How the matching works, and how this site makes money

Business coaching isn't a licensed occupation in Australia. There's no register and no regulator, so anyone can use the title. That puts the checking in your hands, so here's the list I'd work through myself before hiring a coach. Most of it takes a few minutes.

Before you commit to a coach:

1. Confirm the ABN is registered and currently active on ABN Lookup, and that the trading name matches.
2. Confirm the business is not under external administration, using ASIC's published registers.
3. Ask to see a current certificate of currency for professional indemnity and public liability insurance, and note the expiry date.
4. Confirm the coach works with clients in Adelaide or South Australia, and ask how often they meet clients in person here.
5. Ask for the coach's own business background: what they've run, for how long, and in which industries.
6. Ask about any coaching credential they hold, the body that issued it, and its expiry. These bodies are private membership associations, not regulators, so treat a credential as background rather than a licence.
7. Ask for 2 client references you can contact, and contact them.
8. Confirm they publish or will disclose their fees to you before you commit to anything.
9. Ask them to confirm in writing that they don't provide financial product advice, tax advice or legal advice unless they separately hold the relevant licence or registration.
10. Check for a real South Australian presence rather than taking a claim to "service Adelaide" on trust: the main business location shown on ABN Lookup, plus at least 1 of an SA business address, an SA-registered business name, or SA client references you've spoken to.
11. Check the ABN's current registration status and its GST registration status on ABN Lookup, and note the date you checked. A cancelled ABN, or GST charged by a coach who isn't registered for GST, is your cue to stop there.
12. If you keep working with a coach beyond a year, re-check items 1 to 11 every 12 months, starting with the insurance expiry date.
13. Agree in writing what would end the engagement, so you both know where the line is: an ABN that lapses or is cancelled, insurance that lapses and isn't replaced, entry into external administration, giving financial, tax or legal advice without holding the relevant licence or registration, contacting you after you've asked them to stop, or conduct you've raised with them and they haven't fixed.

Your details are collected for 1 purpose: introducing you to local coaches. They go to coaches and to nobody else, they're never sold, and nothing is passed on until you've ticked the consent box on the enquiry form. The consent names the bound itself, no more than 3 coaches, so it authorises a specific thing rather than an open-ended one.

If you change your mind, tell me and it stops. If a coach keeps contacting you after you've asked them not to, tell me that too, and I won't pass that coach any further enquiries.

The Privacy Policy sets out how your details are stored, how long they're kept, and how to have them corrected or deleted. It's linked in the footer of every page on this site and again next to the consent box on the form below, where it's most useful. The collection notice on the form says the same thing in shorter words, at the moment you're deciding whether to submit.

Business coaching sits next to 3 regulated areas, and it drifts into all 3 by accident constantly. A coach works on what the business does to make money: pricing, margin, cash flow, hiring, systems, planning and the decisions you keep putting off. The moment a question becomes one for a licensed adviser, a registered agent or a lawyer, the honest answer from a coach is to say so and send you there.

This matters when you're choosing. A coach who answers every question, including the ones outside their lane, isn't being helpful. They're being expensive later. Item 9 of the checklist above exists for exactly this reason, so ask the coach to confirm it in writing before you start.

ADL Business Coach is operated by Loudachris Digital Marketing (ABN 73 630 143 190, Chris Lourenco) from 21-22 Greenhill Rd, Wayville SA 5034. Enquiries go to chris@loudachris.com.au, or 0403 454 199 if you'd rather talk. The area served is Adelaide and South Australia, and there is no interstate arm of this.

I'm 1 person, not an agency and not a call centre. That's worth knowing because it sets your expectations correctly: the reply you get is written by me, the enquiry is read by me, and the judgement about which coaches fit is mine. A matching service that won't tell you who's behind it is asking you to trust an anonymous page, which is a strange thing to be asked by a business built on introductions. There's more on the background and why this site exists on the about page.

If you'd rather do it yourself, here's the short version of the same work. Get the ABN and check it's active on ABN Lookup, along with whether they're registered for GST. Ask for a current certificate of currency for professional indemnity and public liability insurance and look at the expiry date. Ask what they've run themselves, for how long and in which industries. Ask for 2 client references and actually ring them. Get the fee, the cadence and the terms in writing before the first session, and be wary of a 12-month upfront lock-in when the market has moved to rolling 30-day terms.

That's most of the list above, and you can run it yourself. The part this site adds is reading your enquiry and passing it to a local coach whose background fits your particular problem, and that's the part the coach may pay for.

If you're still working out whether coaching is the right spend at all, start with small business coaching for what an engagement usually covers, or the 10-question readiness quiz, which is willing to tell you the answer is a bookkeeper.