nov 2006 I stated that I wanted 95% of the businesses we coached to still be around 10 years later. Our success rate is 97%. The fact that we had just 1 more business last beyond the 10 years is the true success rate. Think what that means for the business owner, their family, the employees they hire, and the local community. This is the true success of ActionCOACH!