Case Study: Patrick Johnsen & The Founding of BusinessLife Italia

Next up in our case study series is BusinessLife Italia. As the first integral expansion of BusinessLife by Marcus Coaching, BusinessLife Italia is an emerging business coaching program in northern Italy, co-founded by Patrick Johnsen and Peter Marcus.

Introducing Patrick Johnsen

Four years ago, Patrick Johnsen was moving to northern Italy with his wife. As preparation for the move, Patrick took a coaching program with Peter Marcus to better understand his personal and professional goals. He wanted to have a more concrete plan for living and working in Italy.

Patrick taught English in schools for a year and a half, and even developed his own sports-related English-learning program. At night, he worked as a teacher for adults, teaching business English.

He quickly realized that there was a gap in the market for teaching English to business professionals. The courses they took had little motivation for students to speak English, so the learning process was slow. There was no room for creativity or growth in the classroom, and Patrick struggled to make the classes interesting. Without interest and intrigue, the rate of learning a new language or business concept is slow-paced.

Then there was a moment of “divine intervention,” as Patrick calls it. Peter Marcus came to visit Patrick in Italy, and the two realized that they could use their skills to fill this need for Italian business professionals.

And the idea for BusinessLife Italia was born.

Founding BusinessLife Italia

Patrick and Peter realized they could use business coaching and the BusinessLife methodology to help these Italian professionals master English. This would give them interesting topics to discuss, and they would be gaining knowledge relevant to their professions.

Peter and Patrick went through the BusinessLife methodology for formulating a new business. This strategy addresses four areas: people, operations, marketing, and competition.

• People: Peter and Patrick decided to blend their experiences in order to co-found the new BusinessLife Italia business. Peter helped Patrick learn and grow a business in Italy, while Patrick’s network, experience, and professional history gave him a unique vantage point and skillset to run the business from the ground.
• Operations: Peter helped Patrick incorporate a series of topics that would enable his courses to be functional and developmental for clients. Patrick’s unique experience as a teacher and entrepreneur added a distinct value to the business that would enable the BusinessLife methodology to function and thrive overseas in Italy.
• Marketing: Patrick had an established network of schools and learning course organizations to reach out and market to.
• Competition: For the new business, there is competition from schools teaching English as a second language. To address this, BusinessLife Italia took a focus on business coaching primarily, as a vehicle for learning English. This enables them to attract more clients and create a new, unique feature that was a step above their competitors.

The first clients

The first clients for BusinessLife Italia were the administrators of a local business Patrick had previously worked with. They hired Patrick to use his business’ methodology to grow their management’s professional and English-language skills.

This became Patrick’s first BusinessLife Italia course, and the first big challenge for Patrick as a business founder and leader. The attendees were experts in their professional roles, each with decades of experience. This presented a great opportunity to draw upon a wealth of past experience, while challenging Patrick to lead a team of seasoned administrators.

As Patrick taught his first course, he found himself quickly coming into his own as a business coach. As a result, his students thrived, learning a lot about their industry and one another. They were able to improve office situations such as communication and identifying leadership. The benefits of the program were twofold: coaching the Italian professionals to grow in their business skills, and teaching English through pertinent course material.

BusinessLife Italia moving forward

BusinessLife Italia is coming up on its one-year anniversary this May. In this first year, Patrick had to work to overcome personal resistance as well as several mental, cultural, and professional barriers.

Nevertheless, Patrick found that the topics were interesting to his clients, and they were not only learning English effectively, but learning a lot about themselves. The business coaching component facilitated conversations in English, which helped them become more articulate and comfortable with the language.

Patrick introduced Marcus Coaching’s BusinessLife concepts and made them comprehensible to his first clients by mixing together challenging ideas with the comfort of one-on-one coaching. He believes it’s all about taking learning one step at a time.

Despite all that Patrick has learned through this past year in the new business of BusinessLife Italia and his work with Marcus Coaching, there are still challenges down the pipeline. He has to look at his new business to ensure every step of the process is effectively meeting the needs of his clients.

• How is he bringing continued value?
• What are his future objectives? Is he setting SMART goals?
• How will he track results to determine if he is meeting these objectives?
• What could he change or improve to better reach these goals?
• How will he continue to close sales in the future?

Patrick must choose to evaluate his choices for the future, and ensure that each decision aligns with his strategic plans for the development of BusinessLife Italia.

The conclusion of the beginning

For the next three months, we will continue to dig into the development of BusinessLife Italia. As Peter and Patrick work together to build an integral part of growth for Marcus Coaching, we’ll see the team build BusinessLife Italia as the newest part of BusinessLife by Marcus Coaching.

Next month, we will take a deeper dive into the strategic planning of the new business, and dive deeper into the challenges Patrick faced. How did he overcome resistance, and how will he scale his new business?