Why do I want a Business Coach?

Here at ActionCOACH Western Fairfax, I occasionally get the question “why do I want a business coach?”  Since my goal is to help the most people make the best decisions for their business, and get the best results, it seemed helpful to share some observations …

Like many things, the answer is “it depends… ”

For example; why are you in business? 

·      If you are in business to make money – how much? 

·      And how many hours do you want to work – do you want to enjoy the money you make? 

If you just want to make enough – as if you had a job working for someone else - and there is a massive amount of demand for your type of service – maybe you don’t.  At least not until the next time the market changes.  The COVID pandemic was a good example of what can happen then. 

Alternatively, if you started your business to make enough money to build significant wealth and would like free time in your life to enjoy it, then the answer is a little different.  For that outcome, you may want to scale your business up beyond what work you can do yourself.  Why? – because there aren’t enough hours in the day or week to generate enough profitable sales and also do the work, so you can achieve those kinds of results over the long term. 

That said, the process of building a profitable growing business involving more than 8 or 10 people is different than the process of doing a business with the owner with a small team.  Especially if the owner wants to work less than 40 to 60 hours/ week.

For example, if a person starts a business based on their skill at a craft, or making a product they are good at, they will find that the amount of money they can make is limited by the amount of time they are willing to work.  So, they start to hire people to get more done.  Which is good.  But most times, the owners who go that path discover they spend all their time “putting out fires”, and still having to work to get customers served themselves.  And they run out of time to enjoy the life they had been hoping for.  Some find themselves burning out – or give up their goals and shrink back to a smaller business. 

Maybe you have experienced this.

Growing, managing, and leading larger teams profitably requires much different skills and activities than selling and servicing a few transactions. 

Unfortunately, there is no easy, silver bullet that gets every business to the right result overnight.  There are thousands of great books that provide lots of insights.  In fact, that learning is a necessary part of the process.  But those books are not immersed in your specific business situation. 

A business coach can help guide a business owner through the necessary steps.  Partly because the coach can get to know enough about you and your business to see which insights you will need – today.  And yet, they can look at it from the outside, without the emotional attachment the owner has.

The coach can guide that owner to the right strategies for their current situation, and then guide them through the process to learn how to implement them.  It may not be exactly right each and every time – some of this is trial and error.  But part of the process of the owner learning – is trying and finding out what does not work – and why. 

And that gets us to the real reason.  Most business owners do not get what they want from their business because they are not doing enough of the right things their business needs them to do to grow the next increment.  What they are doing now got them to where they are now – but that will not take them to their next goal. 

Why is that?  Sometimes it is due to lack of knowledge of available strategies.  Other times they are doing strategies in ways that are not effective enough.  And still other times it is due to fear of doing strategies they have never done before.  They hope that profit will happen by doing more of what they have always done.  But if that were the secret – they would already have what they wanted. 

So… the real value of a business coach is to guide the owner through a process of learning to do what they have never done before - test and evaluate the results – and then determine what next steps to take.  It will require a constant process to test / evaluate / test / evaluate / test / evaluate – and find those strategies that work best for that specific business.  It helps a whole lot if the coach can bring a proven, systematic process with pre-tested tools to the game, so that the strategies tested are not chosen randomly.  In that way, the owner avoids more of the pitfalls, and learns how to make more effective decisions more quickly – and confidently.  Which brings them profitable and sustainable growth sooner. 

If the business owner and the coach work together effectively – the entire process will produce much more profit to the owner.  It may take a few months to effect the initial changes and get new results – but the cost of the coach should produce a profitable outcome.  That does require the owner to do the things the coach recommends. 

Most times, the profit from the business rises faster than the cost of a coaching program – and they can be achieved in a way the owner does not have to do it all by themselves – when the owner embraces the process – and implements recommendations as quickly as possible. 

For example;

• Would Michael Phelps have achieved as much as he did if he had never hired a coach?
• Who else could have achieved the same - if only they had gotten a coach as early in the game as he did?

So that is why many business owners want a business coach – so they can enjoy the additional profits and free time that come from their faster growing, well run enterprise. 

Want to know your key focus area to help grow your business? Try our 3 min Assessment Quiz at https://stevechiama.nextlevelassessment.com/?source=LI_Event - 6Steps