Serial entrepreneur brings her experience to business coaching
By Sarah Binder
CEDAR RAPIDS—You need to know what makes you special.
Theresa Bornbach, founder of Business and Talent Made Better, said the biggest thing her company does with clients is help them determine their unique selling proposition (USP).
“And customer service differentiates you from no one,” she said.
Once they figure out the truly special thing about the business, Ms. Bornbach’s coaching business focuses on the three key pillars of success: business and financial management, leadership and marketing.
“Unless you find a way to master all three, your business will never reach its potential,” she said.
Business and Talent Made Better is unique, she said, because they focus on all three of those key things. She said many coaching businesses only focus on one component of business success.
In order to provide all three services, Business and Talent Made Better works with partner organizations. Ms. Bornbach is an ActionCOACH-certified business coach for the business aspects and a founding partner in the John Maxwell Team for leadership development.
To provide comprehensive marketing services, Business and Talent Made Better recently signed a contract with Duct Tape Marketing to provide their comprehensive marketing services.
Based in Kansas City, Mo., Duct Tape Marketing has grown to include a network of 63 consultants worldwide, said Jenna Jantsch, director of marketing for Duct Tape. Ms. Bornbach will be the first consultant in Iowa to use their system.
The company is known for a straightforward, practical approach to marketing. Ms. Bornbach said that is a common theme in her services. She plans to add one more member to her staff of four to handle the marketing services.
Because she offers such comprehensive services, Ms. Bornbach said she considers coaching to be different than consulting.
“It’s really like having an objective business partner,” she said.
She said a lot of business owners use their spouses as their “accountability partner,” but that can lead to tension.
In her case, her ex-husband came back to use her as a coach. After winning the lottery as part of the Quaker Oats “Shipping 20,” he became her client for help with wealth management.
“He said, ‘there’s no one better at running anyone’s life than Theresa,’” she said.
Lessons learned
After starting multiple companies, Ms. Bornbach said the lessons she teaches her clients have been ones she’s learned over and over.
She served as the vice president for regulatory affairs at Alliant Energy before leaving to start her coaching business. She said that working for a large company taught her key business principles, which she now tries to bring to her smaller clients.
“It reinforced for me, some of those same practices can be used in small businesses, if they’re implemented in a practical way,” she said.
She started Business and Talent Made Better in 2006, when the idea of comprehensive business coaching was fairly new. She said at the time, business coaching had a stigma attached: that if a business needed coaching, it was in trouble.
Today, she said many of her clients use coaching because they simply want more time to focus on what they do best.
She also founded one of the region’s first coworking spaces, in 2009, with the Business Exchange Center. Hers is a slightly more formal coworking space, with offices for clients, but she also partners with the Vault, a more open coworking space in downtown Cedar Rapids.
“Both of those needs are very important in our economy,” she said.
Then, there was the flood.
Ms. Bornbach became the leader of the Jumpstart Business Administration, and helped to manage more than $75 million in state and federal recovery funding. She helped local businesses come up with “creative yet compliant” ways to work the ever-changing state and federal regulations.
While helping so many businesses is one of her proudest accomplishments, Ms. Bornbach said the three years of nearconstant work took her away from the core mission of Business and Talent Made Better. She’s excited to refocus while offering the new marketing services.
Her goal is simple: to be the premiere business coach in Eastern Iowa.
“It’s a big goal, but that’s OK,” she said. “Without a big goal, you don’t get to achieve big things.”
