What Does Business Coaching do for You Personally?

What Should Business Coaching do for Me?

Good coaching should improve your profit and your leadership. It should also leave you with more energy, more confidence, and a better balance between the business and the rest of your life.

Most conversation about business coaching centers on business results: revenue, profit, leads, margins. That’s where it should be. If you hire a business coach, you should expect your numbers to improve.

What owners talk about less is what coaching does for them personally. Running a business wears people down. Long hours, constant decisions and the feeling that everything depends on you add up, and burnout is common among owners who have been at it for a few years. A business can only grow as far as the person running it has the energy to take it. That means your own growth must be part of the business plan.

How Does Business Coaching Build Confidence?

Business is a steady stream of problems. Some are small, some keep you up at night, and very few arrive one at a time. A good coach helps you recognize your strengths and trust your judgment, which changes how you approach the next problem that pops up.

Marcus Aurelius wrote nearly 2,000 years ago that the impediment to action advances action, and what stands in the way becomes the way. Ryan Holiday shortened that to the title of his book, The Obstacle Is the Way. We take that idea literally here. People only get creative when something forces them to. And what is a business, really, except the answer to someone’s problem? If that’s true, problems should energize us. They’re the reason our business exists.

The Two Objections We Hear Most for Business Coaching

Even owners who see the value in coaching often hold back. Two reasons come up more than any others.

The first is cost. Coaching is a real financial commitment, and it should be weighed like any other investment. The question to ask is what the return looks like. When coaching is working, it pays for itself through higher revenue, better margins and fewer expensive mistakes. And more profit and free time for the owner.

The second is time. Owners tell themselves they’re too busy for coaching. That’s usually a sign coaching is a good fit. One of the first things a coach should have you do is a time study, where you track how you spend your week. Most owners find they’re spending hours on work that shouldn’t be theirs at all. We’ve helped owners in many different industries take that time back, and the decisions you make faster with a coach save even more.

Think about how many hours you spend trying to figure out how to make your business run better. Now compare that to working with someone whose entire focus is making businesses run better, and who already knows the strategies that work.

How Do I Choose the Right Business Coach?

Our last post covered the red flags to watch for in detail. In short, look at the coach’s experience, then ask for testimonials, case studies, and maybe even references. Results from past clients tell you more than anything on their website.

Chemistry matters as much as credentials. You’ll be talking with this person 2-3 times per month about the hardest parts of your business, so you need to trust them and be able to work with them. A good coach will offer an initial consultation.  The best coaches will charge for this. Use it to judge how they communicate, how well they listen, and whether their approach fits the way you work.

Counterintuitively, you’ll also want someone to challenge you, or you’ll likely end up “coaching the coach.”  And that’s no good for anyone.

The Bottom Line

Good coaching should improve your profit and your leadership. It should also leave you with more energy, more confidence, and a better balance between the business and the rest of your life. Coaching won’t do the work for you, but it will make the work you do count for more.

If your plan is to keep grinding until things get easier on their own, the business will likely outlast your patience.

If you’re ready to see what coaching could do for you and your business, contact us.