A Catalyst for Change: The Role of Business Coaching in Your Growth Journey

No matter what stage your business is in, I’d be willing to bet it could benefit from business coaching.

Whether it’s developing your own leadership skills, maximizing revenue, developing a recruiting strategy, or just getting better at managing your time and calendar – a business coach can help you tackle challenges and take your business to the next level.

Here’s how.

What is business coaching?

Business coaching allows an outside professional to guide a business owner through the pursuit of their business goals.

Depending on your coach, the process may look like a lot of different things, but it generally includes the coach learning as much as possible about you, your goals and your current business challenges.

Here at W5 Coaching, we focus on helping you identify the best ways to make sure your business is meeting your goals for how it should support your life.

A good business coach will ask challenging questions that lead you to find the answers within yourself.

They will be your biggest champion and your harshest critic – all at the same time.

Business coaching vs. consulting vs. life coaching: what’s the difference?

With all the different professionals out there, you might wonder about the differences between a business coach, a business consultant or a life coach.

Here’s how I like to think about it:

While a business coach is focused on asking good questions and guiding you to find the answers, a consultant typically provides solutions for you.

In other words, while a business coach acts as a guide to help you figure out your best path, a consultant has their sleeves rolled up, ready to provide a set of solutions for you to choose from.

While a coach works to develop you, a consultant works to develop only your business.

In general, it’s good to work with a business coach to help you develop your own voice and vision over time, and with a consultant to apply their expertise to a specific business challenge.

Both are valuable to the success of your business, and you might engage with both types of advisor at different times.

A life coach, on the other hand, has a more holistic approach, focusing on a client’s full menu of goals, both business and personal.

While a business coach works with entrepreneurs and business owners, a life coach is good for anyone who wants clarity and refinement of their life goals.

Once again, both types of coaches can be beneficial for you, and you may engage with both at various times.

How a business coach can help

Everyone benefits from outside perspective – no matter how smart, driven or experienced.

More than anything else, a business coach can help you see your blind spots.  I often say that it’s impossible to see the full picture of your business when you’re stuck inside the frame.

Your coach can identify things you don’t see and point you in the right direction.

A business coach can also hold you accountable for your professional and organizational goals and can help you hold others accountable too.

Here are some other ways a business coach can help your business thrive:

• Improve operations and remove bottlenecks
• Develop systems for smoother operation
• Shift your mindset from a reactive to a proactive approach
• Hire and train the right team – to get the right people doing the right things, right
• Develop your sales and marketing skills so that you can attract bigger and better clients
• Read and understand your financial statements so that you can make better decisions that lead to profitability
• Free up your time to focus on bigger picture issues

Ultimately, a great business coach will help you set up your business to give you your life back.

What to expect from your business coach

Your business coach won’t tell you what you should do.

Your business is just that: yours.

Instead, a good business coach will ask smart questions, provide some outside perspective and help you talk through your options.

You ultimately make the decisions about how to run your business.

And good coaching helps you make the decisions that are right for you and your business.

You should expect your business coach to focus heavily on your own personal growth and leadership development.

That may mean exploring how to effectively delegate, learning how to read and understand financial statements, running effective meetings, having crucial conversations with your team – and more.

Ultimately, when you work with a business coach, you should feel more empowered, more confident, more assertive.

A business coach can be MOST helpful when you don’t have a formal business education

If you’re like a lot of the clients I work with, you probably started your business because you were a great technician – you were great at delivering the work.

And you achieved a certain level of success based on hard work and persistence.

Not because you have an MBA.

But as John Maxwell says, “What got you here, won’t get you there.”

Once you reach a certain level in your business – what we refer to as “chaos” or “disorder” in our 5 Steps to Freedom program, your business starts to feel a bit like it’s slipping from your control.

You’re working crazy hours, your staff and your customers all need to talk to you, and you may not be certain about how you stand financially. You might be making a lot of money, but not sure where it’s going – or you may be lacking sales to keep up with your overhead.

You run into problems without easy answers. “Just work harder” no longer works the way it used to.

For your business to thrive, you’ll need to shore up the gaps in your business intelligence. It’s time for you to move from technician to visionary and leader.

It’s harder than you think, and it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. A good business coach can help.

If you’re interested in find out more about how business coaching might help you, I’d love to talk with you. Set up a 15-minute call with me today to chat about it: Book a call with John