Beth Triffon · Stage Left Creative · Los Angeles
Becoming a more confident business owner.
How coaching helped Beth see her business through her clients’ eyes, improve its marketing and approach new relationships with confidence.
A client story by Ryan Spanger · 4 minute read
Watch Beth’s story 3:05
- The marketing
- A website and showreel focused on clients
- The relationships
- More attention to repeat customers
- The confidence
- Learning to reach beyond word of mouth
Beth Triffon moved to Los Angeles to become an actor. Her work in television included three seasons of The Goldbergs. Alongside her acting career, she runs Stage Left Creative with her business partner, Kerry Henderson.
Having her own company gave Beth something of her own to build, a creative ambition she cared deeply about. She and Kerry knew how to make the work. They wanted help learning how to run and grow the business around it.
Hear it from Beth.
Her experience of coaching, in her own words.
02 · Why coaching
They knew the creative work. Marketing was harder.
Stage Left had grown through word of mouth. Beth and Kerry weren’t sure how to market themselves or find clients beyond the people who already knew them. They had gone years without reaching out to potential clients, and knew something needed to change.
“We sought out coaching because we’re not trained business owners. We’re more trained artists.”
Beth Triffon, Stage Left Creative
They considered other coaching options after meeting me. What brought them back was my experience building a production company, together with the kindness Beth felt in the way I worked.
03 · Understanding clients
Seeing the business through a client’s eyes.
A central part of the coaching was helping Beth think about what clients needed from Stage Left. She began looking beyond the creative work itself to the experience and outcome the client wanted.
She described the questions she was learning to ask:
“What do they need? What do they want from us? How can we actually deliver that in a way that’s really satisfying on both ends?”
Beth Triffon, Stage Left Creative
That gave us a clearer basis for how the company presented itself, who Beth and Kerry wanted to work with, and how they could help those clients.
04 · Telling their story
Using a skill she already had.
I helped Beth think of marketing as telling the company’s story in a succinct, compelling way. For someone with her storytelling background, that made the task feel familiar and achievable.
“I felt like, okay, I know how to do that. I can do that.”
Beth Triffon, Stage Left Creative
Beth and Kerry rebuilt their website and reworked their showreel with my input. We focused on what potential clients needed to see, so their marketing could speak more directly to the people they wanted to work with.
05 · Working together
Experience, honesty and kindness.
Beth described Los Angeles as an environment where she often felt she needed to protect herself. She valued being able to be more open in the coaching while becoming stronger as a business owner.
She also valued having someone who had faced the problems of running a production company. I could draw on that experience to help her recognise pitfalls and work through decisions.
For Beth, the feedback was useful because she could understand it and connect it to how she saw her own business. It helped her consider things she hadn’t seen for herself.
06 · What changed
More care for clients. More confidence reaching out.
Beth said the business was going well and had repeat customers. One change she noticed was how she looked after those relationships: she felt she was nurturing repeat clients better than before.
She and Kerry were also learning how to approach people beyond their existing network. They were becoming clearer about the customers they wanted to find and the type of work they wanted to do.
They had completed their new website and showreel. Alongside those practical changes, Beth felt more confident stepping outside her comfort zone and taking a more active role in developing the business.
What the coaching meant to Beth.
Beth wanted help with the parts of business ownership she hadn’t been trained for. Coaching gave her an experienced person to work through them with, and a fresh view of where the company could improve.
Her advice to someone who felt stuck was to get that outside perspective:
“He can come in and kind of look at your business in ways that you maybe haven’t looked at it.”
Beth Triffon · Watch her story
Your next step
Let’s work on your business.
If you know how to do the creative work but feel stuck on marketing, finding clients or running the business, I can help you work out where to focus and put it into practice.
You can start with a one-off session or work with me on an ongoing basis. See the coaching options, pricing and what’s included.
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